Why I Threw My Social Media in the Trash

And other such tales of reckless abandon (aka: no longer giving a shit).

Hi there!

The Sacrimony #8 campaign wrapped up last week and I’m super grateful to the folks who showed up to check out the next issue of love, life and death (in no particular order) in these economically troubling times.

I wish I could say I was able to take some time to rest and relax, but I officially started school this week in order to eventually attain the Highly Coveted Super Secure Dayjob so I’m no longer at the mercy of working freelance. So far, I’ve really enjoyed going back to school. My classes are interesting and my classmates are super nice and I would be delighted to have them as super nice coworkers by the end of the year.

One of the things I realized when I started getting to know my classmates is how much I’ve missed talking to people in person, face to face. Working from home by myself all these years has really made me feel lonely and miserable and social media has only amplified those feelings of loneliness and miserableness.

In fact, earlier this year, I deactivated most of my social media because I felt like it was a shallow, stupid game that I didn’t want to play anymore. Goodbye Instagram and BlueSky. I will not miss you. (Facebook is the only one I’m keeping, because I use it to stay in touch with all the Good Homies.)

“But what about MARKETING!?” I hear you ask. The truth is, I don’t care. I’ve never cared, because if I did, I’d have put more effort into my sssssssocial meeeeedia presennnnnce all these years. But I never bothered and the thought of starting now requires me to stifle the urge to projectile vomit on my screen.

I don’t feel like chopping up bits of my life and curating it and serving it to an audience of strangers, hoping they approve of how I live. I don’t care about making cute little aEsThEtIc drawing videos and wasting time on editing them and posting them every single day, hoping that the almighty algorithm bestows upon me the highly coveted state of “going viral that one time” and I don’t like having to remind people with very short attention spans that I exist before I’m completely forgotten to time, itself, after two and a half days of not posting.

Forget me. I don’t care. I’m sick of it.

When I started job hunting last year, I thought about why exactly I’ve been creating Sacrimony. I came to the conclusion that it was never because I wanted to make a “business” out of it. That’s the quickest way for me to end up hating something I love and while I’ve loved making the comic itself, I’ve hated a lot of other things involved, hence, the constant cycle of burnout every other month.

The truth is, I make Sacrimony for me. I make it because I enjoy drawing my characters and I enjoy moving the story forward and seeing where it goes. It’s cathartic. It gives me life and feeds me spiritually and mentally. I don’t want to be finacially dependent on it.

I was never aiming for The Big Netflix deal, I’m not trying to appeal to “the average comic fan” and I don’t care if it never goes mainstream. I don’t even care if only 10 people buy books from me for the rest of my life, because as long as those 10 people are also into what I’m doing, then that makes me happy. I’m still going to keep making the comic and putting it on Kickstarter and whoever shows up, shows up.

I know it sounds pretentious as hell, but I’ve always been an artist and never a “marketer.”

So I talked about stuff I hate, but what do I like? I like writing my little newsletters every week, to be honest. I don’t need to contain them to a certain amount of characters or figure out what #HASHTAGS# I need to use, or pick the right TrEnDiNg AuDiO and I don’t have to worry about whether or not a stupid algorithm will hide my posts.

It feels more personal, like writing to an old friend, and that’s much more my style.

So, hey, old friends, thanks so much for reading this. If you read through the whole thing, feel free to treat yourself to your favorite snacky as a reward and also be sure to have a great weekend!
-M

Also, if there are any things you want me to talk about in future newsletters, just drop a comment and let me know :)