Social Media Experiments

Anyone who's been following my journey over the years will know I've never been a fan of social media. I slowly and reluctantly found my way onto these platforms as there increasingly seemed little alternative to reach people online. In SoulJahm days we mostly communicated through blogs, and before that, it was a combination of blogs, forums and email. As the 2010s progressed Facebook was our main social media outlet. By 2013 we were on Twitter, although we barely used it, and then people began steering me in the direction of Instagram around 2016.

During the scamdemic/lockdown period of the 2020s it seemed all kinds of alternative social media platforms sprung up, and I tried out a few in an attempt to move away from the toxic energies of the main ones. These attempts were all fruitless as there just wasn't enough people on these alternative platforms to make them viable. Plus, I realised one significant factor... it's not really the platform that is the problem, it is the human mind, and wherever you put it, it will repeat the same patterns for better or worse. This realisation convinced me to stick with the main platforms and simply try to make the best of it there.

Instagram has increasingly done very little and seems to be getting worse all the time. I wasn't much of a fan of it to begin with but after 2018 I noticed it has gone significantly downhill. Unless you are prepared to play the game, it seems nothing at all can happen there organically. I suspected I was being shadowbanned because of some of my posts during the lockdown years and so last year I created a new page and kept it all about Music. No spiritual or conspiracy stuff. It was an experiment to see if I could gain any traction. I focussed on reels rather than photos and yes, I did notice reels I was posting on this new page got more views than on my main older account but still it never translated to followers and genuine interaction.

Twitter/X I have used on and off over the years. I wasn't very active there until the latter busking years (2018-2019) where it became a handy place to express some of my views about playing on the streets and some of the challenges I faced there. As the world went increasingly mad from 2020 onwards, I found myself compelled to speak out more on certain injustices I was witnessing around me and then as things got back to 'normal' I backed off my use a little. Until the start of 2024, when I felt drawn to become much more active on there and use it the way most people do. This was kind of an experiment. Years ago, on the David Icke forum, I'd been asked several times to share more of my life, my likes/dislikes, trivial, superficial stuff, but I felt at that time this was all irrelevant and that the focus should be on exploring our true nature, so I rarely got involved in those discussions. For whatever reason, throughout 2024 I felt the urge to be more personal and share more of my life that way. So I started commenting on tv shows, films, music and art that I like alongside the usual spiritual/conspiracy related stuff I'd usually comment on. Sometime during this period I realised that the video for the song "Conveyer Belt" had a shot in it where I made an 'X' sign with my arms at the line "Trying to chain you to past lives / Bring it all forward into the Light". This was a spontaneous move that took me by surprise during filming yet obviously related to the line I was singing. At this time, X was still known as Twitter. Elon Musk had not yet taken over. Finding myself suddenly posting more frequently on Twitter/X in 2024 a thought came to me that perhaps there was something prophetic about this gesture. Did some part of me know I was going to be posting on the newly rebranded X two years after this video? Could the line itself be a direct reference to breaking away from Twitter/X ("past lives")? Who knows? I say all this because it's something I've encountered again and again. There are all kinds of strange synchronicities like this running through my videos and songs. Anyway, here is the video and the relevant scene happens at 1:49:

As 2024 drew to a close, I increasingly felt I've had enough of social media. I've given it a good shot but I just don't think it's for me and never really did. It was always something I've used out of necessity. That doesn't mean I think the concept itself is bad. Potentially, it could have been a great thing, but it's very clear now there is an agenda behind it and it's not what it's made out to be. From the early days of the internet the notion of connecting people up from all over the world has been an exciting prospect but that has been ruined by all the algorithms, AI, fake bots and generally very low vibrational ways these platforms are being used. These platforms have become the very things they were meant to replace - the old media of TV channels and newspapers. They sell you the illusion of having your own place to broadcast, as if it's an exciting new era, leaving behind the old media ways but scratch the surface and you find these platforms are operating just like the old media. You may be able to post and broadcast what you like but they will still control who sees it ("Freedom of speech, not freedom of reach"). The whole thing is now run by agendas and that has become increasingly clear on Twitter/X. There is the obvious Republican/Trump and Democrat camps, with all their propaganda channels spewing out rubbish on a daily basis, filling up your timeline. Then there are other cliques like the feminists and their nemesis, the Andrew Tate style masculinity channels. All of them trying to push their agendas aggressively and get you to buy into their belief system. It feels so old and boring.

I've attempted to reinstate my Facebook account several times and get something happening on there but it just feels dead to me. Everytime I look at posts and things on Facebook it just feels so depressing and old. It feels very claustrophobic. Bitchute has went dead after the lockdown years. It seems unless you're pushing far-right content nothing much is happening there. I gave Bluesky a go for a few months towards the end of 2024 but ended up deleting my account as I ended up with about 100 woke musicians following me without any genuine interest in what I do. I hate this culture of networking, connecting, following people just for the sake of it. There is literally nowhere for me to go on the internet now. It's a depressing place and so sad when you think back to what it could've been. The optimism that was there about it all in the early 2000s.

So, as 2025 begins, I'm feeling to step away further from these platforms and go back to basics. I will probably use this blog as the main way to express my views, keep in touch, post news, like I used to, and although I may not be able to reach as many people, at least I can go into things in a more long-form, nuanced way. I'll still leave my social media profiles active as a way for people to reach me if they wish but this is the best place to follow me I'd say from now on. What I'd really like to see is a way for those of us who feel the same about these things to connect up with each other in a more organic way, away from the manipulative algorithms and agendas of social media.