Not having social media

I have no social media to advertise my stock photography.  No Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter.  They’re all pretty useless as far as I’m concerned.  They’re all full of fake news, frauds, con artists etc.  Facebook pretty much spies on you 24/7 and sells your data to pretty much everyone.  Google is censoring everyone who they disagree with.  If you have wrong thought, you are pretty much banned and making any money on their platform.  I come from a communist country and this is exactly how the communists acted.  Put everyone who disagreed with them in reeducation camps or goulash.  Patrion, PayPal are pretty much the same.  All of these California type oligarchy, communist, crony capitalist are all the same.  You and I are just peons in their little game.

No social media

So I basically shuttered all my social media accounts a few months back.  Not that I was ever on Instagram, Twitter for long.  I was on Facebook for a long time but about two months ago, I closed my Facebook account for good.  Of all the “friends” I had on there, only two noticed.  Only two besides my girlfriend and her sister.  No one else noticed except for a photography friend and one guy that I worked with and remained friends with since 2014.  But people I’ve known since high school and college did not notice.  I don’t think any of them cared.  We didn’t talk daily, weekly or even once a month.  A few I’d talk to maybe a few times every couple of months but other than that.  No phone calls, no texts, no emails.

I’ve also noticed that since I’ve shuttered my Facebook account, I’m getting less and less job offers for photography and my full time IT job.  My day job as a matter of fact.  The red tape in government now, especially in Canada is amazingly bad.  A decision that could take half an hour now takes weeks, if not months.  As an example, I was notified a month ago that a company submitted my resume for a position that I’m extremely capable of doing.  My resume has wast on someones desk in Procurement for a month now.  The company cannot get a hold of the person in procurement for a status update.  Apparently my resume has been under review for that month.  Now, my resume is about 4 pages long.  I can read 4 pages in a few minutes.  This should take about 10-15 minutes for review.  Maybe half an hour to an hour max.  But four plus weeks.  I tell you, when people tell you government is inept, believe them.  Ninety five percent of the people working for government do not live in the real world where results matter.  When I have a client, I communicate daily with them.  If I run into any trouble, I let them know and most people understand.  Governments are just inept and they will fall under their own crushing weight and mismanagement.  

Patreon

I don't have an account on Patreon.  I go to work every day.  Photography is an awesome hobby and I wish I could it as my full time job.  I was actually thinking this year, I'll start doing YouTube full time and subsidize my income on Patreon.  But with the purge on Patreon and YouTube demonetizing videos at their whim, it's not financially feasible to just quit my job and try and survive on Shutterstock money.

What Patreon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook are doing is basically what the Communists did in the USSR and Eastern Europe.  I think it's crony capitalism/socialism/communism.  And I of course blame the politically correct social justice warriors who get offended by everything and everyone.

No social media except...

...my blog, my online media portfolios and maybe a Youtube Channel.  I use Google' Blogger platform only because Wordpress is a nightmare to configure, use and secure.  Wordpress gets attacked hourly because it stores your credit card numbers on its platform for payment and such.  I will not use it just for that.  With Google, they spy on you and use sell your data.  I no longer use the Google search engine personally.  Duckduckgo all the way.

Twitter was completely worthless.  A lot of photo and footage theft.  You can only put low quality stuff on there so you couldn't get any sales on there.  90% of my followers were other photographers who would steal your stuff and call it their own.  Instagram was full of spammers.  I'd say 99% of the users are spam accounts.  Everybody was asking for iTunes gift cards which is a total joke.  I hardly use a Google product.  I just permanently closed my Facebook account which should be done in 30 Facebook days.  

So all I have now is my blog.  I can control the content on the blog.  The size of the photos and footage is limited but better than Twitter or Instagram.  Facebook is crap as well.  Looks like the whole media companies are banning conservatives or anyone with an opposing or different view point.  Media companies are not good for western democracies anymore.  Most are socialist or commie type establishments.

People should support small entrepreneurs and artists like myself.  I saw a quote on the web years which in effect stated that you shouldn't support a CEO of a company to buy his/her new jet but instead support a small business so the owners can support their families.  It may be more expensive than Walmart but you're helping a family business.