Social Media, or lack thereof

I’m sorry I have been MIA from blogging here at RacerDan.com as I have just struggled to find topics that I felt worthy of writing in this challenging time of pandemics, protests and politics.

I’m going to tackle the subject of Social Media or my lack thereof. I will admit for years, I have been a social media junkie spending countless hours a day surfing Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and SnapChat but lately I have become very disillusioned with it all. I finally had enough and through a very methodical process about two weeks ago, I have deactivated my Facebook account that I have had for more than 10 years and deleted all of my groups, pages, and “friends”. I did keep the account “available” in case I ever want to go back to it again as I don’t really want to lose my Facebook.com/RacerDan user name or the photos that I have uploaded over the last 10-12 years. I have also deactivated Instagram, deleted LinkedIn completely and reduced my Snap Chat connections to just my immediate family (so we can send cat pics to each other).

I did keep Twitter although I am not overly thrilled with the decisions their management makes and I ultimately may drop it completely as well but it has survived the cuts for now. In a related move, I have systematically deleted every connection that had anything to do with professional sports on Twitter except for golf. I survived without pro sports during the height of COVID-19 and since most all of the professional sports took it upon themselves to use their platform for a political purpose, I was just no longer interested. I am not saying that the cause(s) are not justified and I am supportive of them supporting it in the right platform but I don’t feel that wearing shirts with political slogans on the field of kneeling for the national anthem is appropriate any more than I feel it is appropriate to tear down statues or the cities which you live in under the guise of “protesting”. I am a patriot, I’m a card carrying member of the NRA, I love my country even in the these troubling times and I will ALWAYS stand for the National Anthem and salute the flag, that is not negotiable in my book.

Why would I get rid of social media you may ask? Well there are many reasons but primarily I don’t like getting caught up in drama, gossip or bitching and there is way too much of that on there for me. I work in an industry that a small percentage of keyboard warriors think it is OK to go bash things that are done without any background or real understanding of the complete situation and finally, it just came down to time. I do not need to spend 4-5 hours a day on my phone looking at BS which is what 90% of it is. There are things I miss, I love using Facebook Marketplace but that wasn’t enough for me to keep it. I constantly read about privacy concerns and censorship which helped with the decision so although it wasn’t really an easy one, it was the right one.

One thing was that for years, I have been an admin on all of our business pages so that was my rationale and reasoning for keeping it but I realized that we have other people that are much smarter than me that handle that so I became expendable as far as that portion of it goes and that allowed me to break the chain of social media bondage.

I am a very emotional person that wears my emotion on my sleeves, I don’t think it is hard to tell when I am in a good mood or a bad mood and unfortunately, I let things like Facebook affect my mood at work, at home and while trying to sleep. It is not all bad for sure, there is good info on social media and I have kept up with many friends throughout the years on Facebook but the amount of negativity is just unbelievable. I used to be a very negative person but thanks to my wife Dee Ann, I have learned to be thankful and grateful for all that I have and I really have tried to be more understanding and positive rather than get worked up over every little thing. I have a wonderful healthy family, a great job that I love and a roof over my head but it pains me to see the length that some people will go to just to be miserable.

I mean so many just complain about everything on social media, it’s rather stunning sometimes. It isn’t just people complaining about the track conditions or the calls we make at the track but if you go to some of these non-racing related chat boards, you just can’t make up the stuff people will complain about and it just brings you down. I don’t mind any kind of constructive criticism but when the same people bitch and complain about everything, it just wears on you.

Especially in our business, the same people over and over complain about the track being too smooth, too rough, too fast, can’t pass, got screwed on pill draw, why do they tech so hard, why don’t they tech enough, and on and on and on. It isn’t everyone for sure, 95% of them are gold and will call or email you if they have a question or concern and that is OK but the other 5% may need to find a different hobby like golf for instance which I like.

I think what people may not realize is that there are real people making real time decisions and they are personally affected when they get personally attacked online. Every decision is made with good intention but as humans we are not always right. I made a mistake recently and changed the tire rule for one of our large end of season events. In hindsight I was wrong I think but I could not believe the hate from people that I have known for years and thought better of. Rather than constructively talk through the problem and explain the reasons why, we were criticized as being stupid or idiots and it didn’t help anything except create long term hard feelings on our end.

Ultimately the ones that handled it with class and dignity showed us why our decision may have been the wrong one and I am OK with that. We had our reasons for doing it but in the end I feel like we made the right call but it was the social media firestorm that left a sour taste in my mouth.

That is just one of MANY examples that just made me realize I didn’t need it. I know many people that don’t have it and they seem to get along just fine and I know many people that do have it and post 10 or 12 times a day but don’t return calls or emails for their job that are important. Is it that important to show the fish you caught 27 times a day, or what you are eating for lunch every day or pictures of your dog every five minutes?

I am sure my posting pattern was annoying to many people too and I am OK with that as I don’t have to worry about that any more. One other thing that is definitely bad is drinking and posting, I have been guilty of it and usually regretted it but you get a few drinks of Captain Courage in you and you say things you most always regret.

Dylan Robinson recently said to me that “Drunk words are sober thoughts.” and that really rings true for many people. I think we all know of so many people that have slipped with a Tweet or Facebook post that were racially disparaging or generally politically incorrect and they have seen their careers or jobs go down the drain over a less than 160 character Tweet in a moment of irresponsibility. It’s not good and I don’t want to make a mistake and be that person as I represent myself, my family and my employer as do all of you.

Ironically, since I don’t have social media anymore, hardly any of you will see this but I am OK with that, some of you will see it and think it is good and many of you will disagree which is OK too but it’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Until next time…..

DR