In 2011, I discovered Tumblr. In 2009, I created my Facebook account. In 2007, I became a user on deviantArt. For the last eight years of my life, my interactions with social media and websites have been dictated by the idea of gathering views/clicks/watchers/followers/friends. But what does it really mean for me, or for the people that were interacting with me?

When I used deviantArt, a website designed as a place for artists to share their work, I used it as more of a social media platform than as a place for creative expression. I mean, sure, I did pretend like I knew how to draw and posted what art I deemed was okay enough, but that wasn't what I was doing there. I was posting journals and talking to people and interacting in chatrooms. This was a good couple of years of my life that I spent trying to prove something to no one about how I was good at what I was doing, whatever that was. I posted things in such a way that I would get lots of traffic, and shared them with friends, who in turn shared it with their friends.

I wasn't well known by any stretch, but I wasn't unknown either by the standards of the website that I dealt with. Of course, now I don't use deviantArt, and my page is a few last pieces that I don't mind being up and half a dozen journals about coming back and leaving again. All that time and effort I spent on that page and that account was gone. Except for the memories and a few friendships, I have nothing to say about the work I did there. So what was the point of trying to get all those views on my art? What was the point of trying to get tons of people to watch me?

There was none.

For me, it was a way to spend time, and once I found other ways to spend my time, I stopped visiting the site. I found other things to do.

Facebook, on the other hand, is hard-wired into our lives. Even when I was using it to begin with, it was less of a place to get popular and more of place to earn the respect of the peers I already knew liked me or at least tolerated me. In this website, I wanted my words to matter, to be witty, to sound sophisticated.

Earning likes was the goal of the Facebook era. While I didn't delete Facebook or leave it in the way that I left deviantArt, I did leave behind the idea of fishing for likes and trying to get people to comment on my posts. From that decision to abandon that system, I wound up posting less, describing only the important things in my life, the ones that I wanted to share. I was more or less a lurker.

Then came Tumblr. When I began Tumblr, I tried to get views and followers. I tried to look interesting, but when it came down to it, trying hard looked funny. So I just had fun with my Tumblr and posted the kinds of things that I wanted to. There was no pressure to try. People liked it or they didn't, and I was content with or without an audience.

And because of this shift in my views only a few years ago, I have come to have an odd relationship with the idea of earning views or page-clicks or shares or watchers or followers or likes. I have come to have a relationship with them in which I realize the importance of getting these things, and yet I don't care. They aren't important to me like they once were, but just a by-product of the world that I live in.