My last two blog posts were on 23 October (Gamehole convention) and 24 September (my Aufstrag campaign game diary).

I used to blog once or twice a week – what has happened? Why have I stopped RPG blogging?

Most broadly, I have grown tired of social media. Everyone (it seems) is trying to sell something. Everyone wants to be an ‘influencer.’ Everywhere I look all I see are ads and promotions of their own product they are trying to convince me to buy, or they are trying to sell the product of someone who is sponsoring them.

I have simply had enough of the never ending promotions. I have unsubscribed/unfollowed the majority of gaming companies/creators. The never ending emails promoting the ‘next big’ crowdfunding project have nearly all disappeared. I no longer care about buying more game products. When my last few crowdfunding products arrive next year I plan on closing and deleting all my crowdfunding accounts. If there is a product I want in the future, I will buy it the old fashioned way – by seeing it on a storefront (physical or digital) and deciding if I truly need it, considering that I have spent several thousand dollars on RPG game products over the last 5 years alone, the answer is mostly going to be ‘No‘.

This also applies to platforms like Youtube and Twitch. Youtube in recent months began sending me (and others) a warning that if I didn’t turn off my adblocker I couldn’t watch anymore videos. I refuse to watch ads, so I have stopped watching Youtube on their platform.

Social media websites also can take up (i.e. waste) a huge amount of time. I am now down to spending 1 hour per week on social media. Thirty minutes a week is on Discord, and the other 30 minutes covers places like Mastodon. I deleted MeWe a week ago (I want nothing to do with their crypto and NFT nonsense, plus the RPG gamers there have become a small, quiet, bunch, as most have moved onto other platforms since the original Google+ exodus of 2018). I deleted my Goodreads account today (even with recent updates it feels as if its days are done, it is also getting corrupted since many books get review bombed by haters, and other people just go there to rant about an author they have a grievance with, and there is no real constructive sharing of thoughts. Finally, who cares how many books you read each year? It is the quality you get from the books you read, not the numerical number of books, or how many pages you read; this obsession with quantifying everything destroys the joy of simply reading and reflecting).

With only 30 minutes on social media each week, unsubscribing from game publisher/creator emails and promotions that drag you off to a website, you wouldn’t believe how much time I have gained in my real life! I literally have acquired several extra hours each day to be productive and live a real, intentional, life. I haven’t felt this free since I first jumped into the social media communities in 2009 (when I was in university busy connecting with people). Except for my Tuesday Castles & Crusades game night, I now put aside 3 hours every night to read and exercise. Since this summer I have lost over 30 lbs and more importantly, I am physically active everyday of the week walking, cycling, and rowing, which has made me more mentally alert as well. I feel renewed!

As just alluded to, I still have my Tuesday night C&C group and I honestly think we are closer and more passionate about the game than we have yet been since 2018 when this particular group first formed. But now I focus just on them, or more accurately, on us. I am no longer distracted by trying to run multiple groups, trying to write and publish witty blog posts to get more subscribers/followers, or following the latest gossipy drama and distractions of ‘who has done what’ to someone else in the RPG community, what product I need to buy (or, I actually don’t need to buy), etc. I plan and run my game, and then I have other things I do (like continue to learn how to cook, attend academic conferences online, and seek out new pursuits).

One of my game diaries would typically take 2-3 hours to complete. I would look for art to represent what happened in the game session, then write, edit, re-edit, and then share it on multiple social media platforms. By not blogging twice a week I have just saved myself 4-6 hours per week. I do miss the interactions with real people, but although some game diaries got many dozens of visitors, many just saw a dozen viewers. When I write product reviews, those have frequently gotten hundreds of views, and although I think I have a unique perspective and viewpoint to share, at the moment I cringe a bit at being one of thousands of other people throwing my voice onto the web competing for views and attention with everyone else.

Additionally, how many real viewers am I getting? WordPress tells me I have had over 7,000 visitors to my blog this year. But I supect most of those are bots. There are several “people” that randomly like a blog post of mine every week. I know many of them are not real people. About a year ago I had several hundred visits every day for several days coming from from Russia, I changed a WordPress setting and they all disappeared the next day. I once got three “people” who began following my blog over three days, I looked at their blogs and they were all cooking blogs that had nothing to do with what I do, so, once again, bots. I’ve read that 47 percent of internet traffic is from Bots. I don’t find that surprising.

Surely I can just ignore all the bots and just focus on the actual conversations with the few dozen or few hundred people that actually care about what I write? Sure, that is nice (although I can foresee in a few years time the next level of bot will not just be liking and following blogs, but commenting as if they are a real person).

But, at least at the moment, I am enjoying the fact that I am saving a ton of money by simply ending spending on RPGs (Gamehole, in October, was the last time I bought RPG products). The multiple daily emails from creaters/publishers trying to get me to buy their next product are no longer clogging my email. I sometimes can now go a day or two without getting an email! That hasn’t been true for years. Getting away from the gossip is emotionally uplifting. The constant hype and flashing ads are becoming but a memory.

Stepping back from social media has allowed me to realize that most of what is shared on social media isn’t that important.

I now go to the library. I read. I have nice notebooks (e.g. moleskine, leuchtturm, paperblank) where I write stuff down – for myself. You don’t have to share everything with the world (because the world doesn’t see it, perhaps a few dozen or a few hundred people see it and the other hundreds or thousands are non-sentient bots). The internet is buzzing with noise, but it is frequently unecessary noise that we don’t have to listen to.

At this time of the year I usually do a year end blog reflecting on the past year and look forward to the future, but in many ways I have already done that. Perhaps a year end blog with some photos of my Xmas gifts? We’ll see.