Hello darlings. This month I’d like to talk a little bit about social media and why I’m leaving it.

I know this is tedious. We all have that friend who is Not Online and therefore lives in absolute bliss, the bastard. We are jealous of them, but we cannot live as they do, for we have Obligations that Require it. But I’ve decided that my highest obligation is to keep writing, and to do that, I can’t be checking Instagram more than once in a blue moon.

This wasn’t an easy decision for me. I was there, Gandalf. I was there when the BBS message boards were owned by a single person who was just really into an obscure TV show. When we had to email our fanfiction to one of the handful of people who ran their own website on a themed webring, hoping they would allow our one-shot to be hosted in their online curio cabinet so other people could read it. When it took up to an hour for a jpg of the X-Files cast to load on a monitor that conservatively weighed 200 lbs. I joined Twitter when it was still possible to grab a first name as a handle. I LOVE talking to other nerds, and for much of my life, the internet was the place to do that.

But that’s no longer the case.

In April, I went on vacation for 10 days. I took every social media app off my phone and had an amazing time. No longer was I anxiously checking every few hours to see if I’d missed an important message. No scrolling past posts designed to make me feel enraged or awful. It felt like my brain had been sent through a car wash. Maybe it still doesn’t run perfectly, but at least it felt sparkling clean.

As an author, there is an expectation on the part of publishers and some readers that I should maintain a presence on social media. How else am I supposed to tell people about my books? Great question, and I’ve come to the conclusion that, although I’m sure the number of people who’ve discovered my work through my posts isn’t zero, it’s certainly not 10,000. Perhaps not even 1,000. The fact is, unless I’m willing to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars boosting my Instagram posts, most people will never see them. And unless I’m willing to spend dozens or hundreds of hours every week creating Content™, I will not be very visible. I can’t do those things. I won’t. You can’t make me. Looking at the numbers alone, that was an easy conclusion to come to: as a midlist author with a modest online following, social media is not going to translate to book sales for me in a meaningful way. (OTHER people talking about my books on social media might move the needle, but I don’t need to be there for that.)

As a trans person, these spaces are laughably antagonistic. I can see very clearly how my Instagram posts about my books that mention their queerness or transness get less traction than those that don’t. Feels bad! And a few months ago, when I started being more open about being on T, my algo started showing me content from detransition influencers—that is, people who had started to transition but then stopped. In real life, the vast majority of people who detransition do so not because they want to, but because they can no longer access their hormones, for example, or because they’ve been forced back into the closet to keep their job or relationship. But you wouldn’t know that from the deluge of detransition content I was being shown, which without fail involved people who had chosen to detransition, complete with makeup tutorials that promised me I’d be looking Feminine and Sexy again in no time. No thank you! If I had been interested in detransitioning, I would have sought that stuff out, but in reality I was seeking out the opposite. I don’t think it’s a coincidence I was being shown these videos during my transition. I think it’s classic transphobia designed to make me angry, leave angry comments on these people’s videos, and increase engagement for this shitty app. In any other job, if it were a requirement to expose myself to this trash, I would have grounds to sue. So that made the Pro list much stronger as I mentally built a case for leaving.

But there is also a weird kind of guilt associated with unplugging. What if I miss an important message? Or an important update from someone I truly care about? How else will I keep up with the news? Will I just be sticking my head in the sand while world events continue on? If I leave, am I contributing to the silencing of trans voices?

Let’s break it down: if it’s really important, someone will text me. If they don’t have my number, then it can’t be that important.

On keeping up with the news: not to toot my own horn here, but I think I’m more informed than 95% of Americans. Honestly, it’s not hard. I still read the news, just in my inbox instead of seeing it in my Bluesky feed or via Destiel memes. I try to be thoughtful in curating my sources. As a New Yorker, I subscribe to a daily newsletter from Gothamist, which is run by our local public media org and is therefore kind of dry and bloodless, and one from Hell Gate, which is more irreverent, silly, and cutting. It’s a pretty okay diet of facts and lifestyle articles, which I supplement with weekly roundups from Assigned Media, which focuses on trans issues, a beat that is woefully under-served even at the most progressive news orgs. I’m not ignorant of what’s going on, I’m just not forced to see a hundred pithy, trite Takes about it every day.

And as for holding the line for trans voices on the internet, especially in the face of legislation that threatens to silence us, here’s my thinking: if there were a club downtown that continued to ban trans women the way tumblr does, or charge more for trans people at the door the way Instagram’s boosting system does, or tell patrons they can’t talk about the ongoing genocide in Gaza the way Bluesky does, I simply would not go to that club. I wouldn’t give them my time and energy, let alone my money. If other people feel strongly about partying there and want to keep doing it, that’s fine. It’s just not my scene. And it’s not my job to try and make the management of that club suck less.

Logistically, me taking a step back from socials won’t change much for you, the reader. I won’t be deleting my accounts, but will use them for updates only, checked infrequently. If anyone wants to get in touch with me, my bio will direct them to my website.

The biggest thing that will change is this newsletter. It will be my only real way to communicate with people who want updates from me, since the algos will not like seeing my accounts falling off in usage. So I’m asking you for a favor: if you have a friend you know wants to keep up with me, forward them this email so they can subscribe if they so choose. It will always be free, and now that I have less of a social media presence, it will probably have more long-form writing like this in addition to event updates and book news.

Thank you for your continued support! And if you still see me posting on tumblr, yeah, okay, sometimes I like to look at gifs of cats. Nobody’s perfect.

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Event News: I will be at the PGH Book Fest in Pittsburgh. Check my website for schedule updates!

These links will bring May flowers:

first time my books have inspired a tea

for those too young or offline to know this meme

old but gold: “What are you going to do, tell the same stories?”

case no. 23478352 why you shouldn’t use ai for legal stuff

hell yeah pittsburgh poetess