In Jim’s previous post, he wondered aloud if anyone is out there reading our blog. Then a reader left us a really nice comment saying that yes, he still does. That was nice to see, especially because June 2nd was our nomadiversary, marking 17 years since we hit the road. That’s when we started documenting our RV lifestyle. I’ve since been mulling over the reasons why old school RV blogging has always been more important to us than becoming “influencers” and growing a social media presence. So now, I’ll explain why.

Social Media versus Old School RV Blogging: Guess Who Wins?

Social media is not where we want to be, for many reasons. Mainly, that it’s destructive. Many experts can explain why much better than I ever could, like in two great books I read earlier this year. The first was The Chaos Machine, which clearly spells out the many ways that social media harms us, and society. And the second was Four Thousand Weeks; Time Management for Mortals. Both unequivocally lay out the facts about the destructive nature of social media, such as:

• Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube make money by encouraging users to be angry, reactive, and divisive
• We the users are their product. These companies make money off our backs without fairly compensating us, if at all

But there’s a third, bigger reason why we keep old school RV blogging.

We have a distaste and distrust of the way that social media operates.

It doesn’t matter how many followers you have on social media. The shareholders are always more important.

I can’t count the number of times we have seen these companies make greedy decisions that instantly wipe away all the hard work that people put into growing their social media presence. Many spent years building a presence, only to have it disappear in seconds because of decisions made at the top with zero regard for the user on the other end.

Jim and I both know legit internet business owners whose Facebook pages have been permanently shut down without warning. Or Instagram-based businesses that became invisible when the company decided to change its algorithm.

It’s illogical to put energy and time into building a business that you have zero control over, which has little, if any financial reward for doing so. But that’s exactly what happens when people decide to spend so much time trying to get likes, followers, and subscribers on social media. I guess it’s because the myth of the fabulously rich social media influencer lingers. This despite the fact that we have entered the era of the de-influencer.

Social media companies don’t care about me, or you, and the billions of other users addicted to it. They only care about making money for the shareholders.

Life is too short. For the purpose of chronicling our RV lifestyle, I refuse to waste any more time of my life on those platforms than necessary, such as RSVPing to a gym class, or checking our community calendar. And I can safely say that Jim feels the same way.

We keep old school RV blogging because:

• This is our website. We own it and we do what we want.
• Live Work Dream is hosted on a server that is independent of social media.
• Our content is 100% owned by us, and will remain here and visible to anyone who finds us, for as long as we see fit to pay rent for the domain, the hosting, etc.

As Jim and I roll into another year of our nomadic way of life, we’ll keep sharing it here, and we hope you’ll stick around for the ride. It’s always fun having you along.

P.S. Just ignore that “Sharing is Caring” social media blurb below. I can’t figure out how to get rid of it!