Unfortunately, I haven’t been holding to my usual practice of posting and ghosting. Usually, I share what I’m thinking and move on, rarely returning to the original post. I did turn off notifications for my last post right after I wrote it, so there’s that. I feel somewhat refreshed. But for others, I’d been reading comments, and in so doing, sensing a black hole form in the galaxy of my willingness to share anything at all. I don’t like that sensation. I’d rather keep sharing, not because I have anything valuable to say, but because for me, writing is a mental illness. Seriously. I have to do it. As I’ve told others, if I don’t, I sometimes feel like my head will split open and spray words on the wall.

I’ve also noted on occasion that there’s a reason for the black hole’s formation and the value of posting and ghosting. No one is truly capable of enduring the scale or flow that the social media firehose can produce. No one is meant to say something and then be instantaneously admired or hated by so many all at once. I suppose the inspiration for what I’m writing right now is an article I just read about the rigors of life in the entertainment business. It certainly seemed interesting, so I scrolled through it. Essentially, the author, a psychiatrist, noted that celebrities—people in the public eye—are more prone to anxiety, depression, bipolar disorders, suicide, and substance abuse. And why? The never-ending media and public scrutiny. They are loved and hated on a mass scale. It seems the ones who survive this are those who can step out on stage, speak, and then leave the stage, ultimately retreating to a well-insulated distance.

In a way, social media gives everyday Joes like us a sense of this. Apart from the fact that it’s a forum where so many rules of normal communication already seem to dissipate into ethereal nothingness, social media gives a sense of broad-reaching importance to anything anyone writes. Social media lets all of us announce our thoughts to the world, as if history itself had been waiting for our exact opinions, typed right there on our phones in a grocery store checkout line. Add to that social media’s instinctual rules. For the most part, nuance is frowned upon. Tribal allegiance matters most. Thoughtful consideration followed by kindly conversation has become heresy. Reactionism is rewarded. And the highest virtue is not being right but being certain that I could never be wrong—preferably in all caps, and while correcting someone who never asked. Or perhaps worse, having direct access to someone through private messaging, demanding an answer to an angry question, neither the response nor the person’s time being something you are owed.

And so, the practice of posting and ghosting is a way of sharing one’s thoughts without being slow-boiled toward defeat by potential vitriol. It also prevents the temptation to knee-jerk in response to the vitriol. In other words—and I speak only for myself when I say it—it’s an act of both self-control and self-preservation in a system primarily designed to fan instantaneous and mass-scale reactionary flames. I believe people can have their moment on stage, speak, and then leave the stage, leaving the crowd to discuss without being harmed in the process. It might not be what readers want from the one posting, but it helps him avoid the black hole, ultimately keeping him around a little bit longer.