TheDeed

What's practical and effective for self defense?

I posted this on here 4 years ago and I had no idea what the future would hold back then

Sometimes people I just met (in a platonic context) will ask me things like "hey, what's your Instagram, let's keep in touch!"

My standard answer is that I don't do social media, but I have found that people take it as bragging perhaps? I get answers like "oh, good for you! I wish I didn't" or whatever.

If I say oh here's my number that seems too odd these days, people not that much younger than me (I'm 31) don't seem to text anymore. They use fb messenger or Instagram or others.

Also saying something like "I'm a privacy advocate and I use the fediverse" is also an odd thing to say unless I'm around techy people and even then it's weird tbh.

How do I approach this? I don't think I am better than people that use social media, its just not for me. I would prefer to text but I am not sure that works for a lot of people.

Or should I just bite the bullet and get an Instagram so that I don't seem weird, and then perhaps ask for further contact details via that platform?

Abstaining from social media can be extremely alienating.

autistic btw if you couldn't tell lmao, I have spent a lot of time thinking about this problem

I created my own lemmy instance a while back so I could browse lemmygrad + other instances because libs automatically defederate from lemmygrad.

I remember when Hexbear started as a wee fork of lemmy and there were plans to federate in the future, and look at us now! Makes me happy to see people on lemmy dunking on libs and even changing a few bystander's minds. Shoutout to the devs here, y'all rock. I love the qol updates like pronouns and emojis that we've had for years that beat out stock standard lemmy.

Anyway, love y'all.

p.s. But now I'm thinking maybe I should just nuke my instance and use hexbear exclusively? it's kinda useless now lol