I’m not Looking for Likes. I’m Looking for Birds.

Many years ago, I joined Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. After a couple years of using social media I quit. Why? Because I found them to be a big waste of time. Time I could be using to pursue activities I love like birding, reading, genealogy, barbecue and poker.

I also figured out along the way why social media exists. It’s because of a market inefficiency. Markets are created by people and by their very nature people are inefficient. What the titans of social media discovered was a market inefficiency. And it all revolved around that very profound question, “What do you want?” Lots of people can’t answer that question in a specific way and they have loads of idle time. The social media titans realized this and they found ways to fill up that idle time. Why? Not because they love you. No, because as they should, they are trying to make a profit and the way they’re doing that is through making social media as addicting as possible.

What I’ve discovered is that social media speeds things up when it might be a better deal if things were slowed down. Why is instant gratification so very important? Most of the satisfying things in life are not instant. When I was in the high Andes in Ecuador in December 2025 we looked and looked for a giant conebill. It took nearly an hour. When we found it, we were all super excited because it’s a very special bird restricted to a very particular type of forest in the Andes. That is true satisfaction.

There are no links to social media on my website. Why? Because I’m not looking for likes. I’m looking for birds. Between the actual birding and the planning that goes into this endeavor I don’t have time for social media. But then I never did.