Every January I do a review of where I spent my time, money, and attention in the year just ended. This lets me add or remove subscriptions, memberships, recurring payments, and social media follows. It also lets me see if I have any biases or blind spots, or if I’m unknowingly stuck in any kind of echo chamber.
This year I’ve decided to document and share some of my 2021 review.
Podcasts
I subscribed to 41 podcasts in 2021:
I listened to every single episode of 83% of them
46% of them I supported financially in one way or another (eg memberships, recurring Patreon support, digital subscriptions, one-off donations)
Women and non-binary people hosted 54% of the podcasts I listened to
I mostly listened to technology podcasts (eg This Week in Tech, Security Now, Rocket, Command Line Heroes, Darknet Diaries)
People
I directly supported 12 people through recurring payments in 2021:
Most of these people are YouTubers (or at least started on that platform)
67% of them identified as female or non-binary
News and information
I paid for eight news and information sources (through recurring subscriptions):
Given that list, it makes sense that Blindspotter thinks my media diet:
leans left + centre (with the Conversation, the Guardian, and ABC Australia as my top 3 news sources) and
is somewhat narrow (since its sourced mostly from independently owned sources).
(This analysis was based off 53 of my most recent tweets that contained a link to a news article, by the way, so take it with a grain of salt.)
Do I want to engage more with media sources that lean to the right or are owned by large media conglomerates? Not really. Which means I’m quite happy with my current media balance.
My current media diet matches the latest ABC Vote Compass analysis of my political leanings (from the 2019 Australian Federal election) which puts me somewhere between the Greens and the Australian Labor Party. So that checks out.
Subscriptions and donations
I like getting and using things for free, but I pay for what’s important to me and what I can afford at the time.
So over 2021:
I donated to a handful of causes and businesses (eg Sikh Volunteers Australia, Edgar’s Mission)
I subscribed (on and off) to seven audio and video streaming services – all of which I made the most of during 2021’s various pandemic-related lockdowns!
I made regular recurring payments to the online platforms I got a lot of value from (eg Wikipedia, Reddit, Twitter)
I paid license fees or made donations to several software projects (eg Mozilla, paint.NET, Joplin, Arq, Camtasia/Snagit, Microsoft Office)
I paid for my public presence on the internet (eg Squarespace, Namecheap)
I subscribed to a bunch of key online tools and services (eg Proton Mail, Signal, Trello)
I paid to keep my digital and online presence secure (eg Bitwarden, NextDNS, Mullvad, Have I Been Pwned, and a couple of cloud storage solutions for encrypted file sync and backup)
The social network I participate in the most is Twitter.
Over 2021:
I posted 1,010 tweets, 33% of which were replies
I tweeted the most in June and August (131 and 139 tweets in those months, respectively)
On average my tweets get 198 impressions, and 5.8% of people who see my tweets engage with them (like, reply, retweet, etc)
My most popular tweet in 2021 got 45,237 impressions
My most engaging tweets in 2021 (of which there were a few) got 33.3% engagement
Overall, I’m happy with how much energy I put into Twitter and how much engagement I have with the people on this social network.
Over the year I also used tools like (the free versions of) Followerwonk and followerAudit to analyse my Twitter graph, which told me interesting things like:
I follow more female users (29%) than male users (22%) – though this tool only estimates within the gender binary
That said, gender isn’t relevant to most (49%) of the Twitter users I follow (eg they’re not personal accounts)
5.6% of my followers are estimated to be fake, which is lower than the 7% world average
92% of the people I follow have been on Twitter for more than 5 years (I myself have been on Twitter for more than 13 years)
Finally, to get the most out of Twitter, I did these things:
I followed really good users and several interesting topics
I maintained a bunch of lists to keep my main feed from being overrun by stuff I didn’t want to see all the time (and then I used TweetDeck to track what’s been said by users in those lists)
I audited the users I follow, and then did at least two bulk unfollows last year
You have to put in the work if you want to have a good experience on your social network of choice. That’s what I did with Twitter, and that’s why it continues to be one of my favourite places to hang out.
(FYI. Most of the rest of my online energy goes into YouTube, Reddit, tumblr, and the broader decentralised, RSS-based web via NewsBlur.)
Where to from here?
I did do more analysis than this, but I’m not going talk about it all here.
Though maybe I should mention that the ‘Wedding song lyrics’ page on this website continues to be the most popular page year after year. I’m glad I refreshed it a few months ago, correcting some lyrics and adding audio references for all the songs I’ve catalogued there.
What I’ll do now is spend the next few days unfollowing and unsubscribing on Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, NewsBlur, and email. That should be fun, and it’ll help get 2022 off to a good start.
I intend to have a fantastic 2022 and I trust you do too. I hope this year exceeds all your expectations and that you have a truly fantabulous time!