What is Passive Posting
Strava is the most popular app to share workouts and activities, and in my usual way for disliking popular things, I have some slight beef with Strava. Particularly how it seems to encourage nonchalantness and dwindles my excitement to post. I believe this is mostly due to the “out of the box” preset to publicize all your activities as a morning ride, which takes away the intentionality of sharing. It’s much easier to forget to put intentionality in if the app auto publishes your activity and you have to go edit it(put in effort) in time for people to see your activity. If your traveling or simply have anything to do after your ride, it can definitely be the case that people will see your auto published ride before you have time to edit it, nothing worse than that. The real passive posting I intend to refer to is the habitual “morning ride” poster, where none of their ride have media, titles or captions. To be fair, this is something I do/have done and is quite easy to do, particularly since the app encourages it. It is very easy to not care, or purposely leave a ride blank, maybe due to its unimpressive nature, which is solely a feeling that social media and comparison gives by the way, the feeling of inadequacy. This feeling of inadequacy breeds a lack of wanting to put effort into sharing a ride that seems not impressive in the first place. This as well as losing motivation to put effort seem most likely to lead to passive posting.
Why I don’t like Passive Posting
I have a particular disdain for riders who consistently upload untitled, uncaptioned rides. Those who upload a bothersome amount of other workouts are begging for the mute button. I think my annoyance for this stems from a inner feeling of needing to make a meaningful contribution with the things I post, e.g. I feel like a prerequisite to posting or sharing with the world is a level of effort to make the person viewing have some small sense of enlightenment, or edification from your post. I guess not to the level of enlightenment or ascension, but I think if you are willing to share and fill the minds of the people who care to follow you, you should make it worth their while. I don’t think untitled uncaptioned activities by themselves justify being seen by other people. I guess as I write this I don’t intend to be sermonizing or preaching that everyone must put effort into their Strava posts so its worth my viewing, this article comes from a place of justification for my personal recent Strava usage.
The Rise of Nonchalantness and the Shunning of Passion
Read on for more ranting. I am also aware that a non-trivial amount of people post morning rides as a way of aura farming, e.g. leaving a hard or impressive ride untitled with the intention of diminishing the perceived exertion of the rider, I have been guilty on occasion… ts pmo. I have seen with my own eyes people who ride a workout, which auto uploads as the workout title, then to edit the ride back to morning ride. Atrocious levels of aura farming. It is not the aura farming in particular that I gripe with, it is more the unconscious shunning of passion. With the eventual standardization of showing no passion or excitement for your hard rides, it eventually becomes cringe to show passion or excitement at all. This I think is a root issue, it is no longer cool to try. I think the nonchalant no passion trope has been fully discussed an emphasized. I don’t have anything nuanced enough to add to that narrative other than passive posting leads to such circumstances.
How to stop passive posting and the big picture?
Easy, don’t post or add meaning to the posts you make. I think the easiest way to do so is to set your Strava default to upload your activities for your sight only. In this case, your rides remain unposted until you have the motivation to add to it and share it. I suppose this means that not everyone will see every activity you put in, a shame any of your work could ever go unnoticed(would it even have existed then???), but I would argue that the intention or the correct use of Strava would be this method. I think Strava should be used to share experiences or enlightenment, not particularly as a way to flex your training or to be secretive about training. I think a lot of discontent that people feel for Strava is from the guilt or requirement to show everyone your workouts, while if you view Strava as a way to share experiences from a ride you may find more happiness and the people who follow you will feel more connected to and care more for your experiences. I think generally social media should function under this idea, as a way to share experiences and keep connections to people you couldn’t otherwise. I and other people care to see what happens in other people’s life, not particularly to see your 23 minute stretching cooldown, unless you make it interesting of course.