Abandon Social Media.

After years of dabbling in / messing around with social media, I've been inactive and basically completely out of all social media for a while now.

Social media started to gain a lot of popularity around the time the smartphone was adopted by the masses in 2007 with the release of the first iPhone. This meant that the Internet was becoming increasingly mainstream and less of a niche activity among computer enthusiasts.

Once social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. were used by the majority (not merely computer enthusiasts, gamers, and the "geek" crowd) it started to include a lot more low quality content (highly subjective but in my opinion) and more inflammatory content.

Facebook has been caught defrauding advertisers by knowingly including bots in ad impressions, likes, and clicks. Twitter has changed hands and has become essentially "pay to play" (without paid "verification" one's account is shadowbanned from a wide audience), and YouTube's censorship makes many topics verboten on the platform. Even Discord, which I still use for now, is starting to make some questionable changes.

While I support free association and people should be allowed to use any platform that will allow them (including... ugh... TikTok), I personally find social media to be a massive time sink that's engineered, through psychological tricks, to keep people engaged. It can be frightening to see just how much time in the day can be consumed on these sites without one being aware.

On Twitter, I've found that I would see more content from accounts similar to those I had blocked, as opposed to accounts I follow. This is by design; conflict leads to higher engagement. Facebook seemed to do the same thing. I no longer use either platform.

YouTube is the only platform I still use and that's more or less only to post videos, not to watch them anymore. This is only because I still make a tiny amount of money through ads. It's still a useful platform if you can filter out the distractions, though, but they are starting to ban ad blockers.

Personally, I've had more of a clear mind since quitting most social media. Facebook is certainly a thing of the past for me and Twitter, while I still have an account, is more or less something I've abandoned at this point.

I plan to organize my thoughts a bit more in this thread but wanted to at least get it started.

I know I'm preaching to the choir when I say this but you ever notice how on the social media sites, you don't see what you want to see, they always choose what's in your feed? Yeah. Makes the whole thing pointless.

I was never on Facebook or Twitter but I used to browse MySpace a looooong time ago. Way back then I was seeing patterns that put me off the whole idea of social media and I never went back. It would have been cool if Elon had actually made Twitter free speech but that never really happened (despite people whining about it). Did you see today that you MUST have an account just to see anything on Twitter now? Going to bleed traffic. But who cares, that site was garbage before Elon and it's garbage now.

You'd think sites like Minds and other alt tech would be better (I've tried out Minds) but, nah. Same old thing where you don't pick what ends up in your feed.

And I'm not going to knock the niche Internet days, back when it was stuff like Digg, Fark, and Slashdot, hell I spend my fair share reading random s*** online but I like getting out and having drinks with friends and just hanging out in real life more than anything nowadays. That and gaming. Especially gaming with friends in real life. Bring back LAN parties!

I tried Minds but didn't like it at all. It's not specific sites as much as the general idea of social media that's run its course.

MySpace was interesting for about a week back in 2005 and then I dropped it.

Good idea! Especially now, with laptops instead of lugging around desktop towers and CRT monitors. I know they have meetups and maker spaces where people with similar interests gather, although that's kind of died down in recent years due to certain reasons.

Personally, I never saw the appeal of it all. Quite a few friends, family, and co-workers use it (and they've pressured me to join quite a few times until the recent couple of years) but there's just nothing there for me. I do text a lot with the people I know but that's about it.

My main haunts online are various forums, Netflix, Hulu, Crunchyroll, and Google News. Facebook and Twitter look terrible and I don't want to scroll through infinite political fights.

Minds and those other ones I won't even name are all politics, so no thanks.

LAN parties were fun. Just get everybody together and play games, maybe order some food, drink a bunch of Mountain Dew and Dr. Pepper. Same with anime clubs, it's more fun to get together and watch stuff in person.

Doing things online is more convenient but it feels empty a lot of the time, sadly it's replaced IRL clubs for a lot of people. My parents belonged to a few different clubs, even when they were busy with work and raising us as kids. We see so much less of that now, especially with people divided against each other over social issues. It seemed like it didn't used to be that way 30 or so years ago with people, all the hate, it's sad really.

Anyway, ditching social media? Sure, I'd get behind that as somebody who never got on it in the first place. Bring back more of the IRL stuff, that's all I can suggest.

On Saturday, July 1st, 2023 at 5:25 pm, Wolfwood29 said:

The online world didn't seem so empty 15 years ago. I think there's some truth to the "Dead Internet Theory" even if it isn't completely so.

As for the division, I have a theory that it's somewhat orchestrated by the media. Whether it's just the reckless pursuit of ratings or an actual desire to balkanize society by the individuals who own most of the media companies, it's definitely happening. It's something to resist, no matter how much certain issues may rile people up.

When people meet face to face, they are forced to be at least somewhat more civil, even if it is out of the fear of being punched in the face for making someone lose their temper. Having no immediate consequences on the Internet makes some people say inflammatory (and often disingenuous) things just to get a rise out of others.