Why We Can't Have Nice Things Online
There are a host of good reasons to ditch social media. From the evidence that it is limiting our ability to focus to the mental health of teens to the mining of our personal data to sell us shit. Tik Tok might be feeding us Chinese anti-American propoganda. Disinformation campaigns by international cyber-bots. The subtle yet pervasive shift from our fellow humans being judged by their actions to being judged by their opinions.
It’s no secret why I deleted the host of social media platforms a few years ago. Around 2019, I recognized that the presence of multiple streams of opinion from people I didn’t know online was causing me to be more hostile to strangers. I started hating folks I would unlikely ever meet in person. I’m a bit of a hair trigger when it comes to the temper department (although far less than in years previous) so having social media wave that red flag in front of my eyes everytime I opened my phone was just a bad idea.
This is not to say that my innate curiosity does not pop up with the next big thing. I had a Tik Tok account for exactly two hours before the stream of middle-aged women dancing in bikinis, younger guys pranking people, kids challenging each other to do borderline criminal or right on the line stupid things, and oddly a bunch of videos of Vietnamese people with swarms of wood tics on their necks caused me to toss my $1,200 phone across the room.
Twitter has evolved into, from what I can tell, a bastion of rightwing trolls openly shitposting about the Woke and Musk has either destroyed it or saved the rest of us, time will tell. I mean, it was never really good unless you were so hungry for followers you sold your soul (and sixteen hours a day) to garner by staring into your phone while you child slowly starved to death.
My niece received an invite to Jack Dorsey’s Bluesky and sent me an invite. So far, Dorsey’s Response requires an esoteric membership to keep the riff-raff out. After a week or two, I discovered that the only time I open up the app is when I’m taking a dump so if you received anything from my account there, know that a douce was being dropped at that very moment. I suppose I’m a part of the riff-raff but managed to get invited regardless of my spotty record of ideological leftness.
Perhaps I’m out of practice or have lost my taste for it like a former drug addict revisiting a high and discovering it isn’t quite what he remembered. Bluesky reads like all the progressives fled Twitter so they could shitpost about the Right without any pushback. In that way it is no different from Twitter. Two segregated platforms for ideological purity complaining about the other guys. {Yawn}
And then the Zuck threw out both his MMA challenge to Elon and released Threads. To join Threads, you have to have an Instagram account. Once again, curiosity bit me in the ass. I joined IG once again, made it private, tossed up a few photos, and hopped onto Threads. First, IG is now Tik Tok and, despite setting it to private and only following a few people I actually know, presented me with scroll after scroll of random bullshit from strangers and advertising. Something I hadn’t thought about is the number of people from Chicago who are on IG and the odd feeling of suddenly being connected in this space with folks I haven’t heard from or thought of in years. It feels as if I dropped out of an entire lifestyle and method of staying in the lives of these friends but it’s inherently shallow given the lack of contact in between deleting the account and jumping back in. When friendship is defined and limited to an online app, I’m not sure it’s friendship or connection of any authentic sort.
Instagram’s new Threads app has already surpassed 100 million users, meaning it reached the milestone dramatically faster than even ChatGPT. OpenAI’s chatbot passed the mark after two months, but Threads, which only launched on Wednesday, got there in a matter of days. The number of users can be found in the Instagram app, which tracks the size of the Threads userbase.
Threads proved to be an early hit almost immediately. In the first two hours, it hit 2 million users and steadily climbed from there to 5 million, 10 million, 30 million, and then 70 million. The launch has been “way beyond our expectations,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Friday.
Users aren’t just signing up: they’re posting, too. As of Thursday, my colleague Alex Heath reported that there have already been more than 95 million posts and 190 million likes shared on the app.
Threads is exploding but isn’t terribly interesting. The concept of online conversation used to be the message board and it felt manageable. Threads is more like seeking a conversation with strangers you might find common ground with but there are so many piping in, it’s nearly impossible to dig in. Skipping stones across the surface of a pond comprised of 100 million voices, none listening, all looking for others to react to their next hot take, angry reaction, or comedy bit.
Already, in a couple of hours, one can see the seeds of what ruined Faceborg and Twitter—outrage.
Social media algorithms are tuned to promote controversy. Rage baiting is an easy way to advance political goals, such as advancing particular positions or even spreading discontent among your opponents. “It’s been a bonanza for political operatives, activists, and even conflict entrepreneurs,” Rose-Stockwell said. But it’s also something regular people can fall into unintentionally. “If you post about something you’re extremely angry about and it gets a huge amount of traction, then our brains will start to assume that this is what the world wants.”
'Flaming Strawmen'? 10 Internet Rage Baiting Techniques You Need to Know About
Both Bluesky and Threads are filled with anti-Musk, anti-Twitter taunts and wannabe comedians trying to get some traction. And ads. Lots and lots of ads. I can’t decide which is worse—the shitposting or the advertising.
When I drove back into Wichita last September, as I hit the streets off of the highway, I remembered exactly why I left the city with no money and no idea where I was headed thirty-four years ago. Those reasons hadn’t changed. As I gaze into my phone and watch these new (not new at all) social experiments unfold, the reasons I left all of this stuff behind are still the same. Too many people looking to be popular, too many thoughts to parse, all surface. The reality I faced when I split from all of this is that the number of actual friendships I have gathered is vastly smaller than I thought but those relationships I am a part of are quality versus quantity.
Also, in a poll of 3,000 avid social media users:
38% have argued with random people
22% have posted something they regretted while drunk.
22% left mean or auspice comments.
20% have sexted someone nude images.
19% claim to have had an online argument with a celebrity.
17% have intentionally posted mis- or disinformation in order to outrage those they despise on the platform.