Ridiculous Opinions #205
Like most perpetually online people this week, I was obsessed with social media. New sites. Old sites. New people. Old people. It was a fascinating exercise for me that I am glad is almost over.
As most of you know, I quit Twitter when Elon the Destroyer took over last October, and as most of you know, I loved Twitter. I had perfected it as a news source. It was finely tuned so that Randall P. Girdner was able to open it up to seek out the information that he wanted and then go on about his day. Though it could be a cesspool of information, it was not a cesspool of information for me and I never experienced the confusion and negativity that most people experienced on the site. I wasn’t a poster on Twitter. I was a reader, and I loved it for what it was.
Then, dead silence for months after I quit. It was freeing to not have to look at Twitter each day. It wasn’t that Twitter was producing things that made me feel bad…it was the fact that it wasn’t the first thing I opened every morning and then closed at the end of the evening. It was nice and it looked like the Age of Social Media was coming to a close for me.
But about five days ago, someone I knew sent me an invite for a Twitter clone called Bluesky. Bluesky was created as a Twitter-type site that was “federated”, which, as far as my limited understanding went, said that whatever information you produced on it was yours. That meant that all of my posts on Bluesky could be moved to another site if I wanted. Bluesky would not own my information. I am also under the impression that Bluesky doesn’t have a central server, so all my information is distributed (though I could be wrong on that).
When I signed up, I discovered that there wasn’t a great deal happening on the network. I’ve had to actively seek out people to follow over the last couple of days, and it has been a pleasant surprise to join the network. It moves slowly. People there have made it a point to be incredibly nice. No nazis. No trolls. Just a real social network.
I was settling in with my four followers on Bluesky when the behemoth of THREADS opened up. Threads is owned by Meta, which owns Instagram, Facebook, and Whatsapp, three apps I despise. But I perpetually sign up for things and I dutifully opened up the Threads app, connected it to my Instagram account, and started perusing through the app.
I liked Twitter because I could control what I saw on the app. Bluesky offers the same control, but there are a lot fewer people on the app, so there’s not a lot to see. Threads is…well…the equivalent of a middle school lunch room on a hot day with giant billboards advertising their wares on every corner.
Social Media is a bit like high school in that regard. There are a limited number of popular kids and they dominate the conversation. And for some reason, those popular kids are kept in place by the adoring masses who also want to be popular kids. It’s weird to observe.
Whereas my original Twitter account was quirky and strange, with one post being about a new ride at a Disney Park followed by in-depth reporting on the war in Ukraine followed by an obscure writer posting about their progress on a new script, Threads is all about yelling out into the void to see how much attention you could get, followed by posts from Netflix, Burger King, and Barstoolsports. It’s chaos and its horrifying.
And all of the people that were popular on Twitter who were still on the site because they were APPALLED that their large audience was leaving in droves have now migrated over to Threads. So now, they can continue to broadcast their proclamations and opinions to their adoring audiences and continue to be adored.
There’s something to be said for social media. In this day and age where we sit on our phones all the time, we are looking for community; for people to connect with. We want to say something and be heard. We want to find our tribe, so to speak. But there is a desperation to social media that is horrifying and off-putting to me; desperate people saying desperate things, desperately seeking attention. And maybe I’m no better, because I was on there quickly, posting a couple of Maurice cartoons in an attempt to attract attention, just the same as all of these other desperate folks.
But maybe…just maybe…we should get off these things. Maybe they’re not so good for us. God forbid I sound like an old person when I say that maybe we should chose human interaction instead of online interaction. I get human interaction every day as a teacher, so social media can be a mindless lark at the end of the day. But here in the summer time, I have much less human interaction and find myself spending more and more time online. And my brain is suffering for it. Maybe that’s why I have spent most of my time here in Florida sitting in the pool, doing absolutely nothing for a couple of hours a day.
The truth is, I don’t know the answers. I do know that Threads is NOT the answer. Nor is social media in general. Time to find something else to do. Maybe I’ll do some writing over on Bluesky, where there are no advertisers or influencers or blue check marks…
And no, I don’t have any invites to Bluesky. Sorry.
