The age of social media is ending
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Dunbar's number of 150 meaningful relationships has built into it a definition of "meaning" which was not anticipated back in 1992. The meaning of meaning changes.
Furthermore, the constraint that meaning has on communication is not fleshed out. Sure I only have 150 meaningful relationships... but I still subscribe to 1000s of youtube channels to learn to fix my toilet, compose music, meditate, etc. These are meaningful to me, but don't require a traditional relationship. The meaning is, now, "I improve my life, and suffer the first 5 seconds of an advertisement for it.
Same with HN in a lot of ways, just not as bad as reddit (yet).
I've always found it strange that YT is considered social media to be honest. Most people just go on there to consume content, not engage on an eye-to-eye level. You can comment, sure, but then any news site that has a comment section would also count. I suppose Youtubers do have a community among themselves, but still that's a tiny minority of the platform's users.
For people who just watch the videos it's purely a video streaming site. For other users it's social media because they use comments/messages (if it has this feature).
It ponders the question that if a website can be used in 2 ways (as a social network, or as an information/entertainment source, like when lurking anonymously), whether you should really call it by it's full-feature name.
For the most part, I rarely write on HN and I browse Reddit but don't have an account, so am I using them as social networks?
And if on a site like HN I can't add somebody as a friend, and always reply once or twice to a fresh user I've never met before, does that still count? Is it socialising or just taking part in a one-off conversation?
I think smaller, focused social networks will emerge/survive and will be much better for society. The concept of a “town square” online is a fallacy and really doesn’t help people, it sure helps these companies make money, well some of them.
The current climate of public, global social media promotes and fosters content that is controversial and draws in heated oppositional arguing, aka “engagement”. The people that engage in this content think first, likely subconsciously, to poke holes in peoples comments, ridicule, troll, and be controversial because they know it gets comments which might get them whatever “score” that social media network uses. Localized content, from people you know directly, is much more normal - pics of things you do, events you’re going to and old school sharing of your life.
I created a list for the people I follow on Twitter and gave someone else the key, effectively rendering Twitter read-only.
It is amazing how fast your engagement drops once you stop liking, posting, and commenting.
TikTok is a behemoth and it really kicked off during the COVID lockdown when people had nothing better to do. It's the latest, and best optimized, social media algo dopamine hit. (I sometimes regret downloading it but it's too late now :P )
Unless it's straight up banned, it'll take over for the other platforms.
"Why does my neck hurt all the time?"
I'm only semi-serious. But this is a thread about how social media needs to die in a fire. And Twitter collapsing would be a big step in the right direction. Now if the brainworms that have infected Elon could just get into Zuckerberg's noggin...
This actually reminds me of a larger issue than social media. I personally don't have accounts on any of these services. Hacker News is the closest, and it's a pure pull model where very little of the content is user-generated and you can't follow individual users.
But I also live in a major US metro downtown and I walk all over the place, frequently. Often several hours a day. And even there, people are screaming for my attention. Mostly, these are homeless pandhandlers, but also sometimes religious nuts, political signature campaigns, people with storefronts trying to get you to come in, and fundraisers for charities.
At one point when I first moved here, I'd actually respond to some of these people, but I just can't do it any more. At a certain level, there are so many people asking for money that, no matter how much each might individually deserve it and I can afford to help them, I'd go broke helping everyone, and have no way to triage when I have no idea who is going to come next and what their story will be. Even more than that, though, the sheer amount of time it takes just to stop and listen to each pitch becomes overwhelming when you add it all up. An hour long walk turns into three hours, with two of them spent not walking at all.
Social media seems like people who don't leave the comfort of the nice walls of the house and car still managing to experience this same thing anyway by subjecting themselves to the interjections and interruptions of everyone else in the world, somehow convinced that whatever tiny nuggets of value they find every once in a while are worth it.