aka “recommended posts are the death of ‘social’ media”

With everything going on right now, I find myself feeling helpless to affect the outside world… so I think that’s caused me to reflect inward. Probably at least part of the reason I resurrected this journal.

Seeing all of this recent content that piques my anxiety got me thinking about the state of social media. If I go to any platform and check out the top 20 posts in my feed, I find that 80+% of them are from people/pages/companies I don’t personally know and will never have a conversation with.

Somehow, slowly over time, I’ve accepted this reality where the places I go to keep in touch with the people I know and care about have become endless fountains of ‘fresh’ content with an onslaught of ads, reels, and engagement bait.

Don’t get me wrong, there are brilliant folks out there who post hilarious or insightful or interesting things, but I much prefer a separate site for that (e.g., old Twitter), rather than taking over the spaces I used to frequent to hear what my (less brilliant, less hilarious, but more important) friends are up to and what thoughts they’re having.

I think that’s why social media killed my desire to write; I mean, why write when it’s just going to vanish into an abyss of content far more interesting than mine?

These days, the digital spaces where I communicate and connect the most are messenger apps, group chats, etc… I.e., transient, fleeting thoughts with no real means to revisit moments past.

More than ever, we’re living in a quick fix / temporary age. Scrolling through content posted by people we don’t know that we’re not going to remember in 5 minutes, let alone look back on years later. And we’re so connected to the world that we’re less connected to each other.

Where is Tom from MySpace and when will he save us?

current mood: dissatisfied

current music: glen hansard – bearing witness