Realized this in 2016 when real life people I knew slowed way down on sharing and shifted to using social media as consumption platforms. Most people I know talk themselves into needing it for work or distant relatives but it’s 99% reels and doomscrolling. I have no answers.
this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2026
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None of my family is posting kids photos on fb/ig. It's all FamilyAlbum where we can control who see's it and the family can interact without strangers chiming in.
Did you just make it or is this so wide spread of a concept that they have memes abt it lol
That is the joke of the meme, is it not?
Always has been (this wide spread) 🙂
It’s been that way for the past 10+ years, internet sib.
Corpo media’s all about the superficial and the addictive algorithms to keep you in the ad-machine. That’s why we’re here.
copy/paste/edit:
Enshittification refers not just to making things crappier, but to a process in which different people benefit. iirc:
- first the customer gets a lot of value and the platform loses money (bc the service is building a customer base)
- then the vendors get a lot of value bc the platform privileges them (this is most obvious with amazon - maybe less on social media platforms but maybe that'd be third parties that work on that plaform?)
- then the shareholders get a lot of value bc the platform squeezes every single possible penny out of the customer and the vendors.
Most major social media platforms are very far into the enshittification process, so yes they do not provide a very "social" environment to the customer. They control the feed so you can't just follow your friends, they force you to watch ads, they have ever-strict requirements to participate (one or more of: you can't just observe you have to create an account, you can't use VPNs, you must enter an email address, you must enter a phone number, you must enter a credit card, ...) etc.
The solution is either:
- look for a platform that is early in the enshittification cycle (like those who went from Twitter to Bluesky) or
- find a platform whose goal is to resist enshittification (like those who went from Twitter to Mastodon.)
It has always been shit. Never was good. Social media is the problem.
You want to go back to when it was not tied to anything, it was anonymous. There was nothing to gain or lose. Forums, BBS systems, The WELL (although that wasn't anonymous unless you wanted to be), etc.
I still have a few forum web pages where we talk and see each other around the world occasionally in real life. Just gotta poke around.
Small groups, private groups like Discord are definitely replacing social media. Which is good because they're smaller circles and can just be people you know IRL. Discord's interface sucks on mobile, yeah. I wish there was a better alternative, something that is, on the surface, simple to use like WhatsApp but featured and powerful as well, so non-gamers and older folks would adopt it faster.
I wish there was a better alternative, something that is, on the surface, simple to use like WhatsApp but featured and powerful as well, so non-gamers and older folks would adopt it faster.
Signal? Desktop app isn't quite there but its pretty close. I heard they were working on detaching the desktop app from mobile completely, which imo is one of the last major things I miss when switching from Discord. Of course there are no servers, only group dms, but I never really bothered with servers anyway. Sorta unnecessary.
IRC still exists my friend, I'm on it daily. this past year alone I've met quite a few people that I talk to almost daily. Message boards also, i'm active on a few. the Internet of old still exists, it never went anywhere, you just stopped visiting it.
loop me in on some good servers
try the Indieweb
Tell me more
Saw it on a yt video but its basically people making personal websites as if its the 2000s again
Most haven't been social for over a decade. It turns out people like watching content far more than making it.
"content" how I hate that word.
As much as Patrick H Wiilems?
As you can see, the level of "stupid" rises with the level of "content" over time, and even when there is a drop in "content", the stupid doesn't retreat.
(this is just silly screenshot from ngram viewer, but I thought it was funny, and the annoying part is I just made "content"). So fucking stupid.
I'm referring to an online film critic. Since you're posting a picture, I'll post a 49 minute video.
Yeah, I know who he is. But I don't watch youtube.
On the other hand, I do have a Nebula subscription so there you go.
Aren't things like discord (or any other more preferable chat service) basically what you are talking about?
I have used most of em, i even tried to use discord but couldn't tolerate the bloated mess with pos UI
Has not been social for a while, imho. I left Twitter some 7 years ago (or more? Can't remember) because of that feeling.... I joined it when it was first introduced and it was so much different, so much nicer and sincere. Not perfect but really great.
There is still that around here, just we lack more active users and we would also gain a lot by being less.... obsessed with politics. Imho, at least.
As for sharing hobbies: irl gathering are still ok-ish. Alas, oftentimes such event will be wrecked by some asshole trying to turn it into something they can boast about on their social media.
Blogs are still a thing, even though it seems almost impossible to get younger people to read outside of their favorite social media platform, blogs are there, very much alive if slower, and they're as much about sharing passions and hobbies as they ever were when they were trendy.
Blogs being slower is a benefit!
The go go go have to meet unrealistic deadlines for the algorithm pressure from large sites is a negative.
Since the rise of influencers it hasn't been social at all. Also Shitter Ratio-ing people made it so much more worse as the whole social aspect went from we kinda underatand we are humans behind the creen with some decency changed to who and how can I ragebait the best.