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Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion

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Re: Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion

#121

Post by II2II »

skydhash wrote: post #104
jjav wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When social media emerged, I remember how excited I was how it could connect like-minded people around the world. I remember that feeling of being blown away at talking (typing) with people across the world without any limitations! But for me this was in the late 80s and earliest 90s on the Internet. When all communication was standards-based, fully interoperable and completely free. What we call today "social medi…

Social media existed before social media. We had forums for permanent collaboration (lecture hall style), and we had IRC for quicker ephemeral discussions (bar style). What we didn’t have was the focus on individuals. To have a brand means you were working on something useful for a group. Today’s social media heavily focus on the individual, not the group, which is ironic. It’s a lot of people clamoring for attention…

The over generalization of the term social media drives me bonkers. In the olden days we had things like message boards, forums, and chat rooms. Then came social networks. All of those terms reflect some sort of connection between people.

When I see the term social media, I associate it with one way relationships. It is about connecting businesses to customers, not the other way around. It is about connecting self-promoters (for the lack of a better term) to an audience, not the other way around. As you said: the focus is on the individual, may that be a person or a business.

Perhaps we should be making an effort to distinguish between the two environments, to avoid associating connecting businesses and self-promoters to customers with connecting people to each other.

Re: Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion

#122

Post by enaaem »

mattikl wrote: post #15

When social media emerged, I remember how excited I was how it could connect like-minded people around the world. Now in 2025, the leader of the biggest platforms is talking about making people less lonely by connecting them to AI chatbots instead of making people find one another. That just feels like a huge lost potential.

Quality was simply better, because reputation mattered. People used to gather in dedicated forums around a common hobby. People would eventually recognise each other's user names and you would built a reputation in the community.

Accounts like "Endwokeness" would have never worked in the old internet era. First of all, low effort political opening post with one sentence and a link would simply be removed. Secondly, people will make fun of him. Doesn't he have job? Why he is so obsessed with gays and trans people? Stuff like that will haunt him forever.

Re: Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion

#123

Post by ogou »

Social media hasn't been social for a while. Personal posts from people I know are buried under the algorithms. It's a high friction action to actually find my friends. All the defaults are pointed at optimized content from generic sources. I have many friends that are artists and musicians. I follow them on these platforms and my engagement with them is captured and funneled into garbage content about art and music instead of letting my see my friends. I hate it.

Re: Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion

#124

Post by sunaookami »

enaaem wrote: post #122
mattikl wrote: post #15

When social media emerged, I remember how excited I was how it could connect like-minded people around the world. Now in 2025, the leader of the biggest platforms is talking about making people less lonely by connecting them to AI chatbots instead of making people find one another. That just feels like a huge lost potential.

Quality was simply better, because reputation mattered. People used to gather in dedicated forums around a common hobby. People would eventually recognise each other's user names and you would built a reputation in the community. Accounts like "Endwokeness" would have never worked in the old internet era. First of all, low effort political opening post with one sentence and a link would simply be removed. Secondly, p…

Building "reputation" and building yourself a "brand" are the worst things from the forum-era. I will not miss power-tripping mods and users with 20,000 posts writing the dumbest replies possible into every thread asking "why would you do this?", "have you used the search function?", etc. Just because you have many posts doesn't mean the posts are good. Many users ignored high-quality posts from new accounts for example.

Re: Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion

#125

Post by dsign »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #66
acd wrote: post #35

Social media is actually anti social. Meeting real people and making real connections is social.

I don't know if it's true but supposedly some birds will eat indigestible cigarette butts thinking they are food, then starve to death because their stomach is full. Feels a lot like what going all-in on social media does to your social life. Interacting with real people is rewarding and can boost your energy. Social media is exhausting and drains your energy so you don't feel like talking to real people.

> Interacting with real people is rewarding and can boost your energy.

Not for everybody. Me and a work friend are considered "highly energetic" by our colleagues when we are at the office in person, to the point that people and things soon find themselves in orbit around us. But the truth is that when we come home, we both feel drained and exhausted for the next day or two. For me, it's as if my entire mind and soul got washed and diluted by those interactions.

I'm not saying it's all bad, in the same way that running a marathon is probably not all bad. But "boost your energy" wouldn't be a term I would ever use for it.

Re: Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion

#127

Post by roomey »

close04 wrote: post #49
roomey wrote: post #9

Fall, or Dodge in hell, by Neil Stephenson has a take on this. The internet is flooded with slop and rage-bait on purpose. So filled as to be unusable, like a firehose of shit. So in there comes a role if "editor" whose job it is (you pay them) to only give you, well not even what's "true", rather what reflects your world view. So which editor you have becomes a factor in how you live, where your educated, your statu…

Doesn’t this just reinforce your echo chamber? Your “editor” only gives you stuff you want to see not the stuff you need or should see. And once you empower someone to gate or filter your access to information, what’s stopping them from treating you like the product for a better paying customer, like today?

You have hit the nail on the head there! The point in the book was that depending on your editor, you were essentially living in different realities.

There was the east and west coasts, and then there was Ameristan (or something I can't remember exactly) in between, which was fundamentalist

Re: Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion

#128

Post by camgunz »

II2II wrote: post #121
skydhash wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media existed before social media. We had forums for permanent collaboration (lecture hall style), and we had IRC for quicker ephemeral discussions (bar style). What we didn’t have was the focus on individuals. To have a brand means you were working on something useful for a group. Today’s social media heavily focus on the individual, not the group, which is ironic. It’s a lot of people clamoring for attention…

The over generalization of the term social media drives me bonkers. In the olden days we had things like message boards , forums , and chat rooms . Then came social networks . All of those terms reflect some sort of connection between people. When I see the term social media , I associate it with one way relationships. It is about connecting businesses to customers, not the other way around. It is about connecting se…

There's two distinguishing characteristics:

One: algorithmic feeds (etc) are engineered to addict you

Two: virality stats (views and likes) allow senders to hone message effectiveness based on structure (funny GIF, misspelling, "this you", etc), completely separate from content (white supremacy, authoritarian communism, etc)

This is why Reddit is maybe barely social media, and HN, other forums, IRC, etc, aren't.

Re: Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion

#129

Post by diggan »

sunaookami wrote: post #124
enaaem wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quality was simply better, because reputation mattered. People used to gather in dedicated forums around a common hobby. People would eventually recognise each other's user names and you would built a reputation in the community. Accounts like "Endwokeness" would have never worked in the old internet era. First of all, low effort political opening post with one sentence and a link would simply be removed. Secondly, p…

Building "reputation" and building yourself a "brand" are the worst things from the forum-era. I will not miss power-tripping mods and users with 20,000 posts writing the dumbest replies possible into every thread asking "why would you do this?", "have you used the search function?", etc. Just because you have many posts doesn't mean the posts are good. Many users ignored high-quality posts from new accounts for exam…

Just because the forums you hanged around were like that, doesn't mean every forum was like that. Probably the web forum I hanged around the most on (which is where my HN username originally comes from) has strict rules about each individual post's quality (although enforced bit unevenly), and their contribution to the discussions, in one way or another. Make enough off-topic/shit posts and eventually you'll get banned because of it. The users with a lot of posts usually made well-argued posts.

Each started thread also needed a "basis for discussion" to remain open, and necrobumping was encouraged. The forum still has decade old threads actively being discussed in.

AFAIK, it's still the largest forum in the Nordics, although the moderation team (and voluntary) seem to unfortunately be shrinking rather than increasing, and the forum isn't without its controversies.

Re: Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion

#130

Post by diggan »

deadbabe wrote: post #115
skydhash wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media existed before social media. We had forums for permanent collaboration (lecture hall style), and we had IRC for quicker ephemeral discussions (bar style). What we didn’t have was the focus on individuals. To have a brand means you were working on something useful for a group. Today’s social media heavily focus on the individual, not the group, which is ironic. It’s a lot of people clamoring for attention…

Is Reddit not like a forum? What about HN?

> Is Reddit not like a forum? What about HN?

Biggest difference for me betweeen HN/reddit and the forums of yore is how the ranking/sorting is done. On HN/reddit, "most popular" opinion or "best sounding" post usually "wins" and gets most discussed, as it's at the top of the page.

Meanwhile, forums doesn't re-order things like that (didn't used to at least), you made a post and it ended up after the message posted before you, and before messages posted after. Everyone's view and message was equal, so pile-ons or hive-mind "this is the right way of thinking" seemed less common.

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