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Are we tired of social media? (2025)

danielbrendel.com

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Re: Are we tired of social media? (2025)

#21

Post by jonfw »

al_borland wrote: post #15
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sort of connection making is happening in varying degrees of private discord servers today. You join the public discord it, you spend time with strangers, if you're likeable you eventually get told about less advertised public servers, or invite-only servers, and you go down a bit of a rabbit hole of loosely interconnected communities. Eventually you find communities that you settle into. Good filters make for g…

I guess that’s sort of what happened with the forums. I was on a decently large one and eventually became a mod. Then a bunch of the mods and admins had their own smaller forums. I ended up being an admin on several of those. Over the years there were migrations and things. However, nothing was “private”. Some of the smaller forums still had members who never found their way to the bigger hub forum. I’ve never used D…

Many discord servers don't even have voice channels and are just collections of text chat channels.

Re: Are we tired of social media? (2025)

#22

Post by jimjimjim »

p-e-w wrote: post #13
al_borland wrote: post #2

With old chat programs and forums I was talking to real people over a long span of time. On the modern platforms I’m just talking to the internet. It feels very different. In 2024 I was looking for a place to see the eclipse, and someone I knew from a forum 20 years ago told me I could come to his house, as it was going right over it. It was my first time meeting him in person, despite having known him for 20 years.…

One thing that often gets overlooked is that 25 years ago, “the Internet” was essentially educated people from North America and Western Europe, with everyone else being a rounding error. This made it very easy to connect on a level beyond just memes. Users had a lot in common personally, and that’s why they were able to engage on a personal level. Today, the majority of the world’s population is online, and memes ar…

Eternal September just kept happening day after day for 25 years.

Re: Are we tired of social media? (2025)

#23

Post by julkali »

AnnKey wrote: post #14
everdrive wrote: post #7

Algorithmic curation is something I'm trying to avoid in all cases. I think it's not highlighted enough. The fact that youtube shows an infinite number of videos to choose from does its own sort of harm in a way that the specifics of the content cannot. When the internet was brand new, it was very novel that I had to go out seeking the content and could look at it any time I wanted. It was different than TV. TV was e…

Agree. I also use Unhook/Brave to remove all recommendations plus my DeCasino to grayscale social media and put a clock over. I only watch subscriptions - clicking from subscriptions bar, not the feed. My phone is fully grayscale, no notifications and only has Brave with custom content filter that removes the main feed as well. It's almost impossible to watch anything on my phone but a video from a direct link. Sound…

I also tried setting my phone to grayscale, but it takes me significantly longer to do useful things, as some UIs are harder to distinguish without color. Have you found a workaround for this?

Re: Are we tired of social media? (2025)

#25

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

jimjimjim wrote: post #22
p-e-w wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that often gets overlooked is that 25 years ago, “the Internet” was essentially educated people from North America and Western Europe, with everyone else being a rounding error. This made it very easy to connect on a level beyond just memes. Users had a lot in common personally, and that’s why they were able to engage on a personal level. Today, the majority of the world’s population is online, and memes ar…

Eternal September just kept happening day after day for 25 years.

To be fair, the Eternal September is also what created that huge tsunami of money, that has made so many tech people wealthy.

Re: Are we tired of social media? (2025)

#27

Post by cdrnsf »

In a word, yes. I have many fond memories of forums and chats that have been abandoned in favor of platforms like Reddit and Discord (which I find to be bloated and grating).

I do participate in small iMessage and Signal chats. Email remains nice as well.

Large social platforms hold no appeal given the algorithmic curation that favors the platform owners and the pervasive advertising. I’ve never seen the appeal of TikTok short form video either, though I’ll willingly acknowledge I’m in the minority there.

I’ve never abandoned RSS and love the slow pace and small scale of Mastodon.

Re: Are we tired of social media? (2025)

#28

Post by AnnKey »

julkali wrote: post #23
AnnKey wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. I also use Unhook/Brave to remove all recommendations plus my DeCasino to grayscale social media and put a clock over. I only watch subscriptions - clicking from subscriptions bar, not the feed. My phone is fully grayscale, no notifications and only has Brave with custom content filter that removes the main feed as well. It's almost impossible to watch anything on my phone but a video from a direct link. Sound…

I also tried setting my phone to grayscale, but it takes me significantly longer to do useful things, as some UIs are harder to distinguish without color. Have you found a workaround for this?

I'd look into accessibility settings - they often have a colorblind mode (even some games do)

Re: Are we tired of social media? (2025)

#30

Post by PNewling »

julkali wrote: post #23
AnnKey wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. I also use Unhook/Brave to remove all recommendations plus my DeCasino to grayscale social media and put a clock over. I only watch subscriptions - clicking from subscriptions bar, not the feed. My phone is fully grayscale, no notifications and only has Brave with custom content filter that removes the main feed as well. It's almost impossible to watch anything on my phone but a video from a direct link. Sound…

I also tried setting my phone to grayscale, but it takes me significantly longer to do useful things, as some UIs are harder to distinguish without color. Have you found a workaround for this?

I did this, and yeah google maps is all but unusable without color, that and the camera takes some getting used to.

I'm on an iPhone, but what ended up doing was creating a shortcut that toggles the phone to grayscale and back, and then having two automations, one for when I open any of the apps I actually want color in (maps, camera, photos, etc) that toggles grayscale off and then another automation to toggle grayscale back on when I close any of those same apps.

The option is located in Settings > Accessibility >Display & Text Size > Color Filters

It isn't perfect, but it works most of the time (I also added the shortcut to the back of the home screen so if it is off or I need one-off color I can just toggle it manually).

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