Curious where everyone sits on what's become of social media, how it's used and if you guys still use it. I've deleted all of them with Reddit being the last one I used up until a month ago. No longer on any of the main ones and have gone back to subscription based news outlets for news such as the Chron and Athletic.
This is the only place I put my thoughts online and per @basso I should post less of it here (aNd gEt a BlOg). I shuttled my Twitter because it’s a bunch of clout chasers. My FB has been deactivated since 2017 because of the MAGA people taking over my feed. IG just makes me feel poor and unhappy. Reddit can be fun to browse but is mostly images and fake stories. the internet is dead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory
I only use instagram. I first got it because I like photography and wanted to follow photographers. I follow a lot of artists who use a variety of media. Keep up with sports and news through instragram as well, but it is not my only source.
for most of us internet OGs, we still use message boards, the original social media....modern Social Media is for the normies
It depends on your definition of "social media". I think there's a stark dividing line between sites where the majority of people post anonymously vs. sites where the majority do not. IOW, I don't consider this BBS (or any, for that matter) and Reddit to be social media. So, by my own definition, I use zero.
Still use Facebook for the unintentional comedy. I have some maga's in my family. I'll leave it at that. And yes, I follow Jomboy Media and all their other pages. Talkin' Baseball is really great. I use Instagram but I only follow my favorite musicians and sports stars. And Sophia Vegara. Never signed up for Twitter/X. I can just read tweets on CF. Ticktock? No. Just....no. Honestly CF is really all the social media I need. Any time anything happens in the world, I just come here.
I use X and IG. X needs a lot of pruning and avoiding its feeds they shove that aren't the people you follow. Message boards like Reddit and CF are considered old web social media. If you don't have IG, Youtube Shorts is like an older version of that or tiktok...
Social media is in the process of destroying civilization. Turns out "connecting everybody" and giving every person a mass audience isn't all peaches and cream. Free speech and expression are great things, but their abuse could be the end.
Funny you bring this up. I use to have it all.. and recently got rid of instagram. Now I’m just down to Twitter. I don’t consider Reddit social media.
I use IG (private acct) to follow bands, artists, photographers and a few friends. Also a ton of dog accounts, LOL. But it's getting difficult. Some of my friends constantly post politics, and then if I ever like my sister-in-law's constant direct forwards, then that bullshit gets incorporated in my algorithm. The thing with in-laws is awful. I tried to say "I don't like long videos" but she got very butthurt. I reluctantly use Linked In and that's my only public presence at this point.
It’s a real issue. People get legitimately addicted. Personally: I read X posts when they’re sent or posted somewhere. Facebook once every few weeks, more for marketplace. I do enjoy funny clips on Instagram but limit myself to once or so a week. Professionally: I use social media, especially LinkedIn, for my day job. For my outside businesses I use social media for various things.
Reddit comes in the clutch for a software I use for work. I used to browse video game subreddits but people seem so miserable. Not sure why they are posting in a sub about a game they hate so much.
Most of it is a lot of garbage unless you have some friends who aren't loons living and breathing on political garbage you can invite to your group. I use Discord for group chats with friends. I still use Twitter for breaking news, but most of the accounts are full of garbage comments, so I rarely scroll down because of the spam, bots, etc. I still use Reddit, but only in certain subs do I bother reading comments. I like to use it a lot for hobby-related stuff. I'm on IG for, again, hobby stuff, although not as much. Too much "influencer" and hyping on there. I'm still on other forums again for hobby stuff. I don't really do Facebook. TikTok? lol. No. Well, unless somebody sends me a link and forces me to go on there. I think a lot of social media is lies, hype, and a bunch of people re-posting stuff they don't even know is true or how to interpret. There are times I just want to ask "do you even know what you just posted is true?" or "do you even understand what you just re-tweeted?" It's like "this post/person sounds like they agree with me, so ... here you go rest of the world!"
I remember when I thought it was so strange that what a celebrity tweeted became the news itself. Now, everything is so watered down and fake it seems like every story I see in my Facebook feed is a NY Post story about a People magazine article about a Reddit post about a man who flew on an airplane with an insufferable fellow passenger. And then the article summarizes what other users commented as if I should care about any of this or any of these people. And then the post on the platform itself has hundreds of comments of drones and bots and more insufferable people chiming in. This is the enshittification theory which seems the same as the internet is dead theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification “Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two sided market", where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.” https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/
He later (more recently) coined the "enshittocene" for our stupid era, hahaha. Love it and live it. https://web.archive.org/web/2024020.../content/6fb1602d-a08b-4a8c-bac0-047b7d64aba5
