from connection to entertainment
Social media has experienced a shift since 2020. As one writer put it, it’s taken a turn from social media to social media. Short-form video content and advertisements from mega-influencers and businesses dominate the platform. Personal updates and posts from your community have been relegated to a separate tab and downvoted by the algorithm. This change has been felt by all. Apps like Instagram and Facebook have joined the race to the bottom to gain user eyeballs and forgo user trust and experiences. In the wake of Twitter’s death (like many, I won’t say it), Instagram launched Threads to much initial praise. Many cited the neighborhood-like qualities the platform hosted as it released void of advertisement and snappy marketing to draw users. It was a place to exist and share your life through tweet-sized thoughts.
The entertainment and commodification of social platforms transforms experiences to prompt more anxiety, uncertainty, and self-judgement. Questions arise for the self-aware but social pressured user like,
What’s my caption? Are emojis still cool? Is it better to stay mysterious and let my pictures speak for themselves? Is this controversial at all and how can I make it more edgy? How will this change the way my followers see me?
Having not had social media for five years, I can’t speak on the matter with primacy. I can admit these are the questions I asked in the days before platforms became truly monetized and culture became self-loathingly obsessed. The truth is that these questions are not merely asked today, but poured over by any and all. From the rising content creator on Youtube or TikTok to the aspiring influencer on Instagram or Twitter (still not gonna do it), we all suffer under the unspoken social rules of the web.
You would think we would rail in protest at the highly commoditized, self-regulated, and over-consumptive posture we must take on these platforms. We should leave them, find alternatives, and build an online social graph that respects our time, attention, and humanity. Appreciating liberty and dignity, we abstain from such manipulative and demeaning chains. Yet we do not.
Because of social pressure, we stay. Because of justifications, we remain. We hurt ourselves (and others) time and time again. We contribute to bad faith conversation in a medium we know to be unproductive. We seek out validation consciously (and unconsciously) by wandering the minefield of likes and comments in our feed. We consume toxic content that makes us more enraged, jealous, anxious, and unkind. We loathe that we do it, but it’s what we do.
What purpose does a dying social platform serve us when it can no longer be called truly social?
Why are we justifying giving a massive portion of our time to a place that gives nothing back to us?
When do we feel is the appropriate time to pull the plug on the deadly self-experiment we miscalculated?
