Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in. We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.
Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered. We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.
Let’s talk about social media.
Social media is certainly a cultural phenomenon, but I don’t think we have ever talked about it here.
It is certainly a mixed bag these days – does it help more than it hurts? Hurt more than it helps?
Should there be an official social media platform for government agencies and elected officials?
What’s the half-life of a social media site? What’s the time from when a shiny new social media site comes out to when it becomes a cesspool?
Would / will social media sites like Twitter and TikTok and BlueSky always ultimately crash and burn? Even if your answer to that is yes, are they worth it for what they provide while they last? If your answer is no, do you think a site like Spoutible that tries to keep the space safe and clean could be the answer?
Do we think of each one as disposable? Use it now for what we can get out of it, even though it’s not perfect and may well get infected anyway?
Why does one site catch on and another doesn’t? I hate to say it, but I personally think Spoutible didn’t take off because it’s owned by a black man who has pissed people off for “not knowing his place”. I’m sure the owner of BlueSky is neither arrogant nor opinionated. //
If social media is a tool and not just a cultural phenomenon, how do we use it to deal with the crisis we are facing in this country?
Which social media sites are good for different types of things?
Anyway, don’t limit yourself to exactly the questions I asked. Just trying to jump start the conversation.
Also, if you guy want to keep Medium Cool posts just fun, nothing serious, feel free to to let me know (nicely) in the comments.
For those who are new to Medium Cool, these are not open threads.
Baud
I coming to the view that unstructured social media promotes conservative personality traits and that ends up hurting libs.
A Ghost to Most
Fight fascism. Kill ALL your social media.
Suzanne
Some of these sites are terrible to look at, and it makes me hate using them. Either too much text, or content looks chaotic in its presentation. I am convinced that Google broke out when it did partly because of the white space around the logo, and that was the first time the www actually looked good. Facebook, as well — MySpace looked like shit, letting everybody clutter their pages with backgrounds and music. Facebook just looked higher-end at the time.
Now it’s more challenging, because there’s so many of them, and I can’t be bothered.
schrodingers_cat
I am not a huge fan of social media but it allows me to keep in touch with family and friends all over the globe and Indian politics
Are blogs considered social media?
piratedan
even though I am somewhat active on Bluesky, there are times when it comes to social media when the old Monty Python bit on How To Not Be Seen comes to mind….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-M2hs3sXGo
Matt McIrvin
These days, I mostly post to a Mastodon instance that is kept afloat by user donations (and I support it financially). There’s a service that mirrors my posts to Bluesky (though not my *replies* to un-mirrored accounts), but I see Bluesky as through a glass darkly, so I’m not 100% on there.
I don’t think the “fediverse” will ever become dominant but I think things like it can serve as a refuge when commercial platforms fail us, and they’re worth supporting for that reason. Right now, it seems like Pixelfed (their Instagram alternative) is going somewhere.
bjacques
I use social media to comfort my friends and shitpost to my enemies when I’m in a mood.
Scout211
I’m letting you know (nicely) that keeping the Medium Cool threads fun and nothing serious is my preference. :-)
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I’m glad mastodon is there, even though I don’t use it much. I haven’t really been visiting Blue sky much lately
Suzanne
@Scout211: I second fun!
Omnes Omnibus
@A Ghost to Most: And yet you post on a blog…
Omnes Omnibus
@Scout211: Agreed.
Baud
@Scout211:
I’d like us to talk more about man’s inhumanity to man.
Jk. Fun all the way!
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne:
They had lifted that from the original user interface of AltaVista, the first automated Web search site that really caught on (as opposed to human-curated catalogs like Yahoo!). AltaVista’s home page was originally just a search bar and a logo. But by that time, AltaVista had become enshittified–its owner tried to expand it into this cluttered “portal” with other junk all over it.
A lot of people were hankering to just have the original AltaVista page back, and Google gave it to them (and it also worked better than AltaVista ever had, because Google really worked in those days).
WaterGirl
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t think so.
wonkie
Mastodon was too complicated for me, plus I like interactions which it didn’t have. I like Blue Sky. I follow people who photograph the desert, mushrooms, the moon and stars, and wildlife. I also follow a lot of political people. I am disappointed by how few Dem pols are using Bluesky.
I like instagram before I got kicked off (no idea why). I like looking at pictures. I followed a Chinese fashion designer, any number of dancers, a Mexican artist, and African media guy who reported on urban street culture, a lady who lives in Yukon Territory, all kinds of people who took pictures of all kinds of stuff. I miss it.
I use FB to keep in touch with lots of people, I also post A LOT of political stuff and many of my FB friends are now using better news sources. I also have a FB friend who moved to Spain and I like getting up dates. Lastly I use FB to help with animal rescue.
I’ve tried Tik tok and I just don’t get it
Liminal Owl
I used to really enjoy Facebook (long, long ago). Very rately posted anything personal, but it was a good way to keep up with friends and share cat pictures, as well as some articles etc. For a couple of years now I’ve been using it less and trying to delete my account. I am enjoying Bluesky for the article-sharing in both directions, but I don’t think I’d especially miss it.
I am, unfortunately, addicted to reddit for entertainment.
WaterGirl
@Scout211: May you be a model for others with a similar opinion! :-)
dexwood
Casting a vote for fun. Wait, would that mean we can’t have a serious discussion about comedies? (kidding)
Matt McIrvin
@Liminal Owl: I have hated Facebook since the moment I first got on–it’s just so unpleasant in so many ways, but the attraction is that lots of people I know in real life are there, and some of them turn out to be pretty entertaining or insightful online, and it’s fun to see their vacation pictures and such. There were also a few groups there that were heavily moderated such that they were not too bad.
I’ve been boycotting Meta/Facebook since Trump’s inauguration. It’s just intolerable. But I’m missing the real-people connections. I need to start drawing them out into other alternatives even if it’s just email lists or something.
WaterGirl
Looking like a pattern so far – with 4 out of 16 comments saying fun!
TBone
@A Ghost to Most: come sit by me.
NotMax
@Scouit211
Hear hear and huzzah!
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: I think blogs are social media. They don’t have the “friend graph” thing going on, but a lot of the same drama happens there anyway.
scav
As a point for possible discussion, is it entirely fair to blame the (water cooler, telephone, stationary pad plus stamp, suggestion box, soapbox stand in bughouse park, . . . ) for the types of statements they enable or should we also focus on the socio-cultural influences? (there are certainly points I can see on both sides, but then I always gravitate to the messy multiple-handed grey zones.)
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
BJ seems pretty staid.
VeniceRiley
I’m positive FB is hiding any trumpistan posts from fam. It’s all friends and innocuous content with the occasional dem scream now.
You know what I miss? TELEVISION WITHOUT PITY. They sold out to “the man” and got flushed down shortly after. I’d throw every social media site in creation to have it back. It had some strict and sensible moderation.
WaterGirl
@dexwood:
That sounds like a good idea for a Medium Cool.
Ben Cisco
I’m good with fun as well, but I will address the issues raised…
Facebook – I’m only there to keep up with family and b/c a civic org I’m in uses it. Whatever utility it may have had aside from that (if indeed it ever did) is long gone.
I have and use BlueSky, Spoutible, and Mastodon (using the latter much less than the other two). Sadly, I’m forced to agree with your take on why Spoutible is not larger than it is.
Cannot really think of any of them as tools because tools (GOOD ones anyway) are useful over the long haul, and I don’t personally see any of them having that long a shelf life. In the interim, they can serve as another comms channel until the next thing gets rolled out. I try to remember that these things are aimed at the younglings, who will move on to the next thing that gets rolled out.
Blogs are communities, and as such are social (and antisocial from time to time).
Keep your heads up!!
WaterGirl
@VeniceRiley: What is TELEVISION WITHOUT PITY?
bbleh
I think “social media” — which imo are not entirely well-defined either in time or nature (see above questions regarding whether blogs are social media) — are somewhat like newspapers when they first came out. They were new and fascinating, they caught on widely and quickly, they were incredibly lucrative for some, they were widely condemned as vulgar and destabilizing, and they WERE both, as well as being liberating and useful (recall the use of social media in various regional revolutions). And they turned out, kinda like other technological (broadly defined) inventions, to be both good and bad and … more or less permanent.
And so waddaya do? You pick and choose, go with the good and ignore the bad. And other people do their thing. And … we end up with the Guardian and the WSJ, and the NYT and the WaPo (which to be fair have done some amazingly good things), and of course hundreds of other local papers (to whom are the only ones I subscribe right now). And hopefully a lot of the bad ones just die out.
(And while I recognize the value of gossipy ones like Facebook for local businesses and organizations as a necessary tool of communication, I won’t touch them with even a remote keyboard.)
Kayla Rudbek
@Ben Cisco: I think that the Spoutible founder also managed to piss off a whole lot of romance authors, Courtney Milan being one of them, so that was a strike against Spoutible in my opinion.
zhena gogolia
@Scout211: Me too. I need it.
Old School
I’d like to cast my vote for more conflict.
oldster
In a very different timeline, a different social media platform sprang. up which had no ads and no algorithms. It let friends and family post their pictures and holiday letters, but it never pushed content and it had no news feed.
It was an entirely non-profit public service, a bit like the post office, and no one got rich by manipulating it. It had all of the functionality that everyone always mentions as pluses of FB — allowing you to keep up with friends and family — and none of the downsides of FB, like monetizing your privacy and pitting citizens against each other.
It would have been a nice timeline to live in.
Whimsical Pickles
Oh, I loved Television Without Pity! Still miss it. I’m on Bluesky, though not much because it depresses me. I quit Threads and Instagram after the election.
Matt McIrvin
@WaterGirl: It was a snarky review/recap/discussion site on TV shows. I first knew it as MightyBigTV, but apparently it started out as DawsonsWrap, a site specializing in Dawson’s Creek!
Eventually they sold it to NBCUniversal and it died several years later.
Miki
@wonkie: Yep. Same here. I’ve curated Bluesky well enough that I’m willing to engage with it daily.
FB is for old timey Boomer friends and family. And some great groups.
Google Groups hosts a couple of groups I really like.
Stay awake (🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣) and curate. TM
VeniceRiley
I’m still on FB and it’s how I met my wife. (Interest groups)
Plus friends from 50 years ago or more.
Plus relatives close and tangential.
Plus 10+ years interest media friends.
Plus old longtime job colleagues.
It’s perfect for that.
The rest of social media is more for interacting with strangers. I met a whole bunch of people from twitter in meatwold long before it got to be not as fun. Several of them are in my FB friends still.
And, back in the day, twitter was a place where you could get some famous-ish folk to follow you if you said something funny or insightful or interesting or helpful. I miss those days.
Softail
Facebook was good for awhile but then the enshitification began. Never got into Xitter. I’m liking BlueSky. Jack Dorsey is certainly opinionated but I think he has correctly identified the technical barriers to doing better but it remains to be seen if they can push it over the finish line and if they do how long it will last in internet years. Technically it’s quite well done. It doesn’t depend on the engagement algorithms and advertising so I don’t think it has the same dangers of say Facebook, of inflaming passions. You only see what you follow and you can block or mute freely. They are getting a grip on the porn bots. Other people have started developing on the AT protocol and there is some funding developing outside of the BlueSky organization, which they welcome. For example, geeks like me can now run our own nodes and have control of our own data. Most people won’t want to but it makes it hard to shut down or turn into a propaganda organ if enough people do it. The “news” is useless, we need a new mass medium and I don’t see any other candidates other than the remaining blogs like this one.
WaterGirl
Okay, the votes have been counted. And the winner is…. Fun!
Craig
@Suzanne: yeah, I used Google cause I liked the simple clean design. Compared to geocities, or the nightmare of yahoo it was easy on my eyes.
TheOtherHank
I mostly use Bluesky. I was mostly weaned off Xitter except for a small number of light-hearted feeds that hadn’t moved to Bluesky, but lately on my phone, Xitter, which seems to think I’m logged in, tells me something went wrong and no posts load. I find that I’m a bit sad that it’s broken because I liked the pictures and whatnot I looked at, I’m not too sad, though, because fuck Elon.
I’ve stopped using FB because fuck Zuck, but also the refusal to just give me a chronological feed of the people I follow makes me crazy(er). I am a bit of hypocrite since I do look at Instagram. I’ve not started up a Threads account because I don’t see the point of it.
I watch TikTok videos when someone cross posts them to IG or Bsky.
Ben Cisco
@Kayla Rudbek: I was not aware of that, but also not surprised to hear it.
Matt McIrvin
I think it’s frustrating that people keep having to revert to email lists as the baseline form of many-to-many communication even though they’re clearly unfit for the purpose and people have been trying to make better alternatives for literally 50 years.
(The first social-media site was arguably the Berkeley “Community Memory” system, a bulletin board on a time-sharing system with public terminals, the first of which was in a record store. That started in 1973, so, 52 years ago.)
UncleEbeneezer
We might not have escaped the fire if we hadn’t been following local updates on Facebook. It was also pretty crucial for getting donations to our GoFundMe that gave us the $ to take advantage of the job opportunity and move to Taos. It’s also been a really valuable for seeing real peoples’ homes, reading their stories etc. Without Facebook (and Twitter) so much information, tributes, updates, donations, guidance on FEMA claims etc. would simply never have gotten out to the masses the way they did via FB. The news coverage really only showed a tiny sliver of the devastation. In fact, when I meet people here in NM who didn’t really follow the action closely on social media (or weren’t in CA/Altadena/Malibu groups), they don’t seem to truly grok just how huge and horrific the fires were. So for all the ills that social media amplifies (like pretty much every shitty human tendency) it does have some great positives in specific circumstances. I also reconnected with old friends or found people from high school that I wasn’t friends with then, but have become pretty close now because they are super-cool. Facebook is also where a lot of our personal pictures live on, even when our computers were melted in a fire. A bunch of my family pix only survive because I posted them on FB. People talk about a world with no social media, but I just can’t envision it. We have computers and we are social animals. There will always be some sort of form of online option to meet people, join groups etc.
Emily B.
I’m coming around to see social media as a drug, the way alcohol is a drug. In small doses, it can be a solace and bridge to companionship. In larger doses, it is addictive and bad for your mental health. At worst, it can rewire your brain in a very damaging way and corrode your humanity. (Cf. Trump, Musk)
Soprano2
@VeniceRiley: Boy, I hadn’t thought of that site for a long time!
I mostly use FB to keep up with people. I saw a high school classmate last night because she knew we owned the bar because of FB. My Jazzercise studio also uses it to keep us updated. I still look at Twitter but don’t post there. I have a LinkedIn that I rarely look at.
I think social media encourages people to be their worst selves because it’s not in person. It’s a real problem that I don’t know how to solve.
VeniceRiley
@WaterGirl: Oh, girl. Ohhhhh girl. “MY SWEET SUMMER CHILD” -tm Ceresei Lannister! Maybe the greatest recap site in the history of the internet – plus comments and discussion unrivalled. Incredible rules, like… Swearing fine. Don’t say “um” and no “boards on boards” which meant not discussing about anything about the message boards, as they were then called, other than the topic threads for the show therein. It was glorious.
Matt McIrvin
@UncleEbeneezer: Before online social media, there were also print-based things that served a similar purpose of fostering DIY individual expression or building a community of discussion: mimeographed zines, letters columns in newspapers and magazines. Things like public science-fiction fandom ran on these channels for decades. Fanfic about Kirk and Spock making sweet love to one another was being distributed by Star Trek fans in amateur print before the Internet existed.
Steve in the ATL
@WaterGirl: so Omnes will be banned, right?
Jackie
@Ben Cisco:
I’m with you. Not one iota of politics is discussed or mentioned.
WTFGhost
Social media can be great for keeping in touch, and such, but it can also harm you more than you think, especially if you’re using it as a primary social outlet. Get into a big fight on X_Site, and suddenly you can feel cut adrift. (Um. “X_Site” just means any old social media site. I’m not saying that X is especially toxic. It probably is, mind you – but I’m not saying it.)
You’ve all heard of doomscrolling, and that can drag you down. If you’re not tied in to your emotional state, you you might not even realize you’re dragging yourself down.
It really helps to have other people to check in with – real people if you can find ’em. And it helps to understand that there are two parts to an emotion – there are the thoughts and the feels, right, and then, there’s the body’s reaction – and once the body reacts, you’re going to be feeling that reaction for a time – 12 hours was given to me once! – so it’s not just a matter of catching the emotional reaction, and dealing with the immediate stuff. You need to recognize that you’re in a state where emotions are like the weather – sometimes, you just have to bear up under it, until things get better.
That said: the worst thing about any social media is, if you can’t see what/who you want, when you want it, then, you can do all the emotional work you can, but the algorithm can still wreak havoc with you, and it might be doing so surprisingly well – with enough information about you, you can be manipulated, by people who have no concern for you, only how much money they can make off of you.
Matt McIrvin
@VeniceRiley: I met my wife on Usenet, which was social media on the pre-Web Internet.
Though, really, it predated the Internet–its original main propagation medium was UUCP, a loose network of computers forwarding information mostly over nighttime phone calls. My spouse had set up a Linux system in the 1990s just so she could get a UUCP-based Usenet feed, which was where she got the initial IT experience that started her career.
But Usenet actually started in 1979, and some of the earliest links were over magnetic tapes being hauled from place to place by hand. (APRANET, the Internet’s original core, dates from the late 1960s, but it wasn’t really *the Internet* until TCP/IP which was basically 1980s.)
VeniceRiley
I also miss Usenet newsgroups … and get offa my lawn.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Some of the recent blowups on BJ have dragged me down emotionally more than anything going on on a conventional “social media” site. I have to nope out of here every so often.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: I’ve already been named as an enemy here.
Liminal Owl
@Matt McIrvin: Makes sense to me. I’m going to blame some of my procrastination (as to boycotting Facebook) on the pandemic; I work from home, my social activities dried up, and we had to move to a much more isolating area… so it has been a way to stay in touch, sort of. But it hasn’t been fun for a long time.
eta: Never got into Twitter, nor other social media.
Still miss my Usenet groups! (eta again: and now I see I’m not alone in that.)
zhena gogolia
I still want to know what John Cole thought of Anora. I hope he checks in tonight.
Math Guy
I have never used social media such as Twitter, Reddit, Bluesky, etc.. Never. I do have a FB account that I use solely for Marketplace; when we moved, I sold a lot of furniture that we did not want to take with us, and I’ve used it to buy furniture to help my daughter furnish her first apartment. That’s about it. And I used to comment on BJ a little more frequently, but not since the election.
Reading the comments it seems to me that social media is important to many of you so, to that end, I hope it evolves to a point where it is a social good, but – speaking for myself – I just don’t get it. I’ll text or email friends and family when I need to be in touch, or even just to say “hi”, but I prefer talking on the phone or seeing them in person. I don’t feel that I am “missing” anything by not using it.
That’s all. I’ll continue to read BJ and occasionally view the links embedded in the front pager’s posts. Hang in there.
Kelly
Out here in rural Oregon Facebook is still useful for local news. I’ve never belonged to Facebook but Mrs. Kelly has been there forever. So I get a filtered but useful view. I post pics on Bluesky.
VeniceRiley
@Matt McIrvin: :fistbump:
That’s what I’m talking about! It’s still out there to be had. We scored spouses!
Furthermore- B5(moderated)unread
But you can still get a reply to an intelligent question from JMS on xhitter even now.
If the rest of humanity wants to drown in algorithm shit posts and horrid videos and pron, it’s on them.
scav
Source and more here. Ban lasted all of two weeks.
laura
I’ve never had a social media account of any kind, but I do lurk on bluesky, nitter and have looked over the shoulder of fb havers. Swear to God, I’ve spent a goodly amount of time looking at Black Twitter in the last couple few years because it’s been a balm to my old white lady soul- the joy, the resolve, the wisdom and the shenanigans. I’m a better person for delving deeply in spaces where my type is not centered- and I’m so very grateful for the opportunity.
That’s all I’ve got to add to the discourse.
Ruckus
I was early on FB but it started downhill and other things, like BJ were (and are) more informative.
WaterGirl
@VeniceRiley: Now I’m sorry I missed it!
WaterGirl
@Steve in the ATL: LOL
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus:
?????
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: Me too, because I care about this community.
Brianoplus
For me, every form of social media is about 50-50. Fifty percent of the time, I find interesting and enlightening commentary. The other fifty percent, I try to ignore. The problem for me is that, prior to social media, I could delude myself into believing that everyone I knew was fairly intelligent and reasonable. With social media, I’ve been finding out that about half of the people I know are moronic douchebags. I prefer the delusional pre-social media days. :)
Matt McIrvin
@VeniceRiley: I’ve spent a lot of time trying to decide: did the messing around I did in early Internet culture, tinkering with proto-smartphone OSes, etc. contribute to fascism coming to America? Was the Unabomber right to be blowing guys like us up, etc. etc. All sorts of morbid thoughts.
It’s kind of like blaming Hertz and Marconi for Hitler though. I don’t know. I still think communication tech can be liberatory but when sufficiently big money gets hold of it they can twist it in terrible ways.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: I doubt that we can blame rental cars for Hitler.
SW
In the 80’s I was very optimistic about the potential of social media. To my sorrow I have come to realize that this optimism was based on a fundamental misconception of human nature. In my youth I believed that most human beings were equipped with bullshit detectors. That is confronted with two mutually incompatible narratives regarding any issue, one true and one false the truth will resonate in a manner which makes the false narrative obvious. Therefore the more competing narratives the better because truth will somehow outshine all the bullshit.
If only. To our sorrow we have all been schooled on the subject of confirmation bias. People will believe narratives that conform to what they already believe regardless of how ridiculous they may seem to a dispassionate observer. This characteristic of human nature has guaranteed that social media would become the premiere method for disseminating propaganda. The damage is incalculable.
kalakal
@Scout211: Fun is good
TBone
On any “free!” sites, apps, and social media (not usually blogs!), WE are the product being bought and sold (to). Nothing is “free” – you just can’t immediately see cost or consequences.
David Collier-Brown
@wonkie: I like Mastodon, but the authors assumed you were a nerd who would build social networks intuitively and instantly.
OK, maybe if you read usenet _a lot_. Building my network took a week or so, but I find it quite pleasant for chatting about things… rather like balloon juice (:-))
cope
@WaterGirl: Then I am not a user of any social media.
I feel that when alien archeologists piece together the demise of homo sapiens, they will determine that giving every person on the planet a megaphone and audience to spout whatever flies through their pea-sized brains regardless of factual accuracy will be a huge factor.
Martin
@Baud: Social medias monetization system generally promotes individualism and exploitation of community, because that’s the most efficient way to make money there.
My experience on Mastodon is most of that behavior is missing because the service is generally built on community spaces and not commercial ones.
Ben Cisco
@TBone: THIS PART RIGHT HERE
FelonyGovt
Facebook was good for a while- I reconnected with my best friend from high school and we became close again until she passed away last year. Otherwise I’m realizing that it is largely a waste of time. I like Instagram for art related accounts and Reddit for fan and speciality stuff. BlueSky is ok but hasn’t become an addiction.
I’m home now recovering from a total hip replacement and I can see that I will be re-evaluating my doomscrolling and social media use.
Tehanu
@Matt McIrvin: Well, yeah … I’m not crazy about Fbook, but it has enabled me to get in touch and keep in touch with a lot of people I probably couldn’t reach otherwise, and I do value that. I have a Bluesky account too, but I really only use it when I see somebody’s post quoted elsewhere and I want to check it out. But I’m an old; it doesn’t come naturally to me to be glued to my phone.
kalakal
@VeniceRiley:
I met my wife on FB* through an old friend. I find it useful for keeping in touch with old friends. I used to be on it a lot but hardly use it now except for a seperate art page.
I also have an art page on Instagram.
Don’t really go on social media apart from that
* We were on opposite sides of the Atlantic
Steve in the ATL
Next time we have authors on here, may we have a discussion of the alleged word “unputdownable” in blurbs and reviews?
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
TBone
@Ben Cisco: I advocate boycotting Xitter and Fascistbook and never, ever, use apps for anything anymore once I wised up to their middleman-with-fingers-in-every-purse nature. I do enjoy read-only use of BlueSky. Since I don’t participate in any other social media, I can’t say anything about other sites but this: there is ALWAYS crapification coming. It’s inevitable because this is all, when you get down to brass tacks, a business model (selling & scraping data).
Or should I say
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
WaterGirl
@SW: Great comment, thank you.
WaterGirl
@FelonyGovt: I started to write to you today but never got the message sent.
How are you doing?
WaterGirl
@Steve in the ATL: Have you actually seen that in the wild? In actual reviews?
(Very much hoping the answer is no.)
TBone
Planned obsolescence also comes to mind.
Ben Cisco
@TBone: Enshittification is a perfectly cromulent word, and I encourage its use.
FelonyGovt
@WaterGirl: Good, very tired and sort of sore. But we’ll get there.
Ben Cisco
@Steve in the ATL: “All
nameswords are made up.” – Thor Odinson 😆No, seriously, that’s fucked up.
WaterGirl
@FelonyGovt: I would have expected worse than “sort of sore” so that’s a victory in and of itself!
I will look forward to an email with more information :-) when you feel up to it!
Scout211
This is an important matter that should definitely be discussed in the future. I commend you for your thoughtful suggestion. That word in blurbs and reviews is an abomination.
However, it has now been added to the dictionary. Sad!
Unputdownable.
My high school English teacher must be rolling over in her grave
Also too, new words and new grammar being created by social media use, texting and product marketing campaigns would be a great Medium Cool topic! So many pedants and so little time.
Heidi Mom
I have about 100 friends on Facebook, and I’m not looking to increase that number just for the sake of it. Most of those share my political views, and those who don’t (5 or 6?) rarely post anything, so in my experience it’s been a friendly place. About 10 of us are a mutual political support group who interact there several times a week if not more. We know we’re preaching to the choir, but also know that we’re not alone. And thanks to the “raise funds for a charity on your birthday” feature, I somehow managed to raise $400 for The Trevor Project!
TBone
I really like fun and (sort of) apologize for being the social media wet blanket that I am. Just the facts, ma’am…
WaterGirl
@Steve in the ATL: @Scout211:
My hopes for that being a joke have been dashed. Ugh.
That might have to be added to the SPAM list. :-)
Scout211
Oh yes. That word is in heavy use on Amazon, but not for reviews so much. Mostly for the blurb describing the books, probably written by the marketing team.
TBone
@TBone: 2019 facts
https://www.fastcompany.com/90381366/the-mysterious-afterlife-of-cambridge-analytica-and-its-trove-of-data
geg6
I use Facebook to talk to my far flung family and friends. I have a very curated friend list, so it has not been a place that I find toxic since my Great MAGA Friend Purge of 2015-16.
I have never had another social media account and don’t ever plan to. Never tweeted, never posted to Instagram, have never made a Tic Toc or even visited the site and I don’t have any desire to visit BlueSky. I don’t feel like I missed anything and I am glad to be away from all that noise and nonsense. Other than hanging here and checking FB once a day, my only online activities are watching particular creators on YT and an admittedly large and eclectic podcast library.
TBone
@TBone: that last link goes to
geg6
@VeniceRiley:
That was a great site! Best Survivor recaps ever, especially for the Pearl Islands season. Epic writing.
Matt McIrvin
@Ben Cisco: The youngs aren’t on Facebook–at one time it may have had a youth focus but today its advantage is that it’s the social network your aunts are on.
They’re not on Twitter/X either–its big sales proposition for a while was that, while it wasn’t actually that big as big social media went, it was the network that media and political people used. Which was why Musk took it over and made it into a Nazi bar.
The youngs are on TikTok. And a bunch of other Chinese networks. Probably on a lot of things I never heard of.
Another Scott
I’m an oldster, so I remember the days before search engines. When “Scott’s Internet Hotlist” (a web page of ~ 20,000 links to various things) was the way one found new stuff. E-mail was a way to cheaply and nearly instantly send 1-1 messages with people across the world. And if you wanted really fast real-time comms, you could use “talk” and IRC and various similar things (but I almost never used them). USENET was the granddaddy of 1-many social media, but it was different from what we have now. And it was great! Sure there were trolls, but one could put them in “kill-files” in one’s news reader and never see them (or responses to them) if you wanted. (* Digression below.)
And then, in January 1994, the first USENET message spam hit.
And then, in April 1994, the first spam ad hit.
And so forth.
I guess I’m too antisocial to have ever see the personal need for FB or T or IG or LinkedIn or … I scan Mastodon/Explore and a few BSky folks, etc., but never post anything. It seems too much like screaming into the void at this point.
I have ad-blockers in every browser I use. I ignore ads that somehow get through.
Anyway, social media generally isn’t for me. (I think of this place as more like USENET than “social media” because it’s still mostly text, there aren’t ads, and it’s small enough that one doesn’t have to be camped out here all day to have interactions with others.) And EM and MZ and the folks at A and G and MS and all the other big outfits that are determined to know everything we’re doing every moment of the day so that they can sell us to others, and sell more stuff to ourselves, must hate me very, very much.
And that’s Ok!
* – (Lots of USENET readers worked in batch mode – you would download all the changes to threads and groups that you were participating in, your newsreader would put them in whatever order you decided made sense, you’d read them, write your replies whenever you wanted, and upload your replies whenever you wanted. If you wanted to reply to a 2 year old thread, you could do that, and your reply would get put in the correct place. There wasn’t the always-on time pressure there is now – especially on really active posts that might have tens of thousands of responses these days… In so much of “social media” these days, if you’re not there “as it happens” then nobody is going to see your input.)
Yes, Medium Cool should stay respite-ish, IMO.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
NotMax
@Math Guy
It’s like you read my mind.
Ben Cisco
@Matt McIrvin: YUP
kalakal
@Another Scott: I was on CIX for years. Used it for remote work when I was a contractor. Some of the social groups were great, used to chat with Terry Pratchett about gardening and cats.
I liked CIX/USENET
PJ
Social media was a huge mistake and is a major reason why the US is melting down. The world would be better off if it were banned. But as the Dead Kennedy’s titled an album way back before this mess, the motto of this country is “Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death”.
Sure Lurkalot
@SW: I agree with your every word.
When people believe they’re anonymous/invisible, it can bring out their worst impulses. I’m not fond of sites with reward systems (retweets, likes, upvotes, badges), the whole “going viral” meme can crowd fund heinous behavior (e.g. Myanmar/Rohingya). Algorithms? Bots? Purposeful fake personas? The downsides seem insurmountable.
pieceofpeace
This site is my closest place to any social media. And I’m fine with that, although am considering Reddit for informative ideas on local activities and events, day trips, restaurants, or planning a trip for lodging, etc.
You do a great job with Medium Cool, WaterGirl, and I like a mix of light and more intensive subject matters.
So here are some suggestions for each:
What film or form of entertainment made a long or lasting impression on your outlook or purpose in your life and stayed with you for longer than a day or two?
What changes, culturally, have you noticed, in general, since the election or maybe even before that that bother or affect you the most? I know, there’s been too damn many! Maybe non-political ones, if that’s possible to discern.
If you were a tree, which one would you be?…kidding about this one…
Chris
Well, the social media I used the most in my life, not counting blogs and IMDb, has been Facebook. And it did in fact used to be good. Back in the day, it was a nice way to keep tabs on a couple hundred high school and college classmates, most of whom I never would’ve put the effort of keeping in touch with back in the twentieth century because it was too much work, but who I do in fact like seeing where they are in life now. Like a non-job version of LinkedIn. At the very beginning, it was also a nice way of finding people who shared your interests, no matter how obscure the interest.
The problem is, of course, enshittification. Facebook was fine when I’d chosen the menu. It used to be the feed was just whatever had been posted recently by people I’d friended and groups I’d joined. Nowadays, it’s almost all bots and trolls. The stuff that is posted by actual human beings is almost always days late, too.
The nature of the enshittification is also, these days, aggressively political. And by aggressive, I mean that it will not let you change the channel. One of my most common experiences is finding an offensively right-wing meme from a person/group I don’t know from Adam, blocking it, blocking the person who posted it, and then returning to the feed and quickly finding the exact same meme under a different person’s name. I’m told that this is just the mobile site and that it’s otherwise easier to curate; maybe so, but the mobile site is where a lot of people get their news all the same (and it’s the form of it I interact with the most).
Finally, I’ll say that while it’s been getting worse for a long long time, at least from my POV, the degradation of the experience just in the four short years from the 2020 to the 2024 election has been remarkable. It was bad in 2020, but it wasn’t this bad. In 2024, it was like a TV set with Fox News on every channel. Further reinforcing the extent to which big money and big media absolutely went all-in against Biden during his four years.
Martin
@WaterGirl: Sure they are.
Social media is anything where a person can create a media space without seeking permission and operates in two directions. Anyone can tip up a blog, and can enable comments to have that two-way communication. Contrast it to before the internet where you needed an FCC license to access the airwaves, or to indie newspapers or newsletters which you could do without permission, but only worked in one direction.
Youtube is social media – since anyone can start a channel and generally comments are allowed (as well as likes, etc.) Facebook, Twitter, podcasts can be, blogs usually are, substack, etc. TV is not, radio is not, newspapers are not.
Now, if Twitter keeps cracking down on who can be on the service, it may stop being that. Same for Youtube, Twitch, etc (beyond broad categorizations prohibiting porn, etc.)
Avalie
@Steve in the ATL: I find it helpful when I see it because I can immediately rule out the book suggested
Chris
@bbleh:
It’s definitely occurred to me that a lot of the criticism I see today about social media closely mirrors the criticism I’ve read in earlier generations about other forms of mass media – and on an even more basic level than that, about mass politics.
Chris
@Brianoplus:
I think this is one of the biggest changes that social media (as opposed to earlier forms of media) has made in a lot of people’s worlds: it really does force you to confront what’s lurking around in the hearts and minds of a lot of the people you know.
Thirty years ago, it was possible to reassure yourself that your wingnut cousins that you saw every couple years at the family reunion might have some crazy ideas and listen to some wrong sources, but were basically good people. After all, you only see them every couple years, call them a few times every year, and even though political arguments inevitably happen most of the conversations aren’t going to be about politics. And they’ll be perfectly kind and heartwarming in most of their interactions with you, because well why wouldn’t they be? You’re family.
But when you’re exposed to every ugly thought they feel compelled to word-vomit every few days about whatever the scapegoat of the week is, you start to get a much nastier and less rose-tinted view than you did back when your interactions with them were more limited. When you keep seeing them retweet pictures of refugees being shipped back to war zones with the comment “grab the popcorn!” or squeeing with glee as videos of cops assaulting or even killing anyone they disagree with, it becomes pretty much impossible to deny that yeah, we had some fun times at the beach growing up, but there is something deeply fucking malignant in whatever these people have for a soul.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
I’m so old, I remember when only college students could be on Facebook.
BellyCat
@SW: I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
RevRick
@WaterGirl: I think Balloon Juice is a social media. For one, it’s a virtual space where people gather and second, it’s a place where people share information and ideas. It’s unlike Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, because here the exchanges are driven, for the most part, by the Original Poster, whereas those spaces are free-for-alls, driven by algorithms.
For example, I use Facebook mostly to watch Reels of bowling, chess, female comics, dinosaurs, mathematics. And I post birthday wishes and visits to local restaurants and attractions.
Today, for instance, I posted about my pastor’s sermon and the Allentown Symphony Orchestra concert, which wove together Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem, and Brahms’ Symphony # 4..
Meanwhile, I venture onto Twitter to give likes to Democrats and to stick forks into MAGA propaganda. In the latter case, I am not trying to change MAGA minds, but to offer a different viewpoint to lurkers.
The other niche social media I visit are DailyKos, LGM, and Digby’s Hullabaloo.
chemiclord
I am most active on Bluesky, but still follow Spoutible for news feeds.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Loved TWOP.
eclare
I want to keep Medium Cool mostly fun, not political.
eclare
@Baud:
You are very wise.
TBone
Enshittification on steroids:
https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-meta-abandons-fact-checking-boosts-viral-content
TBone
According to this ranking, Fascistbook is still the second most popular social media site (soon to be knocked down though).
https://explodingtopics.com/blog/top-social-media-platforms
BellyCat
This.
(Pretty unfortunate when this person is your parent.)
Denali5
@SW: Your are so right about confirmation bias. It is real and the interactive part of social media is what makes it addictive. I enjoy Blue Sky because I can respond and people can let me know when they agree. So it’s rewarding. Balloon Juice is great, but the recent blowups made me really uncomfortable because I feel as though the contributors are online friends whose opinions I respect. But I hate conflict. Sorry to contribute to a dead thread, but I am a morning person.
WaterGirl
@Denali5:
I think the recent conflicts have been hard on all of us. People often comment on Medium Cool the next day, so you’re not late!
bluefoot
@TBone: one thing I don’t understand with social media and data platforms is their ability to legally use data to essentially run experiments on people. If I were collecting anonymized data on, say, use of Tylenol vs ibuprofen for headaches to understand patterns, I would have to submit the protocol to an IRB along with the data handling and retention plan, clear consent forms , etc etc. Data companies should be subject to similar regulatory requirements as biotech/pharma.
bluefoot
I’d prefer Medium Cool to be fun. I’d also prefer if the way people participated was more discussion. I think too often people will list things (favorite heist film or whatever) but not say why or what about the thing makes it good/interesting/special. So it’s hard to engage. For me, anyway.
TBone
@bluefoot: you’d think there would have been guardrails in place by now. But Elno is forging ahead with Neuralink too.
Steve in the ATL
@bluefoot: totally agree. The “why” is what’s interesting!
WaterGirl
@bluefoot: @Steve in the ATL: Totally agree!
I all but beg people not to just list things and to share the “why”. Medium Cool is all about conversation.