I had a bad summer cold recently for a few days. I turned up the bad fan and TV, as one does, and zoning out. When I came around, and it was time to get my bearings back and get back to work, my first order of business was the same as ever: logging onto social media.
When I did, I immediately felt something was off. Seriously.
So much so that I couldn’t help but finally grudgingly agree with the critics who were warning that we are seeing The end of the days of the social network As we knew it.
on Twitter – Excuse me, X – There seem to be as many advertisements for Cheech and Chong’s cannabis products as there are posts from people I already know. When I wrote a post, a response immediately came from a bot trying to interest me with a video on how to make money on cryptocurrency. It felt like logging right into a late night infomercial.
The alternatives weren’t much better – Threads, a competing Meta product, Launched by Mark Zuckerberg In a sensation just weeks ago, I felt vaguely exhilarating but ultimately vacant. I’ve seen quite a few posts from the same few users and some promotional content from people I should be following at some point on Instagram, but their poolside life seems totally weird to me now. It was like being in a well-designed but eerily empty mall, a digital “dawn of the dead” with more attractive zombies.
I quickly logged off, and it turns out I’m not alone – thread users up 82% since its launch less than a month ago. After its meteoric (and exaggerated) rise to 100 million users Within a few days, the strands were in a steady state of decline. As of August 1, users were spending just 2.9 minutes a day there, according to one statistic.
For more than a decade, logging into social media, especially Twitter, has been among the first steps of the day for countless professionals, students, and online talkers—a way to instantly re-enter the fray and catch up on the latest news, trends, and memes. Over the years, despite the mess it feeds into, it has become a guiding force, the way we analyze and organize information for the day or week ahead.
This power is, for all intents and purposes, off. I’m not alone in thinking that either – I’m an intern in journalism Bloomberg wrote about it How their peers don’t take X seriously and seem surprised their older classmates still do. Determined to delete the app, the intern noticed that the algorithm seemed to reduce news and favor reactionary politics — and that’s hard to argue with.
But old habits die hard. I’ve logged into Twitter at the start of every workday since, oh, 2011; It’s easy to let muscle memory take over and keep nutrition updated no matter what’s going on around the place. Which is why taking a break and logging back in is such a stark wake-up call — and she took the occasion to launch an accidental investigation into the state of social media, a year after her supposed death.
So, I headed to Bluesky once noisy, which seems to have the opposite problem that threads did. The place seemed noisy and lively, but also impenetrable to the casual user who pops in occasionally and without much community – it’s the kind of place where active Twitter users and online nerds feel right at home, which is great, but I’m kind of staring blankly for a few minutes, and after Not uploading any new posts for a minute or two, give up the ghost.
See, if Threading was a rocket with a few actual riders who couldn’t keep up its speed, Bluesky is like a party on a stuffed hot air balloon whose engineers are frantically building more decks mid-flight. Seemingly The number of users has recently exceeded 1 millionBut the invitation-only system means that growth is slow.
On the other hand, a slow, deliberate pace of growth can be a good thing, giving site staff plenty of time to build strong policies and user support—assuming they actually do those things. (And there’s still a lot of demand for those invitations; whenever I mention owning one, I’m immediately hounded for it.) On the other hand, many users may lose interest — and Bluesky may lose its window to replace the competition.
Finally, I turned to Mastodon, the first real Twitter competitor that came along Musk took over and broke up the wrecking ball last year. It’s my favorite of the alternatives, by a wide margin, but it’s also…quiet. Nice and quiet, but quiet nonetheless.
The most common strikes with Mastodon are that it is confusing for users at first and that it is relatively difficult to find people you want to follow. I think the first complaint is exaggerated, while the second seems more honest.
I’m mostly done following the progressive academics and techies at Mastodon. To me, it has the atmosphere of a great cocktail party after an academic conference: wowing people, stimulating polite discussions, and feeling—the one you know is dumb and juvenile but still can’t shake it—that you’re missing a nerd somewhere else.
The empty mall, the balloon carrier, the cultured cocktail hour—theoretically, you could attend them all. Indeed, who has time?
Twitter has already been eulogized to death, but the cool thing about it is that it can be all of those things at once. (Keep in mind that we are talking about the end One type From the social network—live broadcasts filled with news and commentary, versus Facebook’s family and friends approach, which swings, nearly 3 billion users.)
The last ten years of this kind of centralized digital life might be seen as an aberration, and visiting a more diverse group of communities, platforms, and websites will return to being the norm, as it was in the 90s and ’00s. Science fiction writer Corey Doctorow argued That this is not only probable, but necessary — that the accumulated weight of years of bad policy decisions and the evolution of platforms into overcrowded monopolies leaves little alternative but to let them burn, as a wildfire might seem disastrous but is actually required to clean the forest floor.
Ideally, away from the ruins, we’d find people online again, under better terms and conditions – and if we’re smart, we’ll pay for More democratic and responsive platforms in processing.
or not! And we will be freed from a pair of long-held tendencies—publication and control—that may seem as burdensome as they are expansive.
So this Brief on the state of social media in 2023: Ripped and torn, lonely and confused. It is no longer a place where cultural trends become apparent, where news or narratives are shaped, but something smaller and more chaotic.
And as we prepare for the end times, we must bear in mind that the unusual thing is not the death of Twitter — that bustling central location where celebrities, politicians, journalists, bizarre posters, and activists met — it’s that it has ever managed to exist.