I really strongly recommend his book You Are Not A Gadget. He wrote it like fifteen years ago and it feels like he is describing last year. Like he's telling you about a lot of the problems of social media today, writing before Facebook had ads.
Why it is worth reading is his thinking about the causes and outcomes is so clear. Its still useful today.
> I think social media, in its current ad-infested, addiction-fueled data-harvesting form, is pure poison.
I'm in complete agreement, but I will say that this attitude has left me pretty isolated as I'm getting older. For better or worse, most people use Social Media to stay connected so I have wound up pretty connectionless over time.
I've been thinking about making a new Facebook account just to try and connect with local people playing TTRPGs, because that's apparently still where most of the organizing is. Unfortunately Facebook wants a fucking government ID now so I'm probably not going to do that
It's got to be said that rewarding people who make content on a regular, frequent schedule seems to A: be a way of coercing a fairly high minimum level of labour out of platformed accounts and B: a good way of flooding feeds with content which is largely devoid of novelty as a handful of prolific accounts dominate what people end up seeing.
The advice here is good, and I'm a big believer that the cream (e.g., sincerity and real opinions) rises to the top for writing. Still, think folks dunk on these types of writing automation tools too much when, for many, they can be a gateway drug to consistent posting and finding your online voice.
That is to say, the whole post is a bit of an internet old-head complaint. Reminds me of baby boomers complaining about a "decline" in homeownership and having children without acknowledging the massive shifts in the economic accessibility that support these milestones.
It's easy to write a post like this when you've already built a following because you started when social media was a greenfield experience. It's much harder when you have to compete for signal while being pressured to build a brand and perform at your day job.
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He said that in 2013, and now we're in 2026, not only is it possible, but it's very likely.
I am glad about it. I think social media, in its current ad-infested, addiction-fueled data-harvesting form, is pure poison.
Why it is worth reading is his thinking about the causes and outcomes is so clear. Its still useful today.
> I think social media, in its current ad-infested, addiction-fueled data-harvesting form, is pure poison.
I'm in complete agreement, but I will say that this attitude has left me pretty isolated as I'm getting older. For better or worse, most people use Social Media to stay connected so I have wound up pretty connectionless over time.
I've been thinking about making a new Facebook account just to try and connect with local people playing TTRPGs, because that's apparently still where most of the organizing is. Unfortunately Facebook wants a fucking government ID now so I'm probably not going to do that
-- Groucho Marx (probably)
That is to say, the whole post is a bit of an internet old-head complaint. Reminds me of baby boomers complaining about a "decline" in homeownership and having children without acknowledging the massive shifts in the economic accessibility that support these milestones.
It's easy to write a post like this when you've already built a following because you started when social media was a greenfield experience. It's much harder when you have to compete for signal while being pressured to build a brand and perform at your day job.
Who's falling behind? What does falling behind even mean if the OP doesn't care about numbers and really doesn't want to play the social media game?
Social media as it existed is gone, because people got tired of it, just as they got tired of geocities and myspace before that.
The new iteration is really bad, and there's a good chance people will get tired of it just as quickly as they got over the older ones.
Meanwhile, let's try to ignore stupid people doing stupid things with AI as much as we can.