Social Media Weirdness
Jun. 15th, 2021 06:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kiriel123Recently made the decision to delete my Facebook (which, they really designed their UX to make you think twice about that), and some of the people around me expressed a lot of shock.
I'd been thinking about it for a while, what with al the privacy stuff, and the bots, and the rampant misinformation all over it, but held off because it was useful for 1)birthdays and 2)organizing events. I was invited to many a birthday party or wedding through facebook.
But at the end of the day, the people that I talk to, I text or call or email, I don't actually use facebook to keep in touch with anyone. Plus the view of people's lives you get is really skewed.
I did find when I made posts that I would check for likes or comments pretty constantly in the first few days. Even when I made the post that I was deleting and to message me to keep in touch, I left that up there for a week before deleting and checked its stats. It really did make me have this surge of serotonin or whatever when people paid attention to it.
Obviously I have a dreamwidth, but I use it just to write down random thoughts, not really as a way to keep in touch or form a community with people. I made a twitter back in the day and have about 3 tweets over three years. Twitter is really something when it comes to a communication tool and that is not meant as a compliment. But twitter also makes me much more self conscious about interacting - I follow mostly book authors I enjoy and some fandom authors who write twitfic, and I feel awkward even "liking" a post because...they don't know me. So why would they care for my thoughts? But twitter is all about the algorithm so people want (positive) interaction with their posts, I just need to convince my brain of that first lol.
It makes me wonder what a "good" social media platform would be. Right now they're overrun with ads and trolls or are really hard to navigate, or difficult to actually form a connection on. LinkedIn is probably the closest, and that is used mostly for networking/work. But it's less likely to be as...I don't know if extreme is quite the right word, but people tend to be more professional for whatever value that adds.
Anyway, even with all the many tools at my disposal, I've found it hard to keep up with people sometimes. It's either you're a close friend and we talk often (very limited in number), you're a work friend/acquaintance and we have contact info for work issues, or you're someone who used to be a close friend and we're still in a group chat together and send each other funny memes but no real conversations.
I'd been thinking about it for a while, what with al the privacy stuff, and the bots, and the rampant misinformation all over it, but held off because it was useful for 1)birthdays and 2)organizing events. I was invited to many a birthday party or wedding through facebook.
But at the end of the day, the people that I talk to, I text or call or email, I don't actually use facebook to keep in touch with anyone. Plus the view of people's lives you get is really skewed.
I did find when I made posts that I would check for likes or comments pretty constantly in the first few days. Even when I made the post that I was deleting and to message me to keep in touch, I left that up there for a week before deleting and checked its stats. It really did make me have this surge of serotonin or whatever when people paid attention to it.
Obviously I have a dreamwidth, but I use it just to write down random thoughts, not really as a way to keep in touch or form a community with people. I made a twitter back in the day and have about 3 tweets over three years. Twitter is really something when it comes to a communication tool and that is not meant as a compliment. But twitter also makes me much more self conscious about interacting - I follow mostly book authors I enjoy and some fandom authors who write twitfic, and I feel awkward even "liking" a post because...they don't know me. So why would they care for my thoughts? But twitter is all about the algorithm so people want (positive) interaction with their posts, I just need to convince my brain of that first lol.
It makes me wonder what a "good" social media platform would be. Right now they're overrun with ads and trolls or are really hard to navigate, or difficult to actually form a connection on. LinkedIn is probably the closest, and that is used mostly for networking/work. But it's less likely to be as...I don't know if extreme is quite the right word, but people tend to be more professional for whatever value that adds.
Anyway, even with all the many tools at my disposal, I've found it hard to keep up with people sometimes. It's either you're a close friend and we talk often (very limited in number), you're a work friend/acquaintance and we have contact info for work issues, or you're someone who used to be a close friend and we're still in a group chat together and send each other funny memes but no real conversations.
