antisocial media

i just want to shitpost with my friends

This week’s writing was born out of my malaise, induced by the crumbling of Twitter and the rise of Threads, which also coincided with me getting an invite to Bluesky. I haven’t joined a new social media platform since I made an Instagram account in 2014. I couldn’t get into Snapchat and quietly deleted it. I still haven’t joined TikTok because a platform of videos is my worst nightmare. I had my spots, loosely used for specific things, though I let them bleed over now and again. Facebook is for friends and family, keeping an eye on the world. Instagram is for pictures and quick book reviews, and talking about makeup, and posting my endless pictures of the river. Twitter is for catching up on news, connecting with fellow library people, and making silly jokes. I had my social media habits, well-formed before I was critical about them. I joined Facebook in 2007 (age 15). I joined Twitter, originally, in 2011. I joined Instagram in 2014. I made a Reddit account in 2011. You could argue Substack was my first real social media join in ages, in 2022, but I view it somewhat differently: I’m still babystepping into the social functions here, and also, Notes was an addition after I decided to get on here and just write.

Then,

Bryn Robinson

kindly sent me a Bluesky invite code. I’d seen enough about Bluesky to want to try it; besides, Twitter’s crumbling was becoming more readily apparent every day. So I made a Bluesky account and started tentatively poking around there. It’s still relatively quiet, since it’s invite-only, and while some of my dearest online and real life friends are there, I was missing a lot of people.

A few days later, Threads, the Meta version of Twitter launched. I signed up, because it was easy, and sure, Zuck also sucks, but I’m already pretty locked into his ecosystem. And Threads was fun for the first little bit! A little chaotic, a little strange, and clearly not fully built yet. Limited features and a strange feed lead for a bizarre experience. What was fun was the joy people were proclaiming over a shiny new platform. People I’ve known on other platforms, who’ve let those ones lapse, are on Threads. It’s like come home week.

But now, as the dust begins to settle and I have these new apps on my screen, I suddenly have nothing to say. I feel fractured.

Why yes, I should know better, shouldn’t be so attached to social media, etc. I like dopamine, okay? And I’ve been on our modern platforms since I was 15. More than half my life. I remember times before it, of course, and I long for the freedom. I could easily remove myself. But it’s like catnip for a curious, nosy little bugger such as myself, and I can’t fully let go. Or, at least until now, I always had an excuse. But the fatigue has finally swallowed me. I have nothing to say with so many choices of where to say it. What was once a fun outlet has finally started on a clear and obvious downturn: it’s finally stopped being fun. Couple that with the recent decision of Google and Meta to remove Canadian news links in response to Bill C-18, and finally, I’ve begun to ask myself: what’s the point?

In my long relationship with social media, it’s had its ups and downs, periods where I was more focused on it, periods where I pulled away. But this feels like the final nail in the coffin. Of course I don’t have to be yoked to social media! I can be free! I can choose to walk away (or not, because like many people, I’m addicted to the endless scroll). It feels different, however, to part ways with platforms, or at least, think about parting ways with platforms, when it’s a decision that feels forced on you, rather than a natural shift in your priorities. In the past, I’ve moved on from accounts and platforms because they’d come to a natural conclusion. They had served me well for a time, but I was ready to move on. There was always another, newer place to go.

Now the places are dull, the newer places are somehow duller and less usable, and all of them are trying to sell me the most random shit. I do not want this. We do not want this. And yet, this is what we have. This is what the internet has become. It feels like a shell of its former self: what was once so big has gotten so small, in little steps over time. Certainly, I miss the magic of the internet from when I was a kid: a precious, limited access resource, but full of possibility. It’s hard to untangle my dissatisfaction with the current internet with the reality that the internet changed just as I grew up, the two of us becoming professionals at the same time, and the playground turned into the office. Do I miss the internet when it was for fun and games, because I had no responsibility? Or do I miss the internet because the one we have now has strayed so far from this, and part of that is the consequence of having all-encompassing social media applications.

And this was all before He Who Must Not Be Named changed the name of Twitter to X, which is such a nonsensical choice that I think it might be the death knell of that place for me.

I’ve also been on a summer nostalgia tour, re-inviting the notion of summer vacation back into my life (while not actually going on vacation, but hey). I’m reading books of childhood mixed in with books that are the more adult versions of things I would have read during my childhood summers. I’m eating popsicles on the regular, going to the beach often, and even have a plan to hit up Magic Mountain, the water park I grew up near, in August. What doesn’t fit into these choices? Social media.

I don’t have an answer for myself here. I’m probably going to continue my tortured relationship with social media because it is where people are, and as a person who’s living in a city she had no connection with prior to moving here, most of my people are somewhere else. Social media makes it easier, I cannot lie. But we are in a very fractured, unfun moment, and I’m just waiting for it to pass, hoping that it will pass and not become a permanent state.