How did we get here?

Social Medias

Discord, Reddit, Twitter, and Instagram have always been my main 4. They've done a lot to make me up too, and it's only fair that I take some time to talk about them. Social media is a weird thing because it gets so much hate from almost everyone despite the fact that everyone uses it despite the fact that they don't have to. I don't mean that in a "You say you think cars are bad for the environment and yet you drive one to work. Curious?" type of way. You literally don't have to use social media and the worst you'll get is minor judgment, but people do it anyway. At that point it could very well be considered addictive, and it is. Although, people who don't use social medias tend to act a bit superior because of it, in my opinion. Maybe I've just had bad experiences, but some people will talk from a mountain about how quitting social media or never using it in the first place was such a healthy decision for them, and that social media is the devil that's equally as bad as cigarettes. It makes me question whether those views are valid and that I am another victim or if these are social media antics being moved to the real world. In any sense, I think social media may be a net negative, but there are legitimately good things about it. Some social medias are better than others, though. You'll never catch me on TikTok. Never ever!

When it comes to active usage, I've been on Discord longer than anything else. 6 1/2 years on Discord, man. That is nuts! It's the only social media where I don't really remember a time where I didn't use it. I made my account when I was 11 (Discord, don't kill me). There was definitely a point where I can remember people talking about quitting Discord and me thinking "Why would you quit a social media where every community is different? Why not just leave the community that you dislike instead?" and that sentiment holds some truth, but man, out of every social media I currently use, I am the closest to quitting Discord right now. Some social medias suffer from this curse of becoming popular where, when they do, a bunch of young teens flood the app and ruin every big community. Discord is no exception to this. Pretty much every big Discord server is impossible to be a real part of, from my experience. They often have these tightly-knitted communities of people who have been in the server from a long time that the mods religiously obey, and they exclude pretty much anyone else from all conversation. Then, THEY have the nerve to claim that new members are the ones ruining the server for being "annoying" as if the server is some giant group chat that you need special permission to enter. That may have sounded like a rant, but I have a point. Finding good Discord servers that are active, non-toxic, and are about something that you are legitimately interested in is a damn near-impossible task. I was talking to Kathi about this once, and I found out that I've had 6-8 different "main" Discord server that I'm no longer a part of either because the server got too professional (and I got banned), the server became corrupt (and I got banned), or because people became obsessed with it and became annoying (and I left). This isn't even getting into the god complex that comes from Discord moderators who treat moderation like a part-time job that they can't afford to lose. Every server deals with some major issue that makes it annoying to be a part of. My only "active" server right now is one that I own with some friends, and if that dies, then I may be done with Discord.

Beyond that, I got very into Twitter in late 2019. I saw a YouTube video about parody accounts that made some (admittedly funny) tweets posing as the Diary of a Wimpy Kid characters. I thought "Wow, I should download the app and follow some of these accounts for more! which led to me making one of the worst decisions of my life. By the way, yes, I know that it's called X. We all know that it's called X, but we've agreed to continue calling it Twitter because X is a stupid name and approximately 4 billion people already know it as Twitter. With that in mind, I kinda hate Twitter. I actually like it conceptually because I LOVE posting random thoughts that I have in little bite-sized messages, but unfortunately, Twitter has decided that the best way of making a profit is by promoting controversy and trying to make its users addicted. I'm not too proud to admit that I somewhat became a victim of that. I was part of a sub-twitter community for a game that I played which ended up being SUPER toxic. There was constant drama and a clear lack of communication skills from the community members who were extremely obsessed with taking a moral highground in everything and "exposing" certain people instead of just talking to them. Even though it was not exclusive to that community, there was also a clear lack of ability to critically think from most of the users who constantly used their echo chamber to validate each other's ideas because they didn't have a life outside of it. It's kinda wild to talk about nowadays, but I actually became some sort of public enemy #1 in that community. I mean by no exaggeration when I say that there was a point, probably in mid-2022, where at least half of active people in that community knew my name, and at least 25% had some sort of disliking for me. Someone even made a separate tweet once because they got scared of ME commenting on their tweet. I don't talk about it a lot because even though a lot of my hate was highly exaggerated through lies and overall unjustified, I did say some things that I'm not too proud of in the heat of my Twitter obsession. It's also not fun to admit that you were part of a community that actually straight up hated you. Since Twitter advocates for hate and purposefully creates echo chambers to engage with, a lot of people on there are very toxic and even normal people have the worst brought out in them. An average Twitter user never admits that they are wrong. Twitter may just be the worst mainstream (I say mainstream because 4chan exists) social media and it's just not worth using at all. It's currently still on my phone for convenience's sake, but I have it hidden from my home screen and I swear not to scroll it or check it unless I'm looking for something specific. Thank you Twitter for teaching me exactly how NOT to act. Let Twitter burn to hell.

It seems appropriate to bring up Instagram next because you might need a cooldown after my very strongly negative opinions about Twitter. I only got Instagram at the start of 2023, so my opinions may be underdeveloped, but I think there's a fair bit of good on there. I use Instagram strictly to keep up with my friends because it's basically Gen-Z's Facebook. My rules for Instagram is to not follow influencers or meme accounts. That mostly goes for influencers (I have no problem with following CAT meme accounts) because that's where you see the worst of Instagram. The main complaint about it is that it makes people feel inadequate to their peers when they see people posting about their lives, but honestly, for me, this feeling is pretty rare. I kinda go in with the knowledge that people only post the coolest things that they do, and pretty much nothing gets through that frame. Instagram's best feature is easily Stories anyway (yet another Snapchat feature gets stolen by Mark Zuckerberg) which are more like tweets and eliminate a lot of those inferiority feelings that people complain about. Just follow your friends, and Instagram is pretty chill to use. It's hard to say much else bad about it. Ever notice that people quit Twitter and other social medias far more than Instagram? That's not a coincidence.

Completely opposite to Instagram is Reddit. I saved Reddit for last because I have some controversial opinions about Reddit. It's the smallest "mainstream' social media site, and it gets a lot of hate. In all honesty, I find that hate sorely unjustified. I think Reddit is great and I'm tired of acting like it's bad. The only people who hate Reddit are people that have never/barely used it or Redditors who don't use any other social medias. People who like Reddit (like me) will often say that Redditors are smart people compared to users of other social medias. However, arguing that makes you sound like someone who wears a bowler hat everywhere, so I'm going to borrow another way that this idea was phrased which sounds less chronically online: Reddit has a large focus on comments. Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook all have a focus on the posts, but Reddit was built as a forum that encourages discussion. Both the posts and comments have very high character limits. It's the only social media (besides Discord which is filled with children or socially awkward adults) where discussion feels like the main selling point. Not every post on Reddit is interesting, but there's almost always some interesting comments. The fact that people are anonymous too means that certain accounts aren't usually boosted for being popular and the actually quality comments are voted to the top. I've also found that it's the easiest to curate content on Reddit vs. other social medias which comes in handy. Most people's issues with Reddit come as issues with most social medias (toxic users, echo chambers, slop content) or are issues with specific subreddits (which they can leave.) The "average Redditor" stereotype isn't all that common from my experience. I've seen far more well-thought out and unique comments in the form of detailed opinions or stories from many demographics than I have from any other social media, and damnit, I like Reddit. There are definitely issues with Reddit (some people get pretty bold when they're completely anonymous especially when in the DMs of teen girls) and it is, from my understanding, a shell of its former self, yet it somehow, I find it to be the best social media and the one that I keep coming back to. Just give it a try and avoid mainstream subreddits while engaging with ones about topics that interest you. You never know.

Aside from all of those, there are a few other sites that I don't really use that aren't really worthy of their own paragraphs. Let me just blast through those. Facebook is a millennial hellscape with way too many bots (albeit less than most people make it out to be), videos that exist solely to hold your attention for as long as possible, and lame astrological interaction bait. I've found that Facebook groups can be good fun though. TikTok is a Gen-Z hellscape, but I can't really say anything about it that you haven't heard (mostly negative stuff). I prefer when Americans feed me slop content and steal my data, thanks China. Pinterest is interesting and might be pretty chill, but I've never properly used it, so it's hard for me to say. Snapchat might be chill too, and I've noticed that its features are regularly stolen by other platforms (namely Instagram), but something about messages that disappear and posts that disappear without any sense of permanence makes the app look like a cult to me, so I'm pretty dissuaded from it. BeReal is on the rise and could end up becoming the best social media if done right, in my opinion. I don't use it right now, but it seems to be oriented against the toxic parts of social media, hence the name, so I'm excited to see where it goes. I'm sure that these apps have their good parts, but I already spend way too much time on the internet, and I don't intend on increasing that amount, so I may never know.

Maybe social media will die one day because of Dead Internet Theory or just general change of public opinion, but who knows? I mentioned that it's a net negative because I think all of the people who have become victims of cyberbullying and gotten social media addictions have not been worth easy access to photos of my friends' pets, but it's not inherently bad. It does make me wonder about technology and how it's affecting us, though. I've been into "social media" since I was 7 and I used an app called Wishbone (where I hit my all-time peak follower count of almost 500 by the time I was 10). Some social medias bring out the worst in us and it shows how we must be careful with our new technologies. Pandora's Box is open, so be wise.