I was never really very immersed in social media. I left facebook about 10 years ago, have had a twitter account for the last decade or so, and have used snapchat as well as discord. However, they have all bored me to tears. Throughout the years, twitter is the only one I consistently used and I restricted it to posting very particular messages regarding my special interest which is in the social sciences.
I have never found any of the social media websites or apps "social" or good for making friends so I am perennially baffled when I encounter people who say it has been beneficial. Then I remind myself that people's definitions of friends might be precarious. I have decided to delete twitter simply because that too is not really that interesting but also because, again, I have made no social connections on there. Even if I did, I would imagine that the nature of such connections would be very noncommittal and thus meaningless due to the ephemeral and narcissistic nature of such apps and websites.
For instance, the reason I left facebook many years ago was due to the show and tell nature of the whole website. As for Discord, it is basically a giant chatroom in which nothing seems to happen, even if I joined a server with so-called like-minded interests or identities that purported to reflect myself. That got boring and hollow very quickly. As for snapchat, that is a very uneventful and tedious venture.
I think some of this boils down to finding it actually difficult to communicate on these apps and sites in the context of making friends. However, it is also based on the pathetic way they are designed purely ot maximise engagement of a very superficial and narcissistic kind.
Overwall,
20 Mar 2023, 9:24 pm
