53
votes
Are you still using social media?
What platforms do you use? What do you think you get out of using them?
For context, this video is what sparked me to ask this question here.
What platforms do you use? What do you think you get out of using them?
For context, this video is what sparked me to ask this question here.
My journey of reducing my social media usage started with an essay I heard about in an Adam Curtis documentary. Reading the essay inspired me to attempt to outright quit social media. I found myself thinking if this is something if that someone felt about internet spaces three decades ago, then maybe there is something fundamentally flawed about the medium, and that the only way to win was not to play. This attempt lasted maybe a day or two, but how I felt those few days made me realize social media is our generation's form of smoking.
I wanted to go over every social media platform I've used, ranked by how bad I think they are.
1. Instagram Reels
In general I think short form video is the most insidious form of content there is. I would find myself wasting over an hour every few days searching for the next dopamine hit through the algorithmic lottery, and at the end of the session all I got out was one or two memes to share, maybe an interesting fact or two and a vague sense that I'm wasting my life.
2. X
Using X wasn't all that bad at the start, it made me feel "in the know", having access to people thoughts on a plethora of subjects. Eventually the flaws of the platform did become apparent to me, character limits promote the sharing of lazy and nuance-less ideas, the same twitter "influencers" with a blue check mark popping up on every post, and a clear sense that the algorithm was trying to promote political bias in every subject matter for the sake of engagement. Quitting X was harder on me than Instagram. For the first few weeks, I felt a lot of anxiety about all the things I wouldn't know about, but eventually I accepted that the majority of that information would either reach me through slower means or wasn't that important to begin with.
3. Reddit
I started using it a bit after when subreddits were introduced, back when r/funny was actually funny. Like many people here know, the culture of reddit was miles apart from what it is now. It was a platform perfectly catered to my techy interests, and while it did have its fair share of power users, they were no where near as problematic as on twitter (I miss unidan). Nowadays the front page is outright awful, and I only use it keep in touch with some hobby communities I'm interested it. I'm still trying to use it less, but like X, the feeling of being out of the loop is so discomforting I've yet to fully kick the habit.
4. YouTube
YouTube is the only "social media" platform I can never see myself avoiding. Between video essays, podcasts, education resources, and low-commitment entertainment I've found YouTube to provide a ton of value as a service, while having little pressure to use the "social" part of the social media platform. As a side note I've found YouTube shorts are an even worse platform for short form video, I genuinely contemplate my existence every time I've accidentally fell down that rabbit hole.
5. Discord
My only gripe with discord is the platform replacing forums, and the abhorrent privacy violation. Unfortunately though most of my gaming pals communicate though discord so I keep an account. The lack of algorithmically driven content is a big plus. It feels a lot like gaming has become the virtual "third space" for a lot of my generation, so I do think the value the platform provides positive value, despite the spying.
6. Tildes
The only platform that makes me think good social media is possible. I read on here more than I post, largely in part because I know if I say I'm not well versed in, someone smarter than me on the subject will (thankfully) point out the flaws. The obscurity of the site also seems to act as a filter for low-effort content.
I don’t know what “social media” actually means but you included Tildes in that list so I guess all of us reading this use it, by that definition. Discord, too, doesn’t feel like it fits under that umbrella to me.
I signed up for Facebook (then known as Thefacebook) and MySpace back in the heady days of 2004 or so. I didn’t stay on MySpace very long but stuck with Facebook until maybe 2013. I haven’t touched any of the big platforms within that category since then. Oh I just remembered I was on Google+ for a while too, lol.
I was pretty into Reddit for over a decade. Survived a number of blackouts and exoduses until I finally said enough is enough and jumped ship for good. This one hurt because there are legitimately some great small communities on there and good content continuing to be posted despite the gradual decline. I still find myself landing there from time to time when searching for things, because it remains one of the better sources of quality info. Leaving was a matter of principle for me because I was so sickened by the way the admins kept steamrolling the users with impunity, knowing that blowback was always temporary and a userbase would always remain regardless of what they did. I had to put my foot down and do my small part to stand against that. I suspect other Tildes folks can relate.
By the time the industry shifted over to junk-food video feeds (I guess Vine, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, TikTok, etc.) I had already long since washed my hands of social media, but this particular shift really rubbed me the wrong way. Just seemed like a really concerning new evolution of the formula for engagement-optimized addiction in an app. My opinion on this hasn’t changed in the years since, if anything I feel more strongly about that now and blame these platforms in part for the shitty state the world is in today. I get the same feeling watching people swipe through TikToks that I do wandering through a labyrinthine Vegas casino full of zombified retirees feeding slot machines.
I’ve never used any of the social features of YouTube but it remains a great source of great long-form content. I use FreeTube, a FOSS desktop app that doesn’t always work but when it does… it strips out all of the algorithmic bullshit, social junk, ads and traffic. I can subscribe to my favorite creators and it’s all managed locally without sending any metrics to Google.
I have mixed feelings about Discord. I’m a member of a bunch of servers but I’m not really active in them. I have these completionist tendencies that want to read every message and that impulse is completely overwhelmed by Discord. There’s just no way to keep up. And that’s liberating in some way because I just have to come to terms with the fact that it’s chaos in there, and I can navigate that at my leisure without needing to feel like all the checkboxes have to be ticked.
I do sometimes feel like all the ways I’ve disconnected from social stuff online have made me rather antisocial. I have some FOMO about limiting my exposure to a broad range of news and ideas. But I still generally feel like this is the right path to be on, and I’ve seen the absolute insanity suppurated by social media echo chambers, so I don’t think getting into modern platforms would help with that problem anyway.
I’ve been really prioritizing my real-life relationships over my digital ones, since the pandemic; my introversion ran rampant in ‘20-‘23, having been emboldened by all that social distancing and remote work. My social life was reduced to embers that are just now getting rekindled. And it feels really good. I’m going GOLFING tomorrow. I don’t golf. I’m over 40 and I’ve never golfed. I’m scared shitless about golfing. But also — I have friends now who care about me and want to take me golfing and dammit that is a wonderful feeling. I never got that feeling from a website or app.
Well, apart from @kfwyre‘s game giveaway threads, that is. 😉
I used a loose definition of, "whatever Wikipedia says is a social media platform". Maybe a few years ago I wouldn't have pegged tildes as social media, but as the site has grown we've gotten a lot more threads that consist of people sharing details of their lives and supporting one another.
It seems that a lot of younger generations are waking up to the idea that these apps don't really provide much tangible value to their lives and are starting to shift back towards face to face interactions. I'm not religious, but I really think that the rise of social media apps was due to the decline in religious participation in young people.
Golf is a great medium to hang out with friends. My dad has been guaranteed to be out of the house every Saturday for the past few decades, and from what I've seem he has a wealth of friends that all share that passion. With the handicap system, and tons of downtime it really seems like the perfect sport for socialization.
When was /r/funny funny?
I might just be nostalgic
That and when you're new, every post/comment is new funny thing. Until it's not :(
Instagram: Back in 2012, my friends were trying to get me to create an Instagram account. That was when it was like early twitter, but for pictures. I swore then that I was going to go down with the ship that is Facebook, but I ended up caving about six years later. I moved around a lot during my 20s, and I wanted a convenient way to stay in touch with the friends I made. I mostly use it to watch my friends' stories, post stories of my foster kittens, and plug in for the occasional brain rot session via reels because I'm too old for tiktok. It's like alcohol. An occasional drink with some friends isn't the worst thing in the world, but it can get out of hand fast and doing it every day will destroy you.
Facebook: I have an account that I never log into unless I randomly think of someone I went to highschool with, which happens maybe three times per year. I would get rid of it if not for the fact that it's a time capsule for my late-teens/early 20s.
Twitter: I signed up for it back in 2008 and hardly used it. But then a few years ago I started following some journalists and a handful of people in the commentary sphere. I have a really nice balance right now for news that I wouldn't come across any other way, plus some random sports people left over from the early days who make noise on Sundays. I have no idea why I followed him in the first place, but Trey Wingo posts all the time and I don't have the heart to unfollow him. I don't check replies, post, or comment on anything, and I won't call it X until I absolutely have to. A lot of people hate it, and I can see why, but I actually get more out of it than any other platform.
Reddit: What was once my favorite is now the worst of the bunch, imo. Every time I stray from my intended destination, I end up getting slop like alignment chart fills or overconfident rambling from some of the dumbest people on earth. Reddit used to poke fun at YouTube comments, but now it's a site that is mostly YouTube comments. Excluding Google results, the only reason I still go there is to check /r/billsimmons because it is bizarrely tailored to me. Decent sports/pop culture talk, the occasional left-leaning political digression, and an ocean of esoteric memes and references made for dumbass 30-something guys like myself who listen to Bill Simmons but hate Boston teams. It's the apex mountain of my reddit experience, it just is!
Tildes: I've been here for most of its existence. It's changed quite a bit, but I still like it here. Sometimes there are moments when it reminds me of the early reddit days in that there are random interesting articles and people who are a lot smarter than me commenting on things I know nothing about. People usually put effort into their comments, and while it may not always seem like it, I try to put some thought into what I post. I dunno. It beats yelling into the void. Plus it's small enough to recognize usernames, which I like because it really feels like a little community of strangers.
Beautifully put. They should add that under their logo!
I'm glad I found Tildes back when I did. I'm prone to overconfident rambling at times, but rational, well-founded arguments can always change my mind.
And before anyone else says it - you're not an idiot if you're still a reddit regular, so please don't take offense. It's just that these days it's so noisy in there, it's extremely difficult to find people worth reading from.
I use Tildes where I get discussion, reddit where I get information in niche areas, discord where I mostly ignore them, Facebook because some family remain, and tiktok/bluesky where I am entertained and learn stuff but don't really participate.
I am forced to interact with certain social media and I hate it. WhatsApp is my family's primary mode of communication; my local government/physical community nearly exclusively uses Facebook despite my formal written complaint; Teams/Slack are mandatory for work
List of ones I actively avoid: twitter/X, Bluesky, tiktok IG snap, Reddit, WeChat, Little Red Book, -verse
List of ones I use for content without engagement: Discord, YouTube, Discuit (memes)
Where I do spend inordinate amounts of time: Tildes, and Google chat going back to Gmail 2gb invite days with highschool friends.
I don't even know what social media is anymore I guess, because people keep lumping in WhatsApp, discord, slack, whatever else. To me those are just messaging platforms, like signal or iMessage or IRC or whatever. Is there a meaningful difference there that I'm not getting, or maybe some features that I'm not aware of that push them into social media territory?
Well where does one end and the other begin, but Discords have full forum level sets of channels sometimes on dozens of topics. It's very different than using Signal IME.
It has automations and moderation tools, lots of modded shortcuts, separate live chat channels, separate threads that act more like traditional fora, but it's definitely closer to a "small" Facebook than a chat program. (Some are quite large but comparatively)
I hear ya :/ my very loose definition mostly stems from how small companies / groups themselves use it to be reached: if they're putting up icons of those platforms on their Social Media list, and that's what they're using to update their followers, then sure why not it's a social media.
The original set was me and a network of first second third degree friends, so Facebook LinkedIn. But as soon as random people can have their content injected into my feed, it's lost its appeal for me. Right now they're trying to be everything for everyone: FB is Kijiji is messaging is following is chat room is email subscription.
Pretty much the answer is no. I spend a roughly 30 to 45 minutes a day on social media, here and discuit are the limit.
I have found that my mental health suffers with too much social media and avoiding just makes me plain happier.
I avoid newspapers and news outlets for the same reason, I just don't need the stress
I’ve never heard of discuit until now, thanks!
At this point, Tildes is all I use and I lurk a lot more than I contribute.
I have deleted my Facebook, Insta and Twitter accounts as well as Bluesky. I don't think I have had anything else.
I used to use Reddit a lot and migrated here during the API nonsense. I still occasionally browse Reddit at work not logged in to kill time, but it is noticeably worse.
Aside from Reddit, I don't miss social media and I don't miss Reddit in its current form. I gradually got to the point where I deleted accounts. I guess Facebook was the hardest for me. I joined when it was "the Facebook" and had a ton of people I knew. That said, I realized I never spoke to most of those people and Facebook was unrecognizable to me. I probably stopped using it 5-6 years before I deleted my account.
Zero regrets. I don't know what positives people get out of it anymore, but I sure see the negatives. My wife still complains about randoms she fights with on the internet but she is also convinced that she needs social media for her business. I know she would be happier without it but I can't get her to drop it. Not worrying about what random people think or trying to come up with post ideas is freeing and superior. In my opinion anyways, to each their own.
I think the thing that a lot of us discovered is that even the promise that social media has isn't actually desirable.
Facebooks initial pitch was "stay in touch with all your old friends!". I discovered I had hundreds and hundreds of old college classmates, roommates, coworkers, exes, people I knew in highschool and so on on my friends list. I never messaged any of them, I'm not really interested in their lives, and if it weren't for Facebook I probably would have forgotten their existence. I realized I'd be better off if I did.
If they were truly important to me, I'd still be in touch with them. The fact that I'm not means that they're not, so what's the point of being "friends" with them?
...does "using the tildes minecraft server as a very inefficient discord channnel" count?
Otherwise, not really...
I never really did, unless reddit counts. I used Facebook very briefly many years ago, because of a girl who also used Facebook. It lasted a few months but I never got the appeal or pull to use it more.
Reddit hooked me for longer because it was "news", but I eventually realized that reddit is no longer good for news and dropped it.
I dunno, social media just sucks what I enjoy out of socializing. Storytelling, seeing people's responses, building off each other's energy.
I do used LinkedIn, but don't count it because I only use it for career building. I don't use it because I want to. It's the same way I use my HR site at work: a necessary task.
I use Facebook through the Firefox browser on mobile (for Marketplace) and they've made it an absolute nightmare to use without the app. That said, I'd rather it be a nightmare than easy. I nuked my 2007 profile ages ago and now it's just transactional.
I dropped Instagram two years ago and never missed it. I don't need the rage bait and approximations of my interests filling my brain when I should exercising said interests.
Never twittered, I stay off if LinkedIn whenever possible and as for Reddit, I keep the sub selection slim these days.
Hell I'll lump Spotify in with harmful, culture sucking platforms to the mix. I subscribe to Digitally Imported radio, Bandcamp and newspapers and magazines because I see it as our responsibility to support the little guy in a fair, competitive environment.
As for my reasoning, I want as little as possible stealing my attention with 'member-berry' bait, trivia or hot political takes.
It's all bullshit and I refuse to feed it.
Here, obviously. The really not much else. I have old accounts on the usual suspects like Facebook and Reddit but I don't use them, I don't even have the apps.
I'll watch youtube videos but not engage with comments or anything.
I have discord but only for my private servers and updates from niche games or something, I don't actually chat.
If I'm looking for content I've been making myself read, and it's been a difficult transition. But a welcome one. I love books, but the garbage content we have readily available online these days are such a low hanging fruit. Luckily I've weaned myself off and used them less and less.
I'll be clear, I would actually fucking love good social media. I thought early Facebook, MySpace and Bebo were the bomb because you were friends with... Your friends. It just got garbage really fast.
I do browse text-based update posts on reddit (specifically, I bookmarked a search result page for posts with "update" in the title), but don't browse it normally anymore. Haven't been to r/all or the home page for years now.
Beyond that, I mainly use Tildes and Discord. I watch a lot of Youtube, but I honestly forget most(?) people consider it social media. I mainly watch it on TVs, so I guess I subconsciously put it in the same category as cable or streaming. I leave comments now and then, but that's fairly rare since I have to get out my phone.
I also have a Tumblr I barely ever check, and have been thinking about getting more active on it for essentially marketing purposes. It's a good platform for sharing creative writing.
Also have Bluesky and Twitter/X accounts that I never use. I hang onto the Twitter solely to be able to see accounts in chronological order because some people will only update there. Genuinely no clue why I even bothered making it in the first place, I never used it "normally".
I used to enjoy /r/BestOfRedditorUpdates , but in recent years they feel too much like story making / karma farming / AI training
I spend most of my time on Reddit calling out AI written stories in the BOR, AITAH, and so on subs. It's an uphill, fruitless battle. At this point, I'm reasonably convinced Reddit itself (as a corporation, not as an AI entity... yet) is contracting out to have a lot of the AI stories written. I think they use baity stories to increase engagement to make the website more appealing to advertisers and investors.
In the very earliest days of Reddit, that's how they began with content, by faking it using astroturfed accounts. Same diff but faster with AI and more money.
Here's one I ran into that was a fake. -..- I understand it's the internet and of course one cannot believe everything, but at some point I am doing the text and worse version of watching garbage Reality TV. You're a good person, and the world is a dimmer place without your service, I just wish the site values you more.
Oh, it's definitely full of fake posts. Some people have even picked up on telltale signs of specific writers. I personally give most posts the benefit of the doubt more than most because it'd suck for someone to be actually dealing with something awful and have to waste time/energy dealing with accusations it's faked, but... Yeah, lots of fake stuff.
The fun part of the "title:update" search is that I can see some actual real-world drama that aren't just karma farming. I have seen so much video game drama from game-breaking updates...
I am pretty much “low contact” with most social media.
I would prefer no contact, but since I have too many international friends I feel like removing social media accounts completely is equivalent to losing contact with them.
So yeah. I am a little bit everywhere. Facebook/Insta for my Asian and American friends, WhatsApp Telegram for Europe, Discord for gamers, and some Signal for those who bother. Most of them are muted anyway.
Gotta kick the Reddit habit since I only go to AITA anyway.
And I have my YouTube habits sorta under control with RSS feeds anyway.
Social? No. Media? Absolutely. Yeah, I have Threads and scroll that religiously, but not because I got friends there. Every single one of my regulars could disappear and I doubt I'd even notice for a while. Same with Instagram. I used to be very active there and had online friends, but over time you just sorta drift apart. I still scroll the stupid videos though, but I also used to read cheezburger and digg back in the day. Everything changes, everything stays the same.
I dunno if I'd count Tildes as social media, but I do like you guys. Seems one of the few remaining places on the internet where you can just sort of... be.
I'm not active on many sites. I come to Tildes to get snippets of information that might otherwise pass by unnoticed, and I watch Youtube videos with very few interactions on that platform. In fact, I'm almost never signed in when I'm at Youtube, and only do so to like a video, or on rare occasions, leave a comment.
There is one small community on Discord where I read and leave comments. It's usually about Mamamoo, so that's a very niche subject.
And I have a tiny group of friends on a private server. We've known each other for more than twenty years.
And that's it. Definite no's to X and Reddit.
Aside from Tildes:
There's not really anything of the Algorithm about my media consumption these days, and I'm so much healthier for it.
I don't count Tildes or the other internet forum I'm on as social media.
I use Youtube and occasionally comment on videos, generally watching about an hour of it a day on a second screen or more often, ignoring whatever furniture refinishing video my wife has put on.
I deleted Facebook...probably 15+ years ago now, never used TikTok, Instagram, Twitter or anything else. I guess I have Discord, which I jump onto once a month or so to voice chat with my friends and play a game.
I did use Reddit, up until the 2023 exodus and I do occasionally go back and look at specific subreddits. I comment maybe a few times a year, usually just to help people with any problems they may encounter and occasionally ask a question I might have about a tabletop wargame I play.
i think this is the correct definition of social media. tildes, reddit, discord, etc are not social media at all.
Why not? Because they're pseudonymous?
What about X/Bluesky?
social media is about the individual where forums are about the discussion. X and Bluesky are still social media.
Stopped using Facebook long ago. Last Instagram post was a year ago. Never really got into Twitter in the first place.
I'm still on reddit, but way less since they killed 3rd party apps a whike back.
My youtube has probably gone up. About a year ago I started seriously posting videos and have had some small success, so a fair bit of my free time goes into making videos for youtuvr
I use:
Facebook - Primarily as a Messenger app. It really is the easiest, smoothest messenger with reasonable adoption in my social group. This is mostly on my phone, but from time to time, I open Facebook in on a PC to message someone, and I catch myself scrolling, and it usually takes about three minutes before I'm like, "this is reddit but worse," and closing it.
Reddit - I mostly end up on Reddit from search results. There are very few places, for example, that provide the answer to the best crop rotation in Stardew Valley. Niche subreddits really are the place for information on the internet these days. I could just use ChatGPT to mine Reddit, but is that any better?
Tildes - Check daily. Comment infrequently. Read most of.
FARK - Check daily. Does FARK count as social media? Or a news aggregate with a comment section? I've been using FARK since 2002. I've been gifted TotalFARK a few times, but I've never paid for it. In the end, it's not much different from Reddit, but I don't feel as monetized chatting there.
Tiktok - You'll have to rip it out of my cold, dead hands. I unapologetically enjoy Tiktok. I've got my feed curated to give me exactly what I want. I get anti-AI/AI doomsday news, leftist discourse/propaganda, good storytelling, and urban planning. To be frank, I'm alright with the echo chambers Tiktok is building for me. Outside of TT, I get my information from a wide variety of sources, and it's nice to sometimes go to an app that does thorough deep dives into topics deeply interesting to me. When I've got the time, I'm going to throw a list under this comment of ten videos I get via Tiktok at random. Honestly, I don't care that I might be getting fed Chinese propaganda.
Relationship-oriented social media (true social media):
Facebook: Always hated it. Used it in the early days to keep in touch with old classmates and for my master's thesis (about social network gaming). Deleted it ages ago.
Linkedin: I had a profile for a very long time in which acquaintances have endorsed me for skills they know nothing about which I might or might not have. Full of clinically insane people I have no desire to work with. Deleted it some time ago.
Twitter: I had an account for DMing people with the bad taste to be unreachable through any other means. Other aspiring writers attempted to tell me I had to develop a twitter presence if I wanted to succeed, a piece of advice I was happy to ignore. Deleted long ago.
Fediverse: Haven't gotten into it yet. Too busy.
Content-oriented social media:
Reddit: Early user (~15 year old account after coming in from Slashdot). Still visit when away from the computer and bored, but not logged in and no apps installed. Posting has slowed down to a trickle. I am not engaged with the platform anymore because the people in it are not very interesting or educated.
DeviantArt: I was slightly active a very, very long time ago when I was more into my photography hobby. I met some people there and comissioned some art too. It was nice. The platform is now fully enshittified and I haven't used it in years.
YouTube: I am subscribed to a small amount of content creators and watch their videos regularly. History is disabled, so no algorithm recommendations. I use ublock origin and sponsorblock. Since there's another recent thread on Tildes about this, know that Google banned me from Adsense twenty years ago and witheld money they owed me, and I've been on a lifelong vendetta against their ads ever since. I will continue to devote as much time as I have to to fighting their ads and if any reach my eyeballs, I will boycott any depicted products (which has happened).
Never had an instagram account, tiktok or anything else. The idea of instagram repulses me and tiktok feels like it would only eat into the time I currently put into my hobbies, which seems undesirable.
Chat:
Discord: I use Discord normally, for real time chat. What else am I even on the Internet for? I'm from the IRCs! I don't typically join public servers for no reason, though, and I do not accept DMs from random strangers. I am (low priority) exploring alternatives in case some form of ChatControl passes. Discord is very useful and has some well-implemented features and good design decisions, but is also increasingly drowning in stupid cosmetics that add a lot of noise to the conversation.
WhatsApp: Unfortunately required for certain types of real life communication in my country. In other words, what I get out of it is the ability to contact people. Everybody gets muted, and I check it as little as possible.
Twitch: I'm listing this here because most people don't really use Twitch in a social media manner when it comes to the content itself; it's closer to Discord (silos where people chat in real time). As on YouTube, I subscribe to a small amount of channels, attempt to block ads, and boycott anything that slips through (god damn you Philips and your stupid shaving machines I've seen that ad a good two hundred times I used to like your products but never again).
VRChat: Surprisingly good. I dislike the company that runs this platform - their closed and locked-down software and hostility towards modding for one; their decisions and priorities are often bad; and I feel like, despite the occasional half-baked "commitment" to better moderation (they made one just this week), they secretly care more about retaining children on the platform no matter what (a la Roblox) out of a desire for extracting financial gain from them in the long term. However, this platform provides the most immersive and realistic opportunities for socialization and there are loads of decent people, interesting events and activities to partake in.
Never use:
Facebook/Twitter and clones
Rarely use:
Instagram, pretty much solely for responding to a few friends who insist on sending me messages there.
Frequent use:
Tildes/Discord/youtube (watching videos only really, rarely comment, let alone discuss./a few old forums/hacker news
Conditional Use:
Reddit - I basically refuse to vote/comment at this point unless its something I can only do there (as some communities are just only in reddit). This means I basically have posted once in the last few years. I still check it frequently, sadly, because I haven't quite figured out a good way to get the info i want into an RSS feed. It's mostly for either very specific communities or quicker updates on world events.
I have been gone from social media for around twelve years now. My primary goal was to eliminate the idea of a profile/personal feed. I use stuff like discord for talking to folks, tildes for writing out random thoughts. Tildes replaced what I was doing with reddit. There is no representation of my actual self on the internet at this point, no feed of my life's happenings day to day. Besides reading my walls of text here, there is nothing of me to watch, and folks who know me personally know there is plenty I am not mentioning in those walls of text.
I originally got Facebook I think around 2009, and "deleted" the profile (I never believed that button truly did what it said, but I can't find me, so, good enough) around 2014. I did similar with Twitter and LinkedIn. I never had Instagram, Snapchat, tiktok, etc. I've seen them, I've tried them to know what they do. Same with alternatives like mastodon, bluesky, etc. I don't like any of them as a social space, and their other uses (news for example) end up happening through their sheer ubiquity. I don't need to be on Facebook to know what everyone around is talking about on Facebook, because all they do is talk about what they're doing on Facebook, to oversimplify things a little. When big shit happens it reverberates through all the platforms/spaces, and I end up hearing it one way or another.
I've always built and maintained my own networks of people, personally and directly. When groups would disintegrate I would go make more, and float between. I still do that. Things change, people change, I have no problem with allowing paths to diverge and go find another one to walk alongside. I don't need to know what happens to them after, I don't need to keep them in a friends list "just in case". Building something new can be as simple as asking the cashier a Real question instead of the usual "how are you". I've found myself in all kinds of places and met all kinds of people by just being willing to engage, and to me social media is a diminished, detached version of that activity, plus a whole bunch of obnoxious bullshit. It works, some folks use it well, but personally I'd rather have solitude punctuated with richer experience, and that is only really accomplished when there isn't some spot online where folks can watch you. At least that's been my view for a while. Could change, doesn't seem likely though.
I don't have an absolute sort of opinion about social media writ large. It depends how it's being used, what it means for folks. Plenty of people are deeply entwined and are also, just fine. But I have across the time noticed how much the offline social experience has changed. Walked out on plenty of dates because folks wouldn't stop checking the phone in the middle of a conversation. Ended some relationships because they would not stop sharing things of me on their feeds. I am viewed with more suspicion for not having profiles than in the past. Plenty of people will get to the end of a good conversation and then disappear, because they just don't do communicating without one of the platforms. Employers get weird when they can't spy on you. Some jobs just don't take an application in the first place, because they would rather take someone they can watch. I don't think folks understand very well just how exhausting and tedious it is to talk to people who behave as though the audience is always present, and the prevalence of that has surely gone up over the years.
On the other hand, being able to guarantee a certain kind of privacy has allowed me to develop good connections faster. I am that one friend to plenty of people, that person they can talk to unburdened by having to measure their words and play to an audience. They know what they say will stay between us, that I am thinking of them and not about how anything looks when we're doing things. I get told plenty of things that won't ever be on the platforms, and get to enjoy experiences with them unburdened by thoughts of how others might react. It is easier to live in the moment, which is what I want to really be doing most of the time. Folks are more willing to offer their trust and work together when they aren't the sort to see the lack of profiles with suspicion. While there might be stretches of time in between those good moments, boredom is sometimes exactly what's needed to get a good idea going. It works out, and I'm happier that way.
I feel like there's something weird about my upbringing + neurodivergence that I don't know how to continue after a very nice conversation. How? Do people call and chat? Make plans to meet up in person? The asynchronous text of a platform allows me to have some continued contact with folks, but shy of that I don't know how to "friend" in real life.
On rare occasion, you'll hit it off immediately with someone so well that you'll want to find any excuse to meet up. Much more often it's simply repeated exposure, whether it's working together, seeing other regulars at the gym, getting the same waiter at a local restaurant, chatting with other parents waiting around at school dropoff/pickup, whatever. Some environments and/or events lend themselves to deeper connection faster than others, but at some point there might be enough of a rapport or discovery of a shared interest that makes a "hey, you wanna [hang out | do thing | attend event] together" feel appropriate.
Hmmmm I'll need more practice on that
I don't think you're asking weird questions, they're kinda on the money already. If an interaction is really good, I will usually take the initiative on asking if they want to talk again sometime, and exchange some contact info. Later on, yeah, when things are slow I might think of them and see if they are up for anything. I might see something that reminds me of them and that kickstarts making some sort of plan.
In the context of the post though, I was thinking of times when I've had folks drop off over not being available on the platform they use the most. We'd have a great conversation, express a mutual interest in staying in touch, but the hurdle of not being able to use their preferred platform was enough to stop that from going anywhere. When I would say, I don't have [platform], the conversation would turn and we'd end up not doing an exchange. It isn't something I'd say is common, just something I've seen more of as time goes on. Opportunities abound so I just keep on elsewhere, but still, happens more, and it didn't really happen at all when I think back around ten or fifteen years.
So I just recently started using Instafel, which is a cracked Developer Alpha version of Instagram that removes ads.
And while I originally installed it to get rid of ads, I've realized it has so many features unlocked that aren't available to the public in regards to algorithm control.
And I'm now on Instagram a lot more solely because I have fine control over the algorithm so that it gives me mainly the following:
Completely filtered out political stuff and brianrot.
Also completely removed thirst trap content that Instagram pushed on me HARD because I was a guy even though it wasn't an interest.
Don't you risk having your account banned for violating Instagram's ToS?
No idea. Never really been a concern of mine. If I was banned it probably wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. And I'd probably just create a new account anyways.
Since it's based off an official development alpha build of Instagram, I'm guessing it's difficult to distinguish between official or cracked. The removal of ads in Instafel's case is a feature of the official alpha build's dev menu which has mindboggling amounts of settings to control like every under the hood setting of instagram.
But I'm not worried as I haven't had any issues in the years I've been using cracked apps to get rid of ads. So whether it's using ReVanced to get rid of YouTube ads, or ReVanced to get rid of TikTok ads and hiding live feeds and stuff, never had any issues.
I use Reddit because it is a treasure trove of content for a variety of subjects that I cannot easily replace.
I have a Discord because lots of projects and communities require me to have one, but I only open it when I need to ask a question or make some kind of request.
I'm not sure if WhatsApp is considered social media, but I have one and use it often because it is mandatory in Brazil.
I do not use any traditional social media, although I have mostly empty accounts for several of them on the off chance that I might need to use them to market my (currently non existing) book at some point.
I have the following:
I've turned 37 this year, and one of the things I'm realising is that I really enjoy in person interaction and communication over anything virtual/digital. If someone expresses an opinion in the real world, I know it's genuine and authentic, even if I don't necessarily agree with it. In the digital landscape I have a huge amount of cynicism over any opinion expressed as I've found that opinions expressed digitally - especially those in text format by anonymised users - vary wildly in real life.
That, and quite frankly, I don't need to see a take on everything. I'm quite happy being ignorant on certain cultural topics and touchstone events, especially if the ignorance gives me mental peace and freedom.
tl:dr i'm enjoying a himbo too much to be chronically online
I have:
I used to use the meta products before they became terrible (think early 2010s). I was active ln reddit until the whole API fiasco killed my favorite third party app (Apollo if you wish to know). But in general I feel uncomfortable engaging on most platforms so i just lurk.
For those of you that suffer from doom scrolling etc. I've found a nifty trick is to uninstall the app on your phone and start using the PWA versions. Instagram definitely doesn't hold your attention as well when it is buggy as all hell as you navigate around.
I recently started using instagram again, but only for men's style / fashion and F1 stuff. You can get a pure timeline with https://www.instagram.com/?variant=following -- otherwise I wouldn't bother or I'd set up some sort of scraping system.
I don't use facebook but I have a few folks who use messenger. Marketplace is fun to browse... and I think there are some escorts 'selling clothes' that are just veiled backpage ads.
reddit, discord, irc, usenet, tildes.... these are not social media.
I actively use:
I gave up on almost all social media a long time ago, but not entirely:
That's it. And to a lesser degree, two sites that I have accounts on but don't really consider to be social media:
In the past I've variously tried out LiveJournal (deleted in 2008), Facebook (deleted 2012), Twitter (deleted 2022), and Mastodon (deleted 2023). I haven't even tried anything else like Insta or Snap or Tiktok or Pinterest, I have zero desire for any of it. I do still stick my head in some old-school-style forums occasionally, of which I think of Tildes as one vs. modern social media, and I have a couple of private Slack groups that I'm active in daily but both are just small circles of close-knit friends.
So as someone who was optimistic about the idea of social media in the mid-2000s and got a lot out of it at the time, I've gradually restricted my online footprint to severely limit my visibility or participation in it because of all the reasons listed in the video: it doesn't connect like-minded people to each other anymore, it's just an algorithmic content hose that's surveillance PaaS for advertising.
I have a solid number of friends in my social circle that I met in the earliest days of social media, most of them through LiveJournal which I was highly active on for years before the SUP buyout chased me off. I could name 5 people off the top of my head that I talk to daily here in 2025 that I met just via LJ around 20 years ago. That idea--that you can talk to a stranger or a group of strangers on a social media platform and get to know them so well that they end up attending your wedding, which literally happened--seems completely absurd now, almost dangerous. There's no real value proposition to the "social" part of social media anymore, so I largely avoid it.
Nope (except Tildes). I need Facebook and Discord for DMs with some people, but I only use Messenger (on my iPhone with no external permissions granted, which I hope prevents the cross-app tracking). On a bad day, I’ll doomscroll the front page of Reddit, but it’s not a habit anymore. I use Youtube, but I have it configured without a login and no persistent cookies, so it just boots to the search bar every time I open it; no recommendations (I love that!).
I know that sometimes LinkedIn is necessary, but I’ve gotten by so far without it and pray I never need it. TikTok/Instagram/etc… I just think they’d make me feel worse. Yuck.
For YT I believe if you just directly head to the channels you follow is the best way to use it, your strategy is good enough to avoid slop but not consistent.
I understand using YouTube that way. I do what I do to make it as uninteresting to use as possible. Now, I only go to YouTube if I want a specific video or specific creator, and I never have it recommending things to me (even via subscriptions). One of these days I’ll set up an RSS feed for particular channels I want notifications for.
Tildes for talking to you fine folks, Reddit for talking to a few niche communities and finding niche information, YouTube for a lot of educational content, Discord for actually having discussions with friends and sometimes family, BlueSky is almost entirely passive and I use it for finding artists and webcomics. Everything else I've probably tried at least once and decided it wasn't for me for one reason or another.