Informative to me, a social media resister and ignoramus.( Due to my age at tha time of its origin and my job not requiring its use). But most friends and contemporaries have at least dabbled in some of those forums, and every relative under a certain age of course. I'm content to just read about its changing status as time goes on. I still like the real world interactions you described as B.I., but I realize that world is gone!
I miss the old Live Journal days when people used to write entire essays. Book length articles on women who had imaginary weddings to Severus Snape, teenagers wondering how many curse words they were allowed to use in their journal entries, ex-Scientology members writing exposes. It was a wild time. Then came Facebook and the effort to make every post short and pithy. It wasn't long before even family and friends would scroll past my posts unless I included photos, and then people started posting videos, and I was done. The shorter people's entries got, the dumber and more generic they got. Although those Snape weddings were pretty spectacularly dumb in the absolutely best ways, where nobody got hurt. Now I understand that Facebook has been flooded with AI entries, which probably didn't make much difference to users since everyone just posts the same generic stuff anyway.
I am convinced that Twitter is just a honey-pot operation to attract all the worst actors, and one day the FBI and Interpol will strike them all down.
(don't burst my bubble)
Good post Purp!
Informative to me, a social media resister and ignoramus.( Due to my age at tha time of its origin and my job not requiring its use). But most friends and contemporaries have at least dabbled in some of those forums, and every relative under a certain age of course. I'm content to just read about its changing status as time goes on. I still like the real world interactions you described as B.I., but I realize that world is gone!
I miss the old Live Journal days when people used to write entire essays. Book length articles on women who had imaginary weddings to Severus Snape, teenagers wondering how many curse words they were allowed to use in their journal entries, ex-Scientology members writing exposes. It was a wild time. Then came Facebook and the effort to make every post short and pithy. It wasn't long before even family and friends would scroll past my posts unless I included photos, and then people started posting videos, and I was done. The shorter people's entries got, the dumber and more generic they got. Although those Snape weddings were pretty spectacularly dumb in the absolutely best ways, where nobody got hurt. Now I understand that Facebook has been flooded with AI entries, which probably didn't make much difference to users since everyone just posts the same generic stuff anyway.
It all started going downhill when they let boomers on Facebook!