The Anti-Social Media – A Thread 10

In the beginning, there was darkness. No wait, that’s another story, let’s try that again: In the beginning, there was Facebook and Twitter. Polar opposites, but both vying for your time and energy as you ventured out into the brave new world of social media. A place made for connecting people and sharing experiences, at least at the outset. As the two emerging behemoths battled for your attention and the corresponding advertising revenue, the platforms took on a life of their own when the algorithms underpinning their very being became self-aware and started taking their own decisions (this is at least what the companies would have you believe, always blaming the algorithms for why your cat videos are being shown to less and less of your devoted followers). Fascinatingly, much like life itself, these sentient new beings evolved in very different directions. Facebook aimed to place itself at the very center of your existence, by monopolizing your attention and demanding that you do more and more things within this well-defined virtual sandbox. Ironically, the platform that chose “friends” as the term for people wanting to connect on it is probably responsible for breaking up more friendships (and even family ties) than any other platform, such is its capacity for bringing out the very worst in people. Blame the unlimited character count and people’s insatiable appetite for tearing other people down, or maybe just that degree of separation that causes people to remove their filters and say the craziest shit to perfect strangers on the internet – whatever the case may be, most FB posts are capable of degenerating into online pissing contests within just a couple of replies. They even tried changing the name of the whole thing to Meta to make it more Zen but people kept misbehaving all the same.

I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.

Twitter’s take was refreshingly different (albeit still online-rage-catalytic), originally forcing users to say what they had to say with 140 characters or less. As many would find out, it’s actually more difficult to make your point with less words – Mark Twain famously said that because he didn’t have time to write you a short letter, he wrote you a long one instead. Twitter also provided a much more organic user experience, with a fun and fluid timeline that could randomly connect you to the most unexpected and often very interesting threads and topics. Of course the platform ended up abandoning the character count and implemented far richer media capabilities over time, but the disorganized chaos that is the Twitter timeline has remained its calling card and indeed its charm to this day. Not that most of you mountain bikers would know anything about that, because of the Great Instagram Exodus that saw the whole bike industry move to a new platform almost overnight.

57 accounts and I don't know what they posted today.

Instagram started out as a photo-sharing platform, with its strange square photo format harking back to the days of Polaroid cameras and flannel shirts. Very hip indeed, and with filters built into the app everybody was suddenly a photographer. A touch of Clarendon was all it took to elevate that picture of your Starbucks breakfast to an art-adjacent masterpiece well worthy of being thrust upon the unsuspecting eyes of your followers. Be square or be square. For some reason, this photo-centric approach resonated with mountain bikers, and we abandoned Twitter and to some degree Facebook for the promise of Insta-fame and glory. Little did we know that beneath the filter-enhanced veneer a far more insidious change was being orchestrated, one aimed at locking users inside the platform and occupying their attention by any means necessary. For proof, look no further than how long it took Instagram to provide zoomable pictures. A photo-sharing platform that wouldn’t even let you zoom in on the images probably tells us that it was never about the photos (even though Instagram did claim ownership rights to everything you uploaded to it from early on). To this day, this “social” platform refuses to provide external links except for the dust-covered and all-but-forgotten “link in bio”. What happens on Instagram, stays on Instagram, and that’s just the way they like it. Forget any meaningful dialogue or exchange – Instagram is all about capitalizing on your fame and glory to create a tangible metric of how cool you are. Users are reduced to liking posts and shouting comments into the wind – there is no real capability for threaded conversation, nor is there an easy way to share in some of the discoveries that your fellow followers might be making. Instagram puts accounts on a pedestal when it thinks it will help the algorithm keep the other users engaged, at the expense of giving “nobodies” a chance at going viral (which IMO was and still is the most fun part of social media). When people eventually became bored with their main feed, Instagram gave them stories. Content that disappears after 24 hours, the ultimate FOMO-inducer. When that shine of novelty wore off, here came the reels. An experience entirely removed from the accounts you actually chose to follow, but by now, many of us probably didn’t realize that. Reels is basically short-form TV that does the channel hopping for you, if Bruce Springsteen was still writing hits in 2023 the song would be called “57 accounts and I Don’t Know What They Posted Today” (although there are some pretty funny cat reels out there still, to be fair).

The social media boom didn’t stop with Instagram of course. Tik-Tok is here to provide yet another opportunity for people in various states of undress to show off their latest “dance” moves, a treasure trove of entertainment for any future alien visitors as they dig into the media archives of our old communication devices. Hopefully you didn’t open an account when that one came around (although many pro MTBers did, hungry as they are to provide yet more “value” to their sponsors.) YouTube has evolved into a social network and a world unto itself – for evidence, I submit the 125427 comments made in the YouTube chat during Rampage asking why Fabio isn’t “racing”. Followed by “He would win,” of course. Even LinkedIn wants you to go viral, or so they would have you believe, what with their suspiciously FB-looking news feed and messaging platform. Many mountain bikers simply view this as yet another opportunity to make sure their content is “seen” and monetized accordingly, and once again, the traffic is terribly uni-directional between the chosen ones and their loving audience.

Let’s just try to keep it social this time, shall we?

I’m writing this on July 7, 2023 - a day after Threads went live. Threads is Meta’s answer to Twitter, and if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Zuck just made Elon’s day. Or maybe not. Either way, any user with an Instagram account can open a Threads account, and to make sure nobody has to start from zero, it’s incredibly easy to just migrate the accounts you follow on IG to the new platform. Naturally, within a few hours, eager mountain bikers were flocking to this old-new platform to ensure that the train didn’t leave without them. Scrolling through this new feed today, we’re already inundated with the same old content, mainly depictions of great feats of MTB bravery to be duly admired, followed by the occasional “so, what do you guys want to see on here???”. I don’t pretend to speak for everyone, but here’s a suggestion: less of whatever it was you were doing before. If your plan is to post the exact same content to every social media platform there is, I posit that your only social interest is in fact the part where society-at-large consumes YOUR stuff. Make it fresh! Make it fun! Post random shit and see where it goes. Click on some random users to diversify your feed, it’s amazing what a little crowdsourcing can do for the entertainment factor. Twitter provided this back then, and it still does today (outside of MTB). We didn’t need Threads because Twitter still exists, but if it takes a new face on the cover of the book for people to read the same stories, so be it. Let’s just try to keep it social this time, shall we?

PS. Don't forget to follow Vital on Threads y'all!!! :-) #letsgo #threadsishere #tothemoon #allthefollowers #viralcontent #lookatourstuff #influencingin2023 #tightDHpants #lookatmyjunk #whipsortables #starbucks #hashtag

-iceman2058 aka Johan Hjord