There’s never been a harder time to be online than in 2024. It’s been clear for some time that monetization has turned social media into a different animal, but this year especially felt like a tipping point. These apps are used habitually in the face of an endless stream of content tailored to capture the viewer’s attention, ubiquitous shoppable ads, AI, and the relentless opinions of strangers. Despite this, I recently realized that I don’t actually enjoy it. None anymore.
Take a look at Instagram. When you open the app, you’ll see an ad for a bidet. Start scrolling. There are separate ads between the first three posts at the top of my feed. Lingerie, squat-friendly jorts, and shoes from a brand that sells items that look like they’ve been dropshipped from AliExpress at a markup. Then, thankfully, two memes appeared in quick succession. I fire at funny people, anywhere from one to five of my friends, in a way that feels like an obligation. Then another ad popped up, showing a bunch of seemingly off-topic reels from accounts I didn’t follow. It takes a few minutes before you come across a post from someone you know in real life. Oh yeah, it’s time to turn off recommended posts again. If you don’t turn it off every 30 days, your feed will get filled with random junk.
But before he gets that chance, he’s distracted by a cat reel watching the Grinch. Then there’s the reel of a guy with a little Chihuahua in his coat pocket. My curiosity got the better of me and I opened the comments, where people were angrily writing that the dog must be choking. Oh my god. I scroll to the next reel. This is a video of a cock walking around in pants, and I’ve seen it a few times before. Below, everyone fights over whether it’s cruel to force chickens to wear pants. is that so? Next, there’s a video of a girl putting on makeup, and the guys comment that they should think it’s a catfish. A deep sigh. Somehow, I realized that 30 minutes had passed and when I closed Instagram, I found myself in a worse mood than when I opened it. After an hour or so I force myself to come back, rinse and repeat.
It’s not just an Instagram problem. On TikTok (which may or may not be shut down soon in the US), the For You page is well-defined and the presence of harmful comments is minimal, but all other posts are It’s either sponsored or promoting a product. TikTok shop. And it’s all too easy to get sucked into the eternal scroll. I often avoid opening the app altogether. It’s because you know you’ll be stuck in that app for longer than you’d like, watching empty videos made by people you don’t know, and you’ll never open it again. But it happens more often than I’d like to admit.
These days, every gathering place on the internet is crowded with content vying for our attention, trying to get it or sell us something, and there’s no room for the “social” element of social media to come in. It feels like there are almost no. Instead, we are relegated to separate corners, left alone to stare at the glowing box in our hands.
Fittingly, Oxford University announced at the end of November that its 2024 word of the year is “brain rot.” This is a term used to describe the possible consequences of consuming countless hours of stupid stuff on the internet. Fittingly, Australian Macquarie Dictionary has chosen ‘encittification’. This explains how the platforms and products we love get ruined over time as the companies behind them seek profit. (It was also the American Dialect Association’s Word of the Year for 2023). In theory, social media platforms are designed around the idea of friendship and connection, but nothing that happens on social media platforms today feels far removed from genuine human interaction. .
If you still have an account, you might turn to Facebook if you really want updates from your family and other people you know. However, its UI is so cluttered with recommended reels and products that it feels unusable. Twitter, where it was once fun to keep up with live discussions about big events and fandom happenings in real time, is no more. In its new form under Elon Musk, X is full of bots and political propaganda.
Meanwhile, Threads, an offshoot of Meta’s answer to Instagram and Twitter/X, gained popularity this year and quickly became a hotspot for copy-paste engagement bait, a problem so serious that Adam Mosseri publicly acknowledged That was a big problem. While the Threads team is clearly “working to get this issue under control,” I still find myself scrolling through my For You feed and seeing just a regurgitated meme being passed around as its own idea, or a question to the public. I can’t help but see about a dozen posts. It’s designed to stir the pot. Otherwise, the same feed is dominated by viral videos stolen from other creators without credit or pop culture commentary that almost always devolves into sex and gender discrimination. I often leave threads feeling like screaming in a field.
Threads do not have DMs. This means that all conversations take place in public. In November, users were finally able to create custom feeds of searchable topics, but those topic pages are still generally filled with bait-and-switch style posts, or subject-specific versions. So, so far, it’s been pretty hard to find a community to truly connect with. It all feels so impersonal.
It doesn’t help that Threads’ follow feed isn’t currently the default view, and there’s no way to change it (although Threads recently started testing this option). After all, the 275 million or so monthly active users don’t even include everyone I actually know, especially those outside of the media industry. The same goes for Fediverse social networks like Mastodon and Bluesky. It has a much smaller population but a more sophisticated feel. Visiting these platforms feels like walking into a room full of people who know each other and realizing you’re the odd one out. But at least Bluesky and Mastodon aren’t thinly veiled, lame shopping experiences. (Threads is also reported to be running ads, although not at this time).
Perhaps it comes down to burnout in an age of overconsumption, but lately I’ve found myself wanting a more inviting and human place to be on the internet. I’m sure I’m not alone. Alternative social apps have emerged in recent years, including BeReal, Hive, Myspace-like entrants SpaceHey, and noplace, all of which aim to bring character and interpersonal relationships back to social media. But no one has completely cracked the code for sustained mainstream adoption. Even Discord and Reddit serve some of the same person-to-person needs, but they have more in common with the chatrooms and forums of primitive social media than with the sites born in the heyday of social.
Meanwhile, Meta is increasingly pushing AI across its apps. Just this summer, we released AI Studio, a chatbot maker. Meta touted this not only as a way for users to create AI characters, but also as a way for “creators to build AI as an extension of themselves and reach more fans.” Rather than talking to your real friends or making new friends based on shared interests, you can chat with AI versions of celebrities, influencers, and fictional characters and deepen your parasocial relationships with them. Masu. Alternatively, you can choose from several AI girlfriends that appear in your DM’s menu. Unfortunately, the plot was completely lost.
I’ve started dipping into Tumblr here and there just to see a less chaotic, more curated feed and to be reminded of the joys of customization. Some friends said they were doing the same thing. But given the platform’s past policy turmoil and current AI partnerships, it’s not exactly an online oasis either. As if on cue, I was recently offered a mock Tumblr poster while scrolling through my evening news, and it felt eerily appropriate. The rest of the internet fared even worse. ”
