Are You Cut Out for Social Media?

I know I have laid myself open to nothing but acronyms and emoticons and links to Chris Cillizza think-pieces.

lol

For me it would be Facebook and ILX, but that would extend to the other popular platforms people use--Twitter, Instagram, etc.

😎

j. is going to single-handedly kill this thread I worked very hard to conceptualize.

Voting something in-between.

was amateurist really popular? i think not

i mean that was his charm

such as it was

I tried to cozy up to him a few times early on but he was having none of it.

Maybe popular is the wrong word. I always felt like he was taken to be very thoughtful, but I couldn't get past the tone. Anyway, I don't want this to be about him--my point was that I sometimes share the thing that drove me up the wall.

I already know I will not join commercialized social media unless under compulsion of force majeure. No Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram, no Snapchat, no Tumblr, no TikTok, no Next Big Thing Everyone Uses, even if it turns my snoot into unicorns. It's bad enough being shadowed by Amazon & other retailers, and having an Android phone.

Thank you for existing, ILX and ilxors. This is a scene I can happily join without selling myself bit by bit. (see what I did there?)

I dont count ILX as "social media", nor most other forums, even Reddit. SM is more things like FB/Insta/Snapchat/Twitter.

So insofar as Ive always loved fora and blogging (Usenet, mailing lists, blogs/livejournal/ILX), I have always sat somewhere between bored despair and outright revulsion for the rest. I'm too old (SC/Insta), or I just Dont get it (Twitter).

I log on to twitter the most because I can refrain from posting and can be anonymous and it really feels like something I can make my own very easily, also it feels like a social leveler

then instagram where I can look at my friends' posts.

I can't bear to go into my facebook account these days, I’ve been thinking about why that happened, there was nothing particularly egregious about it in my experience, I guess I’m just embarrassed to share my experiences with people I barely know

it’s much better on ilx with people I don’t at all know tbh

I love some of tiktok

I can’t sh0t any of them successfully but I try now and then. I’ve been on a discord kick for a few weeks now, it’s ok I guess.

(xposts) Age is definitely part of it (I'm 58). I think back to arguments in fanzines...You had a month to temper your response. I remember one in particular, having to do, of all things, with Celine Dion (between two other people), and I thought, wow, that's a pretty nasty exchange. It would be a shadow of an echo of a blip today.

i'm basically just wishing happy birthdays on facebook. If I posted a photo more often I'd be more in line with the majority of major social media platform users. OP describing power users/vocal minority i think

i was pretty sure this thread was going to be about the 1975

OK, I guess I'll be the pro-social media guy.

I'm reasonably active on Twitter; I use it to post links to shit I've written, or when I have a new episode of my podcast going up, and then I engage with the people I follow. (I have many more followers than people I follow - basically, I'm on there to have conversations with people I think are interesting, and anyone who follows me is the audience for those conversations, is how I think about it.) I post a lot of jokes, making fun of bands and politicians and stupid news stories and whatnot.

On Instagram, I mostly post pictures of whatever I'm reading or listening to.

On Facebook, I post some of the same shit I post on Twitter, and I comment on a few friends' posts, but that's about it. I'm also part of a FB group which has occasionally yielded professional opportunities.

For about the last decade, I have also been the social media person for my employer or for clients. I actually find "speaking" in a professional (or academic) "voice" on Twitter, FB, Instagram and even LinkedIn to be interesting, and it can be a creative challenge at times.

social media was more or less fine before it was public facing. the combination of 1. real name/identity linked to account and 2. assumption that random people you've never met will (and should be) exposed to your content turned me away from it probably forever

twitter becoming a personal brand machine for people who don't need personal brands + a supposed networking tool for many has ruined a lot of the social world for me. i can't force my brain to adjust to it and if i had it my way i would live on an island where it doesn't exist. jobs requiring people to have a professional twitter presence is obviously very bad. i don't hesitate to say it's a general evil and i don't trust people who claim it's a social good.

facebook is sort of the same. i loved it when it felt like the posts i made were for my friends. then it blew up, suddenly you're adding everyone in your family and people you barely know and even though you aren't expected to open it up to complete strangers, it still becomes a performance where you must create a version of yourself for everyone you know. i stopped posting on it when that shift happened, it lost its intimacy.

uperson you have a much more neutral approach to this than I've been able to manage

I took my birth date off my facebook profile, felt really uncomfortable with the happy birthday posts. it's ridiculous i know but I didn't want to be in the spotlight like that

I think that encapsulates my aversion to facebook

i listed where I actually worked for a year and posted once innocently about a raise I got. somehow, it got back to my boss as someone squealed on me for posting that.

I then changed my profile to say my job was selling drugs

haven't had it happen since

I miss the days (2008) when Twitter was an amazing thing that beamed the thoughts of kristin hersh and kay hanley to my phone

98% of my Facebook "friends" are actually professional connections - other writers, music industry people, musicians, etc. The other 2% are a couple of my relatives, with whom I never engage, and one or two people I went to high school with. Every once in a great while, my brother will comment on something I post. But otherwise, it might as well be a LinkedIn page, with dumb jokes.

I took my birth date off my facebook profile, felt really uncomfortable with the happy birthday posts.

Did the same three or four years ago--uncomfortable, and also, the worst, cognizant of who posted and who didn't. (Probably got that from died-just-as-Facebook-was-invented grandmother; she used to always keep an exact count of how many Christmas cards she got each year.) I continue to post birthday wishes myself with most people I've actually met, with a secret system that indicates how I actually feel about you.

"from my"

the creepy thing about birthdate on FB is I've had friends die and their family members didn't know how to convert their profile into a Tribute page, so casual acquaintances who didn't know they died would write "happy birthday" posts on their wall. I don't mean the "remembering you today, my angel" type posts, but like they actually thought they were saying it to a living person.

it's also creepy to see FB accounts up 10+ years after the person died, and yet...someone my age that I didn't even know died of a heart attack in 2010 (she was a friend of a friend), profile is still there, still not a tribute page, page preserved in amber from 10 years ago.

Twitter is basically my newspaper, I'm on it a lot to know what's going on and be entertained, but I have no drive to cultivate my own online personality or brand.

I understand everyone's ambivalence about social media but I also wonder whether "I don't even have a Facebook account" might become the new "I don't even own a TV."

Personally I think some of it is good dumb fun. Plus a lot of stuff you can safely ignore and scroll past.
And it is all, ultimately, a voluntary leisure activity. It's only in your head to the extent you allow it to be.

I understand everyone's ambivalence about social media but I also wonder whether "I don't even have a Facebook account" might become the new "I don't even own a TV."

I think it already has. See also "i have an account but i don't even use it"

kristin hersh still beams thoughts at me!

i still have a facebook profile because i need it for work, but have stripped it of everything but my name. (xp lol) should probably change my photo now that neil peart has died

started using twitter because of work and have become pretty attached, but if i missed something, it's gone; i'm not a completist. the politics/trump stuff can become draining, but that's my fault for not better pruning my follows/filters

i'm on no others, which, i'm told, is where the real shit happens now. it's fine; i'm pretty old

85% of my relationships started one way or another on FB, usually because I'd start a convo online and then wouldn't feel so awkward talking to the person in public.

xp -- true! if only it was just that (these were the days when tweets were sent as SMS messages to your phone)

(at least in my circles, a lot of people have migrated to Discord, which feels kind of like a happy public vs. private medium)

jill hennessy liked one of my tweets so can't nobody tell me nothin about social media, forever

Yah the kids in my house are all on discord. It seems to be akin to a cross between a forum and a sort of IRC?

don't like the name discord, it sounds alt-right to me

the highlight of my Twitter career was zinging Prodigy of Mobb Deep and having him laugh at it

RIP

we've probably all been retweeted by Lil B at some point?

he linked back to the ILX thread ten years ago!

also Ripper Owens was upset that I dismissively mentioned his blip of a career in Judas Priest in less than illustrious terms

don't like the name discord, it sounds alt-right to me

keep thinking it's a typo for dischord

It took me a couple of tries to come around on the film, but I think one of the best representations of how bewildering social media can be is the "Orinoco Flow" sequence in Eighth Grade--even if, in the context of the film, it simultaneously shows how adept this 14-year-old girl has become at navigating that world.

I dip back in now and again for like half a day and then I remember that social media only makes me depressed and anxious and then I extract myself and towel off and hope I've finally learned my gahdamn lesson already.

xp -- yeah, that is a major issue the platform has (partly because it was originally geared toward gamers), but it's like slack in that it is primarily based around servers/channels, so it is siloed in that regard, obviously I stay far away from anything like that

Last time I tweeted I said Twitter made me feel so left out, I felt like Flagstaff Station on a Sunday.

A friend replied "Actually Flagstaff's been open on Sundays for years how behind are you?"

*kills self*

wow, wait till granny danger hears about this

xpost

Covering courts and government are the best ways to learn fact-gathering. They are, alas, increasingly under siege in the newspaper biz.

*is the best way, gah

- Social media (certainly at the beginning lol) is just people posting, and while the good bits like investigations would get attention too you also had people actually reading and engaging with the opinion pages. So it's like a communal skim read of the stuff that's in newspapers. That can be an invitation for news orgs to do better but ofc they are mostly oligarch owned so it's not as if they could take some of those critiques on board

Well, what they learned most of all is that the disapproval of ppl on social media is extremley profitable. If they had taken the critiques onboard their work would be discussed less, therefore become less profitable and eventually they'd be out of a job. Is this reasoning totally morally bankrupt? Yes, that's capitalism baybee.

there is a difference between journalists and columnists. Bouie is the latter.

I assume people are bigging up Bouie's social media feed because it leads them to useful news, not because they believe Bouie is reporting the news himself.

if opinion was a currency you'd have to drive a truck of notes to buy a loaf of bread

Imo the most interesting reporting on the local NYC level is being done by The City Reporter, and I don't subscribe to Hell Gate but I'm open to hearing about them. But it's not reasonable to expect most people to check 6 different sources for news.

Where does anyone suggest that msot people watch or listen to, let's say, US-centric national level news these days?

Because also let's be honest I don't think people casually read the news. They watch tv or video, or listen to the radio in their cars.

Savannah, GA has the worst newspaper, I think it's totally based somewhere in Florida now. In Houston there were a lot of sources/advice for upcoming elections and whatnot, here there's nothing that I can find. I have a friend who is very involved in local politics and she tells me how to vote.

Well, it's more than that. She has a blog thing and it details who the candidates are and where they stand.

When it comes to getting the news, 44% of Americans prefer to watch it, 37% prefer to read it, and 19% prefer to listen to it.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/11/20/more-americans-prefer-to-watch-the-news-than-read-or-listen-to-it/

What we are refering to as "straight" journalism is just a distinction of genre rather than objectivity/subjectivity - the reporting of news as opposed to the expressing of opinions. This reporting is not, never has been and never could be objective, it is filled with biases (as again I think everyone itt agrees), but it nonetheless fulfills a different function than an opinion column.

Thanks for the condescension, but no, I am not conflating anything. What I am saying is that I don’t believe the “straight” reporting that people itt seem so enamored of actually doesn’t fulfil that different a function than an opinion column.

It absolutely does! Even if you view it as entirely propaganda it would still be propaganda with a different function than an opinion column.

the recent discussion on this thread is a great illustration of why opinion writing and related forms of punditry (video podcasts, tiktok) is so popular; people just like consuming it much more than journalism. even intelligent, highly literature ilxor-type people vastly prefer it

*literate

one relevant trend that is worth mentioning is the consolidation of journalism. crazy but apparently true stat: around 7% of all journalists in the united states work for the times, up from 1% a decade ago, with no signs of the trend reversing

I admit I have a consolidation problem. I don't think I can mentally keep up with checking substacks, subscribing to Patreons, whatever the mechanism is now. I would prefer to follow my friends & people I respect and for them to get paid for their work but I'm tired. I subbed to WaPo for a few years bc of Carly Goodman, TNR for Pareene, I subbed to the NYT for ages and ages because of a few ppl and bc it was the paper of record obv...but eventually I didn't want to pay transphobes and genocide champions. Idk what's next but until then socials are doing okay.

ilx was a pretty good news agregator for while!! But as posting has fallen over...idk it seems like 5-8...10? years, it's less useful for world news and perspectives than it used to be.

It absolutely does! Even if you view it as entirely propaganda it would still be propaganda with a different function than an opinion column.

fair enough— the result is the same, imho (manufacturing consent for Empire’s crimes), but the approach is different, yes.

the recent discussion on this thread is a great illustration of why opinion writing and related forms of punditry (video podcasts, tiktok) is so popular; people just like consuming it much more than journalism. even intelligent, highly literature ilxor-type people vastly prefer it

― flopson, Friday, 19 June 2026 bookmarkflaglink

I like long reads and usually link quite a lot on here; lots of good people here so as well.

Social media is great for distributing that stuff. Actually read lots more journalism than I would otherwise bcz of it.

i agree. i actually find news sites mostly promote opinionslop over their own long-reads or investigative journalism. even for the sites i do subscribe to i often find out about the good stuff on twitter, rather than from browsing their front page or the stuff they push in daily newsletters

the result is the same, imho (manufacturing consent for Empire’s crimes)

the irony is that, whether you call it journalism, opinion, propaganda, or just information, the means for the mass distribution of such stuff is the only reason you or I know about the majority of the Empire's crimes at all.

It all comes at us willy-nilly and we are forced to filter and sift it regardless. the alternative is a poverty of knowledge that reaches beyond our immediate environs. in the distant past, the only source for such news was the occasional traveler passing through your village, who you'd eagerly pump for news of the wider world.

It all comes at us willy-nilly and we are forced to filter and sift it regardless. the alternative is a poverty of knowledge that reaches beyond our immediate environs. in the distant past, the only source for such news was the occasional traveler passing through your village, who you'd eagerly pump for news of the wider world.

I strive for the ignorance of a medieval peasant. Do I really need to know what the lord and his vassals are up to? No, I need to get the harvest in.

being well informed in today's world mirrors my process of music consumption, it's essentially an act of bricolage

i have nothing but contempt for the NYT but sometimes it's more about the byline than the masthead

the recent discussion on this thread is a great illustration of why opinion writing and related forms of punditry (video podcasts, tiktok) is so popular; people just like consuming it much more than journalism. even intelligent, highly literature ilxor-type people vastly prefer it

Petition to prohibit anyone under 16 from accessing the opinion section of any kind of media, see if we can reverse this trend.

I strive for the ignorance of a medieval peasant.

It trickles through anyway, pre-filtered haphazardly by whoever you're talking to, who allowed their medieval ignorance to be sullied by a radio, television, internet connection, newspaper, book, or an unknown series of interlocutors playing a game of 'telephone'.

a great illustration of why opinion writing and related forms of punditry (video podcasts, tiktok) is so popular; people just like consuming it much more than journalism

can we use some context clues for why this might be? are there economic, social, and environmental factors that contribute to this? do i need to keep a spreadsheet of all the dispassionate facts and arguments that support my worldview, or are there times when it becomes less important to learn about the world and cross over into changing it? weird, i know

can we use some context clues for why this might be? are there economic, social, and environmental factors that contribute to this? do i need to keep a spreadsheet of all the dispassionate facts and arguments that support my worldview, or are there times when it becomes less important to learn about the world and cross over into changing it? weird, i know

― Cattedrale metropolitana di Santa Maria de Episcopio, Friday, June 19, 2026 2:58 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

having trouble deciphering the sincerity/sarcasm level of this post but, answering as if it's an earnest question: i think it's always been the case that opinion was more in-demand than news but it's just amplified by the "rage bait" multiplier effect of social media, where an opinion piece that makes people made can drive so much more engagement than some breaking news (which even if it's a scoop other sites will report in a few minutes)

fwiw i love reading takes and don't exclude myself from my observation, not immune from the lure of the takes. i strive to read journalism but it is sometimes a bit of an eat your vegetables thing

Investigative journalism can be really gripping tbf, hits the same pleasure centres as good crime fiction. But yeah depending on the subject things can get pretty dry.

my point has to do with WHY we read the news in the first place. it a way it's analogous to money in politics. it's not that i can't stomach reading a detailed outline of a candidate's policy positions, but it often feels like putting the cart before the horse

my point has to do with WHY we read the news in the first place. it a way it's analogous to money in politics. it's not that i can't stomach reading a detailed outline of a candidate's policy positions, but it often feels like putting the cart before the horse

― Cattedrale metropolitana di Santa Maria de Episcopio, Friday, June 19, 2026 3:20 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

meh. imo technology has changed to make takes cheaper (free), more abundant (more than you can ever hope to read), and more addictive. there are positive aspects to the change, but i think many of the posts itt in defence of social media are ex post rationalizations of our habits rather than a principled stance

Not really. Personally internet/social media has made me more informed than otherwise, and I think teens who have started experimenting in many areas of their lives should access it.

And they should definitely not be banned from accessing it by the government.

If posh parents want to be authoritarian that's between them and their therapists and their unfortunate kids that have to suffer them. But governments need to get back to funding public services, healthcare and the welfare state before doing authoritarian shit on kids (just so they can expand it onto adults as well).

Yeah, let the kids smoke!

Wait sorry, wrong thread

ex post rationalizations of our habits rather than a principled stance

new board description

I don't think the position of anyone w/r/t social media is defensive as much as it's descriptive. Addictive algorithms can be bad for us and the government still shouldn't hold the responsibility for censoring information from young people if they're not going to do shit about the AI CSAM generators or...y'know...anything.

i think many of the posts itt in defence of social media are ex post rationalizations of our habits rather than a principled stance

Not really. Personally internet/social media has made me more informed than otherwise, and I think teens who have started experimenting in many areas of their lives should access it

this exchange gives me flashbacks to people with habits of consuming too much... lets call it "social media", and would bristle at the suggestion they were addicted, saying things like "people dont understand that [social media] gives me great ideas & makes me more productive, when i stay up all night doing [social media] its good for me, maybe if they did more [social media] themselves they would get it!"

Not exactly looking for good things that make me more productive out of social media.

And my cat is the bigger enemy when it comes to sleep!

cant argue with the fact that social media has increased my exposure to & enjoyment of cats exponentially

It does raise the question of whether being better informed is worth the cost. I think all of us would agree that there is a social value in being generally informed about the world. At the same time, do I really need to know half of the stuff I come across on social media, especially when a lot of it amounts to little more than outrage bait?

I used to use an app called Nuzzl that would aggregate links posted by people you follow on social media. So you could read the articles people were talking about without the commentary and other noise. That seemed like a good way to stay informed without the brain rot of scrolling a feed. (The app doesn't exist anymore, though I think there are others like it.) The downside, of course, is it still prioritizes the kind of hot-button articles that get traction on social media, though you could probably adjust that based on who you follow.

social media for me is good in the way captains of industry and certain celebrities can directly show the masses how stupid/insane/bigoted they are. It’s also bad that the same captains of industry and celebrities can also cultivate personality cults online. in conclusion, social media is a land of contrasts.