Are You Cut Out for Social Media?

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

(speaking of slack, some of my friends have also migrated there, basically group chats except it's slack; an under-remarked-upon trend of the past few years, I think, is the exodus to semi-private spaces)

FB is my lifeline to older, straight friends; Twitter is essential to posting opinions on the arts. I've adapted to them w/out a hitch. Coping with a pandemic would be less salubrious without this virtual proximity.

I admired amateurist's film posts.

The use of a medium depends on who uses it, obv. I don't get worked up enough about events to constantly post on FB or Twitter; that's what ILE is for, and even then I wait for other posters to clear the way.

the answer to the question is ultimately no unless it's a very small and contained space

Twitter is very real-time based and you have to be in a position to jump in quickly if you're going to get anything out of it. That's not viable with my everyday non-lockdown life.

I used to think Instagram was rubbish until I started following better people. Colleagues from ten years ago with babies is nice, but now my timeline is full of musicians and DJs I'm actively interested in.

Facebook is only as good as you curate it. I'm quite generous with the Mute For A Month button. A lot of people I know are articulate and insightful with posts in a way you can't really manage on Twitter (at least in my experience). I like a lot of publications' pages, I try to stay off their comments, and I join groups that match my interests so it feels more like using early forums.

I don't use Snapchat or TikTok because I am 32.

I really don't enjoy the unfollowing/unfriending element. I'll be the first to admit I have a thin skin for perceived rejection, even though it is always people I've met a few times at parties who I have legitimately nothing in common with etc. A lot of the dynamic is binary and much as we all laughed I think Google+ was on to something with the idea of circles of closeness.

Yes. But then again I only use twitter and it's just like ilx, really.

When blogs began (mid 90s?) I came at them as a reader with the same mindset I'd had as a consumer of print journalism and posted a few snarky comments. One particular music blogger responded saying essentially, Hey I'm not charging for this, these are only my thoughts, if you don't like it don't read it, or start your own. Whether or not he was right I took it as an IMPORTANT LIFE LESSON for the new millennium and I've kept a distance in my online interraction ever since.

ilx is different than twitter. people here engage with what others are saying... sort of. twitter is a bunch of people preening for attention.

no that's more like a description of some of your terrible threads tbf!

I did social media professionally for a couple of years, but it's now so long ago that I'm sure all the tools are different now.

I've never been cut out for social media, and have whittled down my already sparing social media use, but my disenchantment with online platforms feels like it's reached a boiling point. At this point, I'm starting to feel weary of consuming content online more generally, feeling like a pig at a content-trough being fattened up, because that's the only way I know how to be an engaged participant in contemporary culture. Being disconnected from culture and spending my time Doing Nothing is starting to look like the better option. But as someone that's already pretty isolated, and feels increasingly out of touch with my peers, and from the music/art/media/etc that I used to thrive on, it feels like a hard position to reconcile. I think I want to use social media, and online media more generally, as a reference for doing things offline, but it feels like an "I was only there to get directions to get away from there" problem. It might just be depression, but I'm am just so dissatisfied with the world the last 15 years of the internet has created.

i decided to delete all of my social media apps off my phone/block those sites on my laptop for lent and was hoping it would maybe lead to an unprecedented spike in non-screen-related activity but so far it’s just meant that i’m finding other methods of distracting myself online. really think my self-discipline is in the gutter at this point.

One view of ilx a day and a quick 3min footy highlight is about all the online content I am giving myself atm. Much happier. Though yes, important to have a replacement

This is almost all of my interactive social media, because I believe most of you are real

Had a good few hours of reading a bunch of pieces on William Vollmann, Iranian politics, Irish ecology and politics, the African nations cup, abolition and close reading...all collated via this wonderful medium.

I quit Facebook and Instagram because it felt gross, seeing my friends and interests monetized and given to me in easily digestible bits. Affirming what I already like and giving me more more more. It feels good to be done with it.

Otm

Xp you should check out books.

I can like both!

That is true. What are you reading on Vollmann? Have been toying with the idea of a Rising up and Rising Down read for a bit....

I haven't read much in ten years but I put up a piece about him on the Mailer thread so you can see what he's up to

Xp you should check out books.

― H.P, Tuesday, February 24, 2026 6:59 PM (yesterday)

i'm not cut out for books. :(

thanks for the pointer to the mailer thread... do we have a vollmann thread? i feel like we should.

About halfway through W. David Marx's Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century. I wouldn't say it's a great book, but for someone like me, who was both in the middle of but kind of outside all the big stories this century, it's a useful round-up. By 2027, I'll have spent half my life with the internet and half without. (Marking the beginning from 1994--those first few years were obviously pretty rudimentary.) So even though I was very much online from 2000 to 2020, as a grade-school teacher, I didn't have to think about how everything I was following or doing fit together, and a lot of it I just ignored. The connections of the pre-internet world--between, to pick a random example, There's a Riot Goin' On and Schooly-D--will always be more interesting to me than the connections Marx writes about.

Anyway, the point of this post: thinking about the book led me to realize something for the first time. My mom died in 2008; my last grandparent (her mom) in 2007, far outliving my other three grandparents; and my dad in 2003. They are the literally the last three people I've known who were never on the internet.

Two qualifications: 1) I'm sure I had some engagement with a few older people in the years after 2008 who were never on there either. But I didn't know about it. 2) With my dad and my grandmother, I'm 100% sure they never spent a second online. (The idea's laughable thinking about my dad.) With my mom, I'm only 99% sure. When I bought my first computer with internet access in 2003, I gave my mom the dial-up modem I'd been using and tried to get her online. I told her she could email my aunt who she talked a lot with on the phone (when long-distance was expensive), and that I'd find her stuff she could read. She may have logged on once or twice, I can't remember. She had no interest--also, she was afraid that if she hit the wrong key, she'd shut down the whole internet. A slight exaggeration.

None of them ever owned a cell phone, either.

i realized the other day that my ideal internet presence is something like a geocities site - a dumb little shrine to a hobby or something, naively created to "inspire others" with "similar interests". my instagram and facebook are basically versions of that in tone and spirit. i think what i missed, what i was just a little too old for, was the "social" aspect of "social media". the way people started to turn it into an extension of clout or just another manifestation of "the grind." basically when the internet turned from a nerdy niche thing into a mainstream deal around the mid to late 2000s, it started to feel draining and alienating. it turned from a mom and pop shop into a mall brand store. then venture capital bought it and now it's emptying it of value en masse with ai.

I was dismayed to find that the Toronto public library's new online system is a quasi-social media site. Everything you do is public unless you opt out. Users can now rate items and write short reviews. You can make lists that are groupings of library materials like suggested playlists of songs on streaming sites.
I don't want to deny those who might enjoy these new features, but I guess what has been lost for me is the feeling of democracy of the old site; though there may have been many more copies of the latest bestsellers compared to the McGarrigle CD or the Béla Tarr critical study I've recently taken out, when you searched on the old system without reviews, every item felt like it was on the same level of importance.
This is also why I could never post on Reddit - I couldn't bear to have each post evaluated and voted upon. Instead I post on sites where I can imagine that each of us is equal. I don't have any other social media presence.

Those TPL computers are where I got the real internet when I just had the modem at home. (And the Toronto Free-Net was my first access and email address.)

the last three people I've known who were never on the internet.

My dad retired as a school principal in 1986 and was proud of having resisted getting a computer on his work desk before he left. But some of my aunts were using computers in their 80s and 90s, mostly to communicate and play games with each other across the country, though my mom never joined them.

This is also why I could never post on Reddit - I couldn't bear to have each post evaluated and voted upon.

I'd also be spending too much time upvoting everyone else's post with the slightest relevance or insight - "oh, you're all so valuable!"

I was once approached by an old Scottish woman at an airport wishing to know "why people are on their phones all the time".

I thought this was going to be yr old kids-these-days moaning but turns out she genuinely didn't know what a smartphone was, its functionalities.

This was within the past five years too. Not THAT outlandish I guess but it did my head in a bit.

that reminds me of an older relative we took to a tourist site, probably early 2000s. she was getting grumpy at all the people just walking around with headphones on instead of engaging with the site.

to be fair she did laugh and apologise when we told her they were listening to the audio tours that tell you all about it!

It can be so funny if you're not listening to those audio guides and a big group comes along. I remember being in the papal palace in Avignon and loads of elderly Germans sashayed in, all like laughing and sort of dancing, when previously it had been just me in a mostly empty room. One of them took off the headphones and looked at me and was like "there is music!!!"

I guess it was the banquet ballroom type place or similar.

I would l ike you all to join my webring

Back in 2012 or so, my mom said to me, “You mean my iPhone can take pictures?” She nor my father understand technology in the slightest. They refuse to get rid of their AOL email addresses. I gave up trying to change them, partly because I envy their ignorance

My own hypocrisy aside, I think the UK's ban on social media for under-16 (joining Australia, I think) is great. It's so unusual, it seems to me, for people to recognize a problem that generates billions of dollars at an obvious social cost and choose to solve (or attempt to, anyway) the problem.

Dunno about Australia, but in the UK it's just an empty bit of showboating, consider that one of the solutions that the govt floated to address it is AI. They have no interest in fighting misinformation, they're just desperately trying to find something to appeal to middle class parents.

They are middle class parents. I would say it's a rare example of them believing something their voters believe, regardless of what we think here or how it'll be implemented. Also not sure anyone has said this is about fighting misinformation.

The question in this thread title is an interesting one, perhaps worth revisiting.

I think it was pretty clearly implied in clemenza's post, though perhaps I misread.

Re: the original question though, is anyone on ILX still on social media? I guess that's the thing, if you're not you don't know.

I am still on Facebook because it's where certain friends are who I don't want to lose contact with, but by gods it's a cesspool now. I can't help browsing it sometimes at work but it really is time to quit.

Insta too - I'm on it for semi-professional reasons to promote my DJing and my club nights. It's slightly less insidious-feeling than Facebook but still clogged with ragebait, and the whole point of it seems to be for people to use it in the same way I am: To promote themselves and what they do as opposed to using it to maintain connections/chat etc. I also find Insta's UI EXTREMELY frustrating. And the whole arcane ruleset for making successful posts is tedious as alll hell.

i keep facebook for most reasons cited by others but never scroll— I used a feed eradicator extension that does wonders. i check it once a day for a minute or two, then i am out.

instagram is more insidious— i loathe it but realize i am slightly addicted to it, and i also need it to promote events and so on. a real drag.

Clem there has been some discussion in the ukpol thread, it’s much like the assisted dying bill (or more saliently the online safety bill) in that it seems reasonable enough at first glance but a lot less so in the details & actual political context. In this case the proposals for how it will actually work range from absurd to creepy (ai facial age-assessment software is one thing being seriously floated) and this is all being enacted by a notably right-leaning govt with a big authoritarian streak (& there’s a non zero chance of actual fascists getting in in a few years)

Moreover there’s no serious effort to address the, as you say, demonstrably harmful aspects of this technology, just who gets to access it. Nothing done about 50+yos with less media literacy than your average teen having their brains melted by infinite scrolling ai slop showing Birmingham under IS rule or whatever. They say they’re gonna be strict with the tech giants but only in terms of how they enforce the age limits on who sees the non-consensual porn they produce, not on the actual production

The think of the children stuff is also hard to swallow from the ppl who have systematically cut services that would provide young ppl with irl community spaces, also the very kids who often find a lifeline in online communities (trans or autistic kids eg) are being actively bullied by labour so

Re: the original question though, is anyone on ILX still on social media? I guess that's the thing, if you're not you don't know.

― a ZX spectrum is haunting Europe (Daniel_Rf)

Bluesky, Facebook, to a lesser extent Instagram.

If you are you don't know either.

Sure you do, if you have lots of followers and post a lot. Like that stencil fellow