Are You Cut Out for Social Media?

My theory: pivot to OnlyFeet incoming

A good Twitter thread that explains a lot:

A lot of people are getting the OnlyFans story wrong, and the reality of it is a lot more damaging and concerning to both the livelihood of sex workers and online freedom in general.

— Post-Culture Review (@PostCultRev) August 20, 2021

Thanks for that background, it’s illuminating.

We are making a few changes at OnlyFans pic.twitter.com/MiD2tlZcK1

— Vinny Thomas (@vinn_ayy) August 19, 2021

moving in a nude erection

https://myystar.com/MYYSTAR_PRESS_RELEASE.pdf

^in which Tyga tries to piggyback onlyfans

^in which Tyaga tries to piggybareback onlyfans

ok then: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-25/onlyfans-drops-plan-to-ban-sexually-explicit-content-amid-uproar

fucked around, found out, decided to continue to fuck around

What did they expect the reaction to be?!?

Nope

Not really

I'm attempting to build a modest music career, and the extent to which everything revolves around social media now is disheartening.

Yes, and I don't think that speaks well of me

I know how to do this, breaker 1-9 a copy...

Yup, sure am!

Those best cut out for social media are probably those that realize they should cut out social media. (Though not Soto.)

Yes, and I don't think that speaks well of me

― Guayaquil (eephus!),

??

Why wouldn't it?

ILX and an extremely scrubbed, adblocked, chronological FB feed are more than plenty for me, so I think the answer is probably not.

I used to be quite good at Twitter and Instagram and now can barely be arsed with even WhatsApp. So I guess 'no'.

I don't know who social media is for any more, nobody seems to enjoy it or get anything out of it, and it's completely useless for sharing anything you've made.

idk I still get quite a lot of engagement and conversation on FB, even X. I know my life would be poorer without the friends and acquaintances on them.

Quitting sm for a day led me to speak to people irl
Now I’m trying to combine sm with real life

For me, there is a category of person for whom Facebook (or whatever) is _exactly_ the right amount of contact. It's my stepsister's husband or my ninth ex-girlfriend or the person I was in a band with that one time.

I do enjoy and treasure those connections, but I want to calibrate my closeness very carefully. Do I want to lose them forever, and completely forget our shared history? No. But do I want to invite them over for Thanksgiving, and have them stay in my guest room? Fuck no.

If you are careful about curating friends and feeds and keeping appropriate boundaries, social media can be a good tool.

Tl Dr there are some people in my life where social media allows me to stay exactly the right distance from a lot of people

Is it weird to want to get to know someone on sm before you meet them in person? This friend is always proposing irl meetups but I just don’t have the appetite until I get to know them better

No.

Thanks YMP

it's not "weird" but if you want to get to know them better i would meet in person. IME even if most of the interactions you'll have are going to be online, spending a small amount of time together in person will give your online interactions some important context you are missing otherwise. it's necessary to understanding who they are.

anyway i am not cut out for social media because i'm susceptible to that co-option of my thinking space and attention. i broke my scrolling addiction when i deleted my socials several years ago, but it's become a problem again since i got my first smartphone in late 2020. i could stare at the ceiling all day without getting bored, mobile internet is a danger and i need to go back to using a dumb phone.

I think my hesitation has to do more with the fact that I just don’t want to get to know this person better. Ugh

yeah, that's what i was hoping to clarify.

i think dial up aol with chatrooms and instant messenger and usenet all tethered to a desktop was the right amount of internet for me.

ty dm!

Why wouldn't it?

Fair question. I think being "good at social media" is related to but not identical with a certain kind of .. I don't know, is glibness the word? I am also good, in real life, at coming up with a succinct turn of phrase, and I think I habitually use this to sound as if I know more about something than I do, or have thought more deeply about something than I have. It's a bad habit in real life and on social media it's very explicitly rewarded. So I think of this particular skill I have as something that it would be better for me to resist deploying or further developing.

well put

I think I have the opposite problem. I can follow what is happening from loads of different sources and get a reasonable grasp on events and then sound like a clueless numpt when I post about it .. lol it can always be be worse.

Stance on this has hardened a bit since this thread was posted. Quite important to have more sources than ever as things develop in places we know little about.

Sometimes we can do something with this information at the moment -- such as marching -- sometimes there is little.

More locally I only see things getting worse and degraded. In Europe I see much of the public become more divided and more with right wing (or worse) parties elected to power in response to Western made catastrophes like climate change. This week: Dutch elections, riots in Dublin.

So I just think it could become an issue of safety as well, and/or not despairing as very good people are speaking out on issues.

In current concern-trolling news, apparently there are people worried about how social-media-driven cultural polarization means that young people won't get married.

https://wapo.st/46wP02g (non-paywall gift link)

The argument here (I guess) is that social media is helping to sort people into political camps. And they will not marry each other.

Which it does, of course, but that is not necessarily a bad thing (like, why would I want to marry someone who hates me and hates what I believe in?)

This sounds like a digital follow-on of the "big sort" where people physically moved to be near people who agree with them on stuff.

One of my controversial opinions is that polarization can be useful. There are people I do not wish to compromise with.

Quitting sm for a day led me to speak to people irl
Now I’m trying to combine sm with real life

Is it weird to want to get to know someone on sm before you meet them in person? This friend is always proposing irl meetups but I just don’t have the appetite until I get to know them better

― calstars

do you know how long it took me to figure out that by "sm" you meant "social media"?

fet sucks, go to a munch

Pet peeve: I hate it when scolds say that being on your phone isn't being with people.

Songs? Made by people. Movies and TV shows? People. Games? Concieved and made by people. Books? Written by 0eople. Social media? People. Discord, Slack, Instagram? People.

ILX? People.

When you look at a screen, most of the time it is a way of experiencing... people.

People
People who need people
Are the luckiest people in the world

Pet peeve: I hate it when scolds say that being on your phone isn't being with people.

Songs? Made by people. Movies and TV shows? People. Games? Concieved and made by people. Books? Written by 0eople. Social media? People. Discord, Slack, Instagram? People.

ILX? People.

― Iris Demented (Ye Mad Puffin)

Soylent Green? People.

ok serious post i think

i grew up on the internet. i learned how to interact with other people on the internet, how to communicate with other people on the internet. initially, i found it a relief. all of the interpersonal skills people wanted me to have in real life weren't necessary on the internet. i could talk to people on the internet about myself, about my interests, i could be _vulnerable_ on the internet in a way i couldn't be in person

i think that... i've done a lot of work over the past few years in particular on learning to express myself in a healthy way. interpersonal skills have their benefits. my dream of the internet was a place without borders, or any other kind of boundaries either. boundaries are a lot more important to me than they used to be.

i have problems setting my own boundaries sometimes. it helps me to be in an environment that has healthy boundaries. i find that my emotional boundaries are healthier in person than they were on the internet.

i get a lot out of interpersonal interaction that i don't get on from the internet. the internet is great for talking about things intellectually. it just doesn't meet my social needs, though. i found this to be... particularly challenging during covid, when my in-person ability to socialize was curtailed severely.

i have a lot of friends that aren't local, and i keep up with them through the internet. a lot of times i want to express myself in writing, and the internet is good for that. my level of engagement with the public internet is _minimal_, though. this is the only place i post to on the public internet. i like the people, of course, but also, this place has healthy boundaries and isn't overwhelming in scale.

maybe i could get a gram and make it friends-only. maybe i'll do that at some point. that seems to be the way everybody i know does it. honestly not having a gram is negatively impacting my dating life.

Is it weird to want to get to know someone on sm before you meet them in person?

I have at least two friendships that are pretty solid where I met the person on social media, live within ten miles of them, and still have yet to meet them in real life. one of them that's lasted about 10 years.

as far as why we haven't met up, just hasn't happened.

ever since I was 11 and started emailing some random dude from a newsgroup about model rockets (who I assumed was also 11 like me) I wondered about this very thing. like how cool would it be to make an actual friend from the internet. I did randomly meet a person from ILX once and it was pretty weird. not because of the person in question (he was very chill and easy to talk to) but because they potentially could know you better than your IRL friends in a lot of ways. I reveal a lot of stuff on here that I just never talk about IRL. not because it's private or embarrassing but because I don't think anyone else really gives a fuck. in fact it's not until recently that I realized I had never said the word "Autechre" out loud before.

long story, but pretty much my whole life is the way it is because of a good friendship with a guy I met from IRC in the 90s.

honestly not having a gram is negatively impacting my dating life.

tale as old as time

honestly not having a gram is negatively impacting my dating life.

tale as old as time

― bae (sic)

one of the best things about social media is people being able to pick up on my puns :)

I realized I had never said the word "Autechre" out loud before.

how did you say it? this happened with a friend the other day. he said "...uh...autech-ruh" and then soon afterward, when i was speaking, i said "autekker"