Never before has being online been more frustrating than in 2024. While it has long been clear that monetization has turned social media into a different beast, this year in particular has been a turning point. Faced with endless streams of content designed to catch viewers' eyes, advertisements that can be bought at every turn, artificial intelligence and the unrelenting opinions of strangers, I recently realized that despite the fact that I usually use these apps, I don't really enjoy them. any of them is greater.
Take Instagram. I open the application and am greeted with an advertisement for a bidet. I start scrolling. Between each of the first three posts, there are different ads at the top of my feed: underwear, squat shorts, shoes from a brand that sells products that appear to be shipped from AliExpress at a premium. Then, luckily, two memes in a row. I tell funny stories to one of my five friends in a way that feels obligatory. After that, another ad, and then a bunch of seemingly untargeted videos from accounts I don’t even follow. Minutes pass before I come across a message from someone I know in real life. Oh yeah, it's time to turn off suggested posts again, which I have to do every 30 days or else my feed will be filled with random crap.
But before I have a chance to do so, I am distracted by a video of a cat watching The Grinch. Then there was a shot of a guy with a tiny Chihuahua in his coat pocket. Curiosity gets the better of me and I open the comments where people angrily write that the dog must be choking. Oh no. I move on to the next video, a video I've seen several times before, of a rooster marching around in his pants. Downstairs everyone is arguing about whether it is cruel to put pants on a chicken. This? Next is a video of a girl doing makeup, where men comment that this could be considered catfishing. Deep breath. I realize that 30 minutes have somehow passed and I close Instagram, now in a worse mood than when I opened it. I'll be sure to come back in about an hour, rinse and repeat.
This isn't just an Instagram problem. On TikTok (which very soon), with the For You page I've gotten a pretty good handle on the content and the presence of toxic commenters is minimal, but every other post is either sponsored or promoting a product from the TikTok store. And it's all too easy to get caught up in the eternal scroll. I often avoid opening an app altogether just because I know I'll end up stuck there longer than I'd like, browsing through nothing done by people I don't know and will never know. But it still happens more often than I'd like to admit.
These days, it seems like every gathering place on the Internet is so crowded with content competing for and successfully capturing our attention or trying to sell us something that there is almost no room for the “social” element of social media. Instead, we are pushed into different corners to stare alone at the glowing boxes in our hands.
Respectively, announced in late November that its Word of 2024 is “brain rot,” a term that expresses the supposed consequences of countless hours spent online consuming nonsense. It is no less appropriate that Australia chose “enshitification,” which describes how the platforms and products we love are eroded over time as the companies behind them chase profit. (It was also Word of the year 2023). Social media platforms were theoretically built around ideas of friendship and connection, but what happens on them today couldn't be further from genuine human interaction.
Facebook – if you still have an account – might be the place you'd go if you wanted Really wanted to see updates from family and other people you know in real life, but its user interface is so cluttered with recommended videos and products that it feels unusable. Twitter, where it was once fun to follow lively discussions about important events or fandom happenings, no longer exists, and X, its new form under Elon Musk, .
On the other hand, Threads, a fork of Instagram and Meta's answer to Twitter/X, and it quickly became a hot spot for copy-and-paste bait, a problem so bad that . The Threads team is apparently “working to get things under control,” but I still can't scroll through the For You feed without seeing a dozen posts that are either just regurgitated memes masquerading as original thoughts , or questions to the masses. which are created to interfere with the boiler. The same feed is dominated by viral videos copied from other authors without attribution, as well as pop culture commentary, which almost always boils down to sex and genderism. I often walk away from Threads feeling the need to go scream in the field.
There are no private messages on Threads, which means all conversations happen publicly. This on searchable topics in November, but these topic pages are typically still riddled with clickbait-style posts, just more topic-specific versions. This meant that until now it was quite difficult to find communities to truly connect with. It all seems so impersonal.
It doesn't help that the Next Topics feed isn't currently the default view, and there's no way to change that (). And in the end it's doesn't include that many people I actually know, especially outside of the media industry. The same goes for social networks like Mastodon and Bluesky, which are much less populated but have a more communal atmosphere. Visiting these platforms is like walking into a room full of people who know each other very well and realizing that you are the odd one out. But at least Bluesky or Mastodon aren't thinly veiled shopping experiences. (There are no threads at the moment either, but ).
Perhaps it's just burnout in an age of over-consumption, but lately I've found myself dreaming of a place on the internet that's both attractive and Human. I'm sure I'm not alone. In recent years we have seen the emergence of alternative social apps such as BeReal, Hive and members reminiscent of Myspace, SpaceHey and all aimed at bringing character and interpersonal connections back to social media. But no one has cracked the code for sustainable mass adoption. Discord and even Reddit serve some of the same needs between people, but they have more in common with the prototypical chat rooms and social media forums than with the sites that emerged during the rise of social media.
Meanwhile, Meta is increasingly incorporating AI into its applications. Just this summer we got chatbot developer AI Studio, which Meta touted not only as a way for users to create AI characters, but also as “creators creating AI as an extension of themselves to attract more fans.” Instead of talking to your real friends or making new ones around shared interests, you can deepen your parasocial relationships with celebrities, influencers, and fictional characters by chatting with AI versions of them. Or choose from several AI girlfriends that can now be found in your private messages menu. I'm afraid we've completely lost the plot.
I started checking Tumblr again and again, if only to see a less chaotic, more curated feed and to enjoy the reminder of how fun customization can be. Several friends have mentioned doing the same. But given the platform and him It's not exactly an online oasis either. As if on cue, I was recently served it seemed incredibly apt during my evening scrolling: “We didn’t get any better. the rest of the Internet just got worse.”