#glossy-mags — Public Fediverse posts

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Many years ago I liked to get mags. I would look at the choice of mags every time I was in a magazine shop. I would even buy some every so often. Eventually I stopped I stopped, not because my desire to get mags was gone, but because the return on investment imploded.

You would buy a mag, flick through it, read a few articles, and in the process realise that more than half of the mag wa filled with adverts. In effect you’re paying for a magazine but you’re paying for more ads than content. I’d ratheer have a thinner mag, with more actual content than a mag filled with ads.

I mention this because Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok have been awful, with spam, in the last two days. Either the people I “follow” have stopped posting or advertising has become especially agressive.

On FB it’s a lot of junk posts. It’s spam rather than thought out, and researched post. The algorithms are pushing a tremendous amount of junk. With TikTok it’s nothing but footage of Switzerland flooded and Football. If I’m flicking through at 2200 I’m not looking for either of those types of content. I aggressively said “not interested”, especially to the football.

## Noisy Algorithms

Social media algorithms, rather than being intelligent, are dumb. They look at the lowest common denominator, without looking at the context of individual users, so if a football event takes place, then everyone on social media is bludgeoned with the content.

Not everyone wants to see football contennt.

With Facebook I have been flooded by user generated crap by people I don’t follow. Twitter has the same problem. twitter, Facebook and Instagram have forgotten that social media is about following who we chose to follow. The entire purpose of social media is to create a niche, a bubble, for us to have a community, for conversations, laughter and fun. We can’t have that if the “pot de colle” influencers insert themselves so aggressively into our timelines that we find it impossible to see the content we chose to follow.

## Self Curated Social Media is Over

That’s what social media is about. Choice. Self-curation and curation. The more junk we see, the less sticky social media become. I could finally break my twitter habit not because I wanted to, but because I no longer had any engagement, or conversations.

## The Forgotten Niche

Social media was about community. It was about a group of people with common interests coming together to have a chat. When social media was about real life communitiess, rather than algorithms it was a pleasure to use, because the more time you invested, the more you got out of it.

Twitter, FB, IG and TikTok no longer provides with a Return on Investment of the time they spend on social media. That’s why FB has Whatsapp, to ensure that when we flee Facebook we’re still stuck on an FB product. Meta is Facebook, so I will never call Facebook Meta.

## A Different Era

In the days of geocities, Myspace and other communities we slid from one community to the other, following the new and interesting communities. Now we get pushed off of one site, and then another. We were pushed off of Twitter, by the new owners, we were pushed off of IG as the level of adverts and pushed content increased. We were pushed off of Twitter by the rising amount of trolls, and spam.

We are now pushed off of FB by the quantity of noise, and from TikTok by the algorithms that suggest the wrong content at the wrong time of day.

## Conclusion

Social media has to give something back to its users. If it does not then it becomes a waste of time. TikTok could have been fantastic if it helped build friendships. IG was fantastic when it was about friends sharing photographs. FB was great until zynga killed conversation. In the last two days FB has been especially bad. It has become unusable.

I looked at my timeline, the stuff I had shared, over a few days and I was horrified at how junky it was. I think the time for me to give up on FB is here.

I think that the time has come for children, and adults, to stop using social media. Social media was a grand experiment but I think we should revert to social networks.

https://www.main-vision.com/richard/blog/of-glossy-mags-and-social-media/

#content #glossyMags #socialMedia #spam #value

Reading Time: 3 minutesTable of Contents

1. Twitter and People Selling Crap
2. It’s not the Owner, But The Spam
3. A Feeling of Being Used
4. The Apathy of Mastodon
5. Networking for Projects
6. A Reminder
7. And Finally

Recently I spent time on Twitter and Facebook and I was reminded of that horrible feeling you get when you’re looking for posts and tweets by friends, to interact with, and see crappy adverts instead. Imagine if you walked into a pub or conference and instead of having personal conversations you were harassed by marketers rather than human beings looking for a human connection.

The reason I dumped FaceBook and then Instagram is that I got tired of not only feeling that I wa wasting my time, whilst making myself feel lonelier, but on top of that someone else was making a profit from me being lost in the time wasting corporate social media landscape.

Twitter and People Selling Crap

Most of the stuff that is being sold via Twitter ads is crap now. You look and it’s con men trying to sell cons, from cryptocurrency, to privacy, to other crap. It’s ironic that they would sell this crap in a place where anyone with any decency, would no longer use.

It’s not the Owner, But The Spam

Of course it bother me that Facebook and Twitter are owned anc controlled by immoral people, and I could look beyond that, if I could find pleasant conversations, rather than see ads. What gets to me about social media is that it’s about making money for people that don’t value us as human beings. That’s why I switched to blogging, rather than social media. With blogging I might devote an hour to per day, but rather than make money for people who see me as an addict, I give people a reason to surf to my website. I also get to explore ideas in the process.

A Feeling of Being Used

Several times I have looked through Facebook, Instagram and Twitter timelines but I quickly become demoralised by the ads, the reminders of what my life isn’t and more. It’s not that people are using Facebook and Instagram to converse, they’re using it to broadcast. No one is listening. Everyone is being made invisible by the algorithms, and ignored by those that do see posts. For so little engagement I can write blog posts.

The Apathy of Mastodon

Two days ago noise pollution was making my afternoon hell, and I said so on social media. Rather than empathy though, I found apathy. The beauty of social media is that empathy doesn’t cost anything, whereas apathy can ruin someone’s experience. If we come to social media it’s to find empathy, or at the very least vent, and be ignored.

Networking for Projects

I see people write about using Twitter to make money from the content they create. That’s the wrong attitude. You should be making contacts to work on projects with people, rather than making money from social media. Too many people are utilitarian about social media, which is why it becomes a waste of time for human beings. When everyone is trying to sell, then no one is conversing, and without conversation a blog post would have the same impact, without enriching the wrong people.

A Reminder

I was reminded, while writing this blog post that the reason I became tired with Twitter is that people use it, and the community, rather than participate within it. People are busy promoting themselves and their ideas, without engaging, without investing time in friendships and more. The same people are on Mastodon and the Fediverse.

And Finally

There is a difference between what I want social networks to be, and what others want social networks to be. I will never find social networks that achieve what I want because society labels as social people on the web as addicts, and corporate social media profit from wasting our time in the hope that we will see more ads. I don’t use Facebook for moral reasons. The issue is that it has a monopoly so I am isolated, for not using Facebook.

Today Twitter feels just like Instagram. I know that if I spend too much time on Twitter it will become toxic, so I know I need to moderate how I use it.

Althought the Fediverse is an interesting project I think that the community is still weak. I can go for hours without my timeline refreshing, and when I do engage I am either trolled or ignored.

Some toots did well, but mostly likes and re-shares rather than conversations. What I want to find are conversations.

#adverts #glossy-mags #social-media #wasted-time

https://blog.main-vision.com/social-media-glossy-magazines-via-facebook-and-twitter/