Ephemeral social media sucks

posted by Jeff | Thursday, January 24, 2019, 9:33 PM | comments: 0

My overall social media consumption has dropped off sharply in the last year. As I've mentioned before, I find myself using it as a historical record for myself more than anything else. But what I loathe the most is the ephemeral stuff.

Last night I knew there were some cool things that our local theater put up on Instagram as stories, really great backstage stuff during Hamilton. I'd like to see it again, or show it to Diana, but it's gone. It no longer exists. Even if it did exist, I couldn't easily point someone to it. I rarely look at stories on Instagram, because it's too much of a time investment, and not as efficient as scrolling.

Let's be real: If Snapchat wasn't a thing, Facebook/Instagram would have never added this silly feature. "It's what the kids are doing," cool, but they're still not using Facebook. And Snapchat will circle the drain and die, it's just a question of when. They've had a revolving door of executives, their user growth has slowed to a crawl and they're running nine-figure negative cash flow every quarter (and hey, that's down from $2 billion). And WTF are you really selling teenagers?

The other thing is that frankly I'm suspect of anything you're willing to post in public that you aren't really willing to commit to. What you're saying is, "This moment isn't valuable enough to keep," and that speaks to how superficial social media can be. I'm not saying it's all like that (I've seen plenty of great sharing about everything from eating disorders to woodworking), but how many times do you have to show yourself making a duck face over a plate of sushi.

I'm probably just being a hater, or I really am getting into midlife and not "getting it."


Comments

No comments yet.


Post your comment: