At the end of 2022, I decided to stop using Twitter. I hadn't really thought much about how social media had shaped a large part of my 20s and 30s until then. Before Twitter, there was AOL Instant Messenger. We'd post mopey statuses for our friends to see, but otherwise, it was more like texting. The key difference was that, in those early days, we mostly interacted with people we already knew -- friends from school, work, or other in-person experiences.

Social media changed that. It lowered the bar for what we considered a "friend" by redefining it as "a profile online that I follow," rather than the deeper meaning of mutual respect and affection between two people. Occasionally, our online connections blossomed into real friendships, and I'm grateful for that. There are many people I now consider close friends whom I would never have met without the advent of social media.

The Golden Age of Social Media -- if there ever was one -- was likely around 2007. MySpace was still around, Twitter was growing rapidly without advertisers, Facebook was mostly a college-exclusive network, and the YouTube comment section was not yet a toxic wasteland. Flickr was the go-to platform for photo sharing, before Instagram and their over-use of sepia tone filters took over. Smartphones weren't as ubiquitous, so we only interacted with these platforms when we were in front of a computer. This meant we weren't yet conditioned to check our phones compulsively or engage in endless doom-scrolling. Your aunt or uncle's racist/sexist/bigoted political rants were confined to chain emails you would delete without even opening.

Before social media, there were blogs.

I've had a personal website since 2001 because UT Martin gave every student a Unix login and a public home directory.[1] I briefly migrated it elsewhere before it finally landed here in 2007. Back then, I wrote mundane day-to-day posts that today would likely be condensed into 140-character Twitter updates. Over time, social media gradually drained the energy from personal blogging.

Blogs still exist, of course, but they're no longer what they once were. In the early days, blogging was mostly the domain of the tech-savvy. You wouldn't have started a blog if you didn't know HTML, or weren't willing to learn it by screwing up a lot. Platforms like Blogger and TypePad later made blogging more accessible, but for a long time, blogs were the Internet's primary medium for self-expression. Ordinary people wrote about anything and everything, and upstart blogs clashed with traditional media outlets for press credentials. It was fun to watch.

If 2007 was the golden age for social media, the 2020 was likely its nadir.[2] The presidential campaigns of 2008 and 2012 showcased the power of online organizing. But in 2016, we saw how that power could backfire, with disinformation flooding social media from overseas. By 2020, it had become downright dangerous. Misleading content spread faster than the coronavirus itself, and in some cases, it cost people their lives.

Content moderation became a hot-button issue, as social media companies weighed the pressure of advertisers against growing calls for accountability.[3] Years of grandstanding in Congress and the White House put these companies on the defensive. Most of their decisions seemed aimed at placating loud voices to avoid financial retribution, rather than upholding any firm principles. It is ironic that they dumped the department called "trust and safety", abandoning both concepts in the process.

Twitter's acquisition in 2022 was a stark reminder that the "public square" we thought we were participating in never really belonged to the public at all. After 15+ years of building a community on the platform, I deleted every post, every like, and every link that pointed to it that I controlled. I kept a copy of my data as a memento of the handful of times I made a joke that amused a couple hundred people. I do miss that time.[4]

I had cleaned all of my posts off Facebook long before this week's latest acquiescence to their worst impulses. 'll probably do the same with Instagram at some point. The only reason I still have a Threads account is to read others' posts. In fact, that's why I keep most social media accounts -- to stay updated on what my friends are up to, until they're ready to leave, too. That, and because many restaurants now post their current hours or daily specials exclusively on Instagram or Facebook.[5]

If I could wave a magic wand, I'd bring back the era of blogs and webrings. Unfortunately, I don't think that will ever happen. Social media provides an addictive dopamine hit -- whether it's from someone reacting to your post or from scrolling endlessly to find something interesting. I enjoy using Mastodon via my personal instance, but I don't expect it will ever grow to a critical mass like Twitter.

Maybe that's just fine. We should blog more anyway.

  1. This doesn't appear to be a service offered by the university anymore, which is a shame. ↩︎

  2. I'm referring to its prestige here rather than popularity; The active daily users metric across the platforms is still sky high. ↩︎

  3. We now know which side was always going to win a battle between principles and profit. ↩︎

  4. Following along with the live-tweeting of a hockey game or other cultural event was usually more entertaining than the event itself. ↩︎

  5. It's insane to me how many restaurants don't have a website at all. ↩︎