Just listened to this essay in my car with Substack's AI tool. It was a surreal experience.
Like you, I joined Facebook when it was cool and new. At some point - I don't really remember when - I also dropped off.
I had to reactivate my account other day to buy my kids a bumper pool table on Facebook marketplace. I look great in my 26-year old profile pic. Ironically, Facebook thought I was a hacker or something and has since locked me out because of suspicious activity. Nonetheless, I successfully purchased the bumper pool table.
I think FB, well actually the Internet in general, is just mirroring the ultimate fate of the Universe. Scattering in all directions, occasional implosions and starbursts, sites and services winking out of sight of one another, eventual heat death.
Does kinda make one wonder what comes after that point, though. If FB et al. have just been passive substitutes for actual face-to-face social interaction, maybe there could be ACTIVE substitutes around the corner? (And yeah, I know, eventually and inevitably they'll enshittify, too.)
I choose to believe that the end result of social media heat death — so long as it comes before the ACTUAL heat death of the universe — is smaller scale networks, whether digital or otherwise. On some level whatever FB used to provide has been reborn in my group texts, which run the gamut on both subject matter and intimacy. We need that connection! And I think, in fits and starts, we’ll always find it (even if Silicon Valley is literally incentivized to destroy it).
Just listened to this essay in my car with Substack's AI tool. It was a surreal experience.
Like you, I joined Facebook when it was cool and new. At some point - I don't really remember when - I also dropped off.
I had to reactivate my account other day to buy my kids a bumper pool table on Facebook marketplace. I look great in my 26-year old profile pic. Ironically, Facebook thought I was a hacker or something and has since locked me out because of suspicious activity. Nonetheless, I successfully purchased the bumper pool table.
I don’t even wanna think about how AI is trying to bring these words to life!
Kids’ pool table / Facebook thinks I’m a hacker is like a ready-made Moth monologue, you’ll kill it
I think FB, well actually the Internet in general, is just mirroring the ultimate fate of the Universe. Scattering in all directions, occasional implosions and starbursts, sites and services winking out of sight of one another, eventual heat death.
Does kinda make one wonder what comes after that point, though. If FB et al. have just been passive substitutes for actual face-to-face social interaction, maybe there could be ACTIVE substitutes around the corner? (And yeah, I know, eventually and inevitably they'll enshittify, too.)
I choose to believe that the end result of social media heat death — so long as it comes before the ACTUAL heat death of the universe — is smaller scale networks, whether digital or otherwise. On some level whatever FB used to provide has been reborn in my group texts, which run the gamut on both subject matter and intimacy. We need that connection! And I think, in fits and starts, we’ll always find it (even if Silicon Valley is literally incentivized to destroy it).