Baking Soda: noun

Informal term for social media notifications which alert user to:

Makes the somewhat-crass analogy that just as drug dealers "step on" their product with baking soda(making it less potent but maximizing profits), so too do social media companies dilute person-to-person socialization with "fluff" such as ads and other content.

Case Study: LinkedIn (not the worst of them!)

My Last Five (non-spam) Linked-In messages:

I am never going to stop checking my linkedIn messages. As far as linkedIn is concerned, I am "addicted" to DMs.

Which means once a week or so for the rest of my life I'm going to be see a little red dot and think, "Oh I think someone is reaching out to me" only then to be served stuff like this:

Served to me by a company who's idea of "for me" is shit like this:

More Baking Soda

I am getting mad as I write this, which tells me it's time to stop.

I really don't blame any individuals. I've met people who work at Meta. They've been nice. But it's just crazy, the state of cyberspace in 2025. How did we get here? How do we get out?

I don't really know what I'm doing with this format, but I have been taking screenshots over the past two weeks whenever I see something outrageously shit on a social platform. Here's some of what's been served to me: