Why do I continue to post on social media?

Some time ago, not that long ago, I made a post on my Mastodon account about feeling a sense of fear that social media itself is the true Torment Nexus; that its objective of attempting to connect people was one that would lead us to a failure state that we are not anticipating. I want to expand on that a bit more. The initial comment was a bit tongue-in-cheek; meant to stoke a bit of conversation about how and why people use social media. I've been on these spaces for a tremendous chunk of my life; from the early part of my high school life to today. It helped me find work, make friends I couldn't imagine my life without and grow my sense of understanding at speeds and depth I couldn't have imagined. Reading The Victorian Internet gave me a sense of relation to the people who used these systems to stay in touch with family and extend their sense of self beyond their local region. However, I think that, for some time, I kept ignoring how the flatness of social media has made it hard for me to find this to be something I can see as sustainable in the lines of work that I find myself in today and how I'd like to continue to express myself online.

If you want to broadcast a message and not have to rely on the conventional approaches to publishing like through mainstream media, commercial social networks are your best bet; tied with the fact that one would need to have the social standings on these platforms such that it can gain traction. What you don't pay for in cost to access to publishing outlets, you have to muster in the inverse online. The advent of open social networks, which have existed since the commercialization of the Internet, has broken this down a bit more where stronger affinity groups can engage one another (at the least) and support folks (at the most) when it comes to it. The thing about these groups is that they fall into the same issues of access and safety that has plagued global communication networks since their inception: the favorable voice. We can take the example of Rosa Parks, a woman who fought for equitable access on municipal services and the intentional selection and bolstering of her position over Claudette Colvin, a darker-skinned woman who wasn't as palpable to the religious groups who were at the forefront of nonviolent activism at the time. The fact that, despite Colvin being the effective pioneer in the space, the need to make the person more "approachable" to their target audiences (which were white conservatives, liberals and the ilk) shows how the means of controlling the narrative is at the whim of the oppressing (or dominant party) versus those who are delivering it.

Her example, though a larger one, is how I think of interactions on the Fediverse (and in pockets of the ATmosphere due the more algorithmic warping of the space) and how they tend to devolve. Who's the ideal face to have in conversation? Who's more tangible for those who actively dismiss these more difficult conversations? How much do we need to concede from our baseline stances in order to have these folks move a manometer towards progress (only to see them revert a meter in the opposite direction)? Those questions are societal ones, answerable by having better conversations about the kind of culture one wants to foster online with the folks they come across online. Social media platforms (as opposed to a social network) optimizes around "brand building". Such an entity requires constant devotion of attention and energy to validate its experience and to reinforce its value. For example, if all of the people who consume and publish news were to leave Twitter at the same time, it'd become less useful in its utility for the people who keep it running (advertisers and investors). Despite the rhetoric of it being a Nazi bar, it's still the place where a tremendous amount of people of color congregate and communicate. This is because of the lock-in of the "social graph" it's produced; effectively turning every user of its platform into a product (for advertising or otherwise). This is also why BlueSky, as a platform, has managed to successfully capture some of the more vocal folks; because of the social capital and validation of seeing the former CEO of Twitter back it, then a lot of respectable faces in the tech and entertainment space move to it (be it for aestheticism or more advanced control of one's audience). My personal canary for this are the places that Black journalists tend to move to. They're not an overwhelming force in the Fediverse, and it's not because it's an elephant. It's for a lot of reasons that have been beaten to near death (the lack of interest from Mastodon's steering team to optimize moderation tools at the core, making it easier for publishing outlets to understand their reach, et al) that are clearly not on the ideological roadmap (outside of the newest change for showing attribution information for links). A lot of social capital has been built around keeping that advertising social network (Twitter) around; same with Facebook. And because of the Western fixation on celebrity culture from politics to entertainment, that's not going to change without a cultural revolution that has people demanding alternatives. Currently, no one outside of those who have strong ideological convictions (myself included) want something like that. In fact, the most "culturally promiment" thing I've seen in my unscientific scan of timelines is the want for more mirroring of conventional social media platforms in terms of putting things like sports, entertainment and the ilk in the forefront.

Nowadays, I post into social media for reach. Using platforms like Threads, Twitter and Instagram; I aim to attract and pull like-minded people towards the things I find of interest and importance. Yes, there are folks who I've built up relationships with over time and I do communicate with them over these platforms. But as most of the landscape for social media has been optimized towards the influencer era of the Internet, the "Internet relationships" have changed (if it's not in favor of one's corporate stance, then distance is made; for example). This impacts everyone who builds up any sort of following. You can do what you think combats it and in doing so, create a bit of a pulpit of folks who will only know you through that lens. In turn, these followers will defend every action you make in that path. A moment of realization of this was after I wrote a piece about Aral Balkan's self-miscategorization of race and thin advocacy around accessibility in the open source community. The speed at which folks decided to come to me in response to his reply that selectively quoted my points to bolster his sense of victimhood while completely ignoring everything else written mirrors a microcosm of what's commonly known as "stan culture". It doesn't require depth; just loyalty. It's as cheap of an action (and as rewarding) as replying to a micro blog or boosting one's point. It can put more pressure on the stanee to not fail as it comes a level of social death. But in the open social Web, this gets more intense as there's less people for this to be built around and it leans to the creation of even more factions and friction. One good example is the (unnecessary) defense of folks like Richard Stallman and his seemingly pedophile-apologetic content. By folks choosing to fixate on a person over the ideals of what brought that person to notoriety, we choke community growth and evolution of thought for the sake of one person. We don't even properly allow these people to work on changing because the defenders of it reinforce the problematic logic as good! There's no real way to "correct" this behavior on social media; you're expecting thousands of strangers of different socioeconomic standings, developments, emotional welfares and axis of visibility to engage one another over a platform that's optimized for neutral interpretation by default; it's not just wrong, it's unfair to everyone involved.

This is making me reassess what I'm aiming to "get out" of social media. I'm choosing to treat it as it is; a machine of marketing that has been built as the such and doesn't seem to be changing pending a cultural shift/revolution. It can easily devolve into a silent shouting match and that doesn't help anyone involved. This is influencing my choice to ramp up my personal blogging, which I'm not totally sure can help. I can be selective about how I engage in a way that most social networks either explicitly prohibit or don't support; like limiting who I choose to platform on my own site or even choose to read. My local feed reader is where I keep longer form prose for reading and I'm working to keep social network clients only on my laptop; to make it easier to escape from scrolling mindlessly. I have things I want to get out into the world that are meaningful to me and I resent, at times, the time I'd spend rolling down a feed when I could have spent it working on that instead, or going for a walk, or playing with my dog, calling a friend, writing a letter, playing a video game. So many things that I lose because I decided to hit reply.

No longer.

> Individuals are constantly surrounded by _potentially meaningful_ information; however, their ability to use this
> information is consistently constrained by cognitive systems that are capable of attending to and processing only
> a small amount of the information available at any given time. This capacity limit shapes a wide range of
> behaviors, from _in-the-moment decision-making strategies_ and performances to long-term goal pursuit and
> self-regulation.

What is it that we're building, encouraging and subscribing the world to?