Social Media for Unlike-Minded People
At this point, I think a lot of people share the view that social media has failed in its original stated goal of connecting people. Or at least as most of us understood that to mean at the time. ;)
In fairness, in the beginning things were different. The experience with these platforms became worse every year and especially over the past 7 to 10 years.
Although I think this is true for all mainstream social media platforms - let's just look at Facebook as a specific example.
In my personal experience (including witnessing the same experiences by other people), instead of finding like-minded people... the more time passed... the more likely it was that I would encounter people who were anything but like-minded.
There is so much talk about people on social media living in "echo chambers" and in my experience that is something that is just made up.
In fact, it is a very stupid term. The very natural desire and act of people seeking to connect with other like-minded people was twisted to be viewed as a bad thing. These were people who now only wanted to be in an "echo chamber".
And herein lies the fundamental biggest flaw with social media in my opinion. The flaw is that any and every person can react to content.
Normally, I would be all for it because I generally think more freedom and less restriction is better than the opposite of less freedom and more restriction.
However, intent matters. And the intent that drives so much of the "interaction" defeats the whole point of using social media for probably the vast majority of people. Certainly for people like myself.
For "content creators" who only care about "reach", "time on page", "reaction count", etc then sure it is great for them.
It is great for advertisers and authoritarians when Facebook is continually building a database of huge profiles on users "friends & acquaintances", their political leaning, religious beliefs, mapping their location as they use Meta apps, tracking check-in activity showing places they have been (and might go to again) and so forth.
Who is it not great for?
The normal users. The people like myself who are just trying to share my thoughts & experiences and read the same from other people who just so happen to be... like-minded!
Comments are generally left on for those who are like-minded to share their own experiences. BUT it is just as likely, sometimes more likely, that people (including family & "friends") comment only to disagree rather than share any kind of similar thinking or experiences.
Although there is certainly value in discussion of differences in views... it becomes too much when it is a constant thing.
Anything, even a very good thing, can become a bad thing if it becomes excessive.
Not every post needs comments challenging the views in that post or criticizing the poster.
Nor do we need constant arguments in the comments between two very different "sides" - and often completely unrelated to the topic of the post itself!
I came to the conclusion social media is doing more to create conflict than it is to bring like-minded people together.
This is my first post here and I guess the rant is a sort of intro as to one of the big reasons why I looked for a solution and ended up here.
Actually, I view this as positive because there was a problem and I found a solution to it (THANKS to Herman for creating Bear Blog). And others have done the same.
We CAN break free from the extremes these mainstream social media platforms have fueled. :)