Are You Cut Out for Social Media?

AYCOFSM??

great band

in all seriousness though, no I am not, and I should have realized this the first time I told someone on USEnet I wished he was dead when I was 15

I'm a no too. ilx is as close as it gets for me

What’s our working definition of ‘social media’?

I know I have laid myself open to nothing but acronyms and emoticons and links to Chris Cillizza think-pieces.

lol

For me it would be Facebook and ILX, but that would extend to the other popular platforms people use--Twitter, Instagram, etc.

😎

j. is going to single-handedly kill this thread I worked very hard to conceptualize.

Voting something in-between.

was amateurist really popular? i think not

i mean that was his charm

such as it was

I tried to cozy up to him a few times early on but he was having none of it.

Maybe popular is the wrong word. I always felt like he was taken to be very thoughtful, but I couldn't get past the tone. Anyway, I don't want this to be about him--my point was that I sometimes share the thing that drove me up the wall.

I already know I will not join commercialized social media unless under compulsion of force majeure. No Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram, no Snapchat, no Tumblr, no TikTok, no Next Big Thing Everyone Uses, even if it turns my snoot into unicorns. It's bad enough being shadowed by Amazon & other retailers, and having an Android phone.

Thank you for existing, ILX and ilxors. This is a scene I can happily join without selling myself bit by bit. (see what I did there?)

I dont count ILX as "social media", nor most other forums, even Reddit. SM is more things like FB/Insta/Snapchat/Twitter.

So insofar as Ive always loved fora and blogging (Usenet, mailing lists, blogs/livejournal/ILX), I have always sat somewhere between bored despair and outright revulsion for the rest. I'm too old (SC/Insta), or I just Dont get it (Twitter).

I log on to twitter the most because I can refrain from posting and can be anonymous and it really feels like something I can make my own very easily, also it feels like a social leveler

then instagram where I can look at my friends' posts.

I can't bear to go into my facebook account these days, I’ve been thinking about why that happened, there was nothing particularly egregious about it in my experience, I guess I’m just embarrassed to share my experiences with people I barely know

it’s much better on ilx with people I don’t at all know tbh

I love some of tiktok

I can’t sh0t any of them successfully but I try now and then. I’ve been on a discord kick for a few weeks now, it’s ok I guess.

(xposts) Age is definitely part of it (I'm 58). I think back to arguments in fanzines...You had a month to temper your response. I remember one in particular, having to do, of all things, with Celine Dion (between two other people), and I thought, wow, that's a pretty nasty exchange. It would be a shadow of an echo of a blip today.

i'm basically just wishing happy birthdays on facebook. If I posted a photo more often I'd be more in line with the majority of major social media platform users. OP describing power users/vocal minority i think

i was pretty sure this thread was going to be about the 1975

OK, I guess I'll be the pro-social media guy.

I'm reasonably active on Twitter; I use it to post links to shit I've written, or when I have a new episode of my podcast going up, and then I engage with the people I follow. (I have many more followers than people I follow - basically, I'm on there to have conversations with people I think are interesting, and anyone who follows me is the audience for those conversations, is how I think about it.) I post a lot of jokes, making fun of bands and politicians and stupid news stories and whatnot.

On Instagram, I mostly post pictures of whatever I'm reading or listening to.

On Facebook, I post some of the same shit I post on Twitter, and I comment on a few friends' posts, but that's about it. I'm also part of a FB group which has occasionally yielded professional opportunities.

For about the last decade, I have also been the social media person for my employer or for clients. I actually find "speaking" in a professional (or academic) "voice" on Twitter, FB, Instagram and even LinkedIn to be interesting, and it can be a creative challenge at times.

social media was more or less fine before it was public facing. the combination of 1. real name/identity linked to account and 2. assumption that random people you've never met will (and should be) exposed to your content turned me away from it probably forever

twitter becoming a personal brand machine for people who don't need personal brands + a supposed networking tool for many has ruined a lot of the social world for me. i can't force my brain to adjust to it and if i had it my way i would live on an island where it doesn't exist. jobs requiring people to have a professional twitter presence is obviously very bad. i don't hesitate to say it's a general evil and i don't trust people who claim it's a social good.

facebook is sort of the same. i loved it when it felt like the posts i made were for my friends. then it blew up, suddenly you're adding everyone in your family and people you barely know and even though you aren't expected to open it up to complete strangers, it still becomes a performance where you must create a version of yourself for everyone you know. i stopped posting on it when that shift happened, it lost its intimacy.

uperson you have a much more neutral approach to this than I've been able to manage

I took my birth date off my facebook profile, felt really uncomfortable with the happy birthday posts. it's ridiculous i know but I didn't want to be in the spotlight like that

I think that encapsulates my aversion to facebook

i listed where I actually worked for a year and posted once innocently about a raise I got. somehow, it got back to my boss as someone squealed on me for posting that.

I then changed my profile to say my job was selling drugs

haven't had it happen since

I miss the days (2008) when Twitter was an amazing thing that beamed the thoughts of kristin hersh and kay hanley to my phone

98% of my Facebook "friends" are actually professional connections - other writers, music industry people, musicians, etc. The other 2% are a couple of my relatives, with whom I never engage, and one or two people I went to high school with. Every once in a great while, my brother will comment on something I post. But otherwise, it might as well be a LinkedIn page, with dumb jokes.

I took my birth date off my facebook profile, felt really uncomfortable with the happy birthday posts.

Did the same three or four years ago--uncomfortable, and also, the worst, cognizant of who posted and who didn't. (Probably got that from died-just-as-Facebook-was-invented grandmother; she used to always keep an exact count of how many Christmas cards she got each year.) I continue to post birthday wishes myself with most people I've actually met, with a secret system that indicates how I actually feel about you.

"from my"

the creepy thing about birthdate on FB is I've had friends die and their family members didn't know how to convert their profile into a Tribute page, so casual acquaintances who didn't know they died would write "happy birthday" posts on their wall. I don't mean the "remembering you today, my angel" type posts, but like they actually thought they were saying it to a living person.

it's also creepy to see FB accounts up 10+ years after the person died, and yet...someone my age that I didn't even know died of a heart attack in 2010 (she was a friend of a friend), profile is still there, still not a tribute page, page preserved in amber from 10 years ago.

Twitter is basically my newspaper, I'm on it a lot to know what's going on and be entertained, but I have no drive to cultivate my own online personality or brand.

I understand everyone's ambivalence about social media but I also wonder whether "I don't even have a Facebook account" might become the new "I don't even own a TV."

Personally I think some of it is good dumb fun. Plus a lot of stuff you can safely ignore and scroll past.
And it is all, ultimately, a voluntary leisure activity. It's only in your head to the extent you allow it to be.

I understand everyone's ambivalence about social media but I also wonder whether "I don't even have a Facebook account" might become the new "I don't even own a TV."

I think it already has. See also "i have an account but i don't even use it"

kristin hersh still beams thoughts at me!

i still have a facebook profile because i need it for work, but have stripped it of everything but my name. (xp lol) should probably change my photo now that neil peart has died

started using twitter because of work and have become pretty attached, but if i missed something, it's gone; i'm not a completist. the politics/trump stuff can become draining, but that's my fault for not better pruning my follows/filters

i'm on no others, which, i'm told, is where the real shit happens now. it's fine; i'm pretty old

85% of my relationships started one way or another on FB, usually because I'd start a convo online and then wouldn't feel so awkward talking to the person in public.

xp -- true! if only it was just that (these were the days when tweets were sent as SMS messages to your phone)

(at least in my circles, a lot of people have migrated to Discord, which feels kind of like a happy public vs. private medium)

jill hennessy liked one of my tweets so can't nobody tell me nothin about social media, forever

Yah the kids in my house are all on discord. It seems to be akin to a cross between a forum and a sort of IRC?

don't like the name discord, it sounds alt-right to me

the highlight of my Twitter career was zinging Prodigy of Mobb Deep and having him laugh at it

RIP

we've probably all been retweeted by Lil B at some point?

he linked back to the ILX thread ten years ago!

also Ripper Owens was upset that I dismissively mentioned his blip of a career in Judas Priest in less than illustrious terms

I open my Facebook app once a month and it - notifications that don't go away and don't lead to anything, marketplace showing me completely insane things if I click there, the entire video section is somewhere between offensively stupid and just offensive. Not sure how much is punishment for refusing to let it track me and how much is it just being completely broken.

Instagram somehow remains the least offensive platform despite Zuck's best efforts - just cute animals, music/bands, architecture, friends, even the algorithmic suggestion area is just more music and animal photos these days.

i think this is part of it for me, too— i started following some climbers and now it thinks i want all kinds of fitness content, including reels of teenagers giving advice on how to get shredded which is, frankly, fucking creepy. i am 40 (and quite fit thanks) and don’t need to see a 15 year old with a jacked physique.

yeah instagram is pretty solid right now, lots of good content if you’re into old nerdy stuff, pretty smooth ui/ue. not like facebook which last time I logged in had so many buttons and ads it felt like walking through a house full of tripwires.

there's no "following" or "friending" or whatever
and that is why i am still here

amen! & no avatars either.

i spend way more time on here than on FB or Instgrm. i probably only spend about 20+ minutes on both of those in a day. there isn't much for me. maybe some news about or a picture from a friend? that's about it. i share a lot of local business posts. i figure its a little subliminal advertising. maybe someone will go to Denny's Pantry on Federal Street and get the eggs benedict? who knows? i even share other record store posts about sales and new arrivals sometimes. karma points? i'll take all the help i can get.
but i will just read on here sometimes. read old posts. i think they call it "lurking". even old conversations on here are more interesting than anything i see on FB or Insta. FB seems to be a lot of long complaint threads. people bitching about town stuff. me ranting about leaf blowers. that kinda thing. i don't need a lot of it. i joined all the local town groups during covid and now i avoid them like...covid. so many bad vibes. and trolls. its painful.
i feel like there are way less people like ned on FB now. people willing to cheerfully share cool stuff to their friends on the daily. or maybe my friends on there became grouches. a lot of people i know don't post at all or left FB a long time ago.

i feel like there are way less people like ned on FB now.

I mean, I'll keep trying! But people bring to it what they do, I suppose.

you are good at it.

Too kind!

facebook - will only check in at my most desperate. sometimes feel slightly sad at losing contact with the #discourse in Portugal but it's not like I'm the only one who's left and logging on to find some posts by movie bros still having the same fucking arguments about representation is not endorsement and has wokeness gone too far quickly makes me retreat

instagram - default for casual browsing on phone, like if I have to wait for tea to be ready or something like that. almost never post unless I'm on holidays. missing out on a lot of stuff I'm sure because since it's used for casual bites I am very resistant to having sound on.

twitter - good riddance, def has improved my quality of life to be off it. will admit some fomo at the bluesky thread but I think fundamentally I don't think the medium is good whether it's owned by nazis or not.

tiktok - have it installed just to keep weirdos worried about the influence of the Chinese Communist Party on the West. found a few good accounts, but again I don't like sound on my phone, so...

Most worthwhile conversation I have is either on here or in one of a few discords.

I find Instagram unbearable now, it's basically just tiktok but also trying to trick me into clicking links to Threads

You can actually eliminate the parade of Threads links by closing the ones in your feed, and swiping left on the ones in your notifications (choose “disable these” from the menu beside the trash icon). They dwindle and eventually disappear.

I use Instagram for certain areas of interest (mainly food/restaurants). I mostly hate it though and would go back to 2008-2014 forums/blogs in a second if they still existed.

I am on some really nice Discords, both public and private, in the ttrpg space. Mostly chill people, mostly light moderation, zero tolerance for drama/hate.

Facebook just utter trash at this point.

I’m terrible about keeping my own promises on this stuff, but am going to at least TRY to take a little hiatus from here, FB, and IG for Thanksgiving week - focus on calling friends, cleaning the house, Christmas shopping, reading, watching movies.

It’s been interesting to watch everyone flock to Bluesky and it’s tempting! But ILX/FB/IG already feel like too much. Never belonged to Twitter.

Bluesky seems better than Musk-era Twitter, but no less likely to colonize my brain.

You don't have to choose between Bluesky and twitter.

Have both, like me.

I'm spending slightly more time on Bluesky these days but I'm keeping Twitter for now.

Another big difference between ILX and social media is that this is a fairly limited community. Especially these days, I can usually keep up with the threads I'm interested in pretty easily; there's not so many posts that I feel a compulsive urge to keep reading.

I know some people keep their social media communities small, too, by following a limited number of people. But there are always loads more on the platform that you *could* follow, and if you're the kind of person who is drawn to the act of mindlessly scrolling content, there are easy opportunities to do so.

I never used Twitter, will never use Bluesky, highly recommend everyone leave both as well as FB and IG for their own well-being.

My wellbeing is quite well, thanks. I get a lot of useful info on social media and it's essential to keeping track of friends. Like exercise or liquor, you gotta regulate it, though.

Another big difference between ILX and social media is that this is a fairly limited community

also feel a lot less performativity here. FB basically feels like pro wrestling kayfabe at this point, with a whole bunch of people presenting themselves in ways markedly different from how they are offline. Example: the dude who has branded himself as the most progressive, socially conscious person alive, who talked about this abusive person he finally cut out of his life after listening to his victims share their stories the last few years, leaving out the fact that he was told point blank 15 years ago by the victim herself that the dude raped her and he believed the abuser and mocked her (which his new friends who are fooled by his persona don't know as they didn't know him back then). shit like that is why I can't trust how anybody presents themselves.

People less afraid to show real warts here - at least now, that the pile-on era has more or less evaporated.

also in the spirit of honesty and showing warts it's time to admit that I'm actually not Neanderthal, but Denisovan. i'm sorry for lying.

who? i can't even keep up with ilx

it's a bad joke, Wiki Denisovan lol

dang i hope no one named Denis hears about this

too many people makes anything dumb.

it takes a lot to make a stew

Another big difference between ILX and social media is that this is a fairly limited community

there's also a promotion quality to insta/tiktok etc., like people trying to sell something, or sell themselves, or build a 'following', you obviously don't find that here. Insta also has the friend requests from girls in bikinis with six followers and zero posts, never understood what the angle is

i used my real name since day one on here to get writing work.

i was - still am i guess - a moderator on a facebook group called Now Playing. marc masters, who i really like and am fond of as a writer - started it and HE was the first person to bail from his group! haha. i haven't been on it for years. the bigger it got the dumber and meaner and stupider it got. but that's what you get for being public i guess. it sucked though. it started out so cool and ended up seattle during the height of grunge fever. nothing but steely dan posts 24/7. or similar.
anyway, that's my view of facebook for the most part. i get lots of pictures of pizzas and underwear when i go on there now. which is an improvement actually.

i haven't actually interacted with anything shown to me from "pizzas with threatening auras" but they must know i stop to look every time.

i actually sent two submissions to *pizzas with threatening auras* and they used them. because i get a lot of pictures of pizzas in my FB.

lol - thank you

I migrated to ILX after the collapse of first the XTC forum and then another one I was active on called Music(something…heads?brains?). Have always enjoyed the relatively high level of discourse & civility, helped partly by a small userbase and also the deliberately archaic format — a place like Hoffman just doesn’t have the same uh vibes. V grateful for this place & for y’all.

I maintain insta & fb mostly for business & band purposes (but also keep a humour-based insta account that I can endlessly scroll & watch comedy clips on). Have not deleted the band twitter, mainly cause I fear the account getting snapped up by some Russian or whatever. As if that will matter.

i've spent years posting low effort things on fb - and angry things! i used to be so angry - to a few likes from my pool of approx. 200 friends. i got into instagram when i started getting more serious about djing, but i never played by the rules and after a while it just felt like a slog. earlier this year i started adding friends from the recommendation list on fb because i was bored and it was fun to look at profiles. this kind of started serving me up to "looking for masc" type gay men, i posted one of my best thirsty selfies a few days ago and now there's just a steady stream of friend requests every day - literally all of them from gay men. the photo has by far the most ever likes i've ever received during my 20+ years on socials. i thought it would be fun, and it was for a second, but now i just want to turn it off - i took a nice break from fb over the weekend. it feels like more of a trap than ever. overstimulating with no substantive reward, preying on every insecurity under the sun. i think leaning into it even more and trying to turn social media into something that pays me a little would be a nightmare. i think for the first time i'm really realizing that anything that requires me to use social media more than i already do is not where i need to go.

post the photo!!!!

lol anyone on ilx who may have genuine interest in seeing it probably already has. it's just me on a run with my shirt off from a low angle for max moobage.

Stop teasing.

i've spent years posting low effort things on fb - and angry things! i used to be so angry - to a few likes from my pool of approx. 200 friends. i got into instagram when i started getting more serious about djing, but i never played by the rules and after a while it just felt like a slog. earlier this year i started adding friends from the recommendation list on fb because i was bored and it was fun to look at profiles. this kind of started serving me up to "looking for masc" type gay men, i posted one of my best thirsty selfies a few days ago and now there's just a steady stream of friend requests every day - literally all of them from gay men. the photo has by far the most ever likes i've ever received during my 20+ years on socials. i thought it would be fun, and it was for a second, but now i just want to turn it off - i took a nice break from fb over the weekend. it feels like more of a trap than ever. overstimulating with no substantive reward, preying on every insecurity under the sun. i think leaning into it even more and trying to turn social media into something that pays me a little would be a nightmare. i think for the first time i'm really realizing that anything that requires me to use social media more than i already do is not where i need to go.

― five six seven, eight nine ten, begin (map)

super interesting to hear that perspective, i finally got on bsky and posted a transition timeline of myself as a comment on the timeline of a popular poster who had just posted her own timeline. i got over 100 likes and so many compliments. i was always afraid to show myself on social media because i thought people would just say transphobic shit, like that i was a disgusting man or whatever trash, or they'd use it to doxx and harass me. i didn't realize how affirming and validating social media could be.

the main thing is that i'm old and out of touch, lol. after not having used public social media since 2017, i just have no idea how to interact with people.

(thought i posted this already, maybe i just posted it to the wrong thread :( )

Stop teasing.

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, May 19, 2025 7:59 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

;)

https://scontent.fslc3-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/495646364_10162624872487720_8965085198464855760_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=6ee11a&_nc_ohc=0VaMIguCcNsQ7kNvwH6SC9W&_nc_oc=AdmqLNhgt7B7l05WNecUEQGNTVSM3ATa48ern1LmifHnosYwaFtS5Q17UydLXJO_Xlc&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent.fslc3-1.fna&_nc_gid=0Ro40fTZNEHDMPmezO-wtg&oh=00_AfLPXGO4JACR2Zd8tyo8TmQCqIhPf3930WtuRzkS8Nd33A&oe=68340436

I've been having to go to Facebook to search a couple of groups for information, I'm not sure I've seen a post from an actual friend on my timeline this year.

This seems like such a "what part of the elephant are you touching" thing. I have curated such that I see:

1. What my friends and family are posting

And

2. Internetfluvia that I have chosen

And

3. Ads that are benign if occasionally off-base for me

4.

I see no:

1. Right-wing / MAGA bullshit

2. Unpleasant relatives' bullshit

I don't know how I achieved this so it can't be like my own mad skilz or magic app extension or superpower

With mine it's largely an issue of friends having abandoned Facebook over the years as it got worse, I don't see propaganda (and never friended relatives) or anything bad (except for reels/video content) I just don't see anything but noise really

current timeline:
industry group I can't wait to leave soon
REELS - horrible garbage, some of them look like Mormon lifestyle vloggers
Synth Memes group
NYT Cooking
Synth Memes
industry group
Suicide Squeeze Records
Marketplace ad for $3000/mo apartments
Post from a guy who bought a table saw from me a couple of years ago
My old landlord
NYT Cooking
High school teacher I haven't seen in person since 2000
Local guitar tech's business page

Maybe my friends are corny and basic

Valid, tbf; I myself am corny and basic

i'm totally cut out for this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFJOHlnoQNM

except that stupid facebook thinks i'm a bot

PICK ME I WILL GET IN THE HOLE

A question for people who ARE cut out for social media: I’m now in a position of having to “do” social media in a more focused and professional way than I have before. I mean actually making posts w/video, audio and/or graphics. I’m curious if anyone has apps or software they use to make such things easier. I know Canva and have used it a bit, just wondering what else might be helpful.

is this thread about having “thick skin” or something

my wife was relying on Canva mainly when she was doing social media for a startup but that was a couple of years ago.

me: not cut out for social media at all

I did social media professionally for a couple of years, but it's now so long ago that I'm sure all the tools are different now.