Saturday, May 13, 2023

Disintegration

A lot of people are noticing an increasing fragmentation of social media, back towards some prior state.

It may be that the era that stretched roughly from 2008-2020, when pretty much everybody was online in only a handful of places (Facebook, Twitter) may be drawing to a close. Whether there'll be a renaissance of web forums and blogs or what, remains to be seen, but it's hard not to notice a state change.

Scott Hines has a fantastic essay and a list of lessons he took away from his time on social media. Consider it sort of a valedictory for the era and a primer for netiquette...what a quaint old term!...to come.

An excerpt:
You are what you say, not what you say you are. The words coming out of your mouth or off of your keyboard say far more about you than the ones in your bio do, and if you ever have to issue a statement claiming “that’s not who I am”, I have some bad news for you. (Yeah, it is.)

Consider the possibility of other perspectives. You’ll be stunned at what you might learn if you’re just willing to listen and keep an open mind, and you might even make a friend or two along the way.

You are under no obligation to engage someone acting in bad faith on their terms.

...

You do not have to have an opinion on everything. Frankly, it feels great to sit one out from time to time.
I wish I'd wrote this. You should definitely go and RTWT.

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