If we can make it through boomers dying off we have a chance. Boomers are just the absolute nut fucking worst.
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I was the on-call mental health person at our local children’s hospital for several years, and no lie the triggering event for at least 1 in 3 teens who were there for suicidal ideation or gestures had to do with something going down on social media with peers or (more common) a parent taking a cell phone as a consequence for bad behavior.
Before Facebook they just listened to what some guy their brother knows told him last week at the elks club. I think the big issue with Facebook is that a lot of people had friends that were mostly sane, and the insane ones mostly knew they were alone in their views and kept them to themselves in polite company.
The crazy shit my parents have on their facebooks are shared from friends of theirs that I’ve never met in my life and that they might see once every 10 years, or family members who you might see at a big event every few years and never talk to otherwise. But now they’ve got a friends list of 400 people to spread their bullshit on a daily basis.
I know it’s weird for a management consultant to complain about buzzwords, but man for some reason I just hate the terms “content” and “engagement” when it comes to social media. I don’t know why–they’re accurate terms for what we’re trying to describe. I just fucking hate them.
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They’re soul-less. Everything is “content” and everything is “engagement.”
I’m with you. “Content creator” is a job title I’ve also said just turns me off. It tells me nothing about what you do, except that whatever it is you’re going to try to sell it to me.
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Obviously the Wall Street Journal is garbage overall but their reporting on Facebook this week is excellent.
The experimental results are in and “freeze peach” lost. Time to shut this thing off.
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Also the blandness of the terms has a “banality of evil” dynamic to it. Like, a large portion of social media “engagement” is pathologically destructive addictive behavior. If you said that drug addicts “engage” with fentanyl people would think you’re nuts. Same with “content”. Are people making “content” or “hate speech”? “Content” or “dangerous intentionally misleading information”? They call it “content” to absolve themselves of any responsibility to think about what it is.
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“Content” is fine in an era when people are putting out all kinds of different media.
Yeah, this is kind of where I’m at. “Content” is OK, but “engagement” is on my things that shouldn’t piss you off but do list.
Seems like “content” belongs on a list of things that shouldn’t piss you (or someone) off but do, while “engagement” should piss everyone off.
So I still have FB because I’m an idiot.
On my mobile app they have a new “gaming tab” I guess to compete with twitch. Every top link is basically just a nudity mod of GTA/Resident evil.
How the fuck is this a thing?
FB ads work well on the olds. 90% or more of my new customers come from FB ads and I definitely check engagement. I would delete my FB in an instant if the ads weren’t so good for my business. I hate the shit. I would delete my Fb account if I could have a separate business account but you fucking can’t.
Facebook mobile app is really bad. If you’re not going to ditch facebook entirely, at the very least delete the app off your phone and get the Firefox browser extension from Mozilla that isolates it from your other browsing cookies.
I think I’ve found the perfect happy medium with Facebook.
It’s still useful for me b/c I’ve made a couple friends around the world and we only keep in touch via FB messenger.
I also find it very useful for expat groups in certain cities I’m in or hoping to be in, as well as a solid source for apartment hunting.
I deleted both the main app and Messenger off my phone, b/c I don’t need that shit on my phone, and on the main site, I’ve hidden every single person and group except the few relevant to my immediate interests (basically just a couple expat groups). So I never come in contact with any stupid memes or status updates and can stay in contact with a couple old friends.
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I accept this view, but IMO the use of “content” isn’t just a catch all, it’s specifically used to dress up useless crap. Like if someone comes up to you and says “I make content on social media”, do you think “golly they are probably producing some terrific music, highly valuable instructional videos, or insightful commentary!” or do you think “this person produces instantly disposable crap on Instagram”. Because I certainly think the latter, because if someone is producing something of value they will tell you what it is. If someone, or their company, produces absolutely worthless junk, then they will call it “content”.
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For me it’s “influencer”. Nails on a blackboard.
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If you think that letting deplorables spew hate and ignorance on Facebook is bad wait until 9/10 profiles on Facebook are AI Nazibots.
This shit breaks my heart, and simultaneously has me feeling like a turd because I don’t know how to give up social media. … I pretty much have to use it for work (twitter), and I use it to share art (IG). Facebook occupies this weird space of “reality” though, because it’s the closest online “me” there is and so the engagement I get can be real (tho minimal). And when I read about the effectiveness of FB ads, it doesn’t make me want to use it less but rather understand how to use it more and better.
I may have posted this thought before, but: Social is here to stay and deleting it may not work for everyone. Perhaps what we need to do is develop best practices so the average person can use social/FB rather than it using them (so much). There have to be ways to swing the pendulum back, no? I can’t imagine a world absent social media right now, but the impacts are overwhelmingly negative…