cow's journal

A less formal thing, sort of rambling about how I got here... this could be titled The Algorithm is Bad: something something formal something...

A few months ago, a twitter friend (catelli2oh) and I were talking about social media and feeling miserable. It's been a very long two years, with everyone having different struggles, but nobody really feeling good. In my case, I live alone, and the isolation really, really got to me, combined with the person I'm closest to getting extremely sick and losing over a year. And I was relying too hard on social media for, well, social time, because what else are you going to do?

Increasingly, it just was more and more frustrating. It felt like nothing was ever received right. I'd make a joke and get judged for it, or say something happy and just get raw negativity back, and it wore me down more and more until I would eventually vent that frustration.

And that's where catelli2oh came in. He suggested that, while obviously a lot of people are also struggling right now, it might be The Algorithm. And that hit me at the time, but it's also been stuck in my head for the three months since.

Because he's right.

I've noticed it. You've noticed it too, right? Even when you turn off as many settings as possible, Twitter and other similar sites are still feeding you things specifically to get a rise out of you. Make you angry or upset, so you engage and keep engaging. And not to oversimplify, but that's bad. When I use Tweeten on my computer--which still gives you the non-algorithmic, raw timeline--it's so much better, except so many people are still living that Algorithm life that a lot of what you see is hot takes on hot takes on hot takes on

So I stopped reading. For months. And felt better. But also, less engaged? And I do have friends on there, and only on there, and I miss them.

This is all a long-winded way of saying: part of what I'm trying here is to find a way to keep expressing longer-form thoughts. But part of it is also separating out spaces. A tweet is the length of a good joke. Twitter can be good for keeping up with your friends, too. It's really not the best place for long-form thought (tweet 38/72 of my thread on this important issue) and it's not a good place for nuance, given the current algorithmic tuning.

I don't know if any of this makes sense, in the end. I'm prone to overthinking. But I'm hoping this leads to a bit of a healthier relationship with social media. I don't want to quit it entirely, but where I was at a few months ago was unsustainable, and there's got to be a healthier middle ground.