Op-Ed: Social media vs the ultra-dumb uninhabitable 21st century. Options?

Australian legislation could force social media firms to take steps to prevent those under 16 years of age from accessing platforms such as X, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram – Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File Michael M. Santiago

This whole dumb century is becoming uninhabitable due to cost alone.

You’d think someone would condescend to notice.

A capital-intensive sector like social media should know better than to make itself risky, unbearable and irrelevant. This is “dumb behaviorism” at work, and it doesn’t work.

Social media runs as much or more on inertia as it does on inspiration and information. The trouble with that is that the ever-diminishing sanity and competence of the Masters of the Screwedniverse allow the inertia to destroy the whole idea of social media.

As usual, the focus is on everything but core business. Nobody asked for a worldwide nutcase social media environment. Nobody needs bots swarming over the platforms. Nobody benefits from the rotting mess of dead political threads that the trolls generate.

When social media was a huge deal and everyone loved it, it was very different. It was taken seriously. Facebook was fun and interesting. Twitter became a default news feed. Instagram and TikTok created a lot of diversity in the market for a much too short few years.

Now look at it.

This is the exact same market, in meltdown mode.

Let’s not bother to descend to personalities, however irritating. The social media environment is destroying itself with its own methodologies. It has made itself progressively more useless to its users. The Digression to Delirium has been a disaster.

It took a while, but the whole idea of social media, much like the original idea of the internet, turned into an objectiveless overall obsolete obnoxiousness.

That’s the other killer. None of it is new. The same stupid prehistoric trash (politics, celebrities. ADHD with price tags, etc) reduces the social media experience to so much less than it could be.

The drab desert social media has become is an obvious quality check. TikTok is in limbo. Instagram needs more options. Social media in news mode desperately needs to be reincarnated. The news outlets themselves are far too slow.

It would be unfair to put the burden of visualizing the future of social media on an uncontaminated platform like Bluesky as the way out. Since X unnecessarily wiped out its advertisers and users, Bluesky has been maintaining some semblance of what users need from social media. It’s also trying to do new things unlike the older but far too noisy platforms.

Ironically, X and Facebook users know better than anyone else not to engage with the diseases. That’s why those users are still there. They mix with each other, not the “flush mobs” on threads.

It’s also one of the most basic original ideas of social media, but who knows things anymore?

What does social media need?

Imaginative marketing, to start with. This marketing is more like classified ads. Barely noticeable, and not worth noticing if you do. Offer discounts, deals, and try and actually sell!

Clear TOS and practices. Platforms can kick anything they don’t like. Very simple TOS will do. You don’t have to tolerate anything.

Better deals for users. You can do ongoing business with users and advertisers pretty easily. Even the most basic market research should dig up any number of markets.

Algorithms, schmalgorithms. These mathematical mammoths are a bit Simple. They also don’t seem to get modified often enough. I’ve been watching them trying to sell me things from people I’ve been doing business with for years. Market reach? None.

AI apps management. AI is all over social media and it’s getting high density. You’re going to be carrying that expensive data both ways, both generative and just playing around on the platform, Now multiply that a few billion times. Do you see a need to manage the AI plagues?

Lay off content creators, period. You need content. You don’t need idiot executives telling you to spend billions on AI to avoid paying millions to content creators. AI will never generate the Next Big Thing, because it can’t. You want the Next Big Thing; you pay the creators.

Just one more thing –

Everyone’s broke.

This is the real market. The real money comes from other people. If they don’t have money, you don’t get money. Media isn’t essential. Particularly obnoxious media.

If you want this century to be habitable, make it possible to inhabit and at least worth looking at.