I Don't Hate Social Media
I just downloaded Xiaohongshu. It's been pretty nice so far, just looking at pictures of lolita dresses. The algorithm knows me so well. I've also been browsing Twitter mostly for some funny tweets I can send to my friend (to which he'll reply "we have the same feed lol"). I don't come across a whole lot of bad faith content. When I do, I block the poster and scroll on.
We reminisce about the old web and how it was nicer, more genuine. But I think we just grew older and more jaded. Internet back in the days was awful in its own way. If you weren't a straight white male then you're kind of fucked. I was a girl and the internet I remember was countless homophobic and pedophilic memes. As a slightly older child I spent my days reading Tumblr posts romanticising self harm and suicide and thinking about killing myself after I see my favorite band ever live (it was Coldplay by the way, and yes I eventually get to see them and didn't kill myself afterwards).
There are several "good" social media that cropped up in the recent years and none of them really took off. CoHost died to crickets save for those who were on it. BlueSky is full of shitlibs stuck in 2016. Fediverse as a whole stayed niche. Perhaps that's for the better. But I've tried out several of these and made zero connections anyway. The #1 internet place I found the most success making friends is still, to this day, some Facebook groups I was active in from 2017-2020. I was 17 when I joined that group.
The internet as a whole has gone worse, but I'd argue that what we are really yearning for is not the perfect platform but the perfect connection. Such connection exists in even the most awful corner of the internet if you click with them. I met my best friend in a group that has verifiably ruined a bunch of people's lives (members died). It was, in some ways, the best time of our lives anyway.
I'm not interested in webmastery. My interest is in j-fashion, anime art, and rap music. I find those on XHS and Twitter and sometimes Reddit. I've resigned to the fact that the modern social media is better used as some sort of algorithmically personalised television rather than a global town hall where you can have 2-way communication with others. It's not too bad that way. Just remember to not engage with rage baits.