Is it just me or are most sites just pure cesspools nowadays?

First time in a while where I'm not writing a post while drunk! Hip hip hooray! Incredible achievement, I know,

but with my little dumb joke aside... I can't be the only one who has noticed the steady decline of any and all big social media platforms, right?? (or at least most of them).

Twitter, reddit, tiktok, instagram, discord*, in essence any "big" platform which doesn't pander itself to a specific niche (i.e. tumblr, it has its flaws, but in comparison to the sites I mentioned it doesn't really hold a candle lol) is bound to - in one way or another - end up becoming nothing but a negative feedback loop

(*discord is up for debate since you control which servers you're in)

Obviously with the way the internet is, it's always been this way but never to this extent, I feel like the past couples of years have been a downwards spiral full of hate and misery, you could post the most stupid, innocent thing ever and there will not only be a myriad of ragebaiters and trolls, but also people who genuinely (for one reason or another) will find a way with whatever you post

~bartender? Just gimmie the strongest thing you have available, may I wake up in a reality where people don't harass eachother

paul

I’m coming out of the woodwork here to comment.

Yes, I agree with you. Wholeheartedly.

A true sense of community is hard to find on these social platforms these days. As is common courtesy. (I suppose I should joke about “common courtesy” not being so “common” anymore, but honestly, the reality pains me too much to make fun of it.)

Take Reddit for example (yeah, yeah, I know…) - I recently responded to a post about the high prices of a particular internet / cellular service provider, explaining that for my use case, they were quite reasonable. Good service, decent customer support, features that I find useful that are unique to that provider in market, etc.

Well, imagine my surprise when I was downvoted to hell. Not only that, but the attacks: “eff off, you corporate shill”, “do better marketing person”, “you’re an effing idiot if you truly think that” and so on.

Suffice to say, I’m not participating in that “community” any longer. Yet another line drawn through a name on my list of regular haunts.

I’ve recently been exploring Gemini space (hence my emergence here today with a comment) and as much as it saddens me to see pages that haven’t seen updates in literally years, it also heartens me to see that communities like the pub here are still surviving, albeit at such a low volume I would hesitate to say “thriving”.

ropocl

It's whack. The incentives are broken. Glad you found your way here and took the time to share your thoughts!

herson

This is why I'm trying to remove myself from social media, I don't see it helpful anymore, and with the amount of AI slop that poisons most people's feeds, they had lost their magic.

I prefer to spend time playing with my DS now, I've been playing a lot of Picross and SMT, haha.

louq

Well, when the algorithms try to keep you into your bubble, and likes and hearts is how you gain reputation, you see why this is an issue. We are just living in a world of numbers. In the end we, are slaves to the numbers.

Hello ~louq,

I would like to disagree a little:

In the end we, are slaves to the numbers.

Well, I would like to point out, that this is not a law of nature. We ourselves chose to open an account at $some_network_maybe_social.

Or as another example: "How come our children are spending their entire time on the smart phone?" "Because we gave them the smart phone in the first place."

Have a nice day!

~ew

louq

Well yeah, you are right.

It could be that dozens of kids who dont know about internet safety, just go in and be like adults. Even though, social media is only for adults.