"Social" media in the current year

After many years of using social media websites and apps, I find myself dissociating (pardon the pun) from the "social" part of social media. For me, this means that the world's largest popularity contest will turn into a boring filing cabinet.

Social media for information gathering

I want to use these apps now to gather and organize information, rather than making new friends. I still "talk" to the best "online friends" whom I have "met" over the years. However, I try to keep the tally of such friends to a small (enough) number.

These apps have not changed much in terms of their inner workings: we still have "upvotes" (likes, plus-ones, reactions, updoots ... what have you) and "subscribers" (followers, friends ... you get the picture). However, I have found myself finding more value in features such as "bookmarks" (or playlists, galleries, etc.).

I don't know the final destination for all this "information gathering". Perhaps my mind has become over-cluttered with life as I live through it. So, I feel the need to gather sets of knowledge or even "bits of stimuli" in a bid to get organized.

I've even decided to make a return to blogging with this website! All this has become more important to me than making more friends. This could be the case with everyone. This could be just me. Anyway, this article is about how I use social media (and the internet) in "current year" and beyond.

Social media app roll call

I have spent a couple of decades wrestling with social media websites and apps. I remark that each app can do one thing very well, while trying to do all sorts of things. I also noticed how each app tends to become like another. Then, I decided to use each app with a more specified direction:

• Gmail ("mailbox" with read-only "newsletters")
• YouTube (uploading videos and curating video playlists)
• 500px (uploading my "best" photos)
• Instagram (uploading quick images)
• Telegram (dropping a quick line of text)

Following topics over following people

In the 2010's, I used to follow people (or more accurately, accounts by people). Nowadays, I tend towards following topics. For me, the internet has now become a banal tool for information gathering. I simply try to make it help my "irl", so it is now a filing cabinet of data, that pertains to what I want to do "irl".

I have, for a long time, stopped following "celebrities". I just want to follow ideas!

So, for you, should the internet become a tool to navigate what's left of "irl"? It all depends on your willingness to look at insights over influencers!

Discarding some apps

Other apps exist but I have discarded them. They don't necessarily "suck". I just no longer have the mental bandwidth to scroll through more than six or seven apps every day. Also, to name-drop Metcalfe's Law (the idea that an app is more useful if more people use it), not much activity (that interests me) happens on many other apps with which I still have an account: does anyone still use Facebook?

We all have to pick our battles (or more accurately, battlefields)!