Folderol | lurk mode activated
So, I quit social media.
Well, I finally quit the centralized social media platforms that get their kicks out of jiggling the algorithms at the expense of everyone’s mental health. Since the introduction of Web 2.0, virtually every nook of the Internet has some social component to it, so the only way to fully quit is to log off forever. But it’s possible that social media had already quit me. Once I aged out of the magical 18–34 demographic, it was like I’d suddenly turned invisible to my mutuals. Or was it something I said?
At some point — and who can pinpoint exactly when as we’ve collectively experienced approximately a hundred years of history compressed into ten years — somebody or something started making the social aspect of social media a lot less fun and a lot more lonesome. Like a favourite radio station abruptly changing formats, the way we saw each other on social media shifted. The major platforms mucked with timelines and newsfeeds to display “top” or “popular” content by default, forcing users to fumble for the option to switch back to chronological order. Our personal posts got shuffled around to make way for promoted posts and sponsored content. An open forum once primarily used for jokes and breaking news became host to a public, never-ending flame war. Some people went into jerk mode to get attention while others were unwittingly shuffled into lurk mode. And somehow, some folks have fostered successful communities and maintained lifelong relationships on those platforms and don’t see what the rest of us are on about.
It’s astounding to think that a bit of code can decide I don’t want to see the posts of folks I’ve followed for most of my Internet existence simply because I’m not constantly “engaging” with their “content” and then throttle my ambient awareness of them. Does it determine that my “content” is unworthy of reaching longtime acquaintances because it’s /I’m unmonetizable? Must I really keep clicking and scrolling in these apps that feed on my worst rage and narcissistic tendencies and starve me of authentic connection? I did for far too long because my friends/followers were there and what if I missed out on important news or a historical event in the making or a classic viral moment happening in real time or I took a cute selfie.
/lurk mode on.
The paper straw that shattered the dromedary’s back was the pandemic response of 2022. Watching mutuals blithely dismiss pandemic mitigations, routinely fucking around and intermittently finding out; the dismaying disconnect between my sharing reports and tips from epidemiologists and air quality experts and my longtime mutuals rawdogging the air, as the kids say, all while cold and flu medicine shelves at pharmacies sat barren for months was too much to bear. Either these people, which included IRL acquaintances, were completely dismissive of my legitimate concerns or they weren’t seeing my posts. And how are any of us to know? Nobody’s sliding into my DMs to ask if I’ve still been posting stuff anywhere because they haven’t seen me in their timeline in a while. I wouldn’t dare to message anyone to ask why I’m not seeing their posts — or if they can see mine — because that seems sort of pathetic and who needs those vibes?
Even before the pandemic and the blatant data mining and the warp-speed polarization, it felt like we’d already spent too many years on the same platforms. Of course, it feels that way to me as I’ve been logged on since the mid-1990s and the social media landscape was largely unsettled for the first decade or so. I was accustomed to bopping around different platforms every couple of years. At some point — I want to say 2015 — we stagnated on the big platforms, settling in for infinitely scrolling through knee-jerk opinions, misspelled birthday greetings, and clickbait masquerading as news. Could we expect anything more from the slacker generation now in middle age?
From the invention of this cobbled together system of fibre optics and pneumatic tubes that we eventually called the Internet, one of the appeals of logging on was the potential for connecting with like-minded folk and breaking free from social isolation that came with deviating from the heteropatriarchal, neurotypical, suburban/rural physical surroundings that many of us were born into. While we were waiting for on-ramps to the information superhighway to come to our small towns, a fresh-faced, middle class Generation X dialed up local BBSes, where rudimentary chat rooms and forums were opportunities to forge alternate identities and find community in glorious multi-colour ASCII — without commercial interference.
Home computers became the norm faster than you could say Y2K and America Online free trial discs arrived through the mail more often than Publishers Clearing House catalogues. The AOL CDs enabled a bunch of non-tech-savvy people to do something on their new Packard Bells beyond playing Minesweeper and browsing Encarta CD-ROMs. AOL was the Internet with training wheels, with it’s postcard-sized windows filled with garish buttons leading to channels curated with generic syndicated content. If all you needed was sports scores, stock quotes, some juicy Jennifer Aniston gossip, your horoscope and the daily comics, AOL circa-1997–2002 was way convenient and you’d probably hardly make a dent in the 25/100/250/500 free hours. There were also tantalizing chat rooms and message boards waiting to be populated with all the lonesome people with desktop computers, modems, and a landline telephone who were willing to shell out a monthly subscription fee to exchange A/S/L and assorted other embellished half-truths with strangers. Every user could fill out a basic quasi-dating profile with their location and interests. One could easily squander 500 hours creeping through profiles looking for new people and old friends to chat up. The ick potential was off the charts and ripe content for a Rupert Holmes song or two. Ultimately, AOL was a walled garden and however many beautiful freaks populated the message boards and Usenet newsgroups, there was a world wide web beyond beckoning to be Internet Explorer’d. The mainstream maintained that the Internet of yore was just a repository for pornography. Like, there wasn’t not porn, but it was mostly a ton of hobby sites dedicated to extremely niche topics like train schedules of 1907, transcripts to early ’90s comedy sketches, and alternative poetry e-zines.
But, even wading beyond the shallow curated channels to web surf and Ask Jeeves, cyber butler-cum-private detective, about ex-lovers and assorted nemeses, we were never lonely as long as our AOL instant message buddy list was open. The AIM door opening .wav creaking over the external desktop speakers as crushes and besties signed in produced a super-charged combination dose of serotonin and dopamine — more so than the “you’ve got mail guy,” whose best offering was often a chain letter forward from an aunt who seemingly had no purpose for owning and operating a personal computer. On AIM, there was usually some buddy to ROFL with over proto-memes and online in-jokes of the day or to commiserate with over the accolades/marriage/birth announcements/arrest notices retrieved by Jeeves.
Some of us got caught up in the undercurrent of the web and stumbled upon the shores of the blogosphere, which was mainstream media’s go-to gauge for online public opinion long before Twitter. The blogosphere legitimized individual online publishing and notion that opinions could be facts. Anyone could sign up with Blogger or Typepad and fulfill a compulsive desire to create a public record of personal opinions and experiences. Whereas chat rooms and forums presented the potential for real-time discussion, weblogging was a bit like sending a message in a bottle — especially if the bulk of one’s social network consisted of casual internet havers who only logged on to check their email on the weekends. They weren’t about to use their precious AOL minutes just to read about the ten movies that influenced someone — unless that someone was A-list famous. Personal blogging wasn’t wholly conducive to interaction, eliciting voyeurism from a passive audience instead of conversation. When bloggers did follow the advice of marketing books and end posts with a question intended to engage readers, the comment sections were almost always rife with spam and reply guys dissuading legitimate engagement. Building a social network around a blog entailed joining webrings and enabling pingbacks, installing visitor counters and digital guest books and Google analytics, which was a time-consuming chore beyond posting a few quick clever remarks. Several people have maintained successful blogs for over 20 years, diligently posting and somehow weathering the fads of blog marketing and search engine indexing. Overall, though, the blogosphere seems to have ceded its influence on pop culture and world events.
The remedy to lonely blogging was LiveJournal, a platform that simplified writing and posting diary entries and fed posts through a syndicated home feed so users could quickly skim through their friends’ innermosts without needing to click through to individual pages or websites. User could unashamedly fill their profiles with keywords related to fandoms, subcultures, and interests to be discovered by kindred spirits. With minimal HTML experience required, users were able to customize the basic look of their blogs. Content ran the gamut, from fanfic to musings on daily life to sparkly GIFs ‘shipping OTPs from CW teen dramas. Before vague-booking, one only needed to share a Current Mood emoji to convey an emotion or experience that couldn’t be discussed yet was compelling enough to prompt responses from followers. Through LiveJournal, I formed a lot of parasocial relationships with people I recognized from the same fandom newsgroups we’d frequented just a few years earlier. We weren’t quite at the AIM conversation level, but we were mutual lurkers. A few of them became mutual lurkers across multiple platforms spanning two decades, yet we never exchanged comments or direct messages.
It wasn’t unusual in the mid-aughts, if you were forever online, to have a Flickr account for your digicam mirror project gallery, AIM and MSN messenger for direct messaging, a blog/LiveJournal for observations and viral get-to-know-me lists, a Classmates.com alumni account to track school reunions, and a MySpace account for…
What was MySpace for? Basically, it was a casual networking site that seduced new Internet users by giving them a turnkey presence online. It was purportedly a place to make friends, though we couldn’t be faulted for thinking it was for fresh-faced Millennials looking to hook up. The profile page had a spot to post thirst-trap profile pics and a comment section where seemingly anyone could post sleaze-adjacent messages and inspirational glitter text images. Like LiveJournal and AOL and OK Cupid, there was a section to list interests and hobbies. Users could rank their top eight online friends, including everyone’s friend Tom MySpace. And like personal websites and LiveJournal, users could zhuzh up their page with custom colour schemes, background images, and mp3 loops to autoplay for visitors. It had the sophistication of a Hot Topic, which was fine as the target demographic in 2004 probably still bought their edgy accoutrements from that novelty rockabilly goth dungeon at the mall. And yet — our time on MySpace was brief. What was it that sounded the death knell midi for the social media platform? Was it the onslaught of headless bikini bodies pleading for attention and sexy friendship? Or was it the proliferation of Ed Hardy-inspired angel Blingee GIFs?
For a while, we had few if any qualms about being on multiple platforms or having large overlaps of follows across platforms. It was perhaps annoying when the self-promoters went on a cross-posting spree to boost their charity run/live performance/creative project release, but that’s what all the self-promo guerrilla marketing books said to do. Anyone with something to promote was encouraged to maintain a presence on as many platforms as possible to reach audiences. Okay, sure. So, why were so many people setting up all these accounts without a marketing motive? Usernames. It was imperative to retain dibs on that clever username before someone else came along to sully the identity so carefully constructed on other platforms.
Then, the Internet started to fill up with the type of people we initially logged on to escape from.
One of the devil’s greatest modern-era tricks was observing our late night Googlings of IRL formers and potentials and parlaying that curiosity into a format that would alter human behaviour for the foreseeable future.
Facebook originated as an invite-only community for college kids. A Web 2.0 Classmates.com for tomorrow’s alumni. But someone clearly had big intentions. Soon enough, it came for the olds, and like fly paper, attracted everyone and their most distant relatives with promises of staying connected with family, friends, colleagues, anyone who hastily scribbled K.I.T. in junior high yearbooks, casual acquaintances from conventions/workshops/trade shows/vacations, D-list celebrities, the local pizzeria, and mutuals accumulated from across the Internet. Facebook was certainly the less tacky alternative to MySpace, with its minimalist aesthetic eschewing complex design controls and even basic text formatting tools. Forget the annoying autoplay midis and fuchsia text on black backgrounds — just add a profile pic and a banner image and Bob’s your uncle (and first to accept your friend request). It couldn’t get much simpler than that and middle America finally ran out of free AOL hours.
Facebook convinced people to sign up under their legal given names — none of that cutesy username stuff here — which meant the likelihood of finding those crushes, school bullies, and camp buddies was improved over straight search engine indexes, but you could still be sifting through hundreds of results and ambiguous profile pics to find your John Smith. Through strategic clicking, you could creep around someone’s public profile and stealthily catch up without sending a friend request, a farm game invite, or poking them. Oops. How do you undo?
With no bandwidth caps or image upload limits, parents were enabled to massively overshare their children’s milestones and the weekend email-checkers were subjected to an overwhelming home feed filled with photo dumps of vacations and parties from their most active mutuals. Embarrassing moments were captured, uploaded, and tagged and the potential for upsetting careers and relationships rose exponentially as the line between professional and social networking blurred. Every day felt like a class reunion as our friends list filled with a This Is Your Life roster of relations and acquaintances we desired to impress with the highlight reels and humblebrags of living our best lives. What would become of the identities and subcultures forged over the last decade as real life and online personas converged?
The illusion of keeping in touch was successful…for a while. I had approximately ten years on Facebook, sharing links and engaging in delayed banter with far-flung pals. When there was something to self-promote, there was a respectful and appropriate to scale response to the necessary evil. Selfies usually received “likes” from the broad spectrum of my social network, including the lurkers from the distant and forgotten past. Almost imperceptibly, over the course of let’s kindly say several years, response shifted. Banters ceased. Shared links went unclicked. The one guy who “liked” every post on his feed stopped “liking” my posts. My partner’s posts weren’t even showing up in my newsfeed, despite the fact we had mutually declared we were “in a committed relationship.” I despaired. I parsed my posts looking for potential offence that could’ve driven everyone away. I deactivated and reactivated my account. I joined Google+. In 2017, I downloaded my archive and permanently deleted my account — or as permanently as anyone can do anything on this virtual disinformation expressway.
Prior to the US Election of 2016, the Facebook newsfeed had already transformed into a monolithic sludge of user activity according to an algorithm’s faulty assessment of interests — this acquaintance thumbsed-up a slew of bikini torsos, that friend of your former co-worker joined a group for Seapunk enthusiasts, a mutual of another mutual commented on a radio station’s Nickelback ticket contest, that college roommate’s aunt posted yet another Minions-themed meme — interspersed with clickbait listicles and ads for shirts purportedly emblazoned with custom phrases like “Never underestimate this sassy Aquarius who loves Gilmore Girls and kittens and all I got was this stupid AI-generated shirt that knows my last name is Schnicklefritz and I drink coffee.” And there was always more “news” to feed upon. You couldn’t scroll half a page without getting a prompt to load new posts at the top of the screen — so, who could really notice when someone wasn’t posting their best life or posting at all. Who really knows how their friends are doing? Who knows how to switch their newsfeed to display posts in chronological order instead of ranked by an algorithm that responds to highest number of reaction GIFs? Who knows when anyone’s birthday is anymore? Who knows not to post the most offensive slurs using their own legal moniker? Who cares?
Meanwhile, AIM sounded its door closing .wav for the last time in 2017, taking with it the thrill of watching cherished buddies sign on and leaving in its wake mild irritation of seeing tertiary acquaintances making an insipid comments about Mondays.
Speaking of monolithic sludge, Twitter was a microblogging platform and, some naively thought, a promotional tool to post links to longer blogs and assorted online content that couldn’t fit in the originally allotted 140 characters. Cool mutuals flocked to the bird site to once again lay claim to their unique handles. For anyone without something to promote, it was an opportunity to regain some anonymity and freedom lost to Facebook’s format. But it was fraught from the outset. People posted about their bands, other people said “nobody cares about your band.” People posted about their lunch, others said “nobody cares about your sandwich.” Comedians logged on to post jokes. Non-comedians logged on to post jokes. Journalists logged on to post breaking news. Citizen journalists logged on to post breaking-er news. Too often, jokes were treading insensitively on the breaking news. It became necessary to check the trending topics and to serve a hot take on the most topical issue before posting a joke. Fans logged on to discuss their fandoms and we learned that it’s possible to like pop culture wrong.
Twitter became a bloated forum, with too many simultaneous conversations — the banal too often drowning out incredibly vital discussions — and too little context for the basic user just signing in. There were memes of the main character of the day before most users could figure out the original source. One day the extremely online take umbrage with the armchair activists shitposting to power, the next day a brand goes on an anti-capitalist tirade but a comedy guy gets into an argument with anthropomorphized internet-famous cat about whether ketchup is a soup, meanwhile real world war and famine is happening but everyone’s gotta join the #CatSoup discourse. Subtweets begat dunk tweets begat screenshot tweets. It’s no wonder your ex-boyfriend from college only logs on to tweet at customer service when his cable has been out for a week. And with just 140/280-character tweet lengths, there’s always been a tight squeeze for nuance. Conditions are so ripe for misunderstandings, it’s amazing only one sitcom arose from the platform in its 17-year history.
Look, it is entirely possible that social media in its present form is not for me. Without the right prompts and circumstances, I naturally withdraw into lurk mode on my own. In retrospect, I was too withholding with supportive clicks. I abhor making the same cliché comments as everyone else and crafting clever yet heartfelt messages for people who always get my name wrong felt like a questionable investment of time. Same goes for choosing an appropriate reaction GIF. Any feelings of abandonment and unlovability stemming from silent mutuals on the socials can be countered with feelings of guilt and remorse over being equally taciturn. Out of fear for being seen as an annoying overeager clickwhore, I missed out on obligatory reciprocal support clicks. I missed out on being seen. But mine is not a wholly unique experience, as more folks start to complain about visibility on their timelines and newsfeeds.
Mental health is taking a beating. Mainstream folks fault our pocket computers but not the apps manipulating the algorithm to manufacture loneliness and monetizing human interaction without considering context or decency. We feel insecure about speaking up against misinformation when it’s spread by the more credulous of our peer group for fear of being ostracized by the whole group. We remain tethered to social media platforms for fear of losing followers — a tally that is likely misleading due to a mixture of abandoned accounts, defunct organizations, broken bots, and mutuals who muted people who were over-engaged in some pop culture/political event (because unfollowing seemed rude) but then neglected to ever unmute. And although electronic mail is still a thing, who thinks to reach out to mutuals and friends they miss? Well, what if they left you on permanent mute for reasons and a direct confrontation might lead to unpleasant feels? Are the feels not already unpleasant but in a slightly different way?
For as lonely and unseen as we’ve been made to feel by the algorithms lately on an individual level, we’re also in a time when a lot of folks are being seen for the first time in history. Despite the flaws, the big social networks have proven useful in amplifying messages and revealing injustices and inequalities as more people have been able to share their experiences and find solidarity. Social media in all its forms across time and tubes have helped people discover their community and resources to grapple with traumas and burgeoning identities and mere existence. People are relating to each other in ways that were previously inaccessible. Although the mainstream has been looped in and is doing their level best to make speaking truth to power on Twitter seem about as effective at destroying bigotry as an Occupy Wall Street hacky sack tournament was at dismantling capitalism, progress has been made.
However, if what we’re lacking is direct meaningful engagement, a shiny new platform with more of the same old isn’t likely the solution. Maybe a shiny platform free from corporate interests, advertising infrastructure, and algorithms designed to track and snitch on every click will foster legit interpersonal connection. Maybe a platform that isn’t a whirlpool of professional colleagues and former schoolmates all smooshed up in a mutual stew complicating authentic personal connection. Maybe a platform that doesn’t try to force a monoculture while feasting on users’ imported contacts lists. Maybe a platform that doesn’t inexplicably pivot to video entertainment to retain a dwindling userbase. Maybe there are already hundreds of forums, networking sites, chat rooms, and microblogging platforms where people can pseudo-anonymously interact and content creators just haven’t started mining and scraping them for clickbait yet because they’re too busy trying to make TikTok the new gauge for public opinion.
I joined the October 2022 migration over to Mastodon. It is not too technical. There is an ethical component to choosing a server/instance to join, and that takes time and vetting that is a stone cold drag to people who want to sign up and jump right back on their bullshit. Instances with problematic admin or infrastructure have already come and gone, sometimes uprooting new tooters as soon as they’ve chosen their banner graphic. It’s an imperfect system that lets you keep your super cool unique username but doesn’t yet let you transfer your posts to new instances, so those important, informative threads can be lost to the digital wind if they aren’t backed up. Consider this your reminder to go download all the data and archives for your accounts, especially the video streaming services (Netflix does some next-level creeping and tracking).
Maybe this is a good time to rethink how we distribute our content, where it’s stored, and where it really ought to be for posterity. The Wayback Machine and its admirable attempts to crawl and capture the contents of the entire Internet is still woefully incomplete.
Getting my news and information vis RSS feeds instead of via Twitter really shifts the tone. The headlines are less sensational than the tweets accompanying news stories, though there are just as many bad takes in long-form articles as in the dunk tweets amplifying them. When it was still possible to get Twitter RSS feeds, I kept tabs on my follow list for as long as possible, noting when they made leap to another platform and despairing when they defiantly declared they were staying. Intrepid Internet users can seek out alternative sites that allow for peeking over the Twitter and Instagram walls. RSS feeds for blogs and newsletters are a handy workaround, combined with reader view, to read articles and essays without the annoying digital clutter of desperate subscription pop-ups and video widgets that follow you down the page. It feels very retro. And peaceful. I mean, I’m still livid about the goings-on in the world, but I’m less caught up in the second-hand rage.
Being invisible by choice online — or as invisible as one can be with all the cookies and trackers piling up in the browser cache — means I’m no longer compelled to check if someone likes my selfies or scathing subtweets. When was the last time I even took a selfie? (It was last week for my new avatar/pfp.) I’ve stopped missing the mutuals that were lost along the way…mostly. I’ve almost stopped wondering if they miss me. I wonder if the algorithm misses my periodic takes on American International beach party movies that it could never quite work out how to monetize. I don’t need to think about where the fresh-faced youth of today are Internetting because I am an old person who doesn’t need to keep up with youth culture to feel relevant. I try not to think about how no one would notice if I logged off forever and whether that’s a euphemism. I can watch a cat video without Instagram trying to show me all of the cat videos interspersed with clips from The Office and videos on how to repair bathroom sinks with uncooked ramen noodles. I can take my time to thoughtfully curate a library of on-brand reaction GIFs to post for any occasion, should a need arise.
Friendly reminder: Go clear out the browser caches on your devices. Those cookies can take up gigabytes of valuable space on your phone that could be used for cat pictures.
