Boethius

It’s the new day two. (From last round’s days two to four.)

The One With The Memorial Service aired on March 2003. Mr. Zuckerberg released the first version of Facebook a year later. Good ideas are obvious and cheap. Going at it is where it’s at.

There are two sides to interacting with social media. Otherwise spur-of-the-moment thoughts become calcified when published. Writing is taking a stand after all. This introduces extra friction to changing one’s mind.

Before feeds, people had to have intent to visit another person’s page to know what’s up. Success of algorithmic curation to best serve ads flipped this convention. People trade agency for ease. It has become creepy and stalker-ish to do that which is more analogous to what people do offline. Or what people used to.

One could hypothesize that changes online infect expectations during in-person interactions as well. People grasp their opinions tighter. As if by instinct, one knows that the feed would try to get a rise out of oneself to keep oneself hooked. It is easy to conflate arguments for its own sake to commitments to a position. Safe spaces for spirited discussions narrow.

Progress is change. To be better is to change for the better. If you were living in the Dark Ages, would you have known? There has to be a better way to do social media. Meanwhile, I don’t have to if I don’t want to. Enough for today.