Can I just say that at this point in the timeline, I am a little shocked that NO ONE has managed to create competition with Facebook.
No one.
How is that possible?
Facebook, a few years ago, was a nearly perfect animal.
It was about connection and sharing.
Swell.
As it became embraced by businesses, it changed.
Eh…
OK.
It was helpful because you could get the word out about events with their calendar, and you could create a Page or a Group to gather people together who had shared interests. It was super helpful as we got our horror convention together and had events and information to share. It was also a great way to keep in touch with close friends, acquaintances, and “people I know” for various reasons. As folks moved away from email to social networks, it became a bit of “all or nothing” regarding staying connected. Someone you know but are not close to could ditch the social network and disappear from your life.
It was a drag, but unfortunately, it was part of being an adult.
People just disappear.
The problem now, though is with the country going full Alt-Right and the social networks leading the charge, I have no genuine interest in supporting them any further…but have no choice.
There is not a social network that does what Facebook does…WHICH IS CRAZY!
How can we have half a dozen X/Twitter wannabes but nothing that really takes on Facebook? Oh, I am sure SOMEWHERE there is something close-ish, but I need an integrated calendar more than anything. Linking to external things means you lose folks. Heck, as it is, with the throttling Meta has been doing, the people who you follow or who follow you barely know you exist. The great god Algorithm decides what you see. For me, it’s mostly nonsense or Alt-Right stuff.
Gross.
It’s enough to make me yearn for the days of My Space.
The blind greed of wealthy people has just become numbing at this point.
Twitter was problematic, sure, but generally swell.
It was a great place to get news and info.
Now, it’s little more than an egomaniac’s soapbox.
I just cannot believe that to this day no one has created a platform that mixes the best aspects of Facebook, IG, and Twitter.
I suppose the reality is that there’s no money in it, and if there’s no money, there’s no point. Social media, which had become such an essential part of all of our lives, has become overtly political (and politicized thanks to idiots that want to argue about everything, even your opinion) and a tool to force ads to us over anything else.
The sad thing is that so many of us will lose touch and just never know what happened to one another, and that’s life, sure, but it sucks. There are people that you are not close to but care about—voices you still want to hear. I shouldn’t have to join a handful of networks to connect to them.
And we don’t need to be BFFs to want to know one another are still in the world.
And then there’s the small events like what I have put on.
You can put them on calendars all you want, but unless people happen on them, mostly from their friends posting about them, sharing them, or saying they are going, they will go unseen. As it is, Facebook pretty well killed a lot of the ways people would find events, so it became a matter of luck as it was.
As it stands, social networks aren’t so much about being social as being voyeurs watching one another perform on camera, many with the hope of getting famous or wealthy because of our antics or drama.
Foo.
Here’s me, missing the days before Trump, when social media was terribly imperfect but not weaponized and still sorta fun.
…c…
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The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 