On social networks
To build a website, you need to think about what the design will be, you need to think about how and what you'll write about, you need to care about the project. Even though HTML/CSS is not that complicated after all, it requires some thinking.
With so much choice and additional training required, social networks create a much easier alternative — ready-made design, obvious posting options, promotion mechanisms and most importantly — all your friends are already on the platform!
But in the context of social networks, people eventually start to limit their creativity to the platform, and start to evaluate everything in likes, comments or other reactions to the post.
- How can you even recognize a person from a single tweet? The entire tweet is literally a phrase taken out of context, a literal rage-fuel created to trigger a reaction and desire to respond. Who would have thought there would be shitstorms on Twitter all the time?
- How likely would you be to read this post if it had 0 likes, if there was a post with 1000 likes next to it? Does the number of likes make something unworthy of reading? The social network probably wouldn't even show it to you.
- Even the simplest of things - why do we have a higher level of trust in people who have more followers?
All of this turns social media into games of gaining social attention/approval. It shifts the focus of attention of both the people who create content and the people who consume it, to the game around social media, rather than the people themselves and their thoughts.
Is that creepy? Convenient? Unnatural? Familiar?
I don't know. But there's definitely a lot of money in it.