2005, blogs were all the rage. Music blogs, tech blogs, cooking blogs. You could dive in and read up on obscure subjects like rare 70s funk and soul albums, antique watches or just get weird with someone’s incredibly personal live journal. Most people weren’t writing for likes. At best you’d get a few comments. People wrote about what they were passionate about. Posts took time and effort and many popular blogs updated only weekly.
We’ve traded all that for Social Media and Youtube Videos. We now know everything about everyone all the time. Youtubers frantically race to cover every subject every day, each one making the same pedantic video. If you’re not first your last, but even if your last your loyal viewers want your thoughts…for some reason. Usually unrelated to having any qualifications expertise or real insight. They just hate the same things that you hate. So its a match made in hell.
On Twitter you get to know all the worst things about the people you used to like. Have a favorite author? Now you get to know how narcistic they are, who they despise, exactly who they vote for and exactly who they tolerate others voting for. Again, frequently without any real expertise and insight. But you do get dunks. Sometimes someone will post an argument made up of a meme. It’s probably simplistic, it probably adds nothing, no one changes their mind but hey, you got to be smug and “on the right side of history”™.
Nothing is improving. Its all getting faster, cheaper, shinier and more individually tailored but we’re in a race to the bottom. It’ll be interesting to see what’s at the bottom of the slide. Revolution? War? Mass Hysteria? A societal implosion?