Yes! My experience with Threads has been similar. After the excitement wore off, I realized once again that I'm just tired and want less of this stuff in my life, not more. I truly cannot grasp how so many people seem to have the attention/capacity to read books, write, cook, hang out with people in person etc while also being up to cultural speed on multiple social platforms. A friend tweeted about this very topic yesterday (haha) and it was such a relief to read that it's not just me. /yelling at cloud
I am embarrassed by how much I have been enjoying Threads!! I enjoy watching these chaotic first few days unfold, and watching people wrestle in real time with who they want to be on Threads and who they want OTHER PEOPLE to be to them on this platform. It's fascinating. I also am 10000% more comfortable in a text based medium, as opposed to Instagram, because I am messy and my home is messy and I'm too impatient to craft compelling visuals of just about anything. It's just not my native language, so I'm always fumbling and struggling to communicate. Threads feels easy; I feel like I get what it is, at least right now. But I completely agree about the vibes being just totally unhinged and the content not translating across platforms! It's bizarre to see how something that would have seemed fine on Instagram just falls flat (for me!) on Threads.
I'm surprised by how many people have jumped on Threads. Have we learned nothing about the way Zuckerberg/Meta works? Scrape and sell, but first lure you in with connection and the promise of community. Then stuff it with ugly ads, an incredibly frustrating algorithm, and a Byzantine network of "preferences" that's almost impossible to navigate and never actually serves you or protects you, but by then you're in deep and it's hard to let go of the connections you originally found. All so celebrities can pitch predigested toxic-positivity cliches at me? And without any of the real-time news and journalism that I originally went to Twitter for, because Threads has come out and clearly said that it doesn't want to bother our pretty little heads with that?
This is such an interesting take, and you are SO right about it being a completely different playing field. Seeing the usual patenting and social justice content from IG suddenly seemed so uncomfortable and forced that I muted all of them.
However, I’ve been having a BLAST with threads because until now (age 30), I’ve been curating myself so perfectly on LinkedIn and Instagram that I’ve found myself totally in a box. I am MUCH weirder than I let on with my posts on either of those platforms, and Threads felt like a perfect spot to soft launch my personality to the void. Do I want to share with ALL my friends and family on Instagram? Not really. But the tiny following of funny friends and randoms I have at the moment feels perfect and I post whatever I want....fan art, anime commentary, general shit posting, etc.
For now, I’m enjoying 😊 navigating to the content I want is tough, but sharing my own stuff has never felt easier or even close to being this free!!
This made me laugh bc it’s such an apt description of post twitter social media: “It’s just new and there, like a bowl of sub-par chips and store-bought guac at a party, asking “Aren’t you hungry? Aren’t you? Aren’t you?”
I’m mourning Twitter but have opted to skip the clones, except for Substack. Interested to see where Notes goes.
I agree with the Atlantic piece: “Threads represents a memory of a time that has probably passed but of which we cannot yet let go.” The era of big social media is probably over, and we’ve moved into a place where we’ll find niche and sometimes gated corners to hang out in instead of all flocking to the same big, open town square.
This is spot-on. I’m toggling between platforms and each, as you pointed out, has a specific purpose. Threads is like a pot luck dinner. You’re not really sure what you’re going to get and you might only like a couple of things. The accounts I follow on IG are for specific reasons & don’t translate well on Threads. It’s a viable platform, but there’s a lot of work needed.
Eh. I think it's fun. It will turn into a dumpster fire soon enough. Perhaps it's because i'm in my late 40s and I can do the "I remember when..." but I've found this launch particularly charming. Maybe it isn't as witty or clever as the social media platform of yesterday. Certainly we are all aware we don't need yet another way to disengage. Nor should we be giving Zuck more access to our data and, and, and, and.
But, meh, life is hard. Life's a slog. People are enjoying the new and shiny. It can be that simple, non?
I'm having a different and significantly happier experience with Threads because I purposely did not import my IG follows, partially because I knew a lot of those folks wouldn't "translate" well. Curation for the win, baby! Watching them try on the first few days was, well, who says the theater is dead? I'm cheering them on as they wrestle with it and decide who they want to be on Thread and *if* they want to be on Threads. And I've used the mute button liberally.
I’m a person who has just never been able to “get” Instagram. I’ve tried and tried, but have not found the conversation I’m looking for. I have never understood posting curated content for observation only. If there’s no back-and-forth, why am I even doing this? I’m willing to put up with a significant bit of chaos in Threads just to have that public forum model again. I’m sure the “just people I follow” stream is coming, and in the meantime I’ve loved being introduced to new voices and happily followed many people I wouldn’t have seen otherwise.
I am skipping Threads, probably indefinitely. I hate that it's tied to IG and that once you create a Threads account, you can't delete it without deleting your IG account. It should have been a separate thing, or at least have the option to decouple from your IG account. I get why they did it the way they did -- it quickly scaled -- but thanks, I hate it.
My primary use of IG, which I don't think is mentioned here, is sharing funny memes (often tweets & TikToks) with an extended online friend group. If you don't use Stories, you'd never see them, and my feed is mostly birds and flowers.
I am really liking BlueSky, which feels like OG Twitter. I'm hoping it stays that way, but they'll have to generate revenue somehow so I don't think it will last.
Nailed. It. If an alien landed on Earth today and was like, “Dude, what IS social media?” I would pass them this guide without hesitation. (I think some Boomers would also benefit. I think they are still arguing with friends & family over on FB. Maybe Threads is right for them?)
Sure, I signed up for Threads, but haven't scrolled in a few days. It's just not an automatic 'must do' in the way Twitter still is. Maybe that's the news/politics that I need to check in with that makes Twitter still my first click of the day?
Also, I read somewhere that if you want to delete Threads you have to delete your Instagram account. So if an analysis comes down eventually that 'X people have deleted Twitter but no one has deleted Threads!'... that's deliberate planning.
On Instagram the fact that everything is somehow advertising (if not for a product, then for a lifestyle) is less noticeable or maybe less offensive because part of the allure is that I can visualize how my life might be impacted, or at least... dream of another lifestyle entirely and there's some fun and escapism in that. But a product plug in writing is totally one-dimensional and unsubtle. The flagrant pitch is just repellant.
I'm totally disconnected from everything swirling around and inside Threads but I appreciated this piece and how it thinks about social media in general/more broadly.
What resonated for me the most was, "But most normal people have found their lane — the medium that fits their message — and have stuck with it."
Because I discovered Tumblr many, many years ago, and have lived there ever since. I say it jokingly, but I also mean it, as somebody who is physically disconnected from most of my support system. I've met a lot of my current closest friends on Tumblr, discovering shared interests that bloomed into deep relationships with similar values and endless conversations and snail mail exchanges. People on Tumblr helped me survive homelessness and pet loss and the end of my marriage. I've found people whose thoughts and senses of humor and creativity interest me, and filtered out the rest, to be happy there.
I have other social media accounts, but I forget they exist and never use them--I only check FB because my family posts updates there and nowhere else. I don't spend time on Twitter or Instagram because there's nothing there for me--I don't get the appeal. Instead, I'm on Tumblr every day, and when people in my life find that out, they're often baffled because they feel about Tumblr the way I feel about everywhere else: it's too chaotic, it's too weird, it's not fun for them.
So this post was a nice moment of clarity for me, realizing that I may not be the only one with 'my' social media home (as one of the people who doesn't have to use them all, for professional reasons). It's just that our homes are all different, making it harder to communicate across them or understand each other. After all, I encounter all the same political and celebrity drama that other people discuss everywhere else, but for me it's filtered through Tumblr--and that's how I like it.
It does make me wonder how the collapse, invention, and porting over of different social networks affects our bubbles, though. In my case, all the churn won't affect me until Tumblr itself is involved--no other site is like Tumblr enough that I would be interested in it, right now. But before Tumblr, my home was Livejournal, and it felt like a whole world collapsing when I had to move on from that ecosystem.
So when that day comes for Tumblr (because much as I'd love to pretend otherwise, I know it eventually will), I wonder if I'll be absorbed into yet another community rather than try to live a life without social media. And if so, will it change me like Tumblr did? Because I didn't expect that at all when I first saw some cute GIFs and decided to create an account, but the very particular humor and information sharing and creativity that makes my little corner of Tumblr what it is became a part of who I am now. If that's not unique to me, then it probably matters a lot what kinds of communities we're creating with these constantly evolving apps.
Great analysis, and I agree completely. So much excitement about Threads, but after looking at it I feel like Tom Hanks at the toy pitch meeting in Big. “I don’t get it? What’s fun about that?”
Yes! My experience with Threads has been similar. After the excitement wore off, I realized once again that I'm just tired and want less of this stuff in my life, not more. I truly cannot grasp how so many people seem to have the attention/capacity to read books, write, cook, hang out with people in person etc while also being up to cultural speed on multiple social platforms. A friend tweeted about this very topic yesterday (haha) and it was such a relief to read that it's not just me. /yelling at cloud
I am embarrassed by how much I have been enjoying Threads!! I enjoy watching these chaotic first few days unfold, and watching people wrestle in real time with who they want to be on Threads and who they want OTHER PEOPLE to be to them on this platform. It's fascinating. I also am 10000% more comfortable in a text based medium, as opposed to Instagram, because I am messy and my home is messy and I'm too impatient to craft compelling visuals of just about anything. It's just not my native language, so I'm always fumbling and struggling to communicate. Threads feels easy; I feel like I get what it is, at least right now. But I completely agree about the vibes being just totally unhinged and the content not translating across platforms! It's bizarre to see how something that would have seemed fine on Instagram just falls flat (for me!) on Threads.
I'm surprised by how many people have jumped on Threads. Have we learned nothing about the way Zuckerberg/Meta works? Scrape and sell, but first lure you in with connection and the promise of community. Then stuff it with ugly ads, an incredibly frustrating algorithm, and a Byzantine network of "preferences" that's almost impossible to navigate and never actually serves you or protects you, but by then you're in deep and it's hard to let go of the connections you originally found. All so celebrities can pitch predigested toxic-positivity cliches at me? And without any of the real-time news and journalism that I originally went to Twitter for, because Threads has come out and clearly said that it doesn't want to bother our pretty little heads with that?
This is such an interesting take, and you are SO right about it being a completely different playing field. Seeing the usual patenting and social justice content from IG suddenly seemed so uncomfortable and forced that I muted all of them.
However, I’ve been having a BLAST with threads because until now (age 30), I’ve been curating myself so perfectly on LinkedIn and Instagram that I’ve found myself totally in a box. I am MUCH weirder than I let on with my posts on either of those platforms, and Threads felt like a perfect spot to soft launch my personality to the void. Do I want to share with ALL my friends and family on Instagram? Not really. But the tiny following of funny friends and randoms I have at the moment feels perfect and I post whatever I want....fan art, anime commentary, general shit posting, etc.
For now, I’m enjoying 😊 navigating to the content I want is tough, but sharing my own stuff has never felt easier or even close to being this free!!
This made me laugh bc it’s such an apt description of post twitter social media: “It’s just new and there, like a bowl of sub-par chips and store-bought guac at a party, asking “Aren’t you hungry? Aren’t you? Aren’t you?”
This is great insight.
I’m mourning Twitter but have opted to skip the clones, except for Substack. Interested to see where Notes goes.
I agree with the Atlantic piece: “Threads represents a memory of a time that has probably passed but of which we cannot yet let go.” The era of big social media is probably over, and we’ve moved into a place where we’ll find niche and sometimes gated corners to hang out in instead of all flocking to the same big, open town square.
This is spot-on. I’m toggling between platforms and each, as you pointed out, has a specific purpose. Threads is like a pot luck dinner. You’re not really sure what you’re going to get and you might only like a couple of things. The accounts I follow on IG are for specific reasons & don’t translate well on Threads. It’s a viable platform, but there’s a lot of work needed.
Eh. I think it's fun. It will turn into a dumpster fire soon enough. Perhaps it's because i'm in my late 40s and I can do the "I remember when..." but I've found this launch particularly charming. Maybe it isn't as witty or clever as the social media platform of yesterday. Certainly we are all aware we don't need yet another way to disengage. Nor should we be giving Zuck more access to our data and, and, and, and.
But, meh, life is hard. Life's a slog. People are enjoying the new and shiny. It can be that simple, non?
I'm having a different and significantly happier experience with Threads because I purposely did not import my IG follows, partially because I knew a lot of those folks wouldn't "translate" well. Curation for the win, baby! Watching them try on the first few days was, well, who says the theater is dead? I'm cheering them on as they wrestle with it and decide who they want to be on Thread and *if* they want to be on Threads. And I've used the mute button liberally.
I’m a person who has just never been able to “get” Instagram. I’ve tried and tried, but have not found the conversation I’m looking for. I have never understood posting curated content for observation only. If there’s no back-and-forth, why am I even doing this? I’m willing to put up with a significant bit of chaos in Threads just to have that public forum model again. I’m sure the “just people I follow” stream is coming, and in the meantime I’ve loved being introduced to new voices and happily followed many people I wouldn’t have seen otherwise.
I am skipping Threads, probably indefinitely. I hate that it's tied to IG and that once you create a Threads account, you can't delete it without deleting your IG account. It should have been a separate thing, or at least have the option to decouple from your IG account. I get why they did it the way they did -- it quickly scaled -- but thanks, I hate it.
My primary use of IG, which I don't think is mentioned here, is sharing funny memes (often tweets & TikToks) with an extended online friend group. If you don't use Stories, you'd never see them, and my feed is mostly birds and flowers.
I am really liking BlueSky, which feels like OG Twitter. I'm hoping it stays that way, but they'll have to generate revenue somehow so I don't think it will last.
Nailed. It. If an alien landed on Earth today and was like, “Dude, what IS social media?” I would pass them this guide without hesitation. (I think some Boomers would also benefit. I think they are still arguing with friends & family over on FB. Maybe Threads is right for them?)
Sure, I signed up for Threads, but haven't scrolled in a few days. It's just not an automatic 'must do' in the way Twitter still is. Maybe that's the news/politics that I need to check in with that makes Twitter still my first click of the day?
Also, I read somewhere that if you want to delete Threads you have to delete your Instagram account. So if an analysis comes down eventually that 'X people have deleted Twitter but no one has deleted Threads!'... that's deliberate planning.
On Instagram the fact that everything is somehow advertising (if not for a product, then for a lifestyle) is less noticeable or maybe less offensive because part of the allure is that I can visualize how my life might be impacted, or at least... dream of another lifestyle entirely and there's some fun and escapism in that. But a product plug in writing is totally one-dimensional and unsubtle. The flagrant pitch is just repellant.
I'm totally disconnected from everything swirling around and inside Threads but I appreciated this piece and how it thinks about social media in general/more broadly.
What resonated for me the most was, "But most normal people have found their lane — the medium that fits their message — and have stuck with it."
Because I discovered Tumblr many, many years ago, and have lived there ever since. I say it jokingly, but I also mean it, as somebody who is physically disconnected from most of my support system. I've met a lot of my current closest friends on Tumblr, discovering shared interests that bloomed into deep relationships with similar values and endless conversations and snail mail exchanges. People on Tumblr helped me survive homelessness and pet loss and the end of my marriage. I've found people whose thoughts and senses of humor and creativity interest me, and filtered out the rest, to be happy there.
I have other social media accounts, but I forget they exist and never use them--I only check FB because my family posts updates there and nowhere else. I don't spend time on Twitter or Instagram because there's nothing there for me--I don't get the appeal. Instead, I'm on Tumblr every day, and when people in my life find that out, they're often baffled because they feel about Tumblr the way I feel about everywhere else: it's too chaotic, it's too weird, it's not fun for them.
So this post was a nice moment of clarity for me, realizing that I may not be the only one with 'my' social media home (as one of the people who doesn't have to use them all, for professional reasons). It's just that our homes are all different, making it harder to communicate across them or understand each other. After all, I encounter all the same political and celebrity drama that other people discuss everywhere else, but for me it's filtered through Tumblr--and that's how I like it.
It does make me wonder how the collapse, invention, and porting over of different social networks affects our bubbles, though. In my case, all the churn won't affect me until Tumblr itself is involved--no other site is like Tumblr enough that I would be interested in it, right now. But before Tumblr, my home was Livejournal, and it felt like a whole world collapsing when I had to move on from that ecosystem.
So when that day comes for Tumblr (because much as I'd love to pretend otherwise, I know it eventually will), I wonder if I'll be absorbed into yet another community rather than try to live a life without social media. And if so, will it change me like Tumblr did? Because I didn't expect that at all when I first saw some cute GIFs and decided to create an account, but the very particular humor and information sharing and creativity that makes my little corner of Tumblr what it is became a part of who I am now. If that's not unique to me, then it probably matters a lot what kinds of communities we're creating with these constantly evolving apps.
Great analysis, and I agree completely. So much excitement about Threads, but after looking at it I feel like Tom Hanks at the toy pitch meeting in Big. “I don’t get it? What’s fun about that?”