Social

How Wrong We Were

I used to love the Cluetrain Manifesto.

What was not to love? I was young and rather clueless, and with a rebellious streak. Here come The Beatles, and they said that the ways of the world were wrong, which was true, and that everything would change. Which was false.

Quite naturally, I hopped on the Cluetrain. It served me well for some time, so no hard feelings. And yet, it’s incredible how different things turned out to be!

 

We went from…

#62 Markets do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate firewall.

(which was spot-on!)

to…

Companies doing that exactly, outsourcing their ‘conversations’ to PR agencies, flacks and hucksters and people in charge of ‘delivering’ the ‘right’ message.

 

And from…

#2 Markets consist of human beings…

#3 Conversations among human beings sound human…

#10 As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized…

#17 Companies that assume online markets are the same markets that used to watch their ads on television are kidding themselves…

#89 We have real power and we know it…

#94 To traditional corporations, networked conversations may appear confused, may sound confusing. But we are organizing faster than they are…

to…

Brands using AI-generated influencers to promote products on social media [link].

(As if ‘real’ influencers were not bad enough)

 

The web is like the freeways in LA. It was great –– until everybody got there.

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Asocial Media

What we spent the better part of two decades calling social media have turned asocial.

In 2023, the time spent viewing friends’ content was 22% on Facebook and 11% on Instagram. In 2025, that timeshare has dropped to 17% and 7%, respectively [link]. The rest is chosen for us by an algorithm, like it was on TikTok from the start, and based on what we are more likely to watch rather than on what our friends like or comment on.

An increasing percentage of this content is AI-generated, and the platforms seem uninterested if it’s UGB — user-generated bullshit, or AI-generated bullshit. Nobody at Facebook, Instagram, X or YouTube really cares. The only two metrics that matter are time utterly wasted on these platforms and revenue generated per dumbfuck user.

Platforms that were once presented as many-to-many, participative and even revolutionary are now clearly few-to-many and based not on our social networks, but merely on recommendation systems that privilege passive metrics such as watch time and completion rate. Users are bored, alienated, captive and often underprivileged spectators.

What is even worse, this new form of mindless and wasteful broadcasting is personalised, meaning that there is no common ground, no possibility to talk about or critique what is being peddled to us because each of us watches his or her private, personalised channel. We have very little idea of what other people are watching in their own little worlds.

Sui Social Media

Letto in un commento su Marca:

Lo felices que éramos cuando no existían las redes sociales. La degeneración de los comportamientos humanos en su máximo esplendor. Gente que vive aparentando vidas que no tienen. Gente insultando desde el anonimato sabiéndose impunes. Gente que pretende enseñar cosas que no saben o conocen. La verdad es que antes se vivía de otra manera, y a mi parecer todo ésto nos ha hecho retroceder como sociedad. Hay cosas realmente más importantes que ésto y los jóvenes en su mayoría no se dan cuenta.

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