I hate virality.

I've been online since 1998, and the first decade or so was great, so peaceful. Of course, even back then, occasionally some douchebags would comment on my posts, wondering why I liked electronic music when the guitar is the most beautiful instrument in the world. This was back when I was a little kid. But there was little to no toxicity like on today's internet.

I've gained followers and influence while posting a lot during the social media era. After 2015 or so, posts started getting visibility because of the algorithms that continued to "improve". And that changed everything. I became more and more anxious because my posts started popping up everywhere, and followers started accumulating. When I left Twitter, I was nearing 10k followers without doing much. My regular posts got constantly shit flies around them, judging and reviewing things I post about.

Meta, Reddit, LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok, all commercial platforms, suffer from this algorithmic brain rot. Your regular posts and the things you're proud of might suddenly go viral, and all kinds of assholes come to bring you down to make themselves feel better. Without recommendation algorithms, those lifeless losers would never get the chance. Without algorithms, we would have a fair game, without singling out or targeting specific individuals.

I need to be present in the Fediverse more often and cut the time I spend in other places. But there's no easy solution. I'm learning this the hard way over and over again.

I often wish it was the early 2000s again, no algorithms, no shit flies.

#SocialMedia #Algorithm #Reddit #Threads