Okay, it's time again to talk about what the experience of having a social media account with a bunch of followers (*) is like.
(* "a bunch" of followers is platform dependent. I'm getting irritating shit at 2k on Bluesky I didn't get until 10k on Twitter.)
(Ugh, wait, nevermind, I hit 3k while I wasn't looking. Anyway.)
Someone who has never had more than 100 followers literally cannot comprehend the sheer volume of the responses you get. Even if individual posts don't get a ton of replies, if you post with any frequency, it accumulates.
Once you hit the first degradation threshold, your experience gets a little bit shittier. It's overwhelming volume, but the people who are following you are mostly ideologically, socially, and culturally aligned to you. You have the same concept of social media manners.
You'll get a few duplicate comments, because nobody reads the comments before they reply, but they're mostly from cool people, so you just roll your eyes a little at the same joke five times. You still make friends. You still have fun and can wind up finding neat new people.
And then those neat new people retweet your stuff, and it starts reaching out to an audience of people who are less aligned with what you think of as social media manners. You start getting some replies you find obnoxious: they're in good faith, you can tell, but they just grate on you sometimes.
And then *those* people start reposting your more viral threads, and you get people following you who are three degrees of separation from the people you are most likely to vibe with. And three degrees of separation is the second degradation threshold.
The second degradation threshold is where you start getting the constant, low-grade sand-in-a-pearl annoyances. The person who wants to argue with everything. The 15 people making the identical shitty "joke" that's actually just doing the exact thing you're complaining about, "ironically".
Great thread. (Sorry I’m gonna follow you too!) I just burnt x because the volume of homophobic and transphobic abuse I was getting simply for being visibly and proudly queer became overwhelming. And all i post is weed.
This is why, at 40k followers on Twitter, I hardly use it anymore & struggle to engage. I am no longer a person & people frequently attribute powers to me I do not have, or makeup falsehoods that are easily believed because I am dehumanized. Then there's all the misogyny. Barf.
It's really odd. It feels very exciting & cool at first. I never intentionally planned to go viral a bunch of times or build an account intentionally. So it was just like a bonus of this thing I did to fill my time being bedridden. Not sure exactly when it flipped, but it used to feel like community
Now it feels like I'm performing.
I spend more time here on Bluesky than I used to. In part because I don't have a big following here. And I intentionally don't build one. I'm not sure I want it despite the advantages like raising funds for other disabled people or speaking up on relevant issues
Can you elaborate on differing social media manners? Like are there actually different cultures/philosophies, or is it just different thresholds of acceptable rudeness?
I find the more “broadcasty” apps confusing, am I “butting in,” do these people all know each other and I’m the random who just..
..wandered in? Is it weird to reply to Instagram stories of non-mutuals? It feels like I should know if the person I’m replying to has 500 followers or 50k, but does that actually matter?
Facebook Groups on the other hand I totally get, and it’s easy to pick up the culture. There’s written rules!
Apps where folks are essentially broadcasting content, make me feel super awkward and neurodivergent. I know I’m using them to replace having a social life now that I’m a novid hermit, but I’ve just decided to treat then like a buffet and eat whatever until someone tells me I’m doing it wrong. 🤷♀️
I really have no idea how Large Accounts™️ find social media at all usable. If anything I post gets even 100 rxns I get irritated by my mentions. No idea how y’all even stay in the game.
Bluesky needs to put together some features for the power user. Most people only need the basic features BS has rolled out so far, but people with high engagement are worth taking care of because you add so much value to the site.
I’m still annoyed that Twitter went to shit just as I’d coasted to about 1.2k follows, which seemed to be roughly the ideal point of enough sub-minor popularity that you’d always have a good conversation going, but well below the threshold of eternal annoyance. I wonder where that point is for bsky?
500 was the point where I got consistent, solid conversation flow. Where there’s no algo, you need just enough back and forth to pop you into that small circle of relevant to you discussions.
Gut vibe is that 2k+ here starts bouncing you into weird places.
Something I’ll probably never be able to relate to because no one follows me. Debated even posting this comment because I don’t want to add to your poor experience on social media by saying I can’t relate… but I guess the point of all this is to interact with one another. So there’s my 2 cents.
I'm meeting so many fellow members of the League of Exhausted Women (and nonbinary folks and trans and queer people and POC and basically everyone but cishet white men) today
I just posted asking NYers about a good gluten free bagel place (am allergic) and a man not based on NY told me exactly why it was impossible to get good gluten free bagel (hint: it's the lack of gluten), and I want to yeet them all into the abyss
(And honestly us cis-but-not-het-white-guys are probably the *tiniest* increment up from Easy Mode on here, given who the user base seems to consist of so far)
