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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024

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That's a terrible idea. The big accounts I follow, I follow because I like what they post. I don't want to be redistributed to some rando. I'd immediately unfollow any rando the social media tries to make me follow, and I'd be annoyed I had to do it.

And on a lower level, for friends, the number of followers they have doesn't mean much on its own. If I make a friend, and they have 100 followers and follow 100 people, that doesn't mean much compared to another friend that has 3000 followers and follows 3000 people. The second person is just more of a social butterfly who follows a lot of people and gets the obligatory follow back. The person who'd have more social capital than either is the person with 1000 followers and follows 400 people- that's probably a hot girl who posts the occasional revealing photo on a public account, but is also perhaps a normal person who for whatever reason has high social capital for another reason.

One time I reached out to the creator, and they replied back, and they became one of my very few Twitter followers who isn't a bot. I think something like that, on a larger scale, would help Social Media become more "social" instead of mindless passive celebrity worship.

I don't think that's a particularly important goal. No matter what you do, social media friends will very rarely be "real" friends. Real friends will hang out with you to get drinks, will help you move a couch, will send you job opportunities that are a perfect fit for you they heard about from another of their friends. We should absolutely try to do something to rebuild communities and make people more social again, but doing it through social media isn't a worthwhile goal.

I don't think that's a particularly important goal. No matter what you do, social media friends will very rarely be "real" friends. Real friends will hang out with you to get drinks, will help you move a couch, will send you job opportunities that are a perfect fit for you they heard about from another of their friends. We should absolutely try to do something to rebuild communities and make people more social again, but doing it through social media isn't a worthwhile goal.

I agree that having friends who will physically meet you and do things for you in real life is very important, and very different from people who just talk to me online. I don't know how to fix that, though. I know there's Nextdoor that's supposed to be for that, but I've never found it useful for anything except buying/selling stuff. I feel like, for better or worse, we're stuck with social media so we've gotta work forward through that.

I feel like, for better or worse, we're stuck with social media so we've gotta work forward through that.

Encouraging people to be friends with complete randos I don't consider the right step forward.

But what about pen pals, then? Was that not essentially a pre-Social Media form of "encouraging people to be friends with complete randos"?

People are already achieving that level of communication with randos in online comments sections. Pen pals rarely formed very tight bonds.