Unsocial Media

A friend linked to this piece in Sage Journals written by a former BlogHer who has been studying internet interactions for 20ish years. Danah Boyd explains that we called it social media because it was a space for socializing online. But if we’re no longer socializing, is it still social media? Or she proposes that influencers have turned it into parasocial media. You feel like you know the person, but you don’t have a two-way relationship.

She writes,

Users of social media are far more likely to scroll than post – and the content that they consume is often strategically produced and algorithmically curated … We need to stop presuming that these tools are “social media” and begin recognizing that they are now “parasocial media.”

I’ve made plenty of friends through blogging who are true friends. Many have stepped through the screen, and we’ve seen each other offline. Others live too far away, so we talk via Zoom. But, yes, of course I’ve noticed what she describes: “Users are now lucky to see personal content that their friends are posting amid the slick content created by the advertisers and strategic creators who dominate most people’s feeds.”

I know that everyday content and simple musings still exist because most of the people I am connected to online post just that. But a lot of this essay rang true, too. I think a lot about this during this time of year because blogging is what got me through Mother’s Day in the early years. (Apologies for bringing it up here if you weren’t expecting that.)