Tag: Social Media (page 1 of 1)

July 11, 2026 / 8 Comments

I Hate The Way We Talk Online

A little over a week ago, I asked on Threads:

Without googling or using a chatbot, do you know what the top songs (by chart position) in your favorite genres are right now? Could you sing, rap, or even hum them if asked?

What I expected in return were answers from acquaintances and strangers alike about their awareness of what’s actually popular, rather than the hyper-personal, algorithmically curated music being piped into their ears or the tunes that the hyper-niche online music fandom they may be a part of was promoting.

What I got instead were weirdly defensive or hostile replies that seemed to take my innocuous question as an invitation to debate the merits of charts including conspiracy theories about their purpose. Others merely wanted to pat themselves on the back for having edgy tastes.

I’m desperate for some sense of a shared cultural language or zeitgeist right now, but not like this.

On a recent episode of Brittany Luse’s It’s Been A Minute podcast, Wired’s Jason Parharm argued that this current stage of overly algorithmic social media has fostered a “main character” mentality where the primary currency is attention and everything, and everyone is judged through that lens. In this world, platforms reward “algorithm-speak” over individual expression and nuance, and any sense of a monoculture around anything other than the algorithm is almost non-existent.

The price of engaging with topics I care about or content I enjoy in spaces where I know like-minded folks exist is that I earn the attention of those who care more about winning algorithmically than connection. Much like literacy, social skills have atrophied in this age of social media.

As the World Cup has been showcasing lately, we can still find commonality and shared language around live sports, but even that is being fractured by the ways we experience the world through our digital frameworks. I’ve written before about how attending WNBA games in-person is nothing like the tribalism rampant when discussing the W online. I’d amend that today to note that fandom around one particular player and team can sometimes feel like the comments section IRL when they come out in full force at your home arena.

They reek of that “main character” mentality in which people assume they are the most entitled to everyone’s attention rather than reading the room and being good guests.

It’s infuriating.

I’m rejecting the shifting social mores that place the highest value on attention. I’m done with aura, rizz, maxxing, and mogging. I’m not accepting a post-literate society.

I refuse!

Let’s discuss topics without feeling the need to win a non-existent argument.

Hot takes? No.

Unsourced Breaking News from non-journalists? Nah, B.

Engage with nuance. Show the grace you would extend offline to those you meet on these virtual streets.

Have something real to say? Write a blog.

Want to better understand the world we live in? Read a book.

Want to be a creator? Don’t let AI write your shit, render your art, or make your infographics.

Don’t be a “main character.” Be a person.

Don’t make me enter my curmudgeon era.

Despite how far back I have to scroll to find my year in age verification features, I’m too young and pretty to be a full-time crank.

A wide, sunlit Los Angeles scene with a tall palm tree on the left and a leafy tree on the right, framing a concrete wall tagged with large graffiti reading “DESTROY ICE”; dry grass and a low fence sit in the foreground beneath a clear blue sky.

January 16, 2026 / 0 Comments

Intentionally Offline

View on Threads

Ironically, my intention to spend more of my life away from screens crystallized around a social media post. I’ve known Zadi Diaz since the heyday of blogging, the rise of YouTube, and those few years when SXSWi cared more about the culture and creativity of the web than about monetizing enthusiasm at scale. She has always placed a grounded, human lens on our shared digital experience.

Throughout 2025, I’d already been noticing how much more joy I got from leaving the house than from scrolling. Friends. Family. Music. Sports. Art. The world. In the fall, I saw Little Simz live and had to check my growing inner middle-aged crank. I visited Memphis for the first time, wrapped another WNBA season courtside with the Sparks, and started trekking to SoFi Stadium for Chargers home games thanks to a friend’s largesse.

And yet, those excursions didn’t feel especially intentional. Too much of my time was still swallowed by doomscrolling or playing a dumb mobile game. Worse, when I was out, I often felt a pull back toward the screen. I’d sit in the car after arriving somewhere that wasn’t time-sensitive, staring at my phone instead of going about my day. I could easily convince myself to skip or cancel activities, return to a comfortable seat, and indulge in the dopamine rush of the algorithms.

The problem was that the high wasn’t even that satisfying. It hasn’t been for a long time.

I don’t know if we, as a culture, have reached a tipping point with algorithmically curated experiences and hyper-niche virtual connectivity. I do know that I have. When every app leaves you feeling vaguely worse, rarely shows you people you actually know, and demands more effort to determine whether something is real, manipulated, or AI-generated than to enjoy it, it’s time to step away.

I no longer want social media giving me simulated or secondhand experiences that I know are more entertaining, more fulfilling, and more trustworthy in person.

Over the holiday break, I was animatedly telling Tiffany about my intention to trade digital experiences for IRL ones whenever possible.

“Isn’t it funny,” she said, “that we make this resolution every year?”

She wasn’t wrong. Since 2021, I’ve resolved to get back outside each year.

Just a year ago, around this time, I saved another Threads post to my journal:

View on Threads

So what’s different this time? Will I retreat to the endless scroll after another round of declarations?

I don’t think so.

Jenna Wortham has described the current impulse as being “performatively offline.” I don’t take that as a pejorative, but it doesn’t quite fit for me. As Zadi put it, the algorithmic artificiality of our digital spaces is pushing many of us toward the natural world. When you spend too much time trying to determine what’s real, the simplest response is to stop looking at the deception and walk out your door.

The hellscape you see in your feeds may exist in your neighborhood. For some of us, it absolutely does. But more likely, what you’ll find instead are friendly neighbors, pets, babies, and communities in need of your presence and patronage.

Here in Los Angeles, that means embracing friction, inconvenience, and uncertainty. Of course, you sit in traffic. Of course, there are odd smells and curious characters on public transportation. But, in exchange, you get opera in the park, free art in galleries and bars, and protest graffiti on the streets. You eat ten-dollar street tacos instead of thirty-dollar ones delivered by DoorDash. You stumble into hidden treasures, make new friends, and deepen bonds with nearly lifelong ones.

In return for putting your phone down and looking up, you see the world—your world—for what it actually is. That clarity can inspire small acts of care. It can also make visible how wonder and injustice coexist, as they always have. That is both infuriating and comforting. That’s the human condition.

Living this way doesn’t feel performative to me. It feels like a recognition that no matter what tech billionaires try to sell us next, no matter how sophisticated the algorithms become, they still can’t beat the desert of the real.

It’s not all bad online. I enjoy reaction videos to popular media. I look forward to conversations with others about the things I’m passionate about, especially when I’m confident they won’t descend into the caustic debate tactics common on the worst parts of the internet. There are still those serendipitous moments of genuine connection that I appreciate.

But joy is offline. So is epistemic clarity. If I leave my house and keep that supercomputer in my pocket, I don’t have to question my senses. Seeing is still believing when my life isn’t primarily experienced through funhouse mirrors.

Surprisingly, this has made me better at social media. My Threads posts have been on fire lately. When I’m feeding my soul with the physical world, I show up more honestly in digital spaces.

I perform here. Out there, though, I just am.

View on Threads

Links & Things

Joan Westenberg on the case for blogging in the ruins.

Sasha Frere-Jones collected some outstanding writing about 2025.

Kai Cenat is learning in public.

Pam Ward retired from ESPN’s women’s basketball coverage, but she’s not done yet.

For Your Ears: You Can’t Kill God With Bullets by Conway the Machine.

For Your Noggin: Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here by Jonathan Blitzer.

For Your Free Time: Celebrity Traitors UK.

Leslie Jones and Sparky, the Los Angeles Sparks' mascot, are singing courtside at Crypto.com Arena with each other.

May 23, 2025 / 3 Comments

Loving the WNBA in a Season of Change

How can I follow the WNBA without being online? There must be a way because being online with the WNBA makes me want to drown myself. I hate all of you! And the biggest reason I can’t stand online WNBA discourse: it’s hardly ever about basketball.

Bomani Jones

Women’s basketball is on the rise. Many more people are watching at all levels. The players are securing the type of fame and notoriety that they have long deserved. Money is pouring in through exposure and expansion, and the paydays will soon follow.

But alongside the good tidings has come a growing fanbase, some of whom seem disinterested in respecting the WNBA’s culture, vibe, or history. All the things that I have cherished over 11 summers as a season ticket holder with the Los Angeles Sparks and cultivated as a fan of these athletes since before the league began.

I attended SXSW religiously between 2005 and 2011. In ‘05, the tech part of the festival was mostly a sideshow to the main event film + music tracks. Tech was active but quaint. There was little fanfare and a lot of camaraderie. It felt like we were all in on a secret: the internet was cool. By 2010, the event had grown so big that I half-jokingly said there were enough other black folks in attendance that I could afford not to like some of them. By 2011, I felt like an outsider and decided it would be my last.

A week before the 2025 WNBA season started, I worried that this summer might mirror my separation from SXSW.

“This might be the summer where we start losing the magic,” I said in the group chat.

The online discourse was overwhelmingly driving that feeling of dread. After months of quiet, the battle lines reappeared in the culture war over Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese—stans vs. fans, bluster vs. reason, aggression vs. inclusion. The tribalism that is a hallmark of college basketball fandom was rearing its ugly head during the draft and training camp as social media stans caped for their school’s players and jumped in the mentions of any person who dared critique them. Wannabe basketball influencers delivered hot takes in bad faith, seeking attention and engagement.

A play caught my attention while watching the opening weekend matchup of the Chicago Sky at the Indiana Fever with the sound off. I commented about it on Threads: an off-the-cuff observation that in most basketball conversations would be pretty milquetoast. It happened to be about Angel Reese in reaction to a hard foul from Caitlin Clark, though, and it brought to my doorstep the exact kind of interactions I don’t want to be having around this sport I love.

The home opener for the Sparks was the next day, and I was anxious like a kid on the first day of school. I often say that Crypto.com Arena has long felt like church. I go there to find fellowship, community, and to feel the spirit. Well, my spirit, at least. Even when we lose, those three hours are my respite. But this summer, there were changes afoot: our long-time in-arena host is with the expansion Golden State Valkyries; our long-time account reps had been replaced; there had been little communication from the organization about what to expect.

I need not have worried, though. While some things had changed, the good vibes were in plentiful supply. Familiar faces greeted us everywhere, and friends new and old were all around us. Neither the bad actors present in Indy the previous day nor the ever-present online drama followed us into my sacred place.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my relationship with social media recently. The telltale signs that I need a break from the apps are here: increased time spent, decreased satisfaction with the experience, doomscrolling, and fomo. Despite my frustration with some interactions, discussing the W online is still one of the best parts of today’s internet.

Unlike Bomani, I don’t hate this community. He must not run in the same circles I do because I still make meaningful connections with WNBA fans via online social spaces. I find plenty of folks who want to talk basketball. On a different episode of Jones’s podcast, Elle Duncan compared WNBA fans to NBA Twitter—caring and communicating about the whole culture of the sport from the games and its stars to fashion, jokes, memes, themes, and even the playful pettiness of fandom. All that is still here if you know where to look and who to give your time to. The rhythm, hustle, flow, and beauty of the W are also represented by its very online community. It might be dispersed across many networks but hasn’t gone anywhere.

Just because the barbarians have broken through the gate, that doesn’t mean we have to cede our ground. I walked away from SXSW, but I’m not giving up on the WNBA. It’s my home. It’s our house.

There’s too much magic amongst the mess. There’s too much love in the game.

Seasons change, we remain.

January 12, 2025 / 1 Comment

City of Stars, City of Angels

My mom sent a picture of her view in the northeast corner of the Valley early Friday evening before sunset.

I didn’t understand what direction she was facing. I thought it might have been the Lidia Fire burning on its last legs east of her or the Kenneth Fire to her southwest. She texted that she was looking due south to the mountains behind Encino, just a neighborhood or two over from us. She sent a second pic as dusk turned to night, which shocked me, and I looked out our window to deep red plumes, dark smoke, and flames exploding from the back of the hillside. The mountains often feel close enough to touch from our vantage point, five miles away. It was the first time I thought we might have to evacuate, not just in this wildfire disaster but in any Southern California disaster of the last twenty years.

We checked our go-bags, filled a few extra pieces of luggage, and confirmed we had everything necessary, like my passport and booze. Tiffany packed the car so we could be even more ready. As our ongoing crisis in LA moved closer than ever towards us, I turned on the TV and found local news. It was surreal to watch and hear broadcasters talk about firefighting efforts that we could see occurring in real time every time we looked out our dining room window.

Although the evacuation warning zones were within walking distance of us, The fact that an evacuation center was set up less than a mile from our home comforted me as we slept in our beds.

The following morning, the sun shone, and the winds were calm. White smoke over those mountaintops seemed like welcome progress. I sought out trusted local and national sources for additional context. I used the non-profit app Watch Duty for updates. Tiffany turned the local news back on. The battle raged throughout the day with meaningful progress as we hit dusk. This morning, after I had slept hard for ten hours, we awoke to clear skies where the inferno had raged 36 hours prior.

What I had little desire to do over that time when the crisis was so close to home was jump to social media.

I’ve seen tremendous value in social networks as a utility this past week: it’s great for finding out if loved ones, friends, and acquaintances are safe; mutual aid networks scale awareness for those in need quickly in these spaces; if you’ve tuned your feeds right, you might see things that deepen your understanding, build your resolve, make you laugh, or remind you that the folks you know and follow are primarily lovely people who want to take care of each other.

On the flip side, though, seeing the in-the-moment thoughts of seemingly everyone near and far, especially during a crisis, is terrible for the psyche. As LA burns, we’ve been reminded that the owner of the largest and most used networks has no discernible moral compass beyond attempting to protect himself and his business. Misinformation, disinformation, and hatred run rampant, pushing people to debunk and counter those narratives.

None of that is helpful. Much of it is harmful.

TikTok will likely disappear in the US by the end of the month, and I’m not sure I will miss it. The time I spend consuming content is overwhelmingly empty calories. I could be spending that time reading or idling, granting my brain a more hearty diet than the dopamine rush.

The communities I enjoy interacting with on Threads may not survive Mark Zuckerberg’s MAGA machinations, and I will miss that if it happens. However, I’m not sure I have the energy to invest in another Social Media space beyond distributing my blog. The other upstart networks just haven’t been my thing.

I don’t want to chase your attention. I don’t want to be your audience. I want to be a part of something real.

When real shit goes down, these digital networks only simulate community and often through a funhouse mirror.

Real human networks come together directly. Like this week, the city of stars has proven itself as a city of angels every day, especially in times like these.

At times, we might use these platforms to help facilitate coordinated action but they aren’t are our only resource and likely aren’t even the best.

The best might be just going where you’re needed and asking, “How can I help?”

December 27, 2020 / 0 Comments

How To Do Nothing

I’ve been off from work since Tuesday, and I’ve got two more weeks before I return to slacks and emails and zooms and the pandemic remote work struggle of balancing work and personal time.

“As far back as 1886, decades before it would finally be guaranteed, workers in the United States pushed for an eight-hour workday: ‘eight hours of work, eight hours of rest, and eight hours of what we will.’”

— Jenny Odell

During this extended leisure period, I’m still thinking about work or, more accurately, I’m thinking about how we spend time, how we value time, and how I show my team that I respect theirs. To show proper reverence for our most valuable commodity requires me to appreciate my own time and what I do or don’t do with it.

“Ah, let’s see what fresh horrors await me on the fresh horrors device.”

Jenny Odell’s How To Do Nothing opens with a Twitter quote that encapsulates how I often feel when I’ve spent too much time scrolling. Despite efforts to better manage the experience, the algorithms are better than I have been, and I will find myself in the doom loop refreshing and refreshing to find some new nugget that will spark a reaction in me. Joy is rarely the return on investment of that time.

Yesterday, though, I made some different choices with my time. Instead of endlessly swiping through tweets, I read up on the squirrels that roam the trees outside my home office window. That led me down a path to understanding more about the San Fernando Valley ecosystem. Later in the afternoon, when I opened The Wild newsletter from the LA Times, I read it more deeply, identifying things that might help me feel more grounded. Odell writes about having a stronger connection to the physical world around you is more real. It is an actual reality.

Our social media spaces generally lack the contexts necessary to feel real. They present distractions and solicit reactions but rarely in a meaningful way. Odell is quick to point out that she’s not suggesting quitting them all and never returning. “We have to be able to do both,” she says, “to contemplate and participate, to leave and always come back, where we are needed.”

Which raised for me this question: what do I go to each of these spaces to do? On Twitter, I most want to interact with my friends and acquaintances. Occasionally, I want to be entertained by digital culture (though maybe I’m getting that dopamine from TikTok more these days) or be in the mix of basketball chatter or Los Angeles happenings or catch up quickly on breaking news.

However, I rarely am looking to do all those things at the same time, and that is the social media platform trick. I come to see what my friends are sharing, and now I’m lost in covid news or trying to understand a meme or reading a trending topic. There’s no context. It’s a noise storm that I willingly walk into and remain for far too long.

I have different specific intentions for other platforms yet haven’t treated them with care or discipline either. I’d love an algorithmic reset button for Facebook and Instagram, but I will settle for revisiting my follows and actively thinking about my purpose when I enter them.

And to get engrossed in more soul-satisfying pursuits, including the act and art of doing nothing.

There is so much more to Odell’s book than merely a discussion of dealing with social media. It’s part philosophy, part history, part naturalist, part adventure. It is not, however, a how-to book.

It kept my mind ablaze throughout.

I highly recommend.

March 20, 2018 / 0 Comments

Another Day

“I used to scream when a whisper would do.”

— Jamie Lidell

It’s weird to have your birthday in 2018, the day of significant revelations about Facebook and privacy and bad actors in the 2016 American Presidential Election. We recognize birthdays now with posts on social media. I got a few texts, a voice mail, an audio message, several tweets and IG DMs and a hundred notes on the Facebook.

I received one physical card this year. It didn’t come through the mail.

I’m not complaining; this is just the way we are now.

Okay, maybe I’m complaining.

I’m complicit in this. At the beginning of each year for probably a decade now, I’ve had designs on a physical calendar filled with the birthdays I want to acknowledge. Each month, I would take the first weekend and write cards. I’d adorn a stamp, visit the post office, and do the smallest thing: send a note. Whatever the message, I would intend to convey this idea

“I appreciate that we exist at the same time and know each other.”

Instead, I’ve already had to issue Happy Belateds over text message and probably forgotten a few altogether.

Your birthday is what you make it, though. 43 years of waking in the morning and I can count my most memorable birthdays: London. New Orleans. SXSW. SXSW. The poppies. Circus Circus. I often say and mostly believe that my best birthdays have been in a strange city, by my lonesome, doing something unusual. I don’t want people making a fuss.

Correction: I don’t want people making a big fuss.

Without Facebook, few would have made a note of my existence today.

It would have been any other day.

Sure, Facebook is clearly damaging our privacy, our democracy, and our psyches. But do you really want to memorize people’s birthdays?

— Amos Posner (@AmosPosner) March 19, 2018

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

With Facebook, it mostly felt like that anyway.

Except with more emojis.

I Hate The Way We Talk Online

Intentionally Offline

Links & Things

Loving the WNBA in a Season of Change

City of Stars, City of Angels

Good Good

How To Do Nothing

Another Day