What If We Just Stopped? “We’re in the Looney Tunes stage of the end of social, where we’ve glided well past the edge of the cliff and it’s slowing dawning on us that the only way left is down. Fast.”
Advertise here with Carbon Ads
This site is made possible by member support. 💞
Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.
When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!
kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.
Beloved by 86.47% of the web.
Comments 6
thread
latest
popular
I deactivated Instagram, the only social I was using, just after the 2024 election. I couldn’t face the idea of another four years of yelling amidst the effects of this administration.
My version of this was applying to a postgraduate program a few months into 2025. I’m in my second year now of “smaller and closer and less visible” and it’s everything I hoped it would be.
I definitely had a knowing nod while reading this. I got off Twitter when Elon did the layoffs and Meta’s platforms when they said they’d wind down their moderation programs. While I’m not divorced from news or algorithms — I still have RSS, email newsletters, even YouTube — the lack of social media has definitely quieted that ambient stress and sense of impotent doom.
… Except for LinkedIn. Can I get a replacement for that, please?
LinkedIn. I so hate it, but as I'm likely to be on the job market again soon, I feel like I have to check in occasionally. The "social" part of LinkedIn has become so performative over the last 5-10 years that I just can't even follow the feed anymore, though.
For me, being halfway across the world has been great for disconnecting from social media. It’s quieter when I’m awake and I find myself paying less attention. But I’m also not around to participate in threads here when they’re popping off, which I miss.
Man I get a lot of work done without the distraction of the internet though.
My last social was Instagram because I like it when people like my photos but when it turned into tiktok along with everything else I dropped it. Sometimes I feel a bit disconnected but I'm not positive that was an important sort of connection to have. Mostly I feel liberated.
10 years ago, I took Facebook off my phone once the phrase TimeSuck became synonymous in my head with those two words. Only used it on my laptop by design to make it "harder"... engaged very little with it since then. Finally, FINALLY pulled the plug on it earlier this year.
This. So true for my experience with FB, never even tried Threads, never got into IG much, and though I tried, I can't pull together any wherewithal to give Bluesky much of my time.
If you feel like this comment goes against the grain of the community guidelines or is otherwise inappropriate, please let me know and I will take a look at it.
In order to comment or fave, you need to be a kottke.org member. Check out your membership options.
Note: If you are a member and tried to log in, it didn't work, and now you're stuck in a neverending login loop of death, try disabling any ad blockers or extensions. Or try logging out and then back in. Still having trouble? Email me!