What Threads Could and Should Be

People on FB have pigeon holed me as negative, and don’t understand why I am this way. The reality is that I believe the algorithms highlight when I am negative, rather than positive. I also think that there is a certain amount of bias against me. I post plenty of positive things but I think algorithms hide them or the subconscious does.

A Temporary Shift to Threads

Since women, who are mothers, and may never be alone for the rest of their lives think that I am too negative on FB I will take a network from that anti-social network, to experiment with threads.

I have been on Threads for months at this point but I never remain because I see plenty of people asking questions but I do not see conversational threads and I do not see many worthwhile posts. I see the same questions being asked dozens of times, but I don’t see much original thought.

I see that some of my replies have had 20-30 likes and interations but barely any replies or conversation. I also saw that one or two comments got a thousand views, which is both great, but also a shame. It’s a shame that 1000 views results in zero replies. A good social network is about conversations, not likes.

Too Big for Personal Conversations

When Twitter was young, and when Jaiku was around, and when Google + were around these were small social networks, in terms of numbers. This meant that we could have personal and intimate conversations where we got to know each other. In the modern era it’s difficult to have personal conversations because we’re not a dozen people chatting. We’re thousands of people. The numbers are too great for the community to be tight knit and friendly. That’s why we see plenty of pointless and similar questions, rather than interesting and meaningful conversation threads.

The Void

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and more were tight knit social networks for a while but from 2007, with hashtags on Twitter, and 2008 or so, with Zynga, Facebook became anti-social networks. With Instagram it became worthless after FB bought it. We’re not using social networks to be social. We’re wasting time, and feeling more and more frustrated, which is why trolling and ranting are such a problem today. If social networks were healthy we’d be kind, considerate, and positive.

Threads has active users, but the questions have no value. I don’t feel that the ROI, for ordinary people is there, at this moment in time.

Ghosted Positivity

I am probably as positive as I am negative, if not more. I share the adventures I go on and the nice places I see. I also share things that I enjoy. For some reason almost all of my positivity is invisible, and my negativity is amplified. I don’t know whether people are tuned to see negative things, or if algorithms amplify them.

And Finally

As I say more and more often, social media is dead. This is due to algorithms that make it impossible to establish proper friendships. It is also due to the huge mass of people. How do you stand out when thousands of people like and comment? It’s a full time job to keep control of things.

It makes more sense to use the web for meetup, GoSocial, Strava bike rides, and leave socialising to when you’re offline, rather than online. Threads will require months, or years to gain any value, and in that time you can do a lot of hiking, cycling, climbing and via ferratas.