Weaned from YouTube and Instagram
De-Instagramification
it amuses me to read about how Instagram and YouTube are addictive today, when the opposite is true. Imagine, you live alone. You’re in the middle of a pandemic. Your only social exchange is at a petrol station when buying a coke or similar. You exchange three sentences and then you go back to abject solitude.
Now, imagine that at the same time as you deal with abject solitude you see social media pivoting from being about your friends and family, to people living a better, more social, more fulfilled life than you. Imagine being exposed to binfluencers. Imagine seeing them get hundreds of likes, and comments. Imagine commenting but being ignored.
Now imagine the sense of solitude, loneliness and isolation. Imagine the ever-increasing sense of FOMO and post-traumatic stress from not being able to connect.
I bring this up because I saw that YouTube and Instagram are being called addictive. Yesterday I heard someone speak about mindless scrolling on Instagram.
Instagram was “addictive”, when it was connecting me to friends, family and colleagues. It was addictive when I didn’t have an ad that blocks my timeline for several seconds every fourth post. I use the word “addictive”, when the right word is “engaging”. Instagram was a pleasure to use, when it was a social app that connected me with friends, family and colleagues when we were not in the same physical space. When it pivoted to being about binfluencers and strangers, it became redundant.
The nail in the coffin of Instagram was seeing others get loads of engagement, whilst dealing with pandemic solitude. Instagram became ROMO. Reminder of Missing Out. ;-)
YouTube
In the case of YouTube it might have been engaging at one time, when we could search through 30-100 videos at a time. Once they made it so that we get 6-8 recommendations per topic, and everything is written in clickbaitese, and every video uses the same cliché music and sound effects it becomes toxic.
When we could discover content, through browsing YouTube was engaging. When we could read video titles that were not written in clickbaitese, we wanted to click through and browse.
By getting algorithms to take over the timeline and recommendations I’m being fed video titles that repulse, rather attract me. I’m being fed titles that wean, rather than hook me. Ads repulsed me. Clickbait headlines disgusted me off of YouTube.
Engagement Versus Addiction
Humans are naturally social, as was proved by people preferring to play COVID roulette than to get to COVID zero. People want to connect with others, and want to be social. They want to establish relationships and friendships.
Social networks grew and thrived from bulletin boards to web forums and chatrooms to hybrid sites like MySpace, LiveJournal, Blogger and plenty of smaller niche forums. Eventually Twitter, Reddit, Facebook and other monoliths hoovered up every smaller community.
Sparse Geek Density
Twitter and Facebook were engaging because they connected people, in an age where being online was for geeks, not normal people. With time, and especially with the pandemic, normal people arrived on social media, which is when social media lost value.
And Finally, Loneliness is Repulsive, Not Addictive
Instagram and YouTube were interesting. Instagram was engaging when it complemented my life, when it connected me with people I knew and appreciated. When it pivoted and disconnected me from friends it lost its value.
With YouTube it was engaging and interesting when it allowed me to search for and find interesting content after browsing for a certain amount of time. Once it forced me to watch YoUTube optimised clickbait content, it lost it’s value.
By pivoting away from being social networks social media sites became irrelevant. That’s why they need to resort to addiction strategies.