On Performing Rather Than Conversing

Yesterday I went for a run and someone asked “Are people running or not?” and I answered yes. The person wanted to be added to the Whatscrapp group but I couldn’t add them because I have no privilieges within that group. I can’t post. I can’t share the group. I can vote “Of course I’m coming” but that’s all I can do.

The person asked, once she was added by the owner of the group, “Can anyone post?” and the answer was “nope” and she said “good, I don’t want too much noise.”

This is a phrase that I hear all the time, and, for me, this means that Whatscrapp is not the right platform for what they want. Strava and Meetup, and even Facebook would be better.

The reaction will be “But not everyone wants to be on Strava. Not everyone wants to chase personal records and more” to which I would comment, “Whatscrapp is far worse, because it is owned by Facebook and we have all read Mindfck, or at least we should have. In mindfck we read about how Palantir, Facebook and others manufactured consent using big data.

I am in these Whatscrapp groups because I know that people prefer Instagram to Strava for sharing events. My issue with Instagram is that when it was bought by Facebook Instagram stopped being a network of friends of friends and became a complete waste of time.

To quantify how much of a waste of time Facebook and Instagram have become, when I’m facing writer’s block, trying to think of a post idea I open Instagram and I watch a video, then another, and then I realise I’m wasting a lot of time. I’m wasting that time with no “I’m hoping to find a conversation and a connection”. I’m just wasting time and procrastinating.

I’m bringing this up because people often hate the idea of Strava, and Whatsapp conversations but at least with Strava, and Whatsapp conversations you’re conversing with people you meet every week, for runs, if not even more regularly.

When I hear, see, and watch mid to late adopters of Instagram I see that they’re performing, and they almost all post either to private accounts, or to reels. Their posts are ephemeral rather than long lived. They’re a quick performative post to say “I was here doing that” and then they post, and close the app.

When they scroll they’re not expecting to see friends and family, they’re just consuming user generated crap, as I have called it, since 2008 or so. There is no personal connection. There is no friendship. There is no persistence like in the good old days.

I’m writing this today because I saw that middle schoolers in the US are choosing to have AI as a friend, rather than people their own age. I expect the article was pay walled so I thought about whether an AI friend is a modern version of journalling or diary writing.

Strava, ironically, is still very much about your network of friends of friends. You ride, run or hike with people. You add them, and then every day you can see what they’re up to. That’s what Facebook, and Instagram and Whatsapp used to be, until binfluencer culture ruined the friendly atmosphere, to replace it with utilitarianism.

If articles are written about how children are replacing peers with AI, then we have failed them, by destroying the online third space that I had as a teenager, and that is more challenging to find now.

For as long as social media, whether instagram, Facebook or Whatsapp is about performance and influencing, rather than friendly conversation, it will be a waste of time, and it will reduce the opportunity to establish new friendships.

With time I find myself agreeing with normal people that social media is a waste of time. The reward is not worth the time and attention investment.