Social Media doesn’t give a F**K about you

Social Media has become useless again

Little changes over time. Businesses try to sell. Consumers try to ignore them. Platforms are created to bridge the gap. Marketing firms get creative. Platforms constantly change the rules. We all loose.

Social Media Platforms, Organized from Least Useful to Complete Waste of Time

Least Useful

Email

Everyone has one; everyone checks them; no one will admit they do; you are paranoid about giving out your address.

Me: “Hey, here’s a well-written email that gets straight to the point.”
Email: “I’ll just leave it right here. The recipient may or may not get back to you, ever.”

Without any way to confirm receipt, the recipient can safely ignore your message and you’ll never know. Maybe it went into SPAM; maybe they don’t use that email anymore; maybe they read it; maybe they are ignoring you. We’ll just never know.

Complete anonymity breeds a useless platform. But still our most useful of the useless platforms.

Facebook

Everyone is there; most people are just creepers.

Me: “Take a look at this awesome thing”
Facebook: “I will let your friends know about it later, maybe. Our friend Andrew Jackson might help me remember to deliver it, wink-wink.”

If the post is useful, insightful, or provides value; it will definitely get buried and no one will ever see it. That’s the policy.

If the post is dumb, cheeky, includes a cat, or is funny, and is completely useless and wastes every’s time, it gets immediately promoted. Top of everyone’s feed! #teamAndy is a perfect example.

If the post is political, full of rants, or promotes hate; it goes to the top of the feed and will show up over and over again for days.

Twitter

Only those who tweet more the 200 times per day are there; users only want to argue with each other, and no one cares about your tweets.

Twitter is like reading the newspaper laying on the ground while driver by it at 65MPH, on the highway, while wearing sunglass, at night. Did you catch it? No, obviously not.

Me: “Look, awesome, thing”
Twitter: “Sorry, I missed, it was buried in 30k other Tweets that came in that second. Maybe you can tweet it again later. And again later after that. And again.”

If the tweet is useful, insightful, or provides value, it is lost in the background and will never be seen.

If the tweet is political, full of rants, or promotes hate, it is lost in the background and will never be seen.

If someone who has a bazillion followers, happens to see your tweet and retweets it, two others will see it as well. They will both mark it as a “favorite” tweet, which means absolutely nothing.

That same Andrew Jackson will disappear faster on Twitter than at the check-in desk at the Bellagio, only you won’t get an upgrade on Twitter.

Snapchat

Text messages with pictures; for voyeurs.

Me: “Hey, I just did this”
Snapchat: “You don’t have any friends. And I’m not helping you find any. Leave me alone, I’m too cool to be bothered with what you think.”

Your snaps are there for 10 seconds. If anyone comments, and they won’t, you have 10 seconds to read it. And then it’s also gone forever. Because that’s helpful. So, did that thing really happen? We’ll never know.

Instagram

Look at me. I’ve candidly created this elaborate scene, took 43 takes, and applied a lame filter to hide any remaining imperfections. But you know, just a quick pic because I love you. Can we be friends now? I’m still relevant.

Me: “I just did/saw that”
Instagram: “Sorry, you cannot engage with your audience. Try using hashtags, because removing spaces from sentences is helpful.”

I’m so glad you’re having fun with your friends online by trying to one-up them with elaborately created “snapshots”. Now you have a fancy digital photo album of things you staged, congratulations.

Youtube

So you want to be an expert? Find the lowest quality camera made and shoot a video, like 4 hours long. Don’t know how to edit, no worries, no one does. I’m sure everyone will watch your video.

Me: “I spent four hours creating a script, recording, editing, and polishing this information for you”
Youtube: “Why? You should have just used your cell phone and uploaded the unedited video directly. Like everyone else.”

Quality is your biggest downfall. Did you know people use Youtube to “listen” to music? Instead of streaming a full song in about 100kb of data, they stream 4gb worth of video that is never watched. Efficiency.

As the second largest search engine, it shows that Google has no real competition. Kind of like the way socialism works.

Periscope

Something cool might happen, but I’m not sure because I can only shoot it live. Hold on, I think it’s going to happen any minute now. Wait, let me read the comments that are coming in.

Me: “I can’t tell if this is going to be cool or not, so I’m recording this conversation with myself”
Periscope: “Hold on, let me tell your friends, if they are not busy, maybe they will join for 4 seconds until they realize you have nothing to say.”

Is this funded entirely by the cellular data plans to force you into exceeding your 3GB monthly limit? No worries, Facebook just killed them.

Waste of Time


About Me

William Bushee is author of Wired For Coding, co-founder of Code Bootcamp of South Dakota, VP of Development at BrightPlanet, Director and Board President of Health Connect of South Dakota, and local entrepreneur in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He also runs various boot camps and code clubs to teach technology to kids around our region.