Back in early 2010 when Facebook was the only social media site to care about and The Black Eyed Peas were all the rage, social media seemed so simple. It may be rose-colored glasses, nostalgia, or bias memory; but the early years of social media seemed rather direct and accessible where now, the world of social media is its own world with its unspoken cultures, rules, and patterns.
To begin, social media is just bigger in 2019 than most would’ve imagined just ten years ago. Once there was Facebook for social media and Youtube to watch cat videos. Today, Youtube is a viable career path for aspiring filmmakers and showrunners. Facebook’s profile/post structure has been utilized on other platforms including and not limited to: Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat. All of which now compete with the site that inspired and paved the way for their creation. It’s where the ads are. It’s where the money is. Each site has a variety of communities on it with cultures and rules. Some times they conflict with one another like when Tumblr and 4chan have a virtual war of spamming each other’s sites with memes to offend the opposite political ideology.
Other than it’s size, the world of social media has changed in how relationships have developed. Outside of social media’s effect on the ability of people to have quality face to face relationships, the way people treat one another online has changed. There’s the dynamic between fanbases and content creators like Instagram models and Youtubers that range in quality from pressuring children to buy cheap clothes to raising support for charities. Fandoms have been around forever, but the way otherwise average people amass a following of young people who love watching them post pictures of their food, or live-stream themselves gaming has moved the drama-TMZ-Hollywood culture onto the world wide web.
Anonymity behind profiles made “cyberbullying” a household name. In the online world, free speech runs more free than ever for better or for worse (that’s a conversation for a different blog). People can say anything to anyone and this generation has to develop with that reality. If social media is the public square of the twenty-first century, then it’s the battle royale as well. There’s countless discourse and argument about literally everything and anything. The presidential election. Pineapple on pizza. Literally everything is contested and defended in the era of the keyboard.
In the end, it’s hard to put your finger on the pulse of social media. It’s alive for sure, but its health is anyone’s guess. Once you’ve finished analyzing film criticism on Youtube, political arguments in your uncle’s comment sections, and Instagram model brand deals; you still would have overlooked Furry Tumblr users, strange corporate unregulated Youtube channels for children, Goodreads reviews, and the countless blogs like this one here. It’s a beast straight out of H. P. Lovecraft. Too big and wild for us to completely see and understand (let alone tame). A beast beyond our categories and a beast we invented.
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