After a lifetime against, I'm considering joining social media. Any advice?
I've never had a Facebook account or any other social media. I know they keep shadow profiles, but I've never given permission. I never had any interest and frankly still don't.
The problem I'm having is that I don't exist online when people try to look me up. When someone tries to check me out, there's nothing there and apparently that's considered abnormal these days. I think it's starting to affect my life negatively for various reasons I'd rather not get into.
I'd just like some advice about where to start if you wanted to dip your toes in and check it out. LinkedIn, maybe?
You are viewing a single comment
They're forums though, are forums social media? I don't think services people use anonymously and not for the primary purpose of interacting are social media. The stat has always been 90+% of people are lurkers who just look at memes. Doesn't sound very social. Scrolling lemmy and reading articles doesn't get at that part of the brain. We're not a social group, looking at each others lives.
What stops being social media if we broaden the definition. YouTube is social media if Lemmy is imo.
Lurkers on Lemmy and Reddit don't seem too different from someone who is on Twitter or Instagram to follow celebrities.
Commenters definitely are in it for interacting, whether they realize or not. Like, just now, you felt the need to express your opinion to this crowd, and so did I.
I think another divide when it comes to "social media" is the idea of following someone.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc let me follow people (or brands).
Reddit however isn't about people or brands (and yes I'm away they added that feature, it's stupid), it's about topics.
Looking at Mastodon, it is also designed to follow people. They do however have the option to follow hashtags, which as a Lemmy user is something I like.
Similarly as a Lemmy user I don't care who any of you are. I'm not following anyone in this thread. We could interact every day or we could interact once a year, I don't care who you are and I like that.
Also, I don't care if you follow me. I'd prefer if you didn't. I do have an opinion to share, and I do want people to read it. Is that "social media"?
As other folks have pointed out, this is all more similar to Internet forums. Are those "social media"? I would argue they are not, but if you stretch the definition far enough... I guess?
It starts with something silly like an avatar or profile pic next to every comment. If you'ld have had a flag or a dogpic or so next to your name/comment, I wouldn't have read your comment in the same relatively neutral way. I dislike the persona stuff, it's why I prefer forums. Lemmy is a collection of forums to me. I profoundly distrust persona cult stuff, like influencers etc. Sure, I'll encounter same people here I'm sure, but frankly: I'm mostly unaware, usernames barely register in my mind.
The part about social media I dislike is the real connection between Irl and online, and the "profile"-focus, for now both is no issue for me on lemmy.
Yes. Forums are social media. The mental gymnastics....
Is it my imagination or do you think people that don't consider forums to be social media are doing it out of denial, as if they consider social media to be inferior and they want to be the superior ones without social media, but by encountering you telling them these ugly truths, they deny and defend themselves almost in a tantrum?
Because that may happen with a person or two, but no, many people don't have problems having social media, just don't consider Lemmy a social media for various reasons (e.g. not used with a real name, they do not personally message from here, etc.). If their criteria is wrong or right, I don't know. I do consider this a social media, but it's open to discussion.
It'd be helpful if you stop looking at situations as if they were the crying wojak (them) vs chad wojak (you) because that's not how we all work.