Social Media Is Doomed to Die [Content Made Simple]

Issue #307: Post-platform internet, commodification of self, and more.

TOP OF THE WEEK

Social media is doomed to die

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Quote:

We pay for all kinds of software, from to-do apps and dating apps to money management and streaming apps. We pay for creators, avocados, and $5 cappuccinos. We even used to pay for email from ISPs! So surely people would be willing to cough up a few dollars a month for software that facilitates our most important relationships. The cost of transmitting texts, photos, and videos — the bread and butter of social media — gets cheaper every day.

However, the promise of ads may simply be too good to turn down. Advertisers are simply willing to pay more for the product than its actual users. In Facebook’s case, the company makes something like $200 per year of ad revenue on each American user, but how many of those users would pay $15 / month to use Facebook? According to one study, not many.

Commentary:

I found this article to be super insightful, even if I don’t necessarily agree with all of it. I learned a lot by reading it.

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THE TRIVIA QUESTION

As of 2022, which pizza chain is most popular in the United States? (In terms of revenue.)

Answer at the bottom.

HITTING THE LINKS

Link #1: The Post-Platform Internet

One of the better articles I’ve read in a while. Short and sweet.

Nostalgia for digital platforms is pretty pointless: We have so little control over them that when we lose them we can’t be too upset. And yet I still feel slightly betrayed and destabilized by the changing internet order. That’s probably because I benefitted from it over the past decade. In a good thread, Ryan Broderick wrote about how Twitter used to be vital to creative industries. It provided a direct route from a writer’s brain to anyone who wanted to follow them. Its openness and directness made it possible to develop new forms of culture: journalism projects, weird memes, entire genres of humor. I found an audience and support there for my offbeat ideas about cultural criticism.

Link #2: The Privacy-Minded Social Network at the Heart of the Classified Documents Leak

The first link above is authored by Kyle Chayka, and so is this one, just a different outlet. If you don’t know anything about Discord but you’ve heard about it in the news, this is a good introduction to the platform!

Discord launched in 2015 as a tool, reminiscent of Slack, for gamers to chat with one another while playing online. In the years since, it has grown into a kind of decentralized social network that by some estimates has nearly two hundred million active monthly users. Where larger social platforms such as Facebook or Twitter are organized around public feeds, Discord allows users to create and manage their own “servers,” or chat rooms, many of which are private, accessible only to those who have been invited by their administrators. Discord users often remain anonymous or use pseudonyms. Each server sets its own tone and its own house rules. This siloed structure makes Discord a relatively conducive place for the kind of contained leak that Teixeira was apparently going for. In Thug Shaker Central, explosive information could be kept within the “family,” at least for a while.

Link #3: The Commodification of Self

Very good, big-picture thought here. I have a newsletter scheduled about a similar topic that will go out in a few weeks I think.

We begin to define ourselves by what we end up consuming, by brands - just look at any gym influencer or various subreddits or merch drops.

Consumer spending is 70% of GDP growth, so there is an incentive to align us to the products that we buy and the brands that we use and the corporations we follow.

But it results in the commodification of self, a way for us align to stories and narrative (increasingly told by brands). We create ourselves via consumption.

THE FUNNY PART

You can subscribe to The Funnies here. (It is a weekly email of funny internet content, and it will always be free.)

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Trivia Answer: Domino’s