Social Media’s Death Spiral

The slow yet steady destruction of these once-wonderful platforms is almost complete

Image: Badly edited by author

This article was originally published on my Substack, Trend Mill. Subscribe for critical takes on our dystopian metaverse hellscape future.

I remember the early days of Facebook. I had just gone to university around the time it really took off, and whatever the hell this thing was, it offered me and my new friends a new way to engage with each other (and distract us from lectures) — and we loved it.

It’s hard to imagine now, but it was actually fun to use. Sharing status updates, waking up after a night of heavy drinking to see what awful pictures the nightclub had shared of you, poking each other (okay, that one was weird), joining funny groups, following local band pages, and, of course, ‘fraping’ each other. (In our defense, it was simpler times back then, and the worst we did was write fake coming-out announcements).

It was social media that was… social.

It was a little, wonderful moment in tech history.

And it was nothing but a brief respite before the whole thing became a cesspit.

It was a time before we discovered the truth behind social media, before we realized we had willingly submitted ourselves…