As an elder millennial I’ve been waiting my entire life to write that headline 😉
But seriously, I’ve noticed some really bad behavior from the most recent internet denizens. Multiple times now I’ve been in a discussion on a platform only to have a young someone do the following:
They post some stance/take without any evidence. There’s an issue with their position and any attempt to refute their position is met with a reply followed by an immediate block.
The block prevents me from seeing their reply, just the notification that they replied, and it also prevents me from any further rebuttal. Yet everyone else can see it so it looks like they got the last word and I had no rebuttal to their final point.
Haha slam dunk, got ’em! 🤡
Things are a bit worse on Threads specifically where there is a feature to disable commenting by anyone – but the person is still free to come spew their toxic views as replies on your content, just nobody is allowed to refute them. Fortunately you can still “Hide Comment for Everyone” so nobody sees their irrefutable bad take and they are denied their precious likes for their dunk or whatever.
Between this new anti-social behavior and the Dead Internet Theory becoming more real every day I’ve noticed that the overall IQ of the internet has declined.
I’m not really that sad about the demise of social media. When I think back on the people I truly admired in my life, most were never on there to begin with, and the others have long since left.
It’s not surprising to me then when The Harris Poll shows that
- 47% of GenZ wish TikTok had never been invented
- 43% for SnapChat
- 50% for Twitter
Count me among them. I think our world would be so much better had social media never been invented.