I said in my very first post that I was fed up with social media. Now, I didn't really use social media in the first place. I used reddit for memes mostly, and youtube for entertainment and research. Beyond that I did not use twitter, no instagram, no snapchat, nothing. Just the reddit and youtube.
I was discussing this with a friend of mine and he said he didn't really think of reddit and youtube as social media. He's got a point. Snapchat is all about people posting videos for friends to see. Seems pretty social media-ey. Same story with instagram –but with more pictures, less video. Twitter is an obvious one. It's got the likes, the retweets, the peoples posting every kind of file type out there. Reddit, for the most part, isn't about the people because of the way it's set up. It's more about the categories than person to person interaction. Similarly with youtube, it isn't very social oriented because it's mostly an entertainment platform.
At least on the surface.
For the average reddit user who never posts, reddit is not really a social media site because the only interaction you have with others is up/downvoting (likes and dislikes). Reddit transforms into a social media site when users start posting and commenting. Once you click on a post rather than just up/downvoting it you start using the platform as social media. On the surface, reddit isn't very social but once you poke your head down there you find out it is.
Similarly with youtube, 99% of the content is the videos –mostly entertainment, but some educational or interesting stuff. Not incredibly social. But interestingly, the social aspect is much more prevalent than one would think at first glance. Under every video is a like/dislike button. And then below that of course the comment section where most person to person interaction happens. In many videos the creator says "make sure to like and subscribe and hit that notification bell!! leave a comment about this in the comment section below!" Of course those aspects of like/disliking and following/subscribing and commenting are exactly what makes social media social.
Of course reddit has all of these as wells. Following users/communities, posting and commenting, like/disliking posts and comments, and sharing/crossposting.
So in short: yes, reddit and youtube are full on social media sites even if it's not completely obvious.
There are many studies showing that social media is in fact bad for you and that it causes depression and all that jazz. So of course it seems obvious that one should avoid social media completely. But part of the problem is that we think that because it is "social media" that is can replace normal social interaction.
So there are 2 main reasons why social media is bad for you (as I understand it). First has to do with the way our brain experiences happiness. When we interact socially, the chemical serotonin is released. Like with any drug/chemical, we become desensitized to it when it is released often and the more it is released, the less effect it has.
Using social media releases that chemical, making us happy but desensitizing us. But the interesting thing is that our brain can tell the difference between social media and in person communication. So serotonin may be released, but it leaves us unsatisfied.
This is the problem. We use social media expecting our social needs to be fulfilled but they aren't. So after a while of using it, we go and try interacting the normal way –face to face. But because we are desensitized to serotonin, the real interaction doesn't release enough serotonin to make us as happy as we want. This inability to satisfy, and the inability to be happy, causes us to question ourselves and become confused and concerned and start the spiral into depression.
I do not want any part of that.
So I'm moving away from social media. The problem is that places like youtube can be pretty valuable resources. You wouldn't think it, but there are solutions to these problems. There is a site out there called Toogles that is a way to view youtube videos without comments and without the like buttons and without the subscribe button. It gives you the videos without the social media garbage.
Now, for memes and whatnot, that's a little bit harder. There is a solution however. The RSS feed. Using an rss feed you can get memes, news, and all that jazz. It's kinda like creating your own home feed like on reddit or twitter without the social media aspects. As to set an RSS feed up, I have no idea but I am looking into it and will post a summary on the blog here when I do.
There are some gripes I have with toogles. The main one is that the only categories you can access are the trending categories which all suck. There is a light/dark mode switch, which is great, but it covers up the very bottom left of the screen, obscuring a button. And I've had a bit of trouble using it on my mobile phone. It works for the first search but for the second it doesn't. But beyond that, toogles is great. There's no bullcrap social media garbage.
Anywho, I appreciate the whole idea of blogging because I would, on most certainly not be able to post this much information on other sites like twitter. Plus, there's no searching for users or anything. If someone wants to view the blog I don't have to say "oh yeah, look up my user name . . . oh, there's 35 other people with that username? yeah, im that one . . ." etc. It's all here, with searchable posts, and an easy to remember link.
Rant over.
Loink to Toogles: Toogles - Browse
