Hello. It's been a while since I posted.
I imagine most people here are more interested in forums than social media. I've personally given it up recently as I've also given up public Discord servers and chatrooms. It feels alienating to broadcast every thought I have to millions of potential viewers, and I also feel it cheapens discussion and turns well-meaning people into mindless robots.
Firstly, cheapening discussion. Social media is a lot more about conversation than it is about sharing your personal thoughts in any substantial way. This is by design, naturally, and that is its purpose, which is fine. I'm just extremely concerned about how it's superseded forums, blogs, and old sites.
Twitter is easily the worst offender in that regard. Cliques band together according to their own political opinions (on the left and right), and each side stereotypes the other in bad faith, paradoxically strengthening the hatred each side has towards the other, and community on Twitter reduces into circlejerking their intellectual superiority.
It's a culture built on being special, important, righteous, moral and looking down upon those who are different. Their ideologies aren't built on truth or actual morals but self-aggrandizement and moralism. Folks just need something to fight for no matter how ridiculous that may be, something to make them better than other people.
The ranting about "normies"/"normalfags" is another thing. I myself don't have much good discussion with them, but there's some who legitimately believe they're subhuman cattle while they're enlightened erudites with a decalcified pineal gland. Another circlejerk of supremacy. In the least the elitist aristocrats of old had something to be proud of.
People on Twitter, on both the left and right, wear their misfortunes like crowns. They build their identities not around what they can do, but what they can't. It's anything from how leftists always talk about themselves in terms of what ways they're oppressed like "I'm a black trans intersex drug addict with schizophrenia and Crohn's disease" to how incels and virgins constantly post about it. Even worse are "femcels", girls who make it their identity to be depressed loners (and I feel a margin of them definitely do it for attention.)
Even worse is looking at Neocities and the people on there. The majority of their sites aren't about stuff they're interested in, but rather an extension of the "me" culture that permeates social media, just given a retro HTML coat of paint. They see restoring the "old web" as a tool of political leverage against capitalism. Does everything need to have some greater meaning? Can't someone enjoy something for its own sake? It pisses me off to be honest.
Another reason is more personal. I don't function well in groups at all. A forum I would definitely feel OK in, but not a public Discord server nor social media. I'm just not cut out for that sort of conversation in a public space, I've always felt mundane discussion as only having weight when you're with friends. And by mundane discussion I don't mean any discussion that isn't philosophical. Talking about video games, anime, or music is definitely not mundane to me, and those who think every discussion has to be philosophical and "deep" to be good are idiots.
