Chapters

I think one of the biggest problems with the internet is continuity. Your online experience is continuous, there's no break, no stopping point, no logical partition. For everyone, with every platform you use, the presence you have on it grows and with that growth, the weight of what you contribute to that platform is carried with you.

Memories in real life fade for a reason, we hold on to what is important and we let go of the things that no longer serve us but the internet doesn't let you do that unless you go out of your way to make the conscious decision to "reset" your online presence but as a creator or as someone with a reputation that's pretty much impossible to do.

In a world without the Internet, people lived their lives and grew as people, they went through stages or chapters of their lives where they found themselves having experiences, within an environment, with a group of people, at a point in time. As time progressed, the people they interacted with changed, the places they went changed, the environment around them changed, and with that change they could grow as people, this doesn't happen online not anymore.

There was a time when social networks rose and fell, Friendster, Hi5, Friends Reunited, Bebo, MySpace, etc. When Facebook came along it became entrenched in most people's lives, the same with Twitter, and a few other social networks that broke the trend of rise and fall, but with their persistence the loss of the ability to move on created stagnation that prevents personal growth.

To most people who still use those social networks, the thought of deleting their profile is something they entertain briefly but would never actually do, because they can't let go of that weight of content, "memories" they created on that platform.

Stop for a moment.

In real life imagine how much you would be crippled by your life experience if you remembered everything, every single experience you ever had, with every detail intact, it's easy to see how toxic that idea is, but harder to recognise that is what we do when we hold onto an online presence so tightly.

I went through about 12 twitter accounts over the years because I created an account, stayed on the platform until I recognised the negative impact it was having, then deleted the account and started over. Each time I'd interact with a different group of people. The few that I actually wanted to stay in touch with who I felt had an overall positive impact on my life were the few that I exchanged numbers with and provided other ways to stay in touch, and I am still in touch with them today, mainly through Discord and WhatsApp.

That experience of starting over so many times made it easier for me to leave the platform entirely a few years ago when I recognised the toxicity had reached a tipping point, where even as a new account, connecting with new people there was no grace period where you escaped that toxicity, no honeymoon period where everyone gets along - this was also part of the reason why I left Facebook some 12 years ago now and never looked back, I had already recognised the negative impact on my life it was having.

I've been "living" on Bluesky for the last year or so in terms of my online presence and the thing that I think is most healthy about it is the thing most people complain about - the fact you have to start over when you join because there is no algorithm feeding you content, you see posts from people you choose to follow so you have to shape what you want your online experience to be.

In that year and a half or so, I've created a feed that is almost entirely void of politics, there's a passing reference occasionally to the state of the world but for the most part the vibe is very much the early days of MySpace and social networks more broadly where the focus is placed on finding common ground, shared interests, and sharing part of your life.

The comments I see and hear from people who complain about the negativity they experience online and the constant feed of trauma and horror that they mainline everyday mostly come from people who have never audited their online presence, never stepped back and looked at who they follow, what they post, and how that makes them feel seeing it. People who have never deleted a profile, instead they created it day one and on it everyone and everything they have interact with for over a decade is still there.

I am 36 years old, I graduated High School 20 years ago and I don't speak to anyone I went to school with now, I hated those 5 years of High School with a passion, and for a time I was suicidal. If I haven't spoken to you in 20+ years we probably had nothing in common, nothing that bound us other than being in the same place at the same time. If I had to live today with a constant reminder of High School seeing it in every detail, I'd hate my existence with a passion. My life has changed so much in 20 years and the person I was back then is another life that at times does not feel like my own.

TikTok is particularly problematic because of all the social networks it is the worst in terms of design for user experience because it has virtually no way at all for a user to say "I don't like this, don't show me it again" - yes you can block people but that doesn't adjust the algorithm and doesn't tell it to stop serving you content like the content they were producing.

Algorithms are highly susceptible to being poisoned by content other people share with us, if a friend sends you a tiktok and you watch it, the algorithm assumes you want to see more of that content even if you hated it. This even happens with sites like Amazon at this point where a friend wants to buy a dog house and sends you a link and asks you what you think of it, you click, read, and reply, then you get served suggestions from Amazon for days or weeks after it. You have to go into your Amazon viewing history and remove the product to stop this, or open links from other people in private / incognito tabs treating it like porn.

In terms of social media feeds, there's a very simple exercise you can do with any online feed to audit the emotional impact it has on and your mental health but most people wouldn't go to the effort. All you need is 3 columns, titled "Happier", "Sadder", and "No change" and start scrolling through your feed. For every post add a tick to one of those columns based on how it makes you feel, how it changes your mood, do that for a few minutes and you will see pretty quickly what impact that feed is having on a granular level on your mood.

In real life if you have friends that become a constant source of negativity that make you feel miserable, you distance yourself from them, and in the extreme you stop talking to them entirely. We've become conditioned to believe we can't do this online, because physical and emotional distance do not exist online, and because we can't forget our past.