MoxieCat

I love how during the development for Super Mario World they must have been thinking "Damn, we've got this really cool Bowser fight idea, but he can't fly, what do we do?"
And probably someone said "We could just give him wings. That'd be so cool." and Miyamoto was like "No that's stupid. Let's put him in this big doofy clown helicopter thing instead." and he was right.

There were a bunch of weird vehicles in the development files for SMW.
And they scrapped them for a bowl with a goofy smile.

And they were completely right to do so.

hi chosters!!! the next compilation is probably at least a month away, but if you're interested in contributing feel free to either send an ask with contact info, dm on discord (@internetrecordshop) or drop us an email (internetrecordshop@gmail.com)! the next theme hasn't been finalised yet, but i'll send out info when it is!

(if you've already shown interest in contributing and/or contributed to the last mix, no need to contact us again! we'll make sure we send you the info)

(oh and listen to internet record shop 01: MEADOWS if you haven't already <3)

Because it was ready and I couldn't think of any good reason to wait any longer to release it. I dunno when you're supposed to do this stuff or if it matters much at all. :)

because I think this is the large marker between the previous phase of the internet and this new internet we're going into

it could be me I could talk about this possibly

I'd like to be really autistic and take the "social" in social media extremely seriously for a bit. and how ads and Content is changing where social spaces exist on the internet.

the main difference I want to point out is the distribution of kinds of posts you find on a website. so first I'm going to define a couple different types of posts

social: a friend's post or a post a friend shared. you may talk to this person in real life or over text who shared it and say "haha I saw that thing you shared on Website, it was really funny"
semi-social: a post or share from someone who mutually follows you, but you rarely/never talk to each other. you each know of each other's existence but presence is all you share. alternatively: a post or share from someone who is on the same level of "being a nobody" as you are, say for example in a group or forum. they are essentially another stranger passing on the street that you may briefly engage in conversation
para-social: a post or share of someone you follow but does not follow you. you know of this person but they don't know you. you communicate with them exclusively through their comment section and there isn't any expectation of a response.
advertisement: a company or individual paid to put this post on your timeline

to me,
social media puts emphasis on social and semisocial posts, occasionally mixing in parasocial posts and ads.
a content delivery site puts near full emphasis on parasocial and ad posts and may de-emphasize or not even have social and semi-social posts.

I wasn't around for forums but I get the impression they were largely semisocial places where people often found genuine social interactions. as you see familiar faces around you may reply more to a poster you recognize and form a social relationship.

when I was in college, twitter and snapchat were social places. my friends and I would reference things that happened on twitter in real life. sometimes I would meet other people irl then message them on twitter later when we recognized each other in a friend's replies or rt's.

ultimately I think having a healthy mix of all these kinds of posts is good for a social media website. ads pay the bills. social posts keep people having fun. semisocial relationships give a website relationships that only exists there which keeps you coming back. parasocial posts give you filler and high effort posts on your timeline

except that the ads actually don't pay the bills.

content happens when ads start to merge into posts on a website. for example youtube playing an ad before and during every video or youtubers baking ads into their videos.

the shift to content delivery typically brings fewer social/semisocial posts and more parasocial and ad related content. an algorithmic timeline generally signals this shift.

So Is This Bad? Yes. Well, It's Bad To Me.

the main problem is that doing Content Delivery is the most profitable way to run a website right now, which has caused a lot of social media websites to shift to content delivery.

some websites are made to be content delivery websites right from the start, like youtube or tiktok, and honestly I'm perfectly fine with that. I love that I can go on youtube and expect to talk to nobody and also never be acknowledged. it's freeing that commenting on a video is effectively screaming into the void because I'm sure as hell not going back to check for thumbs-ups.

the actual problem is shifting from a social media website to a content website. because this actually makes boatloads more money, but gradually chokes out social and semisocial posts

it was about twitter all along

yeah so this has happened a lot recently, and I just want to list the websites this has happened to in my time on the internet so far.

facebook used to be a primarily social website with occasional ads. then it added more ads and an algorithmic timeline and people stopped using it as much.

facebook then added groups, which made the websites extremely usable again, and actually was a place where people posted memes and college friends gathered. then facebook made the shift to video content and groups started sucking for some reason.

instagram was a social place where people would see irl peoples' pictures. then it shifted to an algorithmic timeline and by today it's rare I see a friend's photo on instagram

snapchat invented stories, which I think people generally forget by now. snapchat actually was an extremely social app. it promoted creativity in photos and conversation between friends with low-effort drawing and stickers. also sending nudes. snapchat was maybe the fastest and worst shift from social media to content I've seen. it was basically in a single update snapchat released the , uh , fuck I forget , , the page to the right of the camera changed to shortform content and stories moved over to the left. it sucked. I don't think it's gotten less cringe.

twitter is what this post was about and I actually want to go in detail with what happened because it was an interesting frog-boiling change. okay so I talked about twitter in college being a social place. then covid happened and twitter became the Only social place, because stuff wasn't happening irl anymore. but at that point twitter had begun the Shift To Content so here was the cycle:

• see a close friend rt someone new, haha funny post! parasocial relationship formed
• they are moots with one of your moots, they interact with your post. semisocial relationship
• you begin to see All Their Posts on your timeline, and because you want to upgrade to a social relationship, you're interacting with their posts
• their schtick gets familiar and you interact with slightly fewer of their posts, it's all good though because you know that you're both some degree of social to semi-social friends still
• their posts disappear from your timeline
• the cycle starts anew with someone else

this cycle sped up faster and faster and faster until twitter was no longer a social media website. that sucked, but now I'm here and that's nice.

one thing I noticed when people were kicking and screaming getting off twitter and coming to cohost was some internet veterans saying "first time???" and I guess to them I'd like to say, NO! it actually wasn't anyone's first time!

the reason I mention this is because the general consumer is getting annoyed at moving between social media websites. and the reason people are having a tough time getting off twitter is because it was one of the social media websites left in the mainstream.

moving off a social media site means losing a bunch of semisocial and social relationships. to be honest I think people are starting to give up on the concept of social media. I don't see threads filling the social media gap for a general audience, and I don't think cohost needs to reach a general audience. maybe social media survives longer when it has a niche crowd.

I don't really have a conclusion but I hope you enjoyed my social media rant. and I hope u enjoy having all kinds of relationships on the internet.