My friends became "my audience" and once-thoughtful comments were replaced with emoji reactions. I would try harder to get "engagement," i.e. thoughtful comments by making more "content." I can't blame my friends for not reacting, though. When everyone's a content creator, the world becomes a sea of things to react to.
Seeing it put like this, I feel like something clicks in my head about (part of) why I've always been a bit of a lurker, why I never posted too much in any social media (or why i might use them more to boost other people's posts instead), and why I used to really like oldschool forums and enjoy open chats, or, thinking about it now: places where interaction is more bidirectional.
Like, I sort of feared falling into this same kind of pattern and worrying to much about engagement... and the fear there isn't just fear of failing at that and not getting anything out of other people, but there's also a fear of not failing and then getting used to... being "engaged with" (so to speak); of getting into too much of a "content creator" mindset, because i can see myself so easily giving so much importance to all that engagement stuff lol (very "the Bocchi-likes-monster Bocchi imagined when she was told to make an 'Isstagram' account" for any Bocchi heads out there).
But, at the same time, i do like and want to "put myself out there"(?), talk about whatever the hell specific stuff i've been into and see if that connects with anyone else. There's still good sides to all of this; connecting with others, reaching out, finding people you can share a space with somewhere else, etc.
Maybe that's why i like cohost too, the lack of metrics and such, but also that that represents a statement of intent for what cohost wants to be and an invitation for people to not pay too much attention to that... to not become too much of a performer. By virtue of being social media, it still is a stage, but hopefully one that's less likely to encourage the worst sides of performing-via-posting. Cohost's lack of DMs maybe also plays a role there, by more or less telling you to find a different space if you want more private/intimate relationships (thou i remember reading the lack of DMs was mostly, if not entirely, due to practical considerations haha)
Ah, this comment got away from me a little bit... to bring it back to the blog post: i guess reading it made me think about how commerce-first internet spaces are naturally driven to make themselves stages for people to perform on, and that it's maybe too hard, if not outright self-defeating, to try to build a home on top of a stage.
