bethposting

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vectorpoem
@vectorpoem
dog
@dog

In defense of low-effort posting

With Twitter maybe probably dying I've been thinking a lot about where social media is and where it's going. The thing that keeps rolling around in my head with trends on Instagram and a broader shift to Tiktok that it feels like we're seeing social media dividing up more between "creators" and the "audience", with most people just consuming. There's probably a lot of reasons why but one of the big ones for me is that those sites demand higher effort. Instagram photography went from normal people sharing casual photos to a predominant aesthetic of carefully staged and edited photos that require skill and professionalism; video takes more time than either text or photos to prepare in general; and Tiktok video editing takes time, skill, effort.

If a social media site's going to be a place where all its users can and do take part, it has to have a room for low-effort posting. And believe me, I'm doing my part

vectorpoem
@vectorpoem

low-effort everything is sacred

Content Brain is widespread enough that there are now people out there who want to live 24/7 in a bubble of exclusively exclusive high-effort slickly produced corporate curated subscription-streamable-only ~whatever~ from gigantic ass media companies. low-effort posting / art / music / quake levels etc etc are acts of resistance, conscious or not, against this.

also everyone starts out at low-effort. also when your mental health is in the crapper low-effort is all you can manage, and that's Fine. also some people never progress past low-effort but still do rad shit their whole lives.

low-effort is sacred. and i shall end the thought here at risk of becoming less low-effort.

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in reply to @dog's post:

BrodyBr
@BrodyBr

Funny, this is also where my head's been at! For me, it's not the quality of posts, per se, but the format's perceived expectation of length. "I don't feel that I want to write at-length on anything, therefore I won't post." Completely mental hurdle!

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NireBryce
@NireBryce

FWIW if anything it's lower stakes to post random things on here in my experience -- people are way less entitled here so far

not to dismiss your concerns, more to go "if you haven't tried yet, it might not be as bad as you fear"

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Video-Game-King
@Video-Game-King

By contrast, I feel that kind of pressure on Bird Site itself. I think the way to resolve this is Twitter's leadership wants it both ways: they want the stakes to feel high enough that you feel COMPELLED to post on every little thing, but also insignificant enough for you to let your guard down and tweet out every unmediated thought of yours on a regular basis. In other words, it's definitely a cultural/platform-related phenomenon...except I'm not completely sure how you'd go about generalizing any of this? Where does Tumblr - quirky Twitter, to extend what I just said - fit into all this? Or Cohost (Tumblr for people who understand CSS), or Mastodon (Twitter for people who understand SQL? Hell if I know)?

Then again, I'm feeling that pressure as I write this post, so some of it is absolutely personal.

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quephird
@quephird

Yeah, I feel ya... there are indeed times when I don't feel smart or popular enough to post on $BIRDSITE either. I think simply by virtue of my being there for... jeez... 13 years now... that I feel way more comfortable there. I hope I can get over my fears here! :3

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Scampir
@Scampir

First, I want to say that I agree that social media is shifting into establishing creators and audiences on their platforms. This is pretty clear as websites have shifted into platforms where audiences are built around content and then the creator can use that audience as a customer base (merch, advertisements, endorsements etc). However (and I'm not taking this up with you or this post specifically, I'd just like to leave it in a comment) I've seen this arms race of content quality as going hand in hand with people building a brand, rather than being tied with people putting in effort. I can put time and effort into posts, but that doesn't mean that they're going to be good or connect with anyone.

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caymanwent
@caymanwent

This has been my issue with Cohost; there is little room for that. It's heavily webdev and tech focused, with the "low effort posts" being in-jokes for people in that arena. It hasn't been a great place for the rest of us to be ourselves and expend that low effort in any way meaningful.

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dog
@dog

It's interesting, you have a very different cohost experience from me but I think that's also valid!

Personally I feel like the "tech person" contingent was more concentrated back when CSS posting was at its height, but at this point my timeline is quite a bit more diverse.

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milktea
@milktea

I agree with this and honestly have not really found anywhere that offers me what I really want which is like twitter/instagram/tumblr from from 5+ years ago. I love seeing mostly unstaged photos of people's day to day or the trips that they're on, shit posts, updates, goofy thoughts, etc. Right now my life is high effort enough I'm not logging on to put in the work but just to feel connected and chill out.

I don't really see this kind of stuff anywhere anymore and things just feel kind of cold and lonely. I sense that things are becoming more private (discords, group chats) and moving faster (instagram stories) but I really miss a slow, low key social feed.

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drone
@drone

this is me! it's also why I'm really enjoying this site while it's still relatively small, but hopefully it can keep a similar feel as the site grows if I keep a small enough number of nice mutuals

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Izvy
@Izvy

i think the trend is only beginning and the division between "high effort" internet and "low effort" internet is a good thing. the way i see it, its more of a divide between "i have something worth sharing with the entire world" and "i have something worth sharing to my friends or family" and apps like bereal show a demand for the lowest possible effort posting but that kind of content is only valued by people that already really know you.

I personally like the feeling of browsing through a social media feed like a hunt for a good meme to drop in the groupchat/discord for my immediate social group to actually interact with.

I want my friends to send me "hey look at this grilled cheese i made" at 3am and its taken with phone flash.

I want ~influencers~ to show me polished thoughts and products that are worth the time i have to give to strangers to see them.

Now, that said, cohost just needs CONTENT right now in general so go fucking nuts.

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ojai
@ojai

this comment in particular makes me wish cohost had a way to re-share comments as top-level posts.

partly to help build inertia behind a thread of particularly interesting discussion (high effort), but also partly because i want more people to see toilet jokes (low effort?)

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MelloMakes
@MelloMakes

Social media sites really overstepped their bounds in their relationship with creators when they started demanding content specifically in their format and suiting their algorithms--which of course change often--just to let us promote. Technically they were always doing it, but it started to feel way more grimy recently. Like each one was a separate job if you wanted to succeed. Personally can't wait for the current lineup to croak

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