All Social Media Sucks (In It's Own Way)
There is no “good” social media platform. Every single one of them is terrible in its own uniquely horrifying way. You might think you’ve found the one corner of the internet where people understand you, where the algorithm aligns perfectly with your soul, where your follower count reflects your worth as a human being.
No matter where you log in, you’re still at the mercy of a machine that exists to for people sell you things, siphon your data, and keep you glued to a screen. And that’s true whether you’re on Instagram, Bluesky, X, Threads, TikTok, or whatever nightmare hybrid some niche subculture of fuckwits is glomming onto.
Every platform is a business first and foremost. You’re a product, or a customer, but you're not a person. You’re numbers on a spreadsheet, a target demographic, a potential sale. They throw you some crumbs of validation with likes and retweets and views, but that’s just bait in a trap. No matter how much effort you pour into your online presence, it’s never going to matter as much as the bottom line or the company’s valuation. Your hottest take, your most artfully filtered sunset, your funniest meme—none of it means a damn thing to the platform owners. And if they decide to tweak the formula to favor ten-second videos over witty text posts, suddenly, your entire online identity is obsolete.
It’s not personal. It’s business. And there’s no amount of engagement that’s going to change that.
You’re never going to “matter” to these platforms in the way you want to matter. You’re never going to be anything more than a cog in their data machine. The app that once felt like a genuine community will eventually morph into something that’s optimized for maximum profit and minimum humanity. This isn’t a bug; it’s a feature. Every platform starts out looking like a utopia of creativity and connection, and ends up sucking in different ways, littered with ads or users whose content is little more than an ad and dominated by bullshit.
The takeaway here? Don’t take any of it too seriously. You don’t need to fight every troll, perfect every post, or agonize over engagement. Enjoy the parts of it you like. Have fun with it. Have a good time. Or don't. Fuck it. Social media will never love you back, no matter how hard you try to win its approval. And while it’s easy to get sucked into the grind of creating and posting and chasing clout, remember that none of it is real in the way real life is real. It’s just pixels and numbers and dopamine hits on a screen.
Log off every once in a while. Touch grass. Text a friend. Read a book. Reclaim some piece of your mind from the digital fuckery. Social media will keep churning with or without you, and that’s just fine. You’ll be happier if you treat it as the disposable, soul-sucking amusement park that it is—and nothing more.
