I really like Om’s word angertainment to describe what gets popular on social media. This goes not just for the “big tech” platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit, but I see it happening on Mastodon as well. Not always merely from those accounts that are engagement farming, but from lots of accounts, some of which I used to call friends and follow.

Years ago I heard a rule from someone (Merlin Mann comes to mind but I’m not sure), “I don’t argue with people on the internet”. To that I’ve added more recently the idea that if some thought isn’t worth taking the time to post on my blog which forces me to spend the bare minimum of time to think, it’s probably not worth posting at all.

Take this post, I could have linked to Om’s content and posted it on Mastodon, but I’ve now spent a few minutes thinking harder about the topic which produced something much more worth your time to read.

Other Thoughts on Social Media

• Twitter wasn’t worth the effort for traffic
• Twitter Threads are terrible
• Even on Mastodon threads should be blogposts