Social networks are people

I don't have many regrets but being on Twitter is one of them. I joined out of curiosity and didn't use the account for years; ditto Instagram. I quit Facebook and never looked back but Instagram was pretty and Twitter was silly so I let them hang around and inevitably fell into using both. Now Instagram is homework and Twitter is poisoning minds. 

Because a social network is nothing more than a collection of users, criticising it triggers an implicit emotional blackmail. Hating on it is hating its members, which includes your friends and followers and people you follow. So I can't dump on Twitter entirely. And I have a new novel coming out in August, so now is not the time to go dark.

Do social networks ever change? Murdoch couldn't change MySpace. Zuckerberg can't change Facebook. Tumblr and Blogger haven't self-organised into sentient beings while we've all been away. TikTok and Snapchat are like Instagram used to be: just one dumb idea. Because they're simple they can be used for many things. But to maintain that audience they can never go beyond that one dumb idea.