Unplugged

The Greta Thunberg vs whatshisname spat seems like the right note to end the year on: teenage girl sass trumping a wealthy man most of us would otherwise not know and who is subsequently arrested having unwittingly exposed himself to the panopticon that is modern police surveillance. The moral is that we are all very tired, and the endgames are obvious, and the internet is a pointless waste of time with terrible real-world consequences but also funny but also not funny, and we are all very tired. Can we continue like this? No. Sarah Frier thinks now is the time we get out of the pool:

"This year, social media mostly stopped offering a window into the lives of our loved ones. It turns out that the social part of social media, which helped shape human behavior online and off for more than a decade, is proving to be something of a fad. It's withering in the sad, slow way that internet habits do; eventually, the people who send public birthday messages on Facebook will be as rare as the ones who still have AOL email addresses.

"In 2022, even the social media companies gave up on salvaging friend-related content. The networks rely on having enough in people's feeds to keep them entertained during a scroll, so they can slot in ads between every few posts and make money. And there just isn't much of that personal posting happening anymore."

Full article is here.