| I still have a deactivated FB, which I would long ago have closed except Messanger became the default family chat app, and I have over 15 years of family messages. FB failed for me in the early years. Even though I only ever added friends I knew in the flesh,I didn't really care which coffee they picked at Starbucks or what cute thing their pets did. When FB moved into the next phase as global forum I found that, just like with email, most of USENET, and pretty much any digital communication tool/platform, no one had the attention and/or capacity for reasoned, balanced, nuanced, irenic discussion of any length. It's one reason why Twitter was "successful" at political/cultural/philosophical "discussion. Despite the complaints about character limit it's what people actually wanted. It's also why I couldn't use it. For years I used to write family and friends email like I would a postal letter. I replied in-line instead of at the top (thanks MS for destroying that sane practice), but even if when printed the email would be a page, page and a half at 12 pt font, I got constant compliments about length. I never used Instagram, quit Mastadon after it had its "Eternal September" as people fled Twitter to talk about nothing but Twitter. I never was able to find active IRC channels even in the late 90s. It felt like rooms with statues even when I asked a specific on-topic question. Mid-90s USENET and Prodigy forums were the best social experience I ever had. Now I mostly use internal forums in the tilde/rawtext public *nix space, a little gopher and gemini. |