The problem with Social Media.. Lately

I’ve been noticing this for a while. I’m going back to reading books. I used to love YouTube (never been a fan of TikTok) but the content is just so RECYCLED. I think we’ve surpassed the peak of authenticity and creativity. They regurgitate the same talking points over and over and over again. It’s beyond boring….and I no longer have the desire to hear it anymore. It’s like how many times can y’all tell the same story different ways?!? It’s like once you’ve watched one video, you’ve watched them all. The most common videos I see “Stanley cups” “Sephora kids” “Modern dating is hard” “Everybody’s lonely” “Making friends as an adult is hard” “Social media is bad” “Feminine energy/dark feminine energy” “How to get what you want through law or attraction/assumption ” “How to be productive” “Sustainability, SHEIN and fast fashion is bad” “Lack of third spaces” “The wealth gap” “Influencers are bad” “Doom scrolling” “Overconsumption is bad” “My 5am routine” And then a shit ton of people just trying to self you stuff. Like 80% of content is just a commercial/advertisement now. YAWWWWWNNNNNNN. I’m beyond tired of it. Everybody’s just hopping on whatever train will get the most profit. That’s it. Everybody’s literally the same. And even the people that “think outside the box” do it in a way that they can’t get “ canceled”, so them “thinking outside the box” is really them still conforming to group think.

"We need to talk about-" no we don't! we been talking about [THING] please make it STOP

I don't have the "addicted" feeling towards social media anymore. It's mostly just shopping and recycled relationship topics and it doesn't feel like you're missing anything anymore.

It is so insane that everyone decided to make a Stanley cup video at the same time. Does no one realize that everyone was buying those cups a year and a half ago????? That whole thing has been done for a long time and suddenly people are talking about it. Crazy

glad i’m not the only one who noticed this! it’s like we’re all stuck in high school gossiping about the same person 😭

Now are other YouTubers gonna copy your idea and make a video about how unoriginal YouTube has become? 😅

This is why I watch hardly watch any youtube video essays nowadays because no one is saying anything new, and if they are, the algorithm isn't pushing their videos anyways so I don't know they exist. Everything is either derivative or self-referential (referencing phenomenons that only exist on social media) that the "real world" doesn't know or care about. I have realized that limiting my time on social media/news cycle means I may be left out of most of the "discourse" but there are so many things on social media/news cycle that 1) I don't need to know about and 2) can't do anything about but 3) it sits in my brain and causes me unnecessary stress that I already have enough of. Like, is knowing anything about stanley cups or sephora kids important for my life? It's not. And learning things like "everyone is lonely" just makes me feel worse. It's not helpful for me to consume this content.

YouTubers have to do what sells to pay their bills. And it's now very rapidly turning the platform into a content mill of nearly identical ads. I can't ever hear people talk about their life. If I look up "life updates" the results will be "how to level up your life!!!" With those thumbnails of the person making some ridiculous face with high saturation and contrast. Nothing is ever just...normal anymore. I'm over it.

Agreed. Youtube used to be a lot of fun. I used to find new music artists, fun makeup tutorials, travel vlogs, theme park food vlogs, some really funny comedy, cooking videos, and flash mobs. It was a lot more fun back then. Now all I find are video essays on the same thing. Shorts are better now.

I miss the old YouTube days, stuff I grew up on. I loved the music video era on here🥰

This is why I am still un ironically on Tumblr. It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s so different to other social media, both in how the platform is designed and the culture of it. It just feels like way less pressure than others 🤷🏼‍♀️

It’s so unfortunate that in order to stay relevant you have to constantly push out content. As a big Meat Canyon/Papa Meat fan, as soon as he began to deviate from horror I knew it was because he wasn’t making animations fast enough. Flash forward a couple of months and now he’s talking about some of his cartoons representing that exact thought process. Flash forward another few months and he’s taking a hiatus from animation all together. It breaks my heart seeing these people quit what they love because they can’t do it fast enough for social media’s tastes.

im so tired.... blah blah blah gen z... gen alpha.... cups.... tiktok things that wouldnt be things if we ignored it. it so hard to leave tho cause its like a lil window into ppl my age, something to discuss abt.

YES. I just said this to my co-worker. I want better content less often but the algorithm isn’t built for that. Also, so many re-packaged ideas and theories. All this talk about “pretty privilege” with responses saying “pretty women get harassed or treated like objects”….misogyny. Y’all are describing misogyny. Women’s value = their looks; less attractive women = dehumanized; more attractive women = objectified…that’s misogyny. People are speaking on things they haven’t really thought enough about just to stay relevant because there’s money to be made. Also, “pretty privilege” is more catchy and speaks to insecurity (best audience bait there is). There’s no depth or originality. Just regression and marketing.

I agree. I also think a lot of people exaggerate world problems like saying “everyone is obsessed with cups, kids don’t act like kids anymore” when in reality that’s far from true at least in my perspective. And I notice that like 90% of popular influencers have gotten into some type of drama because people find unproblematic people boring.

I feel like youtube and social media in general are really dying for me. I don't have any interest bc shit just isn't fun anymore. I try to encourage the algorithm to give me some funny, stupid, light hearted things to enjoy. No matter what I do, every time I open the app there's something devastating, depressing and sad in every single title and thumbnail and maybe one video of someone making a cool outfit or a dog video.

I watched sooo many videos on Stanley cups, 9yr old Sephora girls, the harms of social media, gen Alpha not reading, iPad kids, all that… and after a while it was like I was in an echo chamber. After this, I can’t wait to see how many “there’s too many videos about too many repetitive…” videos and so on and so forth lol

I'm glad that this showed up in my recommendations because I have been feeling like this for a while, and I thought I was going crazy. I am doing a "deep clean" right now of sorts where I am unsubscribing from creators that I don't watch anymore, and I am hitting "do not recommend" on every "video essayist" channel that does TikTok or social media commentary. It's still a work in progress, but it's made me feel a lot lighter.

The trend of "quitting YouTube" videos last month was such a weird regurgitation of content.

I recently saw a video about a woman encouraging everyone who needs to promote content to ditch social media and to make yourself a website instead and tbh, i think we need to go back to that. It would also discourage doomscrolling and you have a bit more control over adds showing up or not