On signing into LinkedIn, I see a number of names come up in the feed that I have not thought about since 2010, when I randomly joined the site, took a quick walk around the platform with its suburban office park vibes and its BIG LANYARD ENERGY, then never went back.
Did these people have the hots for me? Did they hate me? Did they want to hire me? Just who were these perverts? Vanity piqued, in order to find out, I would need to become a “premium member” of the platform. LinkedIn told me people were looking at me, but didn’t provide identities or context. Some weeks it would be 60 people, some weeks it would be 47.
In its kind of catfishy way, the LinkedIn emails told me people had been looking at my profile. That was when I started reading the emails I had been receiving weekly for years now (unable to unsubscribe), from the most unloved platform of all: LinkedIn.
And then there’s you, your other self, the avatar that you drag through the timelines, shackled like a hungry ghost, that feels most tired of all. There’s the sense of having heard it all before, where everything is predictable and even your triggers, your rage, your disgust and your excitement feels reheated and tired. Even the arguments on the platforms have the spite and stalemate of a toxic marriage. The design of these platforms is as familiar, comforting and loathsome to us as the interior of our own homes (this is boring! Don’t you dare change it!) and the invisible hand of the algorithm like a trick that no longer seems fresh but instead feels manipulative and is received with resentment and an eyeroll. On Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram – platforms where many people have been for a decade or more – much of the user experience feels distinctly middle-aged right now. D oes our existence on a social media platform have the lifespan of a dog (10-13 years) or a person (72.6 years) or a palm tree (80 years)? I guess we don’t know because the end has not been written in the code, instead it’s something we feel in our bones – the time when it’s over.
0 kommentar(er)
