Josh Writes a Blog

Category: rants

  • Thoughts on Social Media for the New Year

    I have a love/hate relationship with Mastodon. On one hand, I love that’s it’s open and free and there are no ads inherently. I love that it’s easy to find groups of people with similar likes and hobbies through hashtags. I love that it’s boring–truly, a website that isn’t trying to be flashy and branded and desperate for your money is awesome.

    What I hate about Mastodon isn’t really Masto related, it’s just a realization that it’s hard to meet people you truly like and want to hang out with. Social media isn’t set up like real life; in real life, you might go to a function, meet some new people, and decide that one or two of those people are cool enough to hang out with again in the future. On the internet, you shout into a void and a variety of voices respond back, and there really is no choice. You follow people, sure, but then it’s like you’re in their living room 24/7; you hear everything they have to say. You can stop that, by muting words, or by muting their profile, even–but then what’s the point of following them in the first place?

    And this isn’t even scratching the surface of malicious actors within the social media world. The “reply guys,” the spambots, the people who can’t take a joke. You might meet these people at a party, but you don’t have to talk to them. You can go somewhere else. Online, they’re everywhere and you’ll be spending much of your time blocking and reporting people and accounts. In real life, you can just leave the party!

    When I was a teenager, we had AOL chat rooms, we had forums, and we had messaging programs like AIM and ICQ. I’m confident that if these existed now, they would be just as corrupt as they were then, but back when the internet was new and unknown, chatting in these spaces felt pioneering. People were even more anonymous back then, too; chat rooms were less like a cesspool and more like a tide pool, filled with the bad and the good; filled with creatures attempting to thrive in an environment. And when those environments failed, you moved to proto-social media–AIM, a place where you could directly talk to your friends.

    But it’s 2023 now. Everything is a Brand and/or a Monetization. Nobody scrolls through social media attempting to socialize. Imagine the “social” part in tiny font and the “media” part in giant font, emblazoned with a ™ symbol at the end, to remind you to watch what you say, you don’t want to infringe on copyrights and trademarks, okay? We’ll see you in court!

    Mastodon changed that, but for how long? And can a post-Twitter social media site ever work the same way? Twitter was a, pardon the term, zeitgeist. It was a sociological petrie dish, and we were the bacteria, squiggling around, trying to figure out what this thing was. And then the Arab Spring happened, and people suddenly realized that Twitter was an excellent place for news. News news news. And thus the site had A Purpose™, a direction. This, in a way, killed the site for those of us who liked to tweet stupid, silly things. But it drew visitors which meant eyeballs with pocketbooks for advertisers. It was only a matter of time before it became Brand and Monetization.

    So when people fled to new social media sites after Elon Musk displayed his flagrant stupidity like a hippo flicking its shit all willy nilly with its tail, we didn’t do so with a sense of exploration of something new, we did so already “knowing what Twitter was supposed to be.” This infection of knowledge ultimately soured Mastodon for me.

    For example, look at this post, which was on the Explore page of Mastodon, a page that showcases some of the more popular posts on the site:

    Now, before you’re like “Josh hates gay people,” my point with this example is not specifically that I hate gay people (I don’t), it’s generally that this post is self-righteous and annoying. But apparently it’s the kind of discourse people like, a real “preaching to the choir” type of post that is easy to like, because it’s funny and it’s pertinent to the LGBTQ crowd. It’s not just LGBTQ though, it’s politics in general, and money, and, in Mastodon’s case, an excessive amount of software engineering and programming/

    I just find this kind of stuff boring and uninspired. It’s why I muted George Takei, a popular social media figure both on Twitter and on Mastodon. Or Robert Reich (father of College Humor/Dropout founder Sam Reich, by the way). If you like “old men writing pithy statements about politics,” then those two are perfect for you. But I just, desperately at this point in my life, want to use a social media site where we don’t talk about politics. Not because I hate politics or because I am apolitical, but because there is no site where we just have fun and enjoy life anymore. In order to make that experience happen, we have to curate it. We have to mute and block and craft our social media experience, as if social media were a bonsai tree. If I owned a house where all the rooms except one had toilets in them, you’d bet your ass I’d seek solace in the toilet-free room.

    In real life, you can easily enjoy time without politics, without ads, without brands (well, maybe not this one). Online, every. single. site is trying to pull you in one direction or another, trying to anger you or make you cry. Yes, there are some terrible things going on in the world right now, which is why it’s even more important that there are places you can go where you don’t have to look at it. I don’t think the men, women, and children in Gaza right now would want to force you into their world everywhere you look.

    We don’t have to sit and simmer in the boiling pot just because someone else is in there already. The problem with social media is–it’s all a boiling pot, because the investors, the venture capitalists, the billionaires, want it to boil. They need it to boil, because it’s easier to extract money when the humans have boiled for a few hours.

    I don’t have an answer to this. I don’t think the majority of us can answer this, really, except to stop using social media sites. To put our eyes and our money somewhere else. Maybe I haven’t found the right crowd. Maybe I’m just sick of constantly pruning the bonsai tree. But this is my primary reason for getting away from social media for 2024, to escape the constant boiling, to let the bonsai tree grow, to take a breather from the constant churning of Brands and Monetization.

    I recommend you do the same. And turn off your notifications! You don’t need to be notified of everything all the time.

  • Technology Woes

    Folks, I think I made a mistake. See, a few months back I decided to trade my Samsung A71 in for a Pixel 7 Pro. I was enticed by Google Fi’s “Pixel Pass,” a $50/month option in which you get a free phone upgrade after two years. I liked the Pixel 4 so I decided to give it a shot.

    That, so far, had been fine. The Pixel 7 Pro is pretty cool and fast and good. I’m starting to have a more existential objection to the size of the phone itself, but that’s a topic for later. The phone works and is good.

    Then, a couple months after that, I took the plunge and got a Pixel Watch. At this point, I had decided: I am a Google Boy. I will get all the Google things. Why not. The Pixel Watch seemed neat and I’d never had a smartwatch before (aside from a very cheap, very defunct watch I bought from China a few years ago). So I bought it. It is the crux of this conversation so I’ll come back to it.

    Month or two later, I bought the Pixel Buds Pro. These I like, and I hate earbuds. I really had to hype myself up for these, but they sound great and they don’t make me feel like I’m compacting my ear canal with wax, which is what other, cheaper earbuds feel like. I like this.

    Now, as you may know, I am in my 2023 Marie Kondo mode, getting rid of stuff and trying to make my space simpler and sleeker. I’ve also been running, which you definitely know about because I won’t shut up about it. One of my problems with runs is that I have this Pixel phone which is pretty big and heavy, heavy enough to notice when I’ve got it in my pocket for runs. Long story short, the damn thing pulls my joggers down when I’m running and it’s kind of obnoxious. I even bought one of those armbands that holds your phone but that is also a pain in the ass. So, know that that was in the back of my mind when I thought, “Why did I get such a big phone?” which turned into “Why did I get such an expensive phone?” which turned into “Why did I get a Google phone?” etc etc etc.

    And so I went to Google Fi, my carrier (which is a good carrier, btw, never had a problem with it). This is when I realized that I was locked into all this stuff: Pixel Pass means I can’t trade in my phone. In fact, Pixel 7 phones aren’t even listed among the items I could trade in. If I cancel Pixel Pass, I have to pay the remainder of my phone’s cost. Which is absurd–why not just switch it over to month-to-month, like you do with every other phone?

    That’s alright; the phone is good, if big. I can deal with that. Pixel Pass is nice, and the added features (device protection, YouTube Premium, Google One, and $5 off my plan) are worth it. I just wish I had a smaller phone! Never thought I would think that, but now that I’m running I need something a little smaller and lighter.

    The Buds I don’t want to trade in. They are great, no issues.

    The watch. The damn watch. I can’t trade it in because there’s nothing to trade it in with. It’s a fine smartwatch but here’s the thing, the wrinkle that helped spur my desire: my health insurance include Rally, which is a whole service dedicated toward fitness and health and wellness. Part of this includes “coins” you can earn which go toward rewards. One of the recent rewards is 25% off a Garmin smartwatch (and $60 off an Oura ring, which is also kind of tempting). This made me think of recent YouTube videos I watched from the Running Channel, in which they tested Garmin’s “suggested” feature for runs based on your activity, which I thought was pretty neat.

    Fitbit does this too, but not to the degree Garmin does. And then this morning I was thinking: What do I want out of a smartwatch? Like, what do I use my Pixel Watch for? Heart rate, Strava, Fitbit, and sometimes I use the voice recorder if I had a particularly weird dream. But … I realized I don’t even look at the watch for the time of day. Thus, it dawned on me: I don’t need a smartwatch, I need a fitness watch. I need a Garmin. I barely ever wore a watch in my entire life and I certainly don’t need a watch to tell time. It’s the long battery life and the nuances of exercise that the Garmin offers that I want. Curses!

    Honestly, the problem is less that I have this watch and not that watch. The problem is that I locked myself into something I ultimately don’t want, which is frustrating for anyone. And the truth is that I probably will end up getting a Garmin watch and wearing both when I run like one of those dorks. A first gen Pixel Watch will depreciate in value pretty quickly, especially when V2.0 inevitable releases in the future. I think I made a costly error. Thankfully, at least the Pixel Watch still does a good portion of fitness monitoring and does it well. I just wish I had the added features of a Garmin.

    My point is this: Don’t be a Google Boy/Girl/Person. Or an Apple X/Y/Z! Just get the stuff that works with what you want. All these brands talk about “seamless integration” but it’s all seamless. It all works together, more or less. Get the iPhone and the Garmin watch and the Pixel earbuds. It won’t be as difficult to pair them as the brands would make you believe! Meanwhile, I’ll just keep using this Pixel watch until I inevitably get the budget Garmin Forerunner and then end up wearing that all the time instead. LOVE TECHNOLOGY!

  • Trivial Opinions

    I’m getting tired of people having strong opinions over things that one should not have strong opinions over. It feels like trivial opinions are competitions now, and having the loudest argument for your opinion means you won. There’s something about today’s society that makes people should “PINEAPPLE DOESN’T BELONG ON PIZZA” from the fucking rooftops as if they were trying to appease Jesus Christ himself. This is the de facto thing people are writing on their dating apps. Pineapple does/doesn’t belong on pizza.

    Dudes: who gives a fuck? Who actually cares?

    Having strong opinions about banal shit is the new “small talk.” People claim to hate small talk but don’t mind arguing about pineapple on pizza until their face turns red.

    I think it’s the internet’s fault. More specifically, I think it’s content creation’s fault. Content creation has given people this concept that they must be making content all the time, and then paying them just enough to make it seem lucrative to have content. The byproduct of that is that everyone makes videos about everything because there’s a chance it might go viral and suddenly you’re making lots of TikTok money. It’s the new lottery: if you play long enough, there’s a chance you might become rich and famous. That chance is astronomically small, but playing it absolutely and always benefits the company that is providing the service. Your TikTok video may not go viral, but people will scroll past it to the juicy advertisement that nets Tencent about … ten cents.

    Thus, it is ultimately worth it for corporations for you to have the biggest, dumbest opinion possible, and that plus the need to generate content constantly means that you will scrape the bottom of the barrel trying to come up with something that is appealing enough to a viewer to net you another viral lottery ticket.

    We’ve coined this “the hustle,” but it’s really just making money for big corporations and them (potentially) giving you a sliver of that money back. Yes, a precious few people make a lot of money on Twitch and YouTube. But the signal to noise ratio is astronomically low. And yet, since we see people being successful, we assume that being on Twitch or YouTube will make you successful eventually. It won’t, not just on your content alone. A lot of those successful people had contacts or networked their way into success. Or were just rich already and bought it.

    All of that is to say: please reconsider your strong opinion on bullshit. Nobody cares if Marvel is better than DC. That is not an opinion that should raise your heart rate. Pineapple on pizza? Who cares. Dogs on the couch? Who cares. Just live your life and worry about the bigger stuff.

    Side note: I encourage every single one of you who may happen to read this to please curate your social media feeds and try to weed out overly negative people. The video game content industry is a big offender for this. Your life will be better if you don’t surround yourself with constantly negative people. I promise you.