Bluesky is ushering in a pick-your-own algorithm era of social media

I genuinely don't understand the desire to engage with so many folks on such a superficial level.

Like - if the only way you're going to know about someone's wedding is from a social feed... you aren't friends with that person, you're just acquaintances.

Most folks do a great job at informing you of the things that are relevant in your relationship with that person when you... talk to them.

> I am not interesting in living such a small life that I have time to fully engage with every single happening - I would like a machine to help me.

You think that life is small... but I think yours is utterly dehumanizing. You aren't interested in engaging with individuals, you seem to just want their life's highlights thrown at you repetitively until you've burned yourself out on them, like slamming the oxytocin button for your brain without actually doing anything nearly so drab as actually talking to someone.

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I think my reaction to your comment is driven by your idea that friendships and human interactions are formed over big events (like weddings or exciting happenings). I'd argue fairly strongly that they're driven instead by precisely the small, boring, daily things you're not at all interested in: Commutes. Meals. Emotional responses to small things (politics or not).

I find it distasteful to think you're friends with someone when you only give a shit about the big exciting news they have to share. That's not friendship, it's a weird twisted form of paparazzi/voyeurism. You don't want to know them, you just want their life's highlights presented to you...

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Emotional response aside - Hard disagree on

> It is 100% genuinely and obviously worse to, if someone only sees...3 posts on your social network for those posts to be [someone complaining about commute, breakfast photo, angry election post] as opposed to [wedding announcement, request for a resource the user has, a close friend sharing something exciting that the user hasn't seen]. Telling users that you are showing them less interesting stuff because "they happened in chronological order" is a bad answer.

>You think that life is small... but I think yours is utterly dehumanizing.

The person posted (barely) 3 paragraphs. Like, less than 10 sentences.

Seems pretty hasty to label their life "utterly dehumanizing" from that. Your whole next paragraph is drawing a lot of (frankly, quite rude) conclusions based on nothing. You've read so much into their short comment that you've created an entire fictional person, and then got angry at the fictional person you created.

Looking at their comment and your reply, I would say they have a healthier approach to socializing on the internet than you appear to.

Eh - anger isn't the same as disgust or confusion. And it's not really pointed at the above poster explicitly, it's pointed at the culture that results from the attitude that human interactions should be prioritized on the scale of "entertain me" by a digital algorithm, and that that's a good thing.

And while you might wish it's fan fiction... it's the very real reason we see things like nation-wide social media bans by age. Calls to reduce or reform social media in general. And a huge number of negative social outcomes since the advent of that style of social media.

It's really, really hard to argue that form of media consumption is healthy. Or appropriate.

> I genuinely don't understand the desire to engage with so many folks on such a superficial level.

That's fine! I am not asking you to understand that desire. I'm asking you to understand it's a genuinely held desire that people actually want. We can (and will) have different preferences and live in the same society. That's a fine thing.

You have a totally fine and healthy preference for how you manage your own social life, but you are mistaking that preference for a universal standard about how everyone should best manage their social lives. That is the thing I am critiquing. You are allowed to do what you want and I support you! But so often people describe the fact that their preferences are not "the standard" and imply that the balance would be better for everyone - without considering that different people want different things.

Edit: We could also have a discussion about "what is the ideal social model for society" - but that is a different conversation with different claims than the one we are having now. If you are trying to talk about how you think our current society sucks by attacking my points about the benefits of how social media algorithms interact with us - I think you are coming at me in a confused way.

Even if a version of life where we all had smaller social circles and all had less information coming at us was healthier (totally possible!) - that's not the world I find myself living in. I would like tools to help me live in the world I find myself in and I find it distressing that so many fellow tech workers think that's immoral somehow.

P.s. I think you're being quite rude to me and I don't appreciate it.

>Eh - anger isn't the same as disgust or confusion.

Okay, you're disgusted or confused at the fictional person you created.

>And it's not really pointed at the above poster explicitly,

It certainly seems like it is very explicitly pointed at the poster you replied to considering you directly quote their opinion and then, based on that opinion, say that their life is "utterly dehumanizing".

>attitude that human interactions should be prioritized on the scale of "entertain me"

This is not what the parent poster said.