The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

Before its fall, I had over 700 followers on Twitter. I could post any random thought and within minutes be having an interesting conversation with some rando about it. For example I pondered why phone manufacturers didn't use a p2p protocol for distributing updates and had an enlightening conversation with a person who worked for a major telco chiming in as to why that would be problematic for their infrastructure.

This was my biggest source of joy on the modern internet.

When the walls fell and everybody left, I dropped 200 followers to 500 but by X's own metrics no one sees my tweets. I would estimate between 13 and 20 is my average view count. When I do post, I am lucky a single person interacts, and it is almost always someone I know in the real world.

I have presences on Mastodon and Bluesky, but my follower count on both remains in the low teens. I don't think the market is there anymore for "dude that ponders technology questions". I tweet like it's 2010 and no one cares anymore.

This was the death of social media for me. This was the last place I was really "social" on the internet and it died.

Genuinely this has had a very negative effect on me, the only somewhat of a silver lining is that I now have these conversations with ChatGPT. It's not as much fun though.

Instagram is just brainrot these days. I'd used it for years to post my absolute best photos as a sort of curated gallery. No one cares anymore. Nothing I post ever gets seen. Why bother.

That sums up my general opinion of all social media these days, why bother.

Probably at some point soon social media companies will recognise this and provide everyone with very nearly human-like bots that engage happily with your content. This will probably be even more addictive than their previous products.