Social media is slop

Social media used to serve a fun purpose. But now, it’s a tool for corporations to increasingly push their propaganda and “sell more shovels!” I think now more than ever before (I know, it’s not saying much - it’s all relative) social media has become an ever-increasing sesspool of content.

One platform that comes to mind is LinkedIn. I think LinkedIn has always been one of those things where you know it’s terrible, but you have to put up with it to get a job. If you’re not fortunate enough to frequent meetups, I guess this is more true.

Every post I see on LinkedIn is some BS post that you know they didn’t write. Honestly, I want to know which LLM LinkedIn made that curates this trash-tier content. I wish I could include examples, but if you open up LinkedIn and look at the first post, you’ll see what I mean.

This is beside the point though. While I hate LinkedIn and I’m convinced I’m the only real human on the platform, I’m really talking about X.

Before I do, let’s get some things out of the way.

Instagram - terrible, might as well be the Temu version of Tiktok (used to be good though)

Facebook - their menus have a loading state and the site’s performance is worse than me trying to aerial in Rocket League

Reddit - Left-wing echo chamber full of psychos

LinkedIn - it’s LinkedIn

Okay, so X. But, really, social media in general.

Since AI came onto the scene, all that’s ever been said about it is “wow, I talk to this thing and stuff just magically happens! Wow! Skynet??”

We are currently about 2-3 years into 6 months until AI takes all our programming jobs. Keep in mind, the only people saying this are irrelevant and uninformed CEOs, and the people selling you the AI. I can’t help everytime I hear Nvidia saying that, OpenAI saying that, Anthropic etc., the list goes on. I mean, of course you have to say that!

There’s so much incentive for these AI companies to spew this propaganda.

I’ve found myself getting tired of seeing it. So many lies of AI taking our jobs, AI doing this, AI doing that… it’s all lies. Anyone who works with AI knows it’s a great tool on a micro level, but firing entire teams or thinking you can’t hire junior developers because of it, is beyond absurd and those companies deserve to fall.

I got tired of seeing all this stuff.

• You’re not using AI properly
• You’re using AI TOO MUCH
• AI is taking everyone’s job

The list goes on.

Eventually, I noticed myself becoming more anxious - worried about my future. If AI is going to take our jobs because the CEO of Anthropic said so, what does that mean for me?

Is there a point in becoming an even more competent developer? Why would I, AI is just going to take my job. Should I even try to become better at my job? Why would AI - AI.

The anxiety and burnout eventually crept up in a way I didn’t see coming. This is not to mention that just being on social media too much in general is not a good thing and I was not winning that battle unfortunately, so my “absence” from social media as of late was largely due to seeing so much crap.

I’m not gunna lie, it’s been fun! Being away, recharging, shutting out the noise. I used to think I needed to be glued to social media to network in order to get a better job, or meet someone that might be able to hook me up later.

Once I decided being on social media wasn’t worth it, the pressure has sort of been off.

But social media has become even more parasitic in my life and I’m over it. I’ve had my fill.