OK, so two months between posts is less than ideal, but here we are.

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is the concept of “toxic” online communities & social media and this seemingly-pervasive idea that “this is just how things are” and that we cannot hope for better. And I um, have thoughts about that.

I wanna begin by stating that if you are on corporate-run social networking software, your twitters, tumblrs, instagrams, facebooks, etc.’s, then you very likely are stuck somewhat. that being said: you do not have to just accept that this is how things are!

how did we get here?

it used to be that online communities were built around something: a common interest, a shared hobby, a shared love of a piece of art, or something like that. with corporate social media, we are putting literally everyone in the world (that signs up) into the same space. there’s no commonly shared interest, it’s akin to putting everyone in a big room together.

it may be worth pointing out that when a lot of these got started, in the early 2000’s, the internet was still pretty niche. most people were not online, that was shit for nerds, so even if you somehow managed to wrangle everyone on the internet into the same community back then, there was at least the shared interest in computers, if nothing else.

but such is not the case with the modern social-media-as-the-only-website-you-visit framework. there’s no need for other websites, like personal ones, you see, for you can get all of that from our website! no need to leave ever! post all of your content here so we can comb through it and figure out what we can sell you based on your interests. all too often people fail to realize that if there seems to be no product in a free place like that, then it is extremely likely that you, the user, are the product.

with the normalization and adoption of the internet by the wider general public, there is a huge loss of a shared interest, as the internet has stopped being “a place you can go,” and become just another part of daily life. people live their entire lives online now, and it’s part of their meatspace lives as well.

friends get into fights about things said online, couples break up over perceived infidelity because one partner liked another person’s photos on instagram, etc. you see where I’m going with this, right? the internet isn’t a separate place from daily life anymore, it’s just another thing we use in our daily lives. employers fire people for things they say online that “make the brand look bad.”

we can stand around and lament and write a bunch of thinkpieces crying about how “the internet has changed” all we want, but that isn’t going to bring back the lost sense of community that the internet used to have, and honestly is pretty pointless and sad. nobody feels good about things like this.

which brings me to the thing I wanna talk about today: community in online spaces.

what community isn’t

all too often I see people complain about twitter (I am not calling it that, fuck off) or one of the other 4-6 government-mandated (not yet but it sure feels like it sometimes) social media websites, saying that it’s “too toxic” and people only ever post inflammatory and mean stuff, ragebait, etc. insert any single complaint people have about modern platforms, really. and i see people complain about this sort of thing, and then turn around, look at their account/profile page/whatever and see that they post and repost the exact same kind of content they are complaining about. as if they are not part of the problem.

i recently had the opportunity to help a friend moderate a space online that had a sudden explosion of users and i saw this mentality even in this small space: “managing the community” is someone else’s job. not the members of said community’s job.

friend, that is not what community means!!!! community is not “we all follow rules set by one person and everyone just vibes and has a good time and if someone acts up, then the big boss steps in and takes care of it.” oh but also, I (the user) am somehow the exception to every rule, so when I perpetuate drama/ragebait/controversy/insert-bad-thing-here it is somehow fine, and everyone else is doing it unjustly. See, I have a reason for doing all this and it is justified, but not other people.

anyway, I’m not trying to single out any one group here, but more trying to point to a larger pattern i’ve noticed especially in corporate social media spaces and people leaving corpo sns spaces and coming into new places, like the fediverse, or other alternative social media platforms.

passing the buck

there is this idea that the responsibility of community management is “someone else’s job,” and not something that we all, by virtue of being a member of said community, participate in. sure, some people are more active than others, but the responsibility falls on us all to be the kind of person we’d like to meet or talk to in said space. one cannot expect to go into a new place and act a fool and then expect everyone to cater to them, like they’re an american abroad or something.

what i’m trying to say is that, maybe if you don’t like the social networking website that you use, then maybe 1. it is not a good fit for you, and 2. you might be part of the problem. i left twitter much later than I should have (2021, when I should’ve left around 2012 or so), out of a sense of nostalgia keeping me there long past a cultural shift on the platform that i did not like and no longer felt myself being a part of.

i tried sticking around and being the kind of person i wanted to see on the platform and just hoped that maybe i’d attract others with the same mentality as me, and I did to a degree, in the form of idoltwt (what we j-pop idol fans called our little corner of twitter), but that did nothing to change the feel of things more broadly on the website as a whole. it was too late. the culture had shifted entirely, and was just about whoever was the loudest, had the most followers, etc. I stuck around because I didn’t want to admit to myself that it was a lost cause and that I was having way more stress brought on by having the app installed and checking the website regularly than I would’ve had if twitter wasn’t a part of my life anymore.

i lived in fear that a post might “escape containment” of idoltwt and be taken out of context in the larger community and i’d get nasty messages or be bullied off the internet entirely (because this is where gamergate took off, lest we forget).

ultimately, a south african aquatic rodent purchased said website and enshittified it even further than it had already been doing for the past decade or so, and that’s when I jumped ship, long overdue. I happened to get lucky and find a corner of the fediverse that I enjoyed and am now a part of, but I keep seeing this in users migrating from other social media platforms, using things like ‘(platform they have left) lite,’ and refusing to adapt or integrate themselves into the new community. refusing to learn norms & etiquette of the new environment and just continuing their old habits in a new place.

it takes work

everyone wants a replacement for twitter or insert-sns-platform-of-your-choice, but nobody wants to do the work to foster that sense of community everyone claims to want so badly. this responsibility falls onto the site owner or moderators, if someone’s lucky enough to have friends to rely on for such a role.

people want a place they feel warm and welcome, but nobody wants to do the work of being warm or welcoming. people sign up for a network and think that they will be assigned friends and not have to do anything to maintain those friendships or even begin them, that they will just appear out of thin air. this is just not how anything works, in real life or online.

whether we like it or not, communities take effort to form and maintain. nobody can do that work for us, and i feel like this has been proven over and over again in reports that come out from places like facebook, where burnout in human moderators is a regular occurrence due to the onslaught of traumatic shit being posted and having to be reviewed by a human being.

the internet has emboldened some people to indulge in their worst tendencies: to be the most vile and awful version of themselves. people routinely say shit online that they would never dream of saying to another human being face to face, and that has to stop. dogpiling, death threats, witch hunts, all of this has to stop. we see time and time again that even the huge platforms have moderators burning out, falling into deep depression, and overall having a really bad time because people refuse to edit themselves or think about the person on the other end of the screen. it’s all too easy to forget that you’re talking to other people and to just treat everyone as nebulous “NPCs” that exist solely to torment you.

and yet, the attitude persists that platforms fail because of “lackluster moderation,” the idea that “i guess they’re just not up to snuff,” “they just don’t care enough,” etc. we as human beings cannot continue to sign up for services, then fill said services full of our worst vitriol and hateslop and then complain about how bad the ‘community’ is, and how the platforms ‘reward bad behavior,’ when we are literally rewarding bad behavior by interacting with it, reposting it to “dunk” on people, etc.

basically, i feel like a lot of people have forgotten how to be human beings with empathy and nuance and mutual respect in favor of bite-size engagement-bait that keeps you on a website. it’s pervasive and it’s invading real life and it’s extremely worrying to this blogger in particular.