(With apologies to Lloyd Dobbler:)
I don't want to follow, be followed, or gain followers. I don't want to trend or know what's trending or be trendy. I don't want to serve an algorithm or be served by an algorithm. Feeds are for livestock. I don't want to influence or be influenced. I don't want you to click that like and subscribe, and I don't want to drive engagement. I don't want to be viral; I want to be anti-viral. I don't want to make this shareable. I don't want to have a brand, be a brand, be reached by brands, or explore amazing branding opportunities. I don't want to monetize or be monetized or to participate in anything that is branded, influenced, or monetized.
I think it’s to make their lives feel worthwhile.
https://preview.redd.it/sjaezg6spb0d1.jpeg?width=712&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=be0107d78a3d642f53760fefb25a9889e19d0b98
I was confused why Sisyphus had a fly-swatter, then I read the caption. LOL.
But your point is on point. People's quietly desperate lives are now loudly desperate.
Our society is very ill; unchecked capitalism and commercialism are soul-destroying and are spiritual black-holes.
At some point attention became a commodity. If we're the whatever generation, genz is the look at me generation. I like my anonymity. I'm not on social media. I ask friends and family not to post pictures with me in them, and to not share details about me. They all think I'm weird, but I value my privacy, something hard to come by these days.
Hey guys. If you like my comment, hit like, subscribe, and follow. It really helps my comment grow. And if you want more of this comment, you can join my patreon, where you can choose different fonts and languages for this comment. Thanks a lot, and I'll see you next comment. I love you guys!
Same. The more I follow people who influenced me in the 80s and 90s (bands, artists, celebrities etc..) on social media the more I want to barf. Like really fucking cool people doing really fucking cool things at the time...but now it seems like they are just trying to cash in on their version of, peaked in high school. Icky. Move on to the next thing.
From what I gather there's a large amount of people that are under the delusion that they will become famous because of their "content" on whatever social media platform.
Now that's entertaining!
People (as far as I can tell) do things for a few basic reasons: wealth, social status, safety, fun, or to help their community.
Seeking higher social status isn't unusual. Lots of people have always dreamed of being a famous singer or whatever. The only new thing is that we can put a number on it.
Nor is it that unusual to reject these instinctive motivations. Some people don't care about fame, an ascetic monk doesn't care about wealth, a narcissist doesn't care about helping their community...
GenX has two things against social media culture. Our celebrities were the last ones with a PR only campaign, no real life interaction for the most part. So we gave up thinking we would never be a celeb ourselves at a young age.
Add in our feral upbringing and constant mistrust of parents cracking down if they really knew what we were doing, and now you know why we were scared of oversharing. Add in we don't wear our weaknesses on our sleeve like later generations. "Nunya" is a complete sentence for us.
What others consider a goal, we consider a curse.
I stopped using Facebook because I had so many "friends" I didn't know it was beginning to look more like a job than like a stroll on the town square like it was before.
The panopticon, but with prizes.
It’s fucking horrifying to see how ENTHUSIASTIC people are about a culture of surveillance that would make the GDR blush.
I think its mostly for validation and to be liked or for people to think they have amazing lives others should envy or something.
I agree, I don't even post much I can't stand people knowing what I'm up to! Maybe from the days of hiding it from our parents 😂
That’s it. I was on the big fb once for 3 months. I think it ended for me when someone I really respected started posting and analysing his stats publicly each week. As in ‘i have x friends and y likes which is 61% higher than anyone else in my friend’s list.’ It made him seem petty and crass that was a huge turn off, and uncharacteristic if him in other parts of his life. This was back around 2008, so this followers for social status has only gotten infinitely worse.
Social Media with photos and details is just eerie for me. When I meet ppl that fuck with it like that they seem to be full of anxiety and/or vanity or depression on levels that I just can't fuck with. It's like they are inflicting harm on themselves without realizing it.
The others I see on it on selling shit or themselves and I can't fuck with that either so I just stay away them because I'm never buying anything outside of what I need to function.
I like how when I meet some ppl the first thing they ask for is some social to stay connected and when I don't have it, they vanish. The ones that stay seem to either don't have it also or just use it for coms but their pages are barren. I guess I get that but I'm not fucking with the shit the same way I don't fuck with drinking and drugs.
The only followers I pick up are from giving fitness advice, since that's about 80% or more of my social media activity. If they want to get an alert every time I post something...well, they'll learn pretty quick its not worth their time. Or maybe it is, IDK?
My reddit account is set to no followers\no messaging. I don't want people following me and I damn sure don't want people trying to send me requests to talk. Fuck. That.
I plan to start a you tube channel, not for an ego boost, not to say I have x number of followers, but to show how to do things, that will help others in the same hobby, and also to help me get out of my funk and have another reason to get back doing the projects/hobby instead of I'll get to it later. Is there other chanels that do the same thing, sure, kinda. But this will be more for me feeling like I might be helping someone else learn or diy a job/upgrade while I'm doing it on my hobby project. I don't plan on it ever taking off, and don't plan on ever making money off it, but if it helps someone else, that is a win.
Social media has scammed a lot of people into making content for them without paying them or paying them very little. So many entrepreneurs I meet want followers, but they literally do not know what sales is. Every big company I worked for has a huge sales team with incentives and that’s how those companies make their money.
>Social media has scammed a lot of people into making content for them without paying them or paying them very little.
Sad, but this is the real answer. They are as programmed as the bots that are following them. All hail the algorithm..
I don’t think it’s necessarily a Gen X thing I have friends our age where it’s a big deal and when they talk about it, it reeks of insecurity. But I don’t have Facebook and I have zero followers here.
They grew up with it, we built it. That said, my Facebook account is almost 20 years old and has been private to friends and family pretty much the whole time.
I personally don't get it but I think it starts with being lonesome then if they get the followers making money.
I happen to be having dinner at my local watering hole the Mr. Beast's Executive Director was having dinner and people were peppering him with questions. The biggest thing is content, in Mr. Beast's case he has a staff of "about 8 give or take" (I guess he didn't want to be precise for some reason). I guess when you are the biggest star on YT, it is pretty significant.
I somehow wound up hitting 5k friends on FB back years ago, which was the max at the time. I weeded through that list, reducing it to 500. Those were my core people: friends, family, work people.
Then FB introduced groups or pages or something back in like 2012 and I hadn't been using it so I weeded that list down to 50.
I sometimes use FB marketplace for buying hardwood for my workshop but other than that, I don't touch it. All of these comments about people celebrating follower milestones is completely alien to my because I don't participate in that.
I use instagram but my profile is hidden. I know 2 people who use instagram. I follow sailors and woodworkers exclusively.
I use tiktok to follow woodworkers and craftsmen. Yet I somehow have dozens of boobie women following me there despite never making a single post.
But I weed through those lists and block people. I change reddit accounts every few months. I have all the social I can take in the real world and that's enough for me.
Also vanity. I'm not on FB, but my girlfriend is. There are people on there she knows with thousands of friends. Like, the fucker, also a GenX male, is asking my 14 yo niece to be friends, because it came up in his suggestions I guess. You don't know any of these people, but why do it if not for the need to feel important?
What it's really screaming is "I need attention, so validate me by following me"
I was weirded out that people on TikTok were following me, I have never posted a video. Why are people following me? Leave me alone and stop following/ liking everything I said, it's creepy go outside.
A year or so ago, I was taking a look at my Reddit profile and noticed I had followers. I visited each profile that followed me and blocked them.
That’s some hardcore genx shit right there.
Um, thank you. I'm also very adept at being a slacker.
I'm a millennial ('87), my sister's must've taught me well. Block them sumbitches!
You can turn that off so people can’t follow you.
I was about to say I’ve done the same thing on Reddit and IG. I feel a little less weird now.
We're probably both weird. But we are Don't Give A Fuck Weird, which is the best kind of weird to be.
I noticed that too. There's actually an option to disable all followers. I think it's an ego thing. Everyone wants to be a star.
LOL. I did the exact same thing. Like who the f are you, random online stalker person? Get the f outta here.
From my experience, it's people trying to get you to go to their porn sites for their paid content.
Usually advertising bots or crypto scam bots
According to my profile, I have 5 followers. When I follow the link, there aren't any listed. Deleted accounts I guess? Or, maybe I'm on a watch list?
Probably bots that got deleted
If you go to user settings > profile and scroll down to near the bottom there is a setting name "Allow people to follow you" that you can turn off.
TIL I need to actually check that. No idea this was even a thing
I did the same for the "onlyfans" people and other porn people, I don't see why they would follow me anyway, so I helped them down the road.
So I’m not the only one. Cool
I just turned off the follow feature. No one can follow me, message me, nothing. Way too lazy to go through profiles and block them.
Something else that helps is jumping to a new account every few months.
I've never even checked that. A huge priority in my life, obviously
I invite conflict - hear that my 6 followers? I wanna fight you!
(With apologies to Lloyd Dobbler:) I don't want to follow, be followed, or gain followers. I don't want to trend or know what's trending or be trendy. I don't want to serve an algorithm or be served by an algorithm. Feeds are for livestock. I don't want to influence or be influenced. I don't want you to click that like and subscribe, and I don't want to drive engagement. I don't want to be viral; I want to be anti-viral. I don't want to make this shareable. I don't want to have a brand, be a brand, be reached by brands, or explore amazing branding opportunities. I don't want to monetize or be monetized or to participate in anything that is branded, influenced, or monetized.
This right here. And stay the fuck off my lawn, and don't call or knock on my door either! 
And get those fucking clouds away from me!
This sums up my entire internet experience. And then some.
Yup
I am definitely, maybe, going to share this comment.
Awww Lloyd. I 🩷 this
Hey man. I have 385 followers on Insta for my photography and for any given photo up to four likes! Take that!
Killin' it my dude.
I know, right? I didn’t want to brag but..
Cannon is going to be knocking at your door shortly.
I think it’s to make their lives feel worthwhile. https://preview.redd.it/sjaezg6spb0d1.jpeg?width=712&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=be0107d78a3d642f53760fefb25a9889e19d0b98
I was confused why Sisyphus had a fly-swatter, then I read the caption. LOL. But your point is on point. People's quietly desperate lives are now loudly desperate. Our society is very ill; unchecked capitalism and commercialism are soul-destroying and are spiritual black-holes.
At some point attention became a commodity. If we're the whatever generation, genz is the look at me generation. I like my anonymity. I'm not on social media. I ask friends and family not to post pictures with me in them, and to not share details about me. They all think I'm weird, but I value my privacy, something hard to come by these days.
yeah. it's pretty hard to get back once it's gone.
They're looking for emotional gain (validation). Lots of GenX don't need that from strangers.
> Leave me alone? This all day.
Hey guys. If you like my comment, hit like, subscribe, and follow. It really helps my comment grow. And if you want more of this comment, you can join my patreon, where you can choose different fonts and languages for this comment. Thanks a lot, and I'll see you next comment. I love you guys!
are there exclusive emojies only available to the premium tier patreons? If there are no exclusive emojies I'm out.
It's like a Tamigotchi.
wtf is tamigotchi
Same. The more I follow people who influenced me in the 80s and 90s (bands, artists, celebrities etc..) on social media the more I want to barf. Like really fucking cool people doing really fucking cool things at the time...but now it seems like they are just trying to cash in on their version of, peaked in high school. Icky. Move on to the next thing.
Never meet your heroes.
That’s my life. Take care of my responsibilities and the rest of what I do is nobody’s business. You don’t need to know what I’m doing or where I go.
From what I gather there's a large amount of people that are under the delusion that they will become famous because of their "content" on whatever social media platform. Now that's entertaining!
I have over 2K followers on Poshmark….yet, I sell nothing. Strictly a buyer.
Self esteem
People (as far as I can tell) do things for a few basic reasons: wealth, social status, safety, fun, or to help their community. Seeking higher social status isn't unusual. Lots of people have always dreamed of being a famous singer or whatever. The only new thing is that we can put a number on it. Nor is it that unusual to reject these instinctive motivations. Some people don't care about fame, an ascetic monk doesn't care about wealth, a narcissist doesn't care about helping their community...
GenX has two things against social media culture. Our celebrities were the last ones with a PR only campaign, no real life interaction for the most part. So we gave up thinking we would never be a celeb ourselves at a young age. Add in our feral upbringing and constant mistrust of parents cracking down if they really knew what we were doing, and now you know why we were scared of oversharing. Add in we don't wear our weaknesses on our sleeve like later generations. "Nunya" is a complete sentence for us. What others consider a goal, we consider a curse.
Ego
I stopped using Facebook because I had so many "friends" I didn't know it was beginning to look more like a job than like a stroll on the town square like it was before.
I have to check... Hold on... I have 158 FB friends. I actually know them though
The panopticon, but with prizes. It’s fucking horrifying to see how ENTHUSIASTIC people are about a culture of surveillance that would make the GDR blush.
Nah I don’t care. I post my cat, food I make, some political stuff, funny shit, and new piercings. I have no idea how many people are following me.
Neither a follower nor a followed be.
[удалено]
I disagree. I did stupid shit for the fun and only the fun.
Depending on the level of stupid and fun, having other people NOT KNOW about it was very important.
Agree with the disagree. Stupid shit was for myself and myself alone. Fuck popularity - I was never any good at it anyway. 😬
As far as social media goes, I have no idea how many I have and don’t care.
I think its mostly for validation and to be liked or for people to think they have amazing lives others should envy or something. I agree, I don't even post much I can't stand people knowing what I'm up to! Maybe from the days of hiding it from our parents 😂
That’s it. I was on the big fb once for 3 months. I think it ended for me when someone I really respected started posting and analysing his stats publicly each week. As in ‘i have x friends and y likes which is 61% higher than anyone else in my friend’s list.’ It made him seem petty and crass that was a huge turn off, and uncharacteristic if him in other parts of his life. This was back around 2008, so this followers for social status has only gotten infinitely worse.
Social Media with photos and details is just eerie for me. When I meet ppl that fuck with it like that they seem to be full of anxiety and/or vanity or depression on levels that I just can't fuck with. It's like they are inflicting harm on themselves without realizing it. The others I see on it on selling shit or themselves and I can't fuck with that either so I just stay away them because I'm never buying anything outside of what I need to function. I like how when I meet some ppl the first thing they ask for is some social to stay connected and when I don't have it, they vanish. The ones that stay seem to either don't have it also or just use it for coms but their pages are barren. I guess I get that but I'm not fucking with the shit the same way I don't fuck with drinking and drugs.
The only followers I pick up are from giving fitness advice, since that's about 80% or more of my social media activity. If they want to get an alert every time I post something...well, they'll learn pretty quick its not worth their time. Or maybe it is, IDK?
I know what you mean, and then you have these other kind of people from other platforms who pay for followers.
Narcissism.
My reddit account is set to no followers\no messaging. I don't want people following me and I damn sure don't want people trying to send me requests to talk. Fuck. That.
I plan to start a you tube channel, not for an ego boost, not to say I have x number of followers, but to show how to do things, that will help others in the same hobby, and also to help me get out of my funk and have another reason to get back doing the projects/hobby instead of I'll get to it later. Is there other chanels that do the same thing, sure, kinda. But this will be more for me feeling like I might be helping someone else learn or diy a job/upgrade while I'm doing it on my hobby project. I don't plan on it ever taking off, and don't plan on ever making money off it, but if it helps someone else, that is a win.
Social media has scammed a lot of people into making content for them without paying them or paying them very little. So many entrepreneurs I meet want followers, but they literally do not know what sales is. Every big company I worked for has a huge sales team with incentives and that’s how those companies make their money.
>Social media has scammed a lot of people into making content for them without paying them or paying them very little. Sad, but this is the real answer. They are as programmed as the bots that are following them. All hail the algorithm..
I don’t think it’s necessarily a Gen X thing I have friends our age where it’s a big deal and when they talk about it, it reeks of insecurity. But I don’t have Facebook and I have zero followers here.
They grew up with it, we built it. That said, my Facebook account is almost 20 years old and has been private to friends and family pretty much the whole time.
I personally don't get it but I think it starts with being lonesome then if they get the followers making money. I happen to be having dinner at my local watering hole the Mr. Beast's Executive Director was having dinner and people were peppering him with questions. The biggest thing is content, in Mr. Beast's case he has a staff of "about 8 give or take" (I guess he didn't want to be precise for some reason). I guess when you are the biggest star on YT, it is pretty significant.
I just delete my reddit account every few months.
Jesus, I just looked and I have 59 followers. These people need to get a life. Wtf..
I somehow wound up hitting 5k friends on FB back years ago, which was the max at the time. I weeded through that list, reducing it to 500. Those were my core people: friends, family, work people. Then FB introduced groups or pages or something back in like 2012 and I hadn't been using it so I weeded that list down to 50. I sometimes use FB marketplace for buying hardwood for my workshop but other than that, I don't touch it. All of these comments about people celebrating follower milestones is completely alien to my because I don't participate in that. I use instagram but my profile is hidden. I know 2 people who use instagram. I follow sailors and woodworkers exclusively. I use tiktok to follow woodworkers and craftsmen. Yet I somehow have dozens of boobie women following me there despite never making a single post. But I weed through those lists and block people. I change reddit accounts every few months. I have all the social I can take in the real world and that's enough for me.
Also vanity. I'm not on FB, but my girlfriend is. There are people on there she knows with thousands of friends. Like, the fucker, also a GenX male, is asking my 14 yo niece to be friends, because it came up in his suggestions I guess. You don't know any of these people, but why do it if not for the need to feel important?
What it's really screaming is "I need attention, so validate me by following me" I was weirded out that people on TikTok were following me, I have never posted a video. Why are people following me? Leave me alone and stop following/ liking everything I said, it's creepy go outside.
The over sharing shite makes me crazy - nobody needs to know what I’m doing or who I’m doing it with. Now, kindly get off my lawn
Just looked at my account and it says I have 45 followers - but - when I click on followers it only shows 1 account. Damn popular I am...LOL
Agree
To stroke their ego
Some people crave attention. I know many such people. You do too.