I feel on every single social media platform I have ever been on I will see the comment
[This social media platform’s users] are completely disconnected from the real world.
I never know how seriously to take this. I always want to automatically dismiss it because it seems like a “everyone here is delusional” type of comment and if I have had a majority of pleasant, reasonable-seeming interactions there I will really not like the idea that these seemingly nice people who had a civil, reasonable discussion with me are actually delusional, and by extension I probably am delusional too. And since I have seen it everywhere it basically seems to say nowhere online has (a decent amount of) people in touch with reality. But setting that aside for a moment…
Obviously every platform will attract different types of people, probably not a fully representative sample of the population, a skew towards this or that type of person… but how far skewed from the “normal” experience is each platform on average? What is normal? If one platform has a wild skew towards one type of person, but that type of person makes up most of what I’ll see in real life due to my environment (like who my friends and family are, what my workplace is like), does its distance from normal matter if it’s no different from my real life normal? How much? Given that a lot of people spend a lot of time online, in which they often express opinions they truly hold that they would not vocalize in real life, would you say people who eschew social media have their own disconnect from reality in some way? What social media platform is closest to the average real life normal, which is the least “disconnected from the real world”?
Let’s preface by making clear that when I say Lemmings are disconnected from reality, I don’t mean they’re delusional. I mean they’re so immersed in their unix-like free-as-in-freedom open-source technobubble that they’ve forgotten what regular people want.
As for the rest of your comment, yes, every social media will attract its own niche of people but not every platform is equally as disconnected from the real world. For example, nobody in Fragrantica (perfume social media) would recommend a regular person to buy a perfume that smells like cocaine and magazines, even though its one of the most popular fragrances among people who like perfumes. Meanwhile, on Lemmy, people love to pretend the SteamDeck is an actual alternative to the Switch.
I feel on every single social media platform I have ever been on I will see the comment
I never know how seriously to take this. I always want to automatically dismiss it because it seems like a “everyone here is delusional” type of comment and if I have had a majority of pleasant, reasonable-seeming interactions there I will really not like the idea that these seemingly nice people who had a civil, reasonable discussion with me are actually delusional, and by extension I probably am delusional too. And since I have seen it everywhere it basically seems to say nowhere online has (a decent amount of) people in touch with reality. But setting that aside for a moment…
Obviously every platform will attract different types of people, probably not a fully representative sample of the population, a skew towards this or that type of person… but how far skewed from the “normal” experience is each platform on average? What is normal? If one platform has a wild skew towards one type of person, but that type of person makes up most of what I’ll see in real life due to my environment (like who my friends and family are, what my workplace is like), does its distance from normal matter if it’s no different from my real life normal? How much? Given that a lot of people spend a lot of time online, in which they often express opinions they truly hold that they would not vocalize in real life, would you say people who eschew social media have their own disconnect from reality in some way? What social media platform is closest to the average real life normal, which is the least “disconnected from the real world”?
Let’s preface by making clear that when I say Lemmings are disconnected from reality, I don’t mean they’re delusional. I mean they’re so immersed in their unix-like free-as-in-freedom open-source technobubble that they’ve forgotten what regular people want.
As for the rest of your comment, yes, every social media will attract its own niche of people but not every platform is equally as disconnected from the real world. For example, nobody in Fragrantica (perfume social media) would recommend a regular person to buy a perfume that smells like cocaine and magazines, even though its one of the most popular fragrances among people who like perfumes. Meanwhile, on Lemmy, people love to pretend the SteamDeck is an actual alternative to the Switch.
Obligatory xkcd.