Friendships, People and Social

It’s a Sunday evening and you’re again going to start scrolling on Instagram while thinking why did I not have anyone to talk to or hang out today with after all these years in my life?

Facebook says it’s trying to connect the world, but with whom? because I only remember being connected to the last 30-second video I watched.

Instagram says it’s a moments-sharing app but I’m not even having moments in my life, I’m spending away 4-7 hours on this app looking at “moments” other people are having.

It was far better when I was just watching 10-15 minute-long youtube videos of funny memes every day and then got back to talking to friends I made online. How is it that when there were lesser people on the internet it was easier to make friends on it than now when the whole world is on it? Where did it all go wrong?

Now there are more apps than ever to find “like-minded” people, to swipe right and left on a stack of images trying to depict personalities to find who I’m gonna have dinner with tomorrow, to go through subreddits trying to find the most interesting piece of content but not being able to find one person to share it with.

But did you ever ask for it? Do you really want to talk to “like-minded” people? Do you just need another person who probably works in tech and will start blabbering about AI again?

Friendships are more counterintuitive than that, you don’t like people who’re like you to like people you need someone who’s on a superficial level like you but not exactly like you because otherwise, that would be a VERY boring person to talk to.

It’s true that whatever you create if X number of people get active on it daily they will start forming groups and start engaging with each other more than before, from an analytics perspective this looks great, doesn’t it? You know people engage more in groups, help them make groups and increase revenue!

Well if there’s something interesting about groups is that they work on exclusion and not inclusion, which is why I think as the internet grew we got to enough groups that now there aren’t any more left to be created and the older ones are just dead.