unless you’re branding your posts here with your real name and trying to monetize it, you’re not really using social media in the way most folks mean it in 2026.
social media is when it’s tied to your real life identity and your body, it’s not anonymous posting on forums or message boards, which lemmy is more in the vein of.
I don’t think anyone would regard my posts on forums and old.reddit.com as social media. if i had used reddit as a promotional tool for like my instagram business or as part of a personal brand I’m proving, yeah that would be very different.
IME real social media people are those who have basically internalized the concept of self branding and see their lives as entirely performative for their audience, whether that be internet strangers or their real life friend group.
Exactly. The fun part of social media is(/was) finding people you know IRL and having an extra way to interact. The fun part lf internet forums is finding people you didn’t know before and learning new stuff.
yeah i used social media when it was a IRL friend circle, but that’s not how any of those platforms work anymore, they are all about selling you product via viral ads.
Yeah. To me social media is specifically visual platforms where you are selling a personality.
but let’s not mistake ourselves, the majority of internet use is social media use and has been for a decade. and it’s predominantly accessed via mobile devices, not computers.
Forums, chat rooms, irc, email and other forms of communication existed way before facebook and it were not labeled social media. Social media is its own beast. I would not categorize Reddit and like platforms as social media.
Similarly in terms of words, I saw an article ranking fast food places and basically listed every brand chain restaurant as fast food. Terms should have meaning.
Words can be invented after the thing they describe. “Social media” was invented when normies started using it, long after nerds started using media to socialise.
Of course. I’m sure many more words will keep being invented for concepts. Social media to me is more about being a real persona with identity and connecting with people and having followers. It’s also designed to keep you on. Most of the fediverse is about anonymity and we don’t have enough content for doom scrolling.
That’s a stereotype, not a definition. Normies think of social media that way because the don’t understand forums. And they’ve taught you to think like them.
unless you’re branding your posts here with your real name and trying to monetize it, you’re not really using social media in the way most folks mean it in 2026.
social media is when it’s tied to your real life identity and your body, it’s not anonymous posting on forums or message boards, which lemmy is more in the vein of.
I don’t think anyone would regard my posts on forums and old.reddit.com as social media. if i had used reddit as a promotional tool for like my instagram business or as part of a personal brand I’m proving, yeah that would be very different.
IME real social media people are those who have basically internalized the concept of self branding and see their lives as entirely performative for their audience, whether that be internet strangers or their real life friend group.
Exactly. The fun part of social media is(/was) finding people you know IRL and having an extra way to interact. The fun part lf internet forums is finding people you didn’t know before and learning new stuff.
yeah i used social media when it was a IRL friend circle, but that’s not how any of those platforms work anymore, they are all about selling you product via viral ads.
This has honestly become a pet peeve of mine. At this point anything that has an internet connection is being called social media.
Yeah. To me social media is specifically visual platforms where you are selling a personality.
but let’s not mistake ourselves, the majority of internet use is social media use and has been for a decade. and it’s predominantly accessed via mobile devices, not computers.
My sibling in sin, you are using this medium to socialise.
Forums, chat rooms, irc, email and other forms of communication existed way before facebook and it were not labeled social media. Social media is its own beast. I would not categorize Reddit and like platforms as social media.
Similarly in terms of words, I saw an article ranking fast food places and basically listed every brand chain restaurant as fast food. Terms should have meaning.
Words can be invented after the thing they describe. “Social media” was invented when normies started using it, long after nerds started using media to socialise.
Of course. I’m sure many more words will keep being invented for concepts. Social media to me is more about being a real persona with identity and connecting with people and having followers. It’s also designed to keep you on. Most of the fediverse is about anonymity and we don’t have enough content for doom scrolling.
That’s a stereotype, not a definition. Normies think of social media that way because the don’t understand forums. And they’ve taught you to think like them.