The Thread Vibes Are Off - by Anne Helen Petersen - 0 views
annehelen.substack.com/...the-thread-vibes-are-off
shared by Javier E on 11 Jul 23
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social media twitter instagram tiktok facebook linkedin comparison
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The way people post on Twitter is different from the way people post on LinkedIn which is different than how people post Facebook which is different from the way people post on Instagram, no matter how much Facebook keeps telling you to cross-post your IG stories
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Some people whose job relies on onlineness (like me) have to refine their voices, their ways of being, across several platforms. But most normal people have found their lane — the medium that fits their message — and have stuck with it.
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For some, the only speech they feel should be truly public should also be “professional.” Hence: LinkedIn, where the only associated image is a professional headshot, and the only conversations are those related to work.
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Which is how some people really would like to navigate the public sphere: with total freedom and total impunity
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Twitter is where you could publicly (if often anonymously) fight, troll, dunk, harass, joke, and generally speak without consequence; it’s also where the mundane status update/life musing (once the foundation of Facebook) could live peacefully.
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Twitter was for publicly observing — through the scroll, but also by tweeting, retweeting, quote tweeting — while remaining effectively invisible, a reply-guy amongst reply-guys, a troll amongst trolls.
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The Facebook of the 2010s was for broadcasting ideological stances under your real name and fighting with your close and extended community about them; now it’s (largely) about finding advice (and fighting about advice) in affinity groups (often) composed of people you’ve never met.
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On TikTok, you don’t reshare memes, you use them as the soundtrack to your reimagining, even if that reimagining is just “what if I do the same dance, only with my slightly dorky parents?
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Instagram is serious and sincere (see: the success of the social justice slideshow) and almost never ironic — maybe because static visual irony is pretty hard to pull off.
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Like YouTube, far fewer people are posting than consuming, which means that most people aren’t speaking at all.
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And then there’s Instagram. People think Instagram is for extroverts, for people who want to broadcast every bit of their lives, but most Instagram users I know are shy — at least with public words. Instagram is where parents post pictures of their kids with the caption “these guys right here” or a picture of their dog with “a very good boy.”
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The text doesn’t matter; the photo speaks loudest. Each post becomes overdetermined, especially when so readily viewed within the context of the greater grid
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The more you understand your value as the sum of your visual parts, the more addictive, essential, and anxiety-producing Instagram becomes.
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That emphasis on aesthetic perfection is part of what feminizes Instagram — but it’s also what makes it the most natural home for brands, celebrities, and influencers.
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a static image can communicate a whole lifestyle — and brands have had decades of practice honing the practice in magazine ads and catalogs.
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And what is an influencer if not a conduit for brands? What is a celebrity if not a conduit for their own constellation of brands?
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If LinkedIn is the place where you can pretend that your whole life and personality is “business,” then Instagram is where you can pretend it’s all some form of leisure — or at least fun
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A “fun” work trip, a “fun” behind-the-scenes shot, a brand doing the very hard work of trying to get you to click through and make a purchase with images that are fun fun fun.
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On the flip side, Twitter was where you spoke with your real (verified) name — and with great, algorithm-assisted importance. You could amass clout simply by rephrasing others’ scoops in your own words, declaring opinions as facts, or just declaring. If Twitter was gendered masculine — which it certainly was, and is arguably even more so now — it was only because all of those behaviors are as well.
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Instagram is a great place to post an announcement and feel celebrated or consoled but not feel like you have to respond to people
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The conversation is easier to both control and ignore; of all the social networks, it most closely resembles the fawning broadcast style of the fan magazine, only the celebs control the final edit, not the magazine publisher
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But its utility gradually faded: part of the problem was harassment, but part of it was context collapse, and the way it allowed words to travel across the platform and out of the celebrity’s control.
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Instagram was just so much simpler, the communication so clearly in the celebrity wheelhouse. There is very little context collapse on Instagram — it’s all curation and control. As such, you can look interesting but say very little.