From the Editor’s Desk: Not So Social (Premium)

I've noted before that the more you get to know most people, the more they disappoint you. But there are also exceptions to the rule, and the truly special people in our lives—and they're rare—are those who never disappoint you.

I wish I could focus on the latter. But this past week was a reminder of a dark corollary to that original point, and it will be immediately familiar to anyone who has spent time using any social network. Not only will those people disappoint you, but they'll do so with dizzying speed and alacrity.

People can be tough.

It's no surprise that our online anonymity and isolation are major contributors to the almost casual toxicity that we encounter every day. But that doesn't make it any easier. On Thurrott.com, I try to keep things on track as much as I can, but it still surprises me when I need to pull out old chestnuts like "attack the idea, not the person" as if they weren't common sense and obvious. But people can be awful to each other. It always bothers me.

And it's worse out into the hinterlands of the Internet, where all bets are off. When I was younger, there were hot-button topics like politics, religion, and sexuality, but these days, everything is a hot-button topic. It's almost impossible to communicate anything without offending somebody. And then being attacked for something you thought was common sense, obvious, funny, or just innocuous.

But social media is the worst. Social media is the chef's kiss of toxicity.

I was reminded of this about 18 months ago when I started getting serious about using Mastodon at a time when the quality and reliability of Twitter started circling the drain. But Mastodon, like the people who use it, was ultimately disappointing because the promises—higher-quality discourse, no toxicity—were wishful thinking. As I quickly found out, the people on Mastodon can be every bit as terrible as those on Twitter, which makes sense in retrospect: They're people. The only difference between a typical Mastodon user and a typical Twitter user is that the former is far more likely to actively snipe at Twitter's billionaire idiot owner.

But they're just as intolerant of contrary ideas as the rest of the planet. You can find this out easily enough for yourself: If you ever want a community to turn on you, just suggest that the community isn't perfect, as I did in that case. The bullying is both immediate and automatic.

I still use Mastodon, for whatever it's worth, and obviously there are some pros along with the cons. But if my goal is to replace Twitter, and it sort of is, then I will need to look elsewhere. And you know times are tough when the most obvious solution is yet another service owned by Mark Zuckerberg, the king of toxicity, and Meta. Threads launched with all kinds of hype and hope, and while it feels like that has slowed down, there's also been steady progress. And so I've started wondering if perhaps Threads was, if not the answer, at least an ans...