Social Networks: It's worse than you think (2020)
Related to this, there is an intimacy of small community which makes you feel valued and a proper contributor, that social networks really seem to oppose: they want to make the network bigger, you are part of the biggest world context, everybody on TikTok is eating a habanero while watching Bob Ross, so only if I do the same nonsense do I have a chance of 100 people noticing and liking  the video and maybe opting to see more of my content.When I put it that way it feels banal, but like, you know the “fast-growing subreddits” list on Reddit? There were meetings! Someone worked on that! People literally sat in a room and said effectively, “Hey Fatimeh, what is the status of the ‘make subreddits suck faster’ feature? Management is very interested in delivering that in Q3.” Right? Like this connection from global to personal is just automatically assumed, nobody spends a waking moment thinking it could be anything but that way.