Assessing the worthiness of posting in the AI era
Social media being disconnected thanks to the demise of Twitter remains something I think about a lot. I’m also wondering about the value of “posting” at all. For the posting addled among us, looking for ways to get our (posting) fix remains a constant need. Whether it’s using nuTwitter, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon or some other wild alternative. For many early adopters, the blog era was a transformative time. In the era where words are cheap and might not be written by you at all, it’s difficult to imagine the value of investing in third-party platforms.
It depends on the goal. Are we writing to riff? Are the ideas throwing into the ether, begging for engagement or a way to generative ideas outside of your own head? It’s probably not that deep. I like a good long-form story. Documentaries are favorites of mine, but I’m not going to read even a reddit post that seems like it might be written by an AI. I think LLMs are mostly a scourge, but I’ve also come to understand how they could be utilized productively. So much of social media usage was about expanding networks beyond where you live, work or play. It’s not that it’s impossible to do this with LLMs, bots have been around a while. The extra work required to sift through the noise just makes everything worse to use.
I reflect a lot on whether it’s worth continuing to post — even as I do it — because the habit is difficult to break, and there are brief moments where it feels like “old times.” But so many good ideas get trapped onto networks we don’t own, forgotten about and/or lost. Even bookmarks can be difficult to dredge, and hundreds of other people’s good ideas get deleted and forgotten without a second thought, because all of this stuff is fleeting.