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Apparently this is causing a stir on bluesky, but you know what they say in analysis, visceral rejection is a sign of resistance to something repressed.

Fully avowed, untroubled bubble-desirer here. There are lots of opinions in the world, and I don't need to interact with most of them on social media.

Fair enough. But I miss the Habermasian fantasy of the internet as a public sphere, however perverted, however communicatively irrational. Giving up on that ironically seems to contribute further to the platformization of the internet—even more than a private platform functioning as public sphere.

I think we might need to zoom out a bit to get a sense of the real direction of change. I can remember the range of interaction I had before 2008 — which was much, much narrower both geographically and professionally. I think a lot of us have wider networks now, largely because of the internet.

That's good, and I don't think it's going away. I don't feel I have to wade through engagement farming & techdude hype posts & atrocity videos in order to sustain it. Heck, I don't even have to pay attention to The Atlantic to sustain it!

The difference between us here is simple: I have rarely felt that social media creates solidarity or produces persuasion & learning across social divides. Maybe it can! — I'm open to research on the question. But my experience has been more like "good fences make good neighbors."

I feel a warmer sense of solidarity with my fellow-citizens — from Little Rock real estate dealers to Brooklyn publicists — when I'm not actually listening to their opinions about foreign policy.

I don't want to belabor this but I don't think solidarity is the point so much as knowledge. I don't want to learn what young men are thinking, however distasteful, months later from a NYT opinion piece or a Louis Theroux documentary, which inevitably fail to understand these phenomena from within.