My very honest review of social media apps / part 1

Facebook

The Great Attractor for the collapse of organized society. Originally developed to be a creep’s ultimate wet dream (a place to rate college girls behind their backs and in perfect impunity), after going global, it just took that idea to an epic scale. Now every creep in the world has a place to express their lowest instincts, in perfect impunity.

With 2.7 billion users, it’s officially the biggest community on Earth. Given that the world is full of complete idiots, Facebook is proud to get the lion’s share.

I love the possibility it offers to stalk people, their private lives, relationships and family, including children, without having to take any responsibility for it, and from the perfect comfort of my living room. The best part is that everybody shared their pictures willingly in the first place. You cannot blame me if the privacy settings are so hard to find.

Now I can also go and check people after they are dead! Their pictures change into a reassuring sepia tone, so it feels very wholesome, respectful. It’s like wearing my best shoes at mass. It doesn’t matter if the socks smell and are full of holes. This function is called “memorial page”, which means “we will always profit from your clicks, even after you are gone, forever and ever”. Amen.

Facebook is controlled by a mysterious algorithm that decides what I see and when I see it; whom I love and whom I hate. Especially these. Its creator has no idea how it works, as candidly admitted before the US Congress. So he basically created Skynet, but with cat pictures inside. But he also said that “lying is bad”, so I trust him with all my secrets anyway.

It refuses to perform any fact-checking on what is posted, and despite this – or maybe because of it – a huge number of people choose it as their main source of information, every day. This is like having regurgitated fast food chips as your main source of nutrition – entertaining maybe, but you can imagine it won’t end well.

Still, it’s a great place to socialize. When I feel sad because my desperate calls for attention are not getting enough visibility, I can always buy a paid boost for my ego. Because isn’t that what we call “socializing”? Paid ads are basically viagra for my posts. They almost don’t feel like cheating. Almost.

You can start a group and connect all your friends, or open a page and invite everybody to pretend to admire your idea or business. This doesn’t change the fact that you will feel inexorably lonely and sad most of the time, because the majority of your “fans” will not like your posts, not buy your products, not join your events and won’t even say hi if they meet you in the street. Many of these strangers will congratulate you on your birthday though, so at least that.

True, Facebook hosts some of the worst stuff the internet has to offer. But you cannot blame a platform for what the users do with it, can you? The page “Funny Cats – Your Daily Source of laughter and joy” has exactly the same number of followers of “Evidence of Reptilian Shapeshifters Group” (90 posts a day!), and this fills me with puzzlement and a strange sense of excitement at the same time.

On a brighter note, Facebook does a lot for society. It offers a safe place for people who want to do their own research, share news and publish the results of the independent studies made by courageous benefactors (who often hide behind obscure nicknames, for some reason). This can safely happen away from the greedy eyes of Bill Gates, who wants to enslave us all and rule the world over an army of vaccinated mindless zombies. Facebook, the paladin of the people. Facebook, the enemy of Big Business. Facebook, the Protector of the Realm, First of his Name. Facebook, which is currently worth 527 billion US dollars.

My rating: 9/10. Could still improve, if it included a feature to see through people’s clothes. Probably it already exists, and it’s reserved to the developers.

My Space.

It still exists! The homepage is full of “celebrity” news, but I ignore 90% of them. I guess I am not their main target audience anymore. I haven’t used it in the last 15 years at least and was quite disappointed to find out I cannot even access my old profile – I have no idea what my username was and I completely forgot that old email address. Probably it’s for the better. If anyone had access to that content, they would no doubt use it against me.

My rating: 5/10. At the time, it was great. There was no end to how trashy your page could be. Now that pop stars are trashy, maybe it’s all sleek and shiny inside, like an Apple store for our souls. Who knows. I am certainly not creating a new profile to find out.

Twitter

Just having an account there automatically means I am more sophisticated than the average person and I am entitled to regurgitate my opinion on everything, all the time. So I have one.

But I don’t use it that much, because I find it a place where people fall – without exception – into one or more of these categories:

a) those trying too hard to be funny (and therefore failing);

b) those constantly angry at everything on the other side of their political spectrum, because of unresolved, deep-seeded self-hate issues;

c) those who know-it-all and are there to impart moralizing (and unsolicited) lectures on everybody else.

And before you ask, I am (a + b + c) divided the average time I spend on the toilet seat.

The platform is a digital madhouse where everybody is barking (more than tweeting) at everybody else, desperately trying to prevail. All. The. Time. It’s the daily poison dispenser I open when I want to find out why everybody is so aggravated. And it works. Ten minutes of browsing are usually enough to ruin my mood for half a day. If I decide to engage with a troll, then I move straight to self-hate for a couple of days. This is stellar value-per-click.

The best part is that roughly half of all its users aren’t even real. So I feel like Patrick Swayze trying to punch ghosts, except maybe he got better now at this hobby, while I still suck.

Actually, some of the nicest people I met on Twitter turned out to be bots. Which says something about people, and probably about me too. The other day, I ordered 2000 Twitter bots from a Russian website. Half an hour later, I had all those new, shiny followers. They liked everything I posted, they commented and retweeted, kept the trolls at bay. It was fantastic, so empowering. I had a mindless army of followers at my command. I felt like Matteo Salvini.

They would also operate house appliances: washing machine, vacuum, lights, tv. One of them made me a cup of tea, and I almost died of Polonium poisoning. Turned out they were using an old recipe from the Kremlin, forgotten somewhere in their code. That’s how I sobered up and decided it’s too dangerous a game for me.

Twitter is also great because it gives you the opportunity to be in close contact with your favorite celebrities and very important people. Like, I am following the Pope, the Dalai Lama, Obama and Mark Hamill, all at the same time. If I did that in real life, it would cost me a lot of money – and I would probably end up with a couple of restraining orders to say the least.

These digital deities, of course, go on with their business completely unaware of me and unbothered by my adoration towards them. Just like real gods. And again, just like real gods, probably they don’t even exist. They are just an invention to give meaning to our life.

But still, that feeling of proximity is great: I find great pleasure in knowing that I share the first two things I do every morning with Donald Trump. And I won’t tell you what they are.

A bummer for word enthusiasts like me: its posts are limited to 280 characters. So people write these long-ass “threads” where one message is linked to the next and you have to click fifteen times to see if that unhinged rant gets to the point finally. It usually doesn’t. People comment each of these posts individually and this creates an Inception-style structure with insults within insults within insults, a torrent of hate and verbal abuse that really means that the platform is not made for conversation, but it’s ideal to bring society at a breaking point. In that sense it’s working wonders.

Pornstars can publish their material without any censorship, which is a definite bonus. On the other hand, the platform is trying to contrast the diffusion of fake news and conspiracy theories, and that’s really sad. I find gullible, opinionated people at least as interesting as the genitalia of perfect strangers, and I think they deserve exactly the same treatment on digital platforms. What an unfair world we created.

My rating: 8/10 if I don’t open it, 4 when I do.

TikTok

I have no idea, I don’t use it, but it made Donald Trump worried, so it must be at least better than Joe Biden. Not that it takes much, anyway.

Plus, it’s a Chinese app, so its impact is guaranteed. Just look at the coronavirus.

It seems based on these short, viral videos that are just fugly as hell. I mean, what the hell. They somehow made it even to Pornhub, which means people get randy looking at those things, and this honestly upsets me way more than it should.

Everybody shoots TikTok videos holding their phones vertically, which means barbarians have stormed the gates and all civilization is doomed. So who cares anyway. Maybe Donald is right after all.

My rating: 10. It’s fantastic because I can just ignore it.

Tinder

The name of the app suggests very honestly what you can get using it: something disposable, not very warm, not very bright, and yet with the potential to completely destroy your house and your entire life. So, that’s one extra point for honesty right off the start.

I am glad I got married before it became obligatory, so I am somehow proud to say I have never really used it. I have had a look when a couple of my friends were using it – some were aware of it, some maybe less so – and all I remember is way more dick pics than I could have wished for. This should have taught me better than to peek at other people’s phones. It didn’t.

Anyway, be aware that this will be a second-hand (but still honest) review. Not that it matters anyway.

Tinder users, it seems to me, fall basically into two types: people who rely on their bodies and have absolutely no shame showing them; and people who don’t, and try to rely on personality. These two groups try to cross-breed sometimes, but it almost never works, so they fall back and date among their own – which also doesn’t work, because it’s boring. So nobody is every happy, anyway.

The obvious exceptions are those lucky few who combine the traits of both groups, but they don’t need a dating app, and never will, so let’s not talk about them. Ever. They have all the luck. For starters, they only get a dick pick when they want one. And it’s usually a great-looking dick. Not. Fair.

I watch people as they swipe other people left, right, right, left as if they were choosing an avocado at the supermarket, and I can’t help but think that the experiences have in fact many similarities: the selection process takes forever, and once you think you found the right one, you pay its price, you take it home and after a couple of days, it starts to rot.

Hell, some people organize for themselves more than one date in one night. Because in case the first one proves to be a terrible experience, why not have another one right away? I find comfort in thinking that maybe these guys end up matched with one other. They deserve it.

I discovered one-night-stands later in my life, but I clearly remember the feeling of using another person and feeling used at the same time; being home alone after the date, free, but feeling desperately desolate and empty inside; the thrill and excitement of the hunt and also the creeping suspicion that all those shallow experiences were after all your fault, and that you were not good enough.

Now somebody managed to package this experience into an app. And make money from it? If this isn’t business genius, I don’t know what is.

My rating: 6/10. When they make one that includes Real Dolls, I may consider it.

Snapchat

It’s what makes young people stupid – or is it the lifestyle we designed for them, with impossibly high standards to achieve in education, career, fitness, beauty, all performances to be achieved under tight deadlines and with mind-bending intensity, under the ever-present shadow of nuclear war and rapid climate change?

Anyway, this is what the 40 and 50 years old say as they share fake news videos on their Whatsapp family chats, so when they speak about social media, everybody better pay attention.

Snapchat is fast, creative, outrageous, addictive, but whom am I kidding: I have never even seen it, I am just checking a few articles right now.

My rating: 8/10. If it helps kids forget the endless struggles and pains of adolescence, leave them in peace. Besides, they are having the time of their life, and we are just jealous.

Check out part two here for more honest reviews of Instagram – Linkedin – Youtube – Airbnb – Uber.