Looking for humanness in the world wide social
This is the first part of a series on the identity of social networks.
Social networks have shaped me since a young age. Growing up at the beginning of the millennium, I used to spend my time in phpBB and vBulletin forums. There, I befriended internet strangers, started my way into graphic design, and learned about torrents. Forums were my favorite third places—little corners on the web where I felt a deep affinity.
I can still vividly remember the joy and excitement while exploring those discussion boards. The sheer amount of knowledge and people I’ve met in those places could not be found anywhere else. To this day I believe these experiences have profoundly shaped the path I’m still walking today.
But when I look at the current form of social media, it all feels dumb: watching adults post nonsense or praise “influencer gurus” while doom-scrolling from dusk to dawn seems absurd. We should have had more important things to do with our lives, yet we’ve all gotten caught up in this utopian-dystopian era.
What once felt like home evolved into alienated spaces.
The social archetype, once defined by its role in connecting like-minded strangers, gradually evolved into a space for staying in touch with friends and family. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have all initially focused on cultivating personal connections. However, this social identity grew into a behemoth over time—at a pace that now feels startling. With the rise of the new media model, social networks transformed from intimate bonfires into vast, crowded arenas while losing much of their original charm.
Like many others, I embraced the new social paradigm. But it wasn’t until I was deep into writing these lines that I realized just how detached I am from its very idea. I’ve long been inside the loop of social media—joining and lurking on new platforms, trying to play the game. Yet I’ve never truly felt part of the culture. If you look at my Instagram grid or Facebook wall, they seem pretty dormant. And I’m far from a chronic tweeter.
Interestingly, social platforms exist in a paradox. Despite negativity and declining discourse (at least in my view), they persist and evolve, each with its own premise. Whether driven by hypes, protocols, or ideologies—the ‘recent flocking’ news headlines often appear to describe the recent migration to Mastodon, Bluesky, Farcaster, Substack Notes, Threads, and others.
By now the TikTok-mania has taken over the majority of mainstream social-land. Every platform that embraced the aggressive recommendation model has transformed from a small town square into a big continent—and even beyond. Rather than following IRL friends and shared interests, we follow the algorithm, or shall I say, corporate desires. As Ev Williams recently wrote, social is no more social:
Social networks became “social media,” which, at first, meant receiving content from people you chose to hear from. But in the quest to maximize engagement, the timeline of friends and people you picked to follow turned into a free-for-all battle for attention. And it turns out, for most people, your friends aren’t as entertaining as (god forbid) influencers who spend their waking hours making “content.” In other words, social media became…media.
The trend has also spread beyond what we call social networks per se. Spotify has morphed into a taste guessing machine, promoting its business agenda over listener preferences through continuous and deliberate interface changes, as described by
:The uppermost menu now offers three options, each given equal real estate—Music, Podcasts, and Audiobooks—and the Music tab is filled with rows of playlists, autoplay “radio” stations, and algorithmically generated mixes. The only option for browsing full albums is a small item in the lesser Library column, to the right of yet more buttons for Playlists and Podcasts. With the upgrade, it became clearer than ever what the app has been pushing me to do: listen to what it suggests, not choose music on my own.
I still miss the days I saw what my Facebook friends were listening to.1
The same goes for LinkedIn. The professional social network, once connecting between co-workers has long joined the media gang. The intrusive “promotions as private messages”, and the useless notifications, along with the latest additions—games and even reels have made the platform far from being “professional”.
The pendulum has been swinging hard for the media side, but a core shift has been going underway. Amidst algorithm fatigue, ads, and other downsides, people seem to be gravitating back to the essence of old social networks—smaller, cozier spaces based on real connections and shared interests. There’s a reason why Instagram’s Close Friends has increasingly become popular, why an IRL photo-sharing app like Retro surges, and why Ev Williams just launched Mozi.
This regression feels inevitable as social media culture has grown out of proportion.
Although the human social dynamics from the past haven’t changed, the settings largely have—with a growing “building an audience” economics that made social spaces into one-man shows instead of collective jams.
Back in my forum days, I surely fired comments like a maniac to increase my message count to grow my ego reputation. But connections were formed more naturally. I didn’t comment on random posts with the intention of making friends—I formed connections through genuine activity. And often, those relationships were extended to private messengers like MSN or ICQ.
Miraculously, I wasn’t guided by algorithms—but through my curiosity as I discovered my own world.
In Here for the Wrong Reasons, Charles Broskoski articulates this very notion while referencing a social platform from the past—Soulseek:
There is this tendency to think about software, especially software that is more on the “tool” side as something that augments your ability as a human. What I keep coming back to is that I really don’t want that at all. I like feeling connected to things and unencumbered. I like feeling the humanness of things and my own human relationship to things. I want to be able to feel true attention, or at the very least, the possibility of it.
For Soulseek, the key is that it is just an environment that is made for the same kind of abstract actions that happen when you are surfing nodal points in the physical world: A person might turn you onto something — a band, a book, an artist, etc. — and later on, if that thing becomes a nodal point for you, it might lead you to another person and that person might lead you to another nodal point and on and on.
That shared love for the thing or the overlapping interests allows you to tune your radar for certain types of people. Similar to the idea of desire lines, agency is the key component. There’s the agency to move through abstract space guided by your own intuition. In the case of Soulseek, there’s nothing (other than your own intuition) that is influencing your path.
Software environments that take these types of approaches are attractive because they operate in a way that doesn’t make any assumptions about what an individual might want, at least in terms of content. There are no personalized suggestions or algorithmic rabbit holes to fall into. The content you are exposed to is only based on a network you’ve intentionally cultivated for yourself, guided by your own internal radar. The result is a kind of texture of a network that is both difficult to replicate and rewarding to traverse.
What Charles describes seems to be confined to the internet’s early days—to the previous incarnation of social networks. Nowadays there’s no chance the social media gods would allow you to follow your intuition. After all, that’s their lifeblood—they’ve got their own intuition (and intention) for what you should consume.
But Charles knows a thing or two about such software environments. For years he and his co-founders, have been building and nourishing Are.na—a platform that shares the same ethics as Soulseek. As I’ve already already written, when I step into Are.na I’m not seeking attention or competing for visibility. I simply follow my intuition, allowing my presence to resonate with those who share similar interests, even without a literal and direct engagement.
Such an atmosphere reminds me of old Dribbble. At its peak, the pinky website was just about showcasing design work. Before dribbblisation took over, designer’s presence served as living portfolios, allowing them to get noticed. The incentive of maintaining a profile also felt human—uploading work and sharing (shots) within the network, with little expectations.2
But a few years later, the common social chronic reached Dribbble too. As it expanded, it opened the gates by removing its invite system and eventually got acquired—then becoming more of a busy marketplace rather than a wholesome community.
All this to say that a social platform stays attractive as long as it maintains its cozy and human feelings—with real humans. As
wrote about what makes her product Sublime:On the other hand – the most valuable part of Sublime is the people.
Looking back at the design landscape, there’s one place that really stands out—a small social network called Posts. It’s kind of a mini version of Design Twitter, or at least what it used to be. What I like about Posts is that one doesn’t need a large following to overcome the void. For the most part, I receive useful and thoughtful comments, as its smaller scale allows for deeper interactions.
These platforms cultivate environments that optimize for mojo rather than chasing over-monetization. There are no artificial rules for posting. There are no formats or trends to be followed. There’s no pressure to post on a schedule. And there are no penalties. Rather than shouting into an endless void, there are just natural expressions. This allows for intimacy and shared, or at least, intersecting interests to be valued instead of going through endless and daunting content suggestion loops.
That’s a healthier form of online gathering.3
When I left my beloved forums scene, the internet had already started to change.
The world started to change.
How do you go to a party with 10,000 people? How would you notice someone on the other side of a stadium full of 100,000 people? This lack of affinity and belonging in crowded and chaotic platforms like Twitter often leaves me feeling uncomfortable. Though I’m very active there, it’s still a melting pot of countless interests, not to mention the bots.
While serendipity certainly occurs on the big platforms, the general motivation there is very different from small-scale places seeking humanness. The people I’ve met on Twitter are a fraction compared to the internet friends I made through small and cozy Slack and Discord communities—or even WhatsApp and Telegram groups.
Social networks began with the promise of forming meaningful connections while prioritizing authenticity over virality. I may get too nostalgic when reminded of my early internet days, but I guess I’m longing for more calm environments on the web—which is strongly rooted in those days. When I reflect on my somewhat long journey, the most profound insight I gain is the power of bonding and connection that early online social spaces used to create.
There’s no wish in me that things would go backward, but I appreciate the pendulum now swinging slightly sideways, moving closer to a more human environment.
See you somewhere,
—Itay.
Thanks
for reading a draft and verifying this piece.This feature still exists but is buried in menus and buttons.
While writing this piece, I accidentally stumbled upon some old inquiry emails I had received and was shocked to realize how many came through Dribbble.
Even if I look at the other side of the scale, on Reddit, I sense similar dynamics. Although the giant network is home to a very particular type of people, with the right subreddits, you can stay engaged in the right topics. Despite the annoying recommendations notifications system, I often get helpful responses—whether when sharing something of mine or asking a genuine question.
More interesting platforms-communities like Futureland, USB Club, Commoncog, and Glass are worth watching.
Great article. I reflect myself in many of the feelings and online places you mentioned.
Bittersweet news about Posts.
I definitely loved the atmosphere over there.
Notes were taken. Thanks for writing. It feels good to know that I'm not alone feeling nostalgic, and missing those good old web days.