Facebook was great for keeping up with family while I was abroad in Vietnam during 2004. It’s still how I keep up with what old friends and distant family are doing. It’s now toxic though and creates false glimpses into people’s lives that make me feel bad about myself. The news feed is unusable. Stories aren’t interesting. Notifications are high noise and low signal. I don’t use it that much anymore. A few minutes per day, if that. I would not miss Facebook if it went away.
Twitter was how I met every single close friend who I made in Hanoi from 2009 onwards. I didn’t know anyone up north, searched around for tweets related to the city, and participated in a few meetups. Fast forward nearly a decade, and the platform has become, for me at least, an information firehose for political news, trending topics, cryptocurrency drama, blockchain and WordPress developments, and a timeline that’s almost unusable. I would not miss Twitter if it went away.
Snapchat used to feel fun and a little exciting. Private Snaps with friends felt intimate and temporary, forgotten the moment I watched them twice. Now the platform has an utterly terrible UI, aggressive and offensive advertising, unhappy celebrities who are abandoning the software, Stories that are impossible to navigate, and filters that are its only saving grace.
WeChat is my China hookup. LINE is my Japan hookup. Zalo and Viber are my Vietnam hookups. I enjoy all of these apps.
Instagram stories are pretty good. Out of all the platforms that do stories, this one does them well enough. The food porn, hot influencers, funny videos, and passing glimpses into the lives of friends far away make Instagram enjoyable. It’s one of my favorite time sinks.
Telegram is where I go to have real conversations with groups of people who I have never met and who are all interested in the same things: blockchain tech, the best memes on the internet, and cryptocurrency. Telegram is fantastic. I check it often.
Medium is okay, not great. I’d use it for a company blog, but when it comes to content discoverability and enjoyable reading, Medium’s quality is starting to get a little thin. I do support the platform with a monthly subscription because I do like rewarding better writing.
Anything I didn’t list is probably something I don’t use enough to care about one way or another. WordPress doesn’t count; to me, it’s just software, not a means of being social.
