Does social media suck now?
June 12, 2025
One of the things that's been motivating me to work on my Neocities more is that I feel a little disillusioned with the current state of social media.
It feels like a lot of the spaces that really made social media fun for me don't really exist anymore. That's, of course, not entirely true, but a lot of recent circumstances have made everything feel so... dead and lonely.
I'm a bit upset about the current state of Tumblr. I started using it probably around 2016 or 2017 and I've used it ever since, mostly for art and / or fandom shit.
Out of all the "mainstream" platforms, Tumblr probably has my favorite design. I really like the blog format and the archive feature and tagging system are both incredibly useful. Custom blog themes were also really fun, but then Tumblr started changing their rules about custom HTML and now no one really uses them anymore.
I feel like it's getting harder and harder to deny that the site is facing a slow, painful death. Unfortunately, Tumblr's moderation is a twisted joke. There's been multiple mass exoduses from the site since 2018, due in part to or entirely because of the fact that Matt Mullenweg is not becoming any less of an asshole or any better at running websites. It's just not the same anymore, and it's really quite sad to watch. In as much as Tumblr has pissed me off literally since I started using the site, it is very dear to me. The community that made it fun just isn't really there anymore, and what's left is mostly just incredibly aggravating people. It's crazy that a website that used to be seen as the "man-hating SJW feminazi site" now is mostly populated by people who struggle with basic feminism.
There's also a disturbingly large population of people on Tumblr who are, like, actual pedophiles, which is also surrounded by a ring of people who are at least okay with pedophiles or who will argue very passionately for why pedophiles deserve to be given grace. And at this point, it's not like the mods really can do anything, because last I heard, there's like 12 employees left.
It sucks, because it was probably the best platform for art besides DeviantArt.
I used to use DeviantArt a lot back in the day, too. All my idols when I was a kid were sparkledog and Sonic artists, so DeviantArt was my people. It's also one of the oldest sites of its kind. There are deviations on that site older than me, which to me is such a fucking crazy concept.
I've drifted away from it over the years because the mods cannot keep their noses clean. There was that big controversy with Hot Topic and them allegedly selling their users' art, and now the site is also entrenched in some AI bullshit. I still have an account that I use to favorite stuff, but I don't actually post any of my art there.
I haven't properly used Twitter since I was, like, 13, and now Elon Musk is all over it so I don't want to touch it. I'm liking Bluesky enough (+ it's where a lot of people who left Tumblr went), but the userbase is still pretty small and it feels... empty. It is getting new users, though (something that the aforementioned sites aren't really doing), and I anticipate there'll probably be a surge in users as more and more people get sick of what Elon is doing to the site. Or it'll be another overambitious startup that fizzles out and dies.
I am liking Letterboxd, but it's not really much of a "social" site. I don't think I'm bound to make a lot of lasting friendships off of saying Steve Buscemi is hot.
Neither Facebook nor Instagram really appeal to me, and I also hate Mark Zuckerberg.
I used Mastodon for a few months when I was in high school, but I didn't love it. The concept sounds promising, but the community didn't really appeal to me. Also, it's full of pedophiles. Running theme here! There's practically been documentaries on how full of pedophiles Mastodon is. I did not forget about that shit.
Snapchat was always more of a "local" thing anyway, and from what I understand, it's mostly just an advertising platform for B-list influencers now.
Reddit is... I don't know. I don't know how I feel about the prospect of making a Reddit account. Supposedly there's a lot of useful resources for learning languages on there, and I do want to work on my French. I have complicated feelings about its userbase.
YouTube recommends conservative propaganda to all of its users, and it's also not really a platform for making friends as much as it is for churning out shitty video content. I do have some aspirations for my YouTube channel, but nothing particularly lofty.
I did make a Newgrounds account a while back so I could follow an artist I liked. It has a pretty decent UI and concept. The only caveat is that Newgrounds users are kind of scary.
I'm shocked at how long that site has lasted, by the way.
The thing with a lot of "alternative" social media sites is they either have incredibly small communities, or they have communities that are composed of neo-Nazis, pedophiles, or both. There's also no guarantee that most of these sites will last more than 3 - 5 years tops.
I don't know. I feel like we might be in a transitional stage of the Internet. Or maybe soon they'll make something to replace the Internet and we'll all be using that instead. Either way, the current state of things feels a bit bleak.
I hope they make a Tumblr clone next. We have like 3 Twitter clones now. I want a blogging platform.
