Twitter is toxic, TikTok is banned but also not, Meta’s apps will soon be full of misinformation & abuse, and BlueSky feels like joining the boring adult table. Social Media as we once knew it is dying a horrible death.
I’ve loved the Internet since I first logged on to the family’s first PC in the late nineties. The Internet for me took many forms, whether it was getting lost in online chat rooms, becoming addicted to NeoPets and Habbo Hotel, sitting for hours on MSN, all the way to Web 2.0 and the golden era of social media with MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter.
As a budding musician in the early noughties, I had high hopes that the Internet would help propel me (and whatever band I was in) to success and it probably could have if I weren’t the leading cause of bands breaking up. For some, that rings true though. The Internet was the building block to make bands big, whether it was through MySpace fame, or more recently, TikTok.
That’s all about to come crashing down though as Social Media is thoughtlessly ripped out of our hands, whether being bought out by tech douchebags, having its policies overturned to favour right-wing ideologies, or banned by clueless one-foot-in-the-grave politicians that thing China is tracking our every move.
While I could easily sit here and type that we need a new social media platform, users are tired of switching to another new platform. I think before long, Social Media, at least in its current form will be dead, leaving the door open for something new… or maybe something old?
As noughties fashion and its trends seem to be coming back around, are we going to see the return of an ancient art form of Internet expression. By that I mean the humble music blog. People spending time to dive into music they love, gushing over lyrics or instrumentals, and sharing their passion for music?
Now I know what you’re probably thinking, music blogs and music journalism didn’t really go anywhere, and in some respects you’re correct, but music journalism went through a sort of Pitchfork-ification. In addition, music reviews became commodified through sites like SubmitHub and Musosoup, platforms where bloggers could offer artists reviews in exchange for money via credits. This, in my opinion, pulled all of the fun out of music reviews as it became less about digging and discovering new music and more about how much content can we churn out to earn a profit.
So could we be entering an era where music blogging and journalism goes back to its roots? Where the joy of discovering new music organically takes president without paid barriers of entry? Yes and no, in my opinion. The Internet and social media has had such an impact on society that I’d be hesitant to say there’d be such a drastic shift. Will we see more people jumping on platforms like Substack and starting blogs out of sheer passion? Absolutely, we’re starting to see that happen already. But with social having such a stranglehold on getting any form of recognition online, especially as we see a rise in “Newsfluencers” we’re unlikely to see a dramatic shift.
I miss the Wild West of early 00s internet.