Social Media is All the Same

I’m sure you’ve all recognized this trend in recent years. Maybe we can blame the fall of Musically and the subsequent rise of TikTok. People became hooked on short-form content. Though, really that goes back all the way to Vine with seven second videos blowing up. 

The popularity of TikTok created plenty of spin-offs, not just new apps, but similar features on other platforms. Instagram came out with Reels, then YouTube started rolling out Shorts. Before you knew it all apps just started to look the same. 

Even TikTok is starting to look like its competitors with the introduction of Stories – a feature previously only found on Instagram (more or less). 

It’s understandable why apps have taken this route. Since short-form content is so popular now, it would be a missed opportunity for traction and revenue to ignore the medium completely. Think of all the vague ads the sites can show now, how many partnerships they can cram into an aesthetisized ten to twenty second clip. Short-form content is a corporate gold mine. It certainly takes less time, effort, energy, and most importantly money, to dish out a TikTok or a Reel rather than start up a whole new ad campaign. 

But all of that is at the expense of the consumer.

Let’s be honest, social media is kind of boring now. The atmosphere online is one of monotony. I can see a Story on Instagram or TikTok; I can watch a ten minute video on TikTok or YouTube; I can get a text post on Twitter or TikTok. TikTok really does seem to be the common denominator these days. Maybe we really should have thrown the whole thing out. 

Whenever I think of all social media looking that same, I return to one of my most beloved sites: Tumblr. 

Sure, it’s changed over the years, but certainly not as drastically as some of the others. It’s more or less the same as it’s always been. Your timeline is still chronological, you don’t see follower count so it’s kind of hard to see who’s “famous” and who’s not (aside from a few outliers), the For You section is pretty good as well – mostly showing content from tags the user follows. 

What I think is most important though is that when users push back against changes that would make Tumblr look more like other social media sites those in charge usually listen. There was recently an attempted change that would completely switch the way that likes and reblogs were counted. Everyone was furious over it. So what happened? There were campaigns online and after a very short run, the owners decided to roll back the feature. Of course, they’ll likely try something like this again in the future, but it’s nice to know that they listen. Sometimes. 

This is the sort of change I want to see. It’s highly unlikely that YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter will roll back any of the features they’ve implemented that function like other social media sites. After those features being staples for years (in the cases of Reels or Shorts), it would be somewhat problematic to just take it all down. Instead, this is a sign to stop where we are. Stick with the changes you’ve already made, sure – although I’m still not thrilled about it – but don’t try to rip each other off anymore. 

There’s enough ten second videos to fill hundreds of data centers, more than anyone will ever see in their entire life by a longshot. They’re overdone but more than that they’re just plain boring after you’ve seen your hundredth one of the day. Return to the days of the good old curated Instagram profile or well crafted YouTube essays. Let’s try to reignite the spark that the Internet used to have.