I was struggling to come up with a topic for this week, and then it occurred to me that I have not logged in to a social media app for any meaningful length of time so far in 2026. Ah ha! How about a post on how social media stinks? Here we go.
Now, you may have come by this via a post I made on X sharing it. Well, I do have to get the word out to the world that a new post is ready for your reading pleasure. “If a tree falls in the forest…” and all that, you know.
Engaging with social media today is just exhausting in every way. I walk away feeling one or more of the following:
- Drained
- Angry
- Dispirited with humanity
- Disappointed with myself for all the minutes of my life lost scrolling through dross.
I used to like to see what my friends were sharing on sites like Facebook and Instagram. Then, again, recalling some of the things they posted over the years, maybe not so much. There were several occasions when I came away thinking, “Wow! I never knew so-and-so felt that way.” Such posts were very disappointing for me.
For some, it was nothing but political outrage against their opponents. It was either full-on TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) or BDS (Biden Derangement Syndrome). When it comes to political topics, I am infected with IDC Syndrome; IDC meaning I Don’t Care as long as the economy works, prices remain affordable, taxes are reasonable, jobs are created, crime is low, and we’re not at war. Not too much to ask, I think.
Now I will go through each of the social media platforms I was on and why I have disengaged from them.
I have been on Facebook since 2012, when I moved from Ohio to the east coast. It was a great way to stay connected with family and friends back in the Buckeye State, and it was fun. Sure, they had games that could suck up all your time and usage data (Farmville), but if you wanted to avoid having your data compromised the solution was to not play the games.
Then 2018 came along and we learned about the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, where Facebook user data was provided to a British company, Cambridge Analytica, in 2016 to target political ads to Facebook users. But that data breach didn’t stop us from using the platform.
Today, though, my Facebook feed is filled with AI slop, some of which is actually quite funny. But there are only so many short videos one can see of a giant ape throwing a belligerent, woke Karen out of a store window before the shtick becomes boring.
Other examples of AI slop in my feed: insanely fat people jumping into swimming pools, car and train crashes, and the usual political BS.
My old boss, a man with a long and distinguished career in information technology who is now in retirement, built an AI model on a server in his basement. The results? My feed is flooded with his content. The images are good, but it’s still fake and repetitive, which I do not want to see. I want to know what he’s doing in his life, even if it’s just boring everyday stuff.
As for content from my actual Facebook friends? I rarely see that in my feed. If I want to see what they are posting, I must go directly to their pages. Too much effort! I have over 200 Facebook friends and I am not going to scroll each one of their pages to find out what’s new in their lives.
Because the site has become a swamp of AI slop and junk marketing content, I am done with it. If any of my Facebook friends want to connect with me, use Facebook Messenger and hit me up directly.
What started out as a place where you could post your resume and connect with like-minded professionals has become a waste of time. The site is now full of “founders” (i.e., unemployed people) and “thought leaders” (a.k.a. BS artists) offering up AI-generated content littered with corporate jargon.
Here is an illustrative example for you to choke on that I created using Grok:
In today’s dynamic, fast-paced professional ecosystem, LinkedIn stands as the premier platform for strategic personal branding, thought leadership amplification, and high-impact networking that drives measurable ROI on your career trajectory. By leveraging LinkedIn to curate your professional narrative, foster synergistic connections, showcase value-added content, and engage in meaningful conversations with key stakeholders across industries, you position yourself at the epicenter of talent velocity, innovation ecosystems, and opportunistic growth pipelines—ultimately unlocking next-level synergies, elevating your personal brand equity, and accelerating your journey toward sustainable career excellence in an increasingly disrupted and AI-first business landscape. 🚀 #Leadership #ProfessionalDevelopment #Networking #PersonalBranding #CareerGrowth
That’s going to kill my SEO for this article, but oh well. (By the way, if you regularly talk like this, I suggest you rethink your life. Get out more. Interact—not “interface”—with regular, everyday people. Go for a slow, quiet walk in the forest and enjoy the sounds of nature to clear your mind.)
Then there are the ghost jobs on the platform. Everyone looking for a job has applied via LinkedIn, only to watch their application disappear into the void. Some jobs are legitimately real. You’ll know there is a good chance it is real because you get redirected to the company’s Workday site to apply. Otherwise, assume that the job is fake. Companies posting such jobs are using them as bait to develop a pool of candidates or suss out the market for that role. They are not interested in hiring you or anybody else.
For job seekers, applying for work using LinkedIn is an incredibly demoralizing experience. I have reached a point with it where I will no longer play the game.
LinkedIn and Facebook are great examples of enshittification, taking a service or product that was once really useful to users and then degrading the quality over time to maximize short-term profits for shareholder returns.
X/Twitter
I got my Twitter handle (@johnmeolaoh) in 2009, when the service won the “Breakout of the Year” Webby Award and started to really take off. I do not know exactly why I signed up, but I recall my wife saying something about others claiming your name and posting trash for which you get blamed. This was well before the whole “blue checkmark” thing.
Whatever the case, I used it, posted stuff to it, and routinely deleted my posts because there were times when I was not the most diplomatic. (Let’s face it, X/Twitter does not bring out the best in anyone.)
I still use it to share out my articles published here because it has global reach. If you follow me on X, expect most of my posts (other than links here) to be deleted after a month.
As for the content of my feed, the term “Dumpster fire” comes to mind. “Cesspool” is another one. It’s mostly political stuff that I no longer care to read, along with the worst of humanity: videos of shootings, street fights, riots, etc. It’s enough to wish for God to do a hard reboot and start over with earth.
My advice to people who are despondent with the state of humanity today: stay off X!
I used this to share photos, but I hate it and will no longer use it. Firstly, it crops photos taken with my DSLR cameras to fit on a cell phone screen. That is not how I wanted my pictures to be seen, and it’s really frustrating that I cannot change the cropping on it.
Secondly, the only people following me on it are a few friends and lots of bot accounts. Useless!
And finally, I don’t see photography from others on it. The platform is filled with irrelevant short videos, AI slop, and political content. I don’t want my work associated with that garbage, so I’m done with it.
Which one sucks the most?
This is a tough one, but in order I would rank them as follows, with #1 being the worst.
- Instagram – Useless for serious photographers and full of junk. Also, the algorithm repeats content and there is a lot of negative content on it.
- X/Twitter – The worst of humanity all in one place.
- LinkedIn – Pretentious twatwaffles, ghost jobs, and full of corporate humbug. The games are pretty good, though.
- Facebook – Messenger is useful, and if you really want to see your friends’ posts you can, but it will take some effort.
But I’m done with it all. All these sites have become boring and repetitive, and wastes time I could spend doing something more meaningful. They are also deleterious to my mood. With the sites reaching peak enshittification, they have no benefit to me anymore, so I’m out.
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