Stumbling around
"Electronic communities build nothing." Not my quote!
I spent most of yesterday afternoon battling with Meta and X, trying to set up accounts for our new app—independent of my own channels, which might as well not be there anyway.
This stuff should be easy. It wasn't. You can check the outcomes here: PlayStats on X and PlayStats on Instagram. Social media hounds — feel free to suggest taglines in the comments.
Why does technology take such delight in humbling you? Especially when the person stumbling around actually believes he knows what he's doing. If these platforms have a soul, or some trace of human empathy, surely they can sense the growing frustration and lower the drawbridge.
Instead, they circle in formation and cackle while you try to distance yourself from old accounts and create new ones. And if I have to identify one more bicycle in a nine-panel CAPTCHA, I genuinely don't know what I'll do.
The other reluctance I have about these platforms is the myth that they build community. Kurt Vonnegut said it back in 2009: "Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We are dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you different."
So I won’t. No counter-argument. Well—they did help get Barack Obama elected.
P.S. For the cricket-minded who like their stats, feel free to take a look at the new accounts. I’m pretty sure we have zero followers. Let’s keep it that way.
Nick
