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we live in an interesting era of the internet and, by extension, the world. there are more and more ways for people to interface with eachother than ever before, and it's undeniable that people are in many ways far more connected. this is generally a good thing, dodging the general malice that this post is explicitly not about.

what im interested in here is something ive already hinted at. we "interface" with eachother, which you probably think is just a fancier way of saying talking so that i sound smart but its only mostly that B).

you see, in the current digital landscape our discussion is very curated, it's almost served to us. people hand picked to either make us angry or to only have our exact same opinions. rings of reccomended users curated on mutual ideas and interests. this isn't awful, despire the vaguely uncanny vibe of being matchmade by a computer, but that's not the main issue

those curated people are then forced to interface with you through means of abstraction, which is a pompous asshole way of saying that they don't talk to you, they make "posts" or the like. people on sites like twitter often have "mutuals", someone who they have friended and who has friended them, but these relationships are often forced to be very shallow.

you can't kickstart a real time discussion, and you can't be too thoughtful due to the character limit. your only option is to post shallow quick ideas, even if the core thought is very thoughtful, or share media to eachother. the main way of interfacing with the platform, with your friends, with everyone, is very detatched and cold. these limits make it hard to be thoughtful like a forum or quick like a basic text chat.

and yes, obviously there are usually dms in most of these big social medias, but they're not the main way of interfacing with the site, and they're not how you meet people. the way we talk to people online is fundamentally flawed, to the point where actually just talking to someone is a phase you have to build up to.

self aware one sentence thesis; just talk to people, install discord or an irc or something.

maybe i'll make a post about my thoughts on chat clients someday but anywhere you can find people you can connect with is worth checking out, even if you're super anxious and just end up lurking its still something.