🤔 John It feels like online social platforms have really become less useful over the last year or two. I guess it's the Eternal September problem, but it feels like more than that. Anyway, I'm going to share more on Sublevel as a way of coping with how terrible my Facebook feed has gotten.

Bugabinga The 'usefulness' of social media has eluded me for years. The signal to noise ratio of Twitter & co always had me tired pretty quickly. What does eternal September mean?

🤔 John It's a term that's been passed down from Usenet (I think) before internet access was ubiquitous. Summers would be relatively calm with good discussion, but in September all the college students would get access to their school networks and the influx of new users ignorant to the community standards would drive down the quality. When user growth accelerated exponentially, the constant influx of new users overwhelmed the communities that couldn't adapt. For me, Facebook is important as a way to communicate with friends and family back home. Twitter is great if you have a well curated list.

Bugabinga Thank you for explaining that. I wasn't around back then, but I definitely recognize the pattern. The somewhat uncomfortable analogy that comes to mind is immigration and its social challenges.