semi‐public parlors where people choose their company and set their own rules, spaces that prioritize continuity over reach and coherence over chaos. People will show up not to go viral, but to be seen in context. None of this is about escaping the social internet, but about reclaiming its scale, pace, and purpose.

Scrolling has become a form of ambient dissociation, half-conscious, half-compulsive, closer to scratching an itch than seeking anything in particular. People know the feed is fake, they just don’t care.

While content proliferates, engagement is evaporating. Average interaction rates across major platforms are declining fast: Facebook and X posts now scrape an average 0.15% engagement, while Instagram has dropped 24% year-on-year. Even TikTok has begun to plateau. People aren’t connecting or conversing on social media like they used to; they’re... See more

These are not mass arenas; they are clubs — opt-in spaces with boundaries, where people remember who you are. And they are often paywalled, or at least heavily moderated, which at the very least keeps the bots out. What’s being sold is less a product than a sense of proximity, and while the economics may be similar, the affective atmosphere is... See more

Substack is full of personal brands announcing their journeys, Discord servers host influencers disguised as community leaders and Patreon bios promise exclusive access that is often just recycled content. Still, something has shifted. These are not mass arenas; they are clubs — opt-in spaces with boundaries, where people remember who you are. And... See more

Shrimp Jesus

But as social media collapses on itself, the future points to a quieter, more fractured, more human web, something that no longer promises to be everything, everywhere, for everyone.

The antidote to this compulsive, numbing overload will be found in deliberative friction, design patterns that introduce pause and reflection into digital interaction, or platforms and algorithms that create space for intention.

Engagement is now about raw user attention – time spent, impressions, scroll velocity – and the net effect is an online world in which you are constantly being addressed but never truly spoken to.