MK

This was what personal style was to me in 2008: a cipher for something much broader, a glimpse into the lives of others.

The whole idea of social networks was networking : building or deepening relationships, mostly with people you knew. How and why that deepening happened was largely left to the users to decide.

Vigorously participatory curatorial subcultures certainly exist, but in practice, they require too much time and energy to have a broad appeal. People enjoy sharing their discoveries with friends, and they may at least occasionally rate and review items. But most people, most of the time, leave the hard work of curation to others — or to

When I first got access to the internet as a kid, the very first thing I did was to find people who liked the same things I liked — science fiction novels and TV shows, Dungeons and Dragons, and so on. In the early days, that was what you did when you got online — you found your people , whether on Usenet or IRC or Web forums or MUSHes and MUDs.

The flip side of that coin also shines. On social media, everyone believes that anyone to whom they have access owes them an audience...

Flat is in essence a process of homogenization. Today it doesn’t matter where an influencer lives, because she dresses like she’s from the internet, and that’s all that counts.

A social network is an idle, inactive system—a Rolodex of contacts, a notebook of sales targets, a yearbook of possible soul mates. But social media is active—hyperactive, really—spewing material across those networks instead of leaving them alone until needed.