I think the first social network I used was VIVA Teletext. There were chat sites and it was actually a bit like Twitter. There was already a kind of feed, which was different from the forums that were common at the time or on the chat portals. But of course you couldn’t link people, you couldn’t reply directly, you couldn’t share anything or get notifications, you had to stare at them all the time for an interaction. There was a dating teletext page, one for “normal” chatting, one for Tokio Hotel and one for the rest of the music, so I was in there (probably everything was different from what I remember now). I was only there passively, because how could one afford the 19 cents per SMS to appear there in the teletext? I sometimes had the chat “halfway”, that was the TV setting where you could stare at the music videos and “interactive” on the left of the screen and then just the teletext in the right half. A bit sad when you think about it today. But I had no internet and no real friends either, it was the early 2000s. Nevertheless, as a secret observer, I became sympathetic to some users over time, some shared music tips or unpacked about their relationships, there were feelings and so on, no political disputes (as I said: 19 cents/SMS), of course there were also in between the usual types with their rum wags. They were really everywhere.
Then, at least for me, little happened for a few years, I tried chatting in the school computer room, at some point mum had a computer that we were allowed to use for a few minutes a week, and my experiences with other people on the Internet were really only the rumschwankel- Guys and bullying by strangers and known people. So I missed ICQ, AOL, Knuddels, schulerVZ, MySpace, tumblr, … I knew something was going on, but I only found out about most things afterwards.
Then in 2009 I got my first mini-laptop and off to studiVZ and into the beautiful groups. Oasis group, Radiohead group, Tocotronic group, “How I Met Your Mother” group, then all the “funny” groups you were in just for the name (“making pasta is also cooking”), then the “cool” groups that should enhance their own profile (“I pretend harder than you party”, haha, drink…). You had to curate them… “Nice groups” was always the first message a stranger wrote to you, and then you either flirt or just became friends.
Because: YES. You could just EN PASSANT suddenly find friends without pushing it too hard, without – at that time it was still considered megapainlo – to post a personal ad, even if you were just as lonely as the people who just placed personal ads. The emergence of this type of social media has been nothing short of amazing. You had a profile that you could set up however you wanted, within the scope of the respective possibilities, and when you finally had an Internet flat rate, it simply didn’t cost anything. Suddenly all these people were there. Where have you been all my life? Oh there! Like-minded people… Even if it just meant listening to the same band or watching the same series or laughing at the same cheese. Then you discovered a second thing in common and you crept into a shared chat… It was cute. And here and there of course it was disillusioning the first few times, when the person was then at some point completely different from what was projected in, when you were fooled and of course ghosted , even though the word didn’t exist back then.
Well, and then everything just got ruined. Everyone went to Facebook, which was okay and still works as a platform for me. But on Facebook it quickly got bigger, nastier, more political – and EVERYONE was there at some point. The boundaries between online and real became increasingly blurred, today I can hardly say which of my friends I see first on Facebook or in the real life met. The world became smaller, everyone has to do with each other, everyone knows each other from a few corners, that became obvious on Facebook. I always thought it was great and the loneliness was finally over. It was also great to use as a writing platform, a lot of people got an opportunity to express themselves that they didn’t have before, you could sort of be spread, something that was not possible with “Studi”. Since Facebook, StudiVZ has only been vegetating, not developing further, and was quickly broke. Recently it just said goodbye without a word, I would have liked to have had a warning to take a look again. I’m not angry, Lea (VZ presenter), just disappointed. No, that’s not true, I’m really angry too.
And Facebook is of course, as we know from every second Twitter thread and every second documentary of public law, simply a super villain corporation that makes money and politics with our data, opinions and feelings. All for capital and fascism, yeah yeah yeah. Oh, I just want to be cuddled again…
It was all cool. When it was all about pure exchange. Not about meat markets, about selling, about self-marketing. Twitter was still relatively free of all this, but unfortunately extremely annoying because of the short posting form, because it only attracted smart people. And now Elon Musk has bought the store and wants to privatize it, and of course that’s “the end” again, even if we smartasses probably won’t unsubscribe anyway… Some have already jumped off to MASTODON, a decentralized version of Twitter , which is BURNED and YESTERDAY and BLOBLED. Everything is beautiful and peaceful at the moment and a lot of well-known people have already made the trip. Maybe it could actually work… Thumbs are blown.
In any case, a secret photo shows Mastodon developer Eugen Rochko shortly after hearing about Musk’s Twitter takeover:
Of course it’s not just Elon Musk and you can’t complain as a Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp user anyway and we’ve already accepted so much capitalization shit of our lives in the past few years, so why THE OUTCRY NOW? Doesn’t matter. Then right now. At some point we’ll have to stand up to these shitty men with their shitty wealth because we all deserve resources.
And to loosen up, here are a few nice tracks as a farewell to the popular social media. Off to the new world.
Frank Ocean – “Facebook Story”
Britney Spears – “Email My Heart”
Girli – “Girl I Met On The Internet”
Knife Party – “Internet Friends”
Gym Class Heroes – “New Friend Request”
Childbirth – “Siri, Open Tinder”
Sean Paul feat. Sean Kingston – “Follow Me (Twitter Song)”
What happened until now? Here is an overview of all pop column texts.
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