Does anyone else feel like social media is getting worse? The rise in AI-slop content, the dead internet theory, and last but not least, Instagram's constant beta testing are taking social media to an entirely different planet from the early days of “poking” on Facebook. As an avid user and social media professional, I have seen all these changes slowly play out over time.
There always seems to be a “dominant” platform, with some variance on age and preferences, which changes over time. At first it was Facebook…then Instagram…and now TikTok.
Here’s where it gets sticky; the data tells us that YouTube is the most popular platform and has been since 2018. Now we can get into a back-and-forth about YouTube being a cross between social media and a streaming service and how it’s available on more devices than just mobile and browser. So, let’s take long-form content out of this equation. What I am talking about is not popularity dominance but cultural influence.
All for One and One for All
Different social media platforms are all in conversation with each other. So trends, ideas, sounds…they are all originating on one platform and slowly making their way over to the others. Due to this, we start to see one platform typically outperform the others as the main “originator” of popular content/themes/etc. In 2015, if you wanted to know what was trending, you would see it on Instagram (IG) first. Now, platforms like Facebook and IG are filled with trending audios that originated on TikTok—even full videos are being directly ripped from the platform and reposted on the others. Despite both of Meta’s platforms having more reported usage, they are often not the original source of the content.
The X Factor
But here’s what I think we are missing in this conversation: Twitter. I wholeheartedly believe that for over the last decade, the latest trends, jokes, and most up-to-date commentary have been coming from Twitter. (And yes, I genuinely refuse to call it “X”). Even after Elon Musk’s gutting of the site, which rendered it almost useless since the change, it has bounced back every time. On any big occasion like a sports game, global news incident, or pop culture event, I always run to Twitter first. When I see think-piece TikTok videos engaging in widespread dialogues, I usually have already seen a couple different takes on Twitter about 1-2 days before. Even back during Instagram's peak, the common “meme format” mimicked how things are laid out on Twitter.
I think Twitter has silently been the dominant platform that no one thinks to reference as the true originator of content because it’s not video or photo-based. While it does have those features, which definitely are crucial to its success, it is primarily a text-based platform. Even competitors like Threads or BlueSky couldn’t pull people away from the platform. In fact, there’s a common meme on Twitter right now featuring screenshots of funny or outlandish posts captioned with “You just can’t get this on BlueSky.”
Despite its pitfalls and controversies, I must say, Twitter’s still got it. And coming from me (#1 Elon Musk hater), this is not something I say with a beaming smile. I just simply can’t deny its impact in the cultural zeitgeist and truly don’t think it’s going anywhere.
