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Ambient Disassociation – The Social Media Collapse?

Maybe this is it?

Maybe these are the last days of social media.
Not because people are logging off in protest.
Not because regulation finally caught up.
But because the feeds themselves seem to be collapsing under the weight of their own junk.

We used to scroll because we were curious… because there was something human in the mix.

Photos from friends… stories from people we knew… insight from people we respected.
Jokes… news… updates… arguments.
It was messy… but it was “ours.”

Now? The scroll feels different.

The feeds aren’t powered by people… they’re powered by machines.
The feeds show you what the tech wants you to see… you can’t even sort the feeds by the latest posts only from your direct connections anymore.
Content optimized for clicks… not connection.
Headlines engineered for engagement… not meaning.

And now AI floods the zone.

Instant articles, instant comments, instant “influencers” that don’t exist.
A never-ending slop of recycled text and bot chatter that looks like something… but feels like nothing.
Or… a human actually using the AI to do the heavy lifting (which just multiples the problem).

What has always been true remains true…

More content doesn’t mean more connection.
It means less.
Instagram engagement is down.
People are drowning in the flood, and instead of swimming… they’re quietly drifting away.

Some corners still hold out.

Reddit, for example, where communities call out bots and protect the threads they care about.
Subcultures within subcultures (and subreddits) fighting to keep the human pulse alive.
But that takes work.
And social media was never designed for work.
It was designed for the frictionless… endless feed.

So here we are.

I read the article, The Last Days Of Social Media on Noema this weekend (thanks to Hugh McGuire for picking it as one our Six Links That Make You Think this past week).
I can’t get the idea of “ambient disassociation” out of my head.
The scroll as anesthesia… a way to numb instead of engage… a way to feel time pass without ever really feeling.

This might not be the end of the internet (I really hope it’s not).

It might not even be the end of networks.
But it feels like the end of something.
Or… we’re all just too tired from it, so some will stick it out while others just shift attention elsewhere.
Maybe it’s the end of believing that social media was ever really social?

What is the path forward?

The article argues that we, the users and creators, need to change.
We need to ditch and stop caring about “likes” and “follows.” We need to ditch the notion that engagement matters.
We need to ditch the idea that getting rid of AI slop will come from better algorithms.
We need to focus on actual presence… smaller and slower… and (most importantly) more human spaces.

That sounds more like the early 2000s to me.

Because if these really are the last days of social media… maybe that’s not an ending.
Maybe that’s the beginning of the internet we actually wanted all along.

That same internet that connected me and you… and our ideas.

This is what Elias Makos and I discussed on CJAD 800 AM.

Mitch Joel · Ambient Disassociation – The Social Media Collapse? – The Elias Makos Show – CJAD 800

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Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.