Thanks Margot, for taking some time out of your busy schedule to post this fabulously intricate meta-contribution on bots, identity, and social media! Its much appreciated.

This is surprisingly sick funk for the end of my day.

Precisely. I just saw that you have to be on .new or the official app to participate. Oh well…

Doing it right now is absolutely tone-deaf.

Its mandated fun. “Users, you have been agitated in the last weeks. We hereby strongly suggest you participate in this thing we have chosen in order for you to have fun again.”

Reddit becomes stale as it goes through the motions when trying to hand out the member berries.

the messaging has been consistently toned down in the hopes people would listen.

My guess is its even more than this: deadlines were extended to not let people fall into inaction. The tipping point always close enough so that its dangerous, but still far away enough so that there is still hope. It is a ploy analogous to the fascist “the enemy is strong enough to be dangerous and weak enough to be thoroughly defeated.”

This scene is far more realistic, I think. But as you can tell, it doesn’t play very well with either the audience or the media.

Either they are dumb or I am.

Though we’d love to reveal more to you all now, we’re in the process of early testing and feedback, so aren’t ready to share official details just yet.

So they are killing cashflow at this crucial point and any possible replacement is “in the process of early testing and feedback”? WTF? Am I missing something?

Question is what do you do then? First, you try to reach profitability. Get out of the red by milking users and reducing costs, but there is little chance to get that really sweet ROI that you dreamt of in the last decade. What do you do next? My guess is that we will see some websites change ownership into some shadier hands in the next years. The personal data collected could still be worth something after all.

They are nothing but hot air until they really do it. And when they really do it, they will look and be really stupid.

Don’t fan their vanity by paying attention to stupid people doing stupid things. Put your phone away or close your laptop, go out, breath some fresh air. This nonsense is of no concern to you.