Episode transcript

Edit transcript

Ryan Burgess
Welcome to a new episode of the front end happier podcast. I don't know if it's New Year's resolutions or what but I've been hearing a lot of people taking different approaches on how to reduce their social media consumption. People are setting timers, deleting apps, or just completely ditching their phones. In this episode, we will talk about social media habits and how we each approach them. This is not necessarily a software engineering topic, but continually it shows up around our careers. Let's dive into introductions. Surely you want to start it off. Hello,

Shirley Wu
I surely Wu recently graduated from art school software engineer data visualization designer. Yeah.

Augustus Yuan
Justice. Yeah, I guess I guess I have some news to share. So one of the folks who was impacted by the layoffs at Twitch. So yeah, that's been kind of a bummer. So I'm kind of exploring options right now. But I am still me. That's

Ryan Burgess
awesome. Yes. And we all know that you're going to land somewhere grade Augustus. So yeah, if you are hiring, I know a great engineer that is currently looking for a new role. So you can definitely reach out to Augustus gem

Jem Young
young engineering manager at Netflix, and you should hire Augustus is great. I will provide a full character reference for him.

Ryan Burgess
I mean, we're doing it right now live on a podcast, right, like that's, that's right. That's perfect. And I'm Ryan Burgess, the host of front end, happy hour. All right. So before we start with the topic, I also wanted to bring up that we've been asked many times to do video for our episodes. So in 2024, we have now officially started recording video and publishing on YouTube. So check out our YouTube channel and subscribe. You know, that seems to be the cool thing to do is subscribe to different things on YouTube. So you can find us there at front end. Ah, ah, all right. I figured as a good way to start with this episode around social media is I want to know what you all are using for platforms like what's your go to ones What are ones that you just like, you know, maybe guilty pleasures, all that I'm very curious.

Augustus Yuan
I guess before we like, dig too deep into it. Like what do we consider social media? Because I feel like, like, it's Reddit considered social media. Like, I feel like we people typically are like Facebook, Twitter slash x, or what, or whatever it's called now. Like, what do we consider social media?

Ryan Burgess
That's a good question. I guess. I mean, I consider Reddit social media. I mean, you're connecting with people. You're having discussions. I mean, I guess like is a forum social media. Yeah, I think it was the early social media. So I think pretty much anything that kind of fits in that category. YouTube, tick tock, Instagram, whatever. I think the bulk of those I'm probably missing some tunes and more niche ones but I think that covers them.

Augustus Yuan
I will say, I primarily had been on Reddit a decent amount for like my news and like, whatever communities I decided to join, like, family, so like organism, but I have more recently have had an unhealthy obsession with tick tock. I, you know, I was a hater. I'm just gonna be honest, I was such a hater. I was like, Nah, tick tock is not for me. It's like, I'll never use it. And then I just, you know what? I was like, No, I'm gonna try it. And it really, really got trained on what I like, and yeah, I've been using it a lot. It gets

Ryan Burgess
trained too quickly. I think that's part of the problem, too. It's just like, you go down a little bit of a rabbit hole and you're like, Wait, I've been doing this for two hours. Like, what what just happened?

Shirley Wu
It's funny because with tic tock I think I was on it for like a month during the pandemic. And people are always like, Wait, how do you go away or get away from it and it's funny because they got trained really quickly. But what I was interested in was such a niche that they ran out of content for me was like arts and crafts but like very specifically, I think I was really into like resin stuff at the time. And I think like polymer clay so and also I want to like medial arts so and then after a month like they just kind of stopped having you suffered.

Ryan Burgess
I feel like there's probably some updates now by that point. Sure. Lovely.

Shirley Wu
Yeah, but I also uninstalled Tik Tok and I'm okay with it. I'm okay with the and also by now I feel like a lot of people also upload their tiktoks to Instagram and also YouTube. I try really hard to stay away from YouTube shorts. Like I know that I am desperately procrastinating if I am going on YouTube. shorts. That's high now. But I think that to answer your original question, Ryan about what social media, I feel like for the longest time for me, it was twit a tweet Twix, I was about to say Twitter.

Jem Young
Rex

Shirley Wu
but, I mean, I feel like that's how I met a lot of you. That's how I met a lot of my friends. Like, in my post, college. And I feel like for a good number of years, it was I like to now describe it as the corner I was in was a really fun house party with like, the people that I really enjoyed being with and trying out like other like the Macedon and like blue sky feels like. Now it feels like I have to be out like five different house parties at the same time. But like, also, they're all not really like bumping, and so confused. So recently, I've just been on Instagram. And Instagram also really knows me because I'm like, I'm like, gonna use my Instagram. Like, I might be a serious artist and follow all these artists. And Instagram is like, no, no, we know what you really are. And we're gonna show you Calabar reels and flew to New York. So that's that these days, it's Instagram. Jem, how

Ryan Burgess
about yourself?

Jem Young
I actually try to use social media as little as possible. But it like it's like inescapable in a way, which is dumb, because I know you can just quit it. But kind of like surely you're saying it has been beneficial for like, career meeting friends, making connections. So there's that aspects. But anyways, we can get more into my feelings on social media. What I use primarily, if I had to pick one, maybe Twitter, but like, I almost never post. I don't know, I have followers. I never post anything. I mostly retweet. Yeah, I have a lot of followers for some reason. That humblebrag that's 24,000 followers. I don't post I don't post anything.

Shirley Wu
But I think the retweeting I think is also like I've been thinking about this a lot, and maybe we can touch on it later is like, there's just as much value and curation as there is an original content, I think, um,

Jem Young
but So Twitter, I guess, for scrolling, but I really don't scroll that long. And I don't follow that many people on purpose, just so I don't get sucked in anything. LinkedIn, I guess. But again, I don't post much, but everybody tells me like LinkedIn is like where it's at now. And like Twitter x is not where to be. Like, I've heard that from multiple people like people with big followings. It's like LinkedIn has much more engagement. It's like, better quality engagement. Again, I don't post and probably my long standing one. I don't know if this counts as social media Hacker News. Like I read a fair amount of Hacker News. Not not social media, just a forum. But it's like just good random nerd stuff that has been consistently high like the moderation there is fantastic. So those are probably my my top three. Don't have Instagram, much to the chagrin of Ryan, who always gets my case ever been on Tik Tok? Yeah, I guess I'm the old man. The only I clouds here. But still, I still don't like social media. It's like to lunch.

Ryan Burgess
You know, Jim, I give you a hard time on it. But at the same time, I'm like, don't write like, it's like one of those things like you're not. You're likely not missing it in your life. Obviously, you're not because you're like, Yeah, I'm not on there. And I think it can have those negative side effects where you do get sucked in and it's like, wait, I'm just wasting time. And it's I don't think you necessarily feel great about doing that either. Like that's what everyone says like, oh, yeah, I just spent so much time on tick tock or Instagram or whatever. So maybe you're Yeah, maybe you're smart by not doing it or not even just like diving in. For me. I think like, if you asked me this, probably, I don't know maybe a year ago or something that probably Twitter would have been my like top one that I spent the most time like, you know, if I was grabbed my phone, that's what I would, you know, load up I don't find that I'm going on there as much. Same with you. Surely, it's like, you know, there's now there's just I liked what you said there's so many parties but like, not everybody's there. So it's not that exciting. Like, there. We didn't even mention threads like there's you know, face right beside it, right. Like, there's like all about that. There's like blue sky, there's Twitter, there's Mastodon, there's threads. I'm probably missing some other niche one that you know, there's probably a few others, but those are the main ones that come to mind. They're all kind of that like techspace social media. I think. You know, Twitter was amazing. I still have fond memories of it. It has definitely gone downhill. I think also If people left, right, like, even if it wasn't going downhill, they all decided, you know, I'm a blue sky fan. I'm a Macedon fan. And you know, everyone just kind of diverged and, and that kind of sucks because you're, you're missing that community. So definitely not as much there. Instagram has always been one that I like, just kind of kill time when I do like watching a lot of the reels on there, or even just different Photography content. That's pretty much what I see when I'm on there. Graffiti tattoos and photography like that. If you looked at my feed, that's what it would be no surprise there. And then I have been finding since I have not been working as much I'm not doing this so much that like, even during the day, but YouTube videos like I feel like I'm like, oh, I want to learn how to do this. So I'm like diving into YouTube videos more. I haven't got sucked into the short surely that like I see them there. I definitely do. I've been posting more to YouTube as well. Like, I'm doing more with like drone videos. And I feel like YouTube looks the best for it. I'll post them to tick tock and Instagram. But I feel like YouTube is where it's at. So maybe that's my new one that's starting to suck me in. I'm not sure. But I haven't got down the shorts road yet.

Shirley Wu
I just realized reading. There's also like Twitch and other vessels. Because I that I was on there for a year or two. YouTube reminded me of that. Yeah,

Ryan Burgess
surely I remember you diving on that one that was like when we first met. Like, I totally remember that too. Yeah, Twitch is definitely a good example. Gus is very familiar with Twitch. Great. Yeah.

Augustus Yuan
No, no, no, no, it's great company, it was was actually really interesting is like, you know, depending on the platform, you know, like twitches, like live streaming. And then like, I realized there's like certain social media platforms for very specific, you know, what they focus on. Like, I feel like I think designers have a special key did invited only place I forgot what it's called. It's like invite only for designers. But there's like tons of small social media apps like that, that are like very focused on one thing, and they do it very, very well. So it's just kind of fascinating.

Shirley Wu
That actually reminds me, um, I guess you can also consider dating apps, social media, because I've also heard of people finding friends on dating apps and like, and, and what Augustus just said, it reminded me of, I've also heard of that, like, highly exclusive dating apps where you have to, like, earn a certain amount of money and have like, a certain amount of education. And yeah, so but I was actually also going to add something I forgot to mention earlier, um, is, to your point, Ryan, about like, with YouTube, like, the drone videos, and you're really enjoying, like, a Yeah, I think to both Ryan and Gus, this point, I'm like, each platform feels like there's something that works really well on there. And like YouTube being like longer form, content, or I know that the reason why I started being fascinated with Instagram is because of the reels and their short form content and how people tell stories, but then the minute or two, I'm not a big fan of shorts, only, mostly because I feel like they're training me to have even less attention span than I already do. But I do really admire like people that can really fit a whole story within the 60 seconds. And I've been trying, I'm shit at it. But that and also, one of the reasons why I stopped posting on Twitter as much is because I realized that there's a lot of things I wanted to share and talk about that just like wouldn't fit into 280 characters, right? And then when you like start to thread them is that is that where threats got their name, like when you start like I don't know what the terms are anymore, but like when Twitter use you, like do the reply chain, even those feel really awkward. And surprisingly, I'm not a fan of substack but I have been more and more of a fan of like newsletters as like long form, like information sharing and updates. And I'm now subscribed to like a few that's like just daily or weekly, some amount of content about tech or art or media or some amount. And that's that's why I've been thinking a lot about like, Oh, I'm not everything we share have to be original content. Some of these are just like aggregating really useful resources from across the Internet and I'm And I think about this a lot, also as someone that has to find clients somehow, and for the longest time, Twitter was my big source of how people found me. And now that that's gone. And I've been trying to figure out how to replace that, and arriving at a conclusion that maybe I just don't bother replacing the social media, maybe,

Ryan Burgess
you know, we've talked a little bit about this to interlayers talking about that, but like what you're using it for to, like Jim mentioned, like, he's mainly using Twitter just to digest or like, you know, read content, not necessarily posting new content. You know, I mentioned like, yeah, like, leveraging YouTube and Tiktok, and Instagram for more for like, video content that I'm just like, playing around with and doing. But yeah, like, what are you all finding, like, using? Like, what are you using social media for? Is it just consumption? Or is it like, I do want to share things as well, I

Augustus Yuan
guess that kind of depends on what you're hoping to get the platform. Actually, I think a few others. We kind of miss was like StackOverflow and GitHub, like, do it? Do we consider those like, social media. And I personally, I personally used to do a lot of StackOverflow and GitHub, and the purpose of that was just going to be honest, like, I wanted to build reputation on that platform. And then, you know, I felt it would help my career. And also, you know, it was a good way to learn too. So I feel like it really does depend on the platform. Like, for Reddit, I just like, comment, whatever, you know, hope. Hopefully, I did. Actually, like somebody might find my Reddit account and be like, Oh, my God, I guess it's like posting the most random stuff, you know, but I have an open book. Because then for like, tick tock, I don't post anything. I literally, I'm literally a consumer. I am like eyes to content. That's fair, Augustus. I

Ryan Burgess
mean, I love what you said, too, is like you're like, Oh, I wanted to do that to help my career and learn. I liked the learning part, too, as you had done that for a while. I know you're not doing it as much. I mean, you probably gotten busy. And you know, that comes at the cost of something like that. Did you feel as though you did learn from it? And Did Did it help your career?

Augustus Yuan
It's hard to say because I don't think I've ever had a recruiter say like, wow, I saw your stack overflow, and it just blew my mind. Like, so it's hard to say, I'm sure. I would like to think it got someone to raise an eyebrow and say, okay, this person might know something. But actually, I'm so sorry, I had to go on a quick rant. Because StackOverflow reputation means absolutely nothing. One of my highest rated, I swear I have 10,000 reputation on StackOverflow. But my most upvoted answer is literally like, how do you amend a commit? Like, like, how do you write a message? Or how do you No, no, it was? How do you quit out of amending a commit? And there was already an accepted answer. I found another way to do it. And everyone was like, Oh, my God this way so much better on love you you're so amazing, you know, and it's like, does that make me an excellent engineer? Like, absolutely not. So sorry. That's,

Ryan Burgess
I mean, I think what it means is that you answered a question people see value in it, right? I mean, it is one that I will admit, I google often like, not, you know, the typical, like, you know, git add and commit and everything. But there's certain things that you're like, Wait, how do I like, how do I do that one thing that I only do, you know, every month or two, so there are those things where it's just easier to look it up and trying to figure it out. And that's probably what you did with that. And so that's helpful. So I don't think it makes you necessarily a strong engineer. But you're you're providing value.

Augustus Yuan
For sure. Well, I guess my takeaway is, if you're a recruiter or hiring manager, like that reputation isn't really supposed to i Yeah, there should be more signals here. You should be looking at. Sorry. Okay, rant over.

Ryan Burgess
Fair, fair enough. I guess this?

Augustus Yuan
Surely don't yourselves.

Jem Young
For me, it's kind of sharing, sharing the content that I make accidentally. Like I don't consider myself a content creator in but like I, I do have content somehow, like I was on a podcast the other week talking about hiring, because someone invited me to be on a podcast or I've been on panels because someone invited me to be on a panel, but I don't I'm not like Ryan, who like deliberately makes good content, but I do have content so I like to share it out when I can. So that's kind of what I use social media for. And and just connecting to other people following my friends, is also helpful to seeing what they've been up to. I think Twitter has been helpful for that like watching the progression of people I've known for many years progress from software engineer to engineering manager, like a few people like Whatever that journey the same as I am, and we can share some of that is helpful as well. But yeah, it's kind of it's, I hate to say it's like all career stuff. I don't do social media for fun. Like, I don't have a Reddit account or I don't play on Discord or anything like that it's kind of all. It's all related to tech somehow. That's my feelings on social media, maybe. Maybe I'm too to connect it to and it feels like work. Like not fun. So that's

Ryan Burgess
fair, though. You've you've had this like purpose for it like it to me. It sounds very purposeful. First, like, yeah, some of us are like, Yeah, I just sit there and scroll on tick tock for hours, because who knows why. But like, I like what yours is maybe just more purposeful, and it's for work. And you're like, that's, that's what I do. So I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Shirley Wu
I find that really interesting. Also, that like Twitter, for example, I think started out as like just a place for you to randomly post things, but the way that I remember that my first tech meetup I went to in 2012, or 2013, and everybody was like, um, do you have a Twitter handle? And I was like, and, and then and then that became a way of like, instead of, I mean, I guess I don't know if we ever exchanged business cards at tech meetups, but I don't know, to me, but instead of exchanging business cards, that was like Twitter handles, and that that, and I think because of that, I think Twitter, like, like Jemma's saying, Twitter has come to feel more like work. Um, because at some point, I feel like a transition. I think the the point at which a transition for me was when I decided to go off on my own, and take on client work. And I think at that point, something switch where I feel like before, it was just a place, I was, like, for fun sharing side projects, I was doing, like, you know, while when I was at a full time job, and it was just like, things I found that was fun, or things that I found was helpful for my work or, or just like talking to people I met at meetups, but like on Twitter, and this assembly, I feel like over the years, um, I do feel like maybe this also came hand in hand with also not a humble brag and brag as to Jim's point of like, at some point, my Twitter audience did grow a lot. And I feel like, I think coupled with that, it made me feel like I needed to be more like careful with what I posted. And it felt like it needed to be more curated and needed to like, I put out stuff about what I'm involved in. But then after a while, it felt kind of like people were reaching out to me, expecting me to post, like, for example, if they invited me to do to do an interview or something, it kind of started feeling like I was expected to them, um, post about it, or like they never would verb like, say it out loud or anything. But like, I would feel they would be like, oh, so I put it up and like, here's I tweeted about it, or I posted it on LinkedIn. And then if it would feel like I was kind of expected to Yeah, like, share it also, or write about it. And I feel like all of that started to suck out the enjoyment of it for me. And I feel like it was like maybe two or three years ago, where I just like got really burnt out from it. And I think in the two years that I've been in school I barely posted, and my Twitter is like dead. There's like, I don't think the algorithm likes me. I paid for what's that called, like the Twitter blue or whatever. And I've paid for it for a few months to see if anything will happen. Nothing has happened. And so as actually part of like my trying to think about what I would like to concentrate my time on going forward, like into the new year. That's when I was like, I think that, like, Twitter still has a place a special place in my heart. Vital I think it's like somewhere that I'm going to be spending that much time on anymore. Um, and I do feel like in a similar way, like Instagram feels kind of similar to me of like, we started out posting on Instagram just for fun like with like wacky filters about things like coffee that we took a photo of that day or something and at some point, like artists and designers are like, no, no, no, we're gonna make this place. God damn beautiful, and everything is gonna look like it's so highly produced. And do you need to have like a expensive camera, I don't know. And I think that also makes me feel really scared about posting to like, your Instagram wall is like the like, it needs to be beautiful. Oh, your profile needs to be beautifully curated and professional. And I feel like all of that has like suck the joy out of all of that for me. So I guess what I'm trying to say is nowadays and sometimes I'll post on stories because that feels one still I've been mostly I just scroll. And that's how I find good restaurants in New York and Google Maps or Yelp, I find it through Instagram. Now, I

Ryan Burgess
like so much of what you said there surely, like, I think that there's these like, for me, what I liked even what you're saying about the early days of something like Instagram, I think Twitter fits that for me too, is you get that like, bit of quick feedback from people and like, they're, you're able to get inspired from others. And it didn't feel like a chore, it there was that enjoyment side of it, where it's like, you're like, Yeah, cool. I can follow people that do amazing work that I, you know, I find great. And I want to see that work. Now. It's changed so much too, because of the whole algorithm, right? The algorithm shows you what they think you'll like, and maybe, maybe yesterday I was searching how to fix a toilet. And now it's like, it's like, cool. That's all I've done that I that's not my new hobby. And but the algorithm algorithm thinks that I'm doing that for a while, and it just keeps showing me that shit. And so that feels weird to it's where it's like, I know, I just want to see surely had an update of some new project that she did. I want to see that I want that to show up in my feed, because I follow her and really want to see that not just some random person that you think I will like. And so I think that's made it a lot difficult for that. And then I want to come back to something that you said too, that really sparked for me was you were kind of saying that you felt the social norm essentially, for like, if you did a podcast or interview, video, whatever it is that you feel inclined, you're almost have to share that. Nobody said that you have to buy it. But yeah, it's this. It's like this internal pressure that I think a lot of that comes up. There's no rulebook for this stuff. And the thing is, is like, you'll have friends who post like, I'm just gonna pick on Instagram, they'll post like 10 photos, like all at once, and people would be like, no, no, no, you shouldn't do that. You should save them, like, you know, once every couple hours or whatever. And it's like, whose rules this like, I'm going to use the platform for what I want to do it for. And I think that there is these weird social things that came into play. But there's not really a Set Rulebook for how to use these platforms,

Shirley Wu
closest to rulebook I guess, is how the algorithm like, algorithms are implemented. And so people are like to beat the algorithm do XYZ, I guess. And that's

Ryan Burgess
exhausting, though, like, that's, like, tiring to be like, Oh, if I post it this time, or I, you know, get people to comment or like, and it's just like, That, to me is where it's very exhausting. It's like, No, I just want some like to show off what I've done. Get some like feedback, you know, people say, Oh, you've tried this or whatever, like, connect on that level. I think that's cool. But yeah, I don't really care if 1000 People like my photo, or, you know, engage with it. It's like, that's not really what it's about, or I don't want to, like, spend time curating a perfect profile like that. That to me is just like, that's not really I don't have time for that.

Augustus Yuan
I was just gonna say, like, all those points he made about, like, I kind of remember YouTube when it first started. And do you remember like, it was just like, very basic, like, people would just come look at a camera and they just be talking? There'd be like, no, like, animations. Or, or maybe there'd be like, a very cheesy intro in the beginning, but they just be talking, you know, and it's like, what have you like, I suggest everyone to go back, like, look for a video posted like that, like Kev Jumbos videos, or whatever it's

Jem Young
like, it's like, very nostalgic, and just very chill. But nowadays, there's a lot of this, I would almost say like, it feels templatized like, like, oh, like, make sure you like and subscribe at the end of this video. And, and like they do a little jingle jangle and, you know, they like, space it out very, very cleverly and stuff. It's, yeah, at some point, it gets kind of exhausting. And this, like, if you want to participate, you feel like you might you almost have to adhere to that. I don't know. Like social media has become its own economy, really. So. And I think that's a struggle we're, we're all talking about here, which is, I just want to post something. But there's like, rules and all these things, because you're compared against people whose job it is to post on social media. And while they're really great looking selfie at them wasn't a great selfie, because they have a whole camera crew that like follows them around and takes pictures for them because that's their job is to do that. So like we're comparing ourselves against that or YouTube who entire movies and films are made on TV shows are made on YouTube. And we're trying to compare against that because like, that's their job. And that's, I think we're social media is kind of gone gone awry, a little bit where it used to be fun and enjoyable. But now it's like this economy of attention where, you know, like, I just want to say something to people. Like, yeah, but it's not polished enough. And if you don't have enough followers, then it becomes a point of why post it at all, because no one's gonna see it. Hence, you're trying to get to that point where you have an audience, but to get there takes polish. And yeah, it's one of those to what end? Like, again, that's why I only use social media generally for tech stuff or career stuff, because I'm like, at least there's something there. I can see, it's harder to quantify that value, but at least I can justify that time being put in a little bit. But yeah, just for fun, and like you said, Surely trying to make like the curated Instagram profile. I just for what, you know, to one side,

Ryan Burgess
maybe a little bit of mixed feelings. I actually shouldn't say that, because I do agree heavily on like, a lot of what you just said, Jim, I think one thing that I've actually liked or maybe appreciated on some of the aspects of the quality is that you start to maybe want to get better at that not everyone, right? Like someone's just like, I just want to jump on and say something. But I also like that some of these things, it's like, you're learning how to produce like a podcast, let's just start there is like, I remember our first episode, it was like, We had no idea what we were doing. The quality's gotten better, we've learned a lot. And to me, that journey has been so powerful, like, I love that it's like taught me so many things that I wouldn't have really needed to learn or I don't know, it really gone down that it was just more like, I want us to continue to get better. And so I think there's some of that quality is a good thing, and can drive some of that innovation or just like making improvements to your own content. But I also see the like negative to that to where it's like now everybody feels like they need to be at that level. And then it might deter people from doing that or discourage them get frustrated. And that sucks like it because that does take the fun out of it. I'm curious with you know, we've talked a lot about of our like us being on social media. Do you all feel like you've spent too much time on social media? Jam, I'm assuming you're good. But you know, I'd be curious on each of your thoughts.

Jem Young
Well, I guess I don't spend a lot of time on it. My my challenge I have with LinkedIn, Twitter, all these other inbound ways of being in contact with human being. I've thought a lot about this in the past year. And like I realized my introversion is like I am a, like a written introvert. Like, I think very carefully about what I write, and talking, I'm fine. I'll talk to you all day. But if you asked me to write you something, I'll think very critically about that. And like, I think I'm more introverted that that way. So for me, sometimes it's like being in the middle of a web of just all these different ways of communicating with me. So there's like, text messages, Slack, email, LinkedIn messages, Twitter messages, I'm sure there's more. But as a manager, especially, like I'm dealing with so many inbound communications all the time, and then you add on these other messages and ways of getting a hold of me. Like, it's just like, it's sometimes it's really overwhelming, and I just have to be like, I'm gonna respond to my text messages in three days, I'm gonna let them queue up. And then when I'm in the mood, I just knocked them all out at once. And I just gotten a little bit slower about responding because I'm like, It's not critical. But for me, I think that's the challenge is like, there's like, almost too connected to people, which is a good and a bad thing. And I always try to respond to everybody, which puts like, weird pressure on me I don't need to but I do. But then also like, it's more work in the long run. So if it were up to me, I'd like drop it all but to me the the benefits slightly outweigh the cons on on all these platforms.

Ryan Burgess
Jamie want to know what one of the best things is of not being a manager right now. Not not dealing with Slack messages. Like honestly, I think actually, Gemini went out for dinner and we were we just kind of went on this like rabbit hole of slack and like how people are communicating on it. And that to me, I do not miss at all right now. It's like it was just, there's too much of it at like, it's there's no break on it either. Right? Like, you'll get messages, you know, early morning, late in the evening, weekends, whatever. It's just kind of like it's not even people are necessarily expecting you to respond similar to surely it's like there's no rules. It's just like that own internal feeling like I need to respond. So I'm actually happy to hear Jim say, you don't that's not critical. I'll get back to you in two or three days. Like it's not I don't have to immediately respond to me that's amazing. Like you're setting a great boundary and like I think everyone needs to do that we nothing is critical. I mean, I'm sure Jim you get some messages that are like Gemma kind of like response now, but you will probably respond to that if needed. But if it's just like, you know, hey, like, what are you up to this weekend? And you're like, it's Monday, I'll respond on like Wednesday or Thursday and say, Hey, here's my I plans like you know that there's certain types of messages that you'll respond to quicker, I'm sure. I also

Shirley Wu
really really liked Gemma's term of written introvert because I really, really, really relate to that of like, I think maybe it's, it's because like, once it's written and sent out, it feels so permanent. I know, like, we have, like, for a lot of messaging apps, we now have, like, undo. But, um, for me, I think maybe this is also why I prefer DMS to him actual email. But what you've described, I forgot, even that part about social media have like all of the like plethora of like, why, why did each of these platforms build DMS? I mean, I get why. But it just like, is, it really is that same feeling of feeling overwhelmed, and, and it actually makes me not want to reply to anything, because I'm so overwhelmed. And actually something that you said, reminded me that I think that in combination with a kind of Ryan's original original, quite unlike prompt of a lot of people, original original. People this year been like, I'm done with social media, I've been I've been wondering, I've been trying to think of like, what is it about this past year, I have some clues, at least from a Twitter perspective, and, but we're gonna need to figure out like what it is about this past year, and that has been triggering people to be like, I want to be less online. And then for me, personally, it has been, I don't know, if it's because of the time in my life, where I feel like I'm in a very transitional phase, I don't know if it's like my age, where I'm suddenly like, all my friends are starting to have babies or have had babies and and that means that I don't have the kind of like, you know, we used to be like, as friends, we used to be each other's priorities. And understandably, like, I'm not their priority anymore, which, like, I totally respect that. But it has made me think a lot more about like, the different levels of like, what I would want to prioritize for communication, like, similar to how we think about like our family, and then our closest friends, and then like, our like, you know, a little bit more extended friends, and then the acquaintances, a lot of these social media platforms feel like I'm coming to feel like communication with acquaintances, or even like, potentially pure strangers. Um, and I realized that for a really long time, especially on Twitter, I was giving more time to communication with strangers, very friendly, very, sometimes very helpful strangers, because like, I might tweet a question about a topic and they're, they're, like, responding back, or they're responding back about something I posted, and they're like, Oh, that's really good work or something like that. And I and I, again, feel the obligation to be like, thank you so much, but their relative strangers were, whereas like, because I'm spending so much time on that I am much less responsible to my friends and my family, that should be my priority. And I think that that's a lot of what's shifted in the past year for me of like, I've stopped posting as much on all of these platforms and platforms, and I've stopped being as responsive on them too. Because if I think about, like, my, I don't know, like a water tank of written introversion, and like, if that's a limit, and then maybe I want to save more of that for, like, for my friends and for my family. And so that's, that's a lot of what that made me think.

Augustus Yuan
Yeah, I don't know if this is true. III don't think I'm the complete opposite. I, I don't think when I post truthfully, that much. Like when I post on Reddit, make a mistake people downvote Oh, that one wasn't very popular. I think I'll just delete that comment. No one will ever know. It will be a mystery forever. That's to me. But um, but I actually I'll say I, I did quit Instagram, like in terms of like posting and Twitter. Twitter, just because I don't know what to post like, I'm just really bad at it. But actually for Instagram, the reason I quit it is like, I love like keeping in touch with my friends and what that's happening in their lives, but might just be me, but it kind of ruins I feel like it ruins it when I like meet them up. I'm like, oh, what's up? I'm like, oh, yeah, you know, I saw you did that. Like, Oh, yeah. Okay, you know, all right. That's cool. Like, it's just like it takes I don't know. Like, it sounds weird, I feel like a mystery out. Like, it's like, I don't know, I'm not trying to make my, like my wife more adventurous by like, you know, like, not keeping in touch with them, but I just feel like meeting up with them is like a lot more fun when you don't know what's going on in their lives, you know? And then, you know, sometimes so little is like a little shocking like, oh, I had a kid, like, oh, you had a kid? Like, it didn't see all the Instagram like, nope, did not, did not know that. But it's like more exciting. Because I don't know, like, that's, I just don't feel like I need to be always plugged into others because, you know, I'm gonna make time to see them eventually. And that's when we'll reconnect, you know? And it's, it's not like, it's like, you know, I'm just trying to focus on myself. Well, so ligases I like thank you, Callie. Jeez.

Ryan Burgess
Before we dive into pics, I would love to even hear each of your thoughts on like, what do you think the future of social media is? Like, when you actually think about social media? You know? Yes, I mentioned forums count, and everything. And forums have been around for a long time. But we're we're looking at social media has been around like 1015 years like, and we're already having problems with it. And it's not going to be any different. I are like, My prediction is like, I mean, it's just going to get worse. But like, what are your predictions kind of thinking even a year out? Like, what's the future of some of the platforms we're looking at? Do we have yet another text based one like another Twitter? I'm not sure. I hope not.

Shirley Wu
I guess. Oh, and hopefully, I'll try to answer really quickly, about what I've been hearing a lot of people say, which I think goes back to one of the things we were saying about how the algorithm has made it so stressful to like, if our whole point of social media was to try and keep people in our lives updated, then the algorithm kind of really fucked with that. And I've heard a few people say that, like blogs are coming back, which I find really interesting. And similarly, like newsletters. And personally, I've really, really enjoyed writing my like longer form. newsletters, and then getting like, you know, I can't always respond to them, but like getting the emails back that like people responding like quality responses to what I've sent out. And I've really been enjoying that. And also actually on a similar vein, and I don't think Twitter is as dead in like, I feel like a lot of when that was in Europe, a lot of people still use it. And when I was in Japan, it's like, nothing has happened. Nothing has changed. I'm like, I think it's it might very, it feels kind of like a very American, and very tech thing. The whole thing that happened I think a lot of because of all that happened with the 2020 election, and a lot of what happened Wait no 2016. But elections and I think what happened with musk, I think it feels like a lot of other parts of the world is so like, Twitter is still their main thing.

Augustus Yuan
I mean, surely, I

Ryan Burgess
think just chime in on the Twitter thing, too, is like people are still using it heavily. Like a lot of the people in the tech community. They were like, I'm done. I'm jumping to Macedon blue sky. You know, whatever other one was hot that week. They're back, right? Like they're back on there. I do think it's changed. Like, it's not the same Twitter that we really all kind of maybe romanticize about where it was like, Yeah, we met all these amazing people we connected. It's not that anymore. And I think in some ways, it was like everybody jumping ship on like Elon Musk taking over. Yes, there. That was a mess. Absolutely. And, you know, I'm not going to say that that wasn't, but I think a lot of the problem was to is now everyone's on a different one. Like, you might have chose that blue sky or threads or whatever. And so it's kind of dispersed. People are still out there posting things, but it's just not on that same platform, or some have migrated back but it's just it hasn't felt the same for a while.

Augustus Yuan
I'll say like some of my experience being at Twitch and then other things like one thing that we've definitely seen even from like twitches perspective is like, you know, we we actually category categorize different platforms is like long form content or short form content. Twitch is traditionally seen as long form content because a live stream is long. And we've definitely seen like, especially with like younger generations, like shorter form content, is what people prefer. And, you know, Twitch was like, we eventually launched stories, check it out, you know, we launched that TwitchCon but we were kind of late to the game. And it's definitely like very apparent that Like, as time goes on people, I don't want to say they're getting more picky about what they're watching, but they're not going to, it's like, you'd have to be very deliberate in what you're showing, to get someone to watch an entire thing. So I feel I don't know how far that's gonna go. But I feel like over time, that's going to continue. And then the other thing that definitely noticed is this authenticity, of like the content that you're seeing, like, how will that get improved? There's like social media apps that try to like, prioritize this, like, there's one called be real, where it's literally like, it will like, notify you, hey, take a picture right now. Like, like, just quickly take a picture, it's like, it gives you like a one to two minute window to take the picture, or you can't take a picture that day. And the whole goal of it is be real. I don't know how real people are in this one to two minute window. I tried it, I took a picture of the floor. And my one my one friend who saw it was like, dude, why'd you take that? I didn't have enough time. But it just I didn't know what to do. So you know, it's like, I don't know how successful we'll be. But I feel like I can see that. headed in that direction, especially with like, AI and what is achievable these days. It's like very crazy, of what you can fake and stuff. I

Shirley Wu
want to be aka sisters be real friend, if I don't have I don't have a be real. But I want to see oh, God, this is

Augustus Yuan
I'll be honest, after that one, I was like, I don't know if I can do this. This is too much pressure.

Jem Young
My my quick take is, I think at 2024. We're going to hit like content overload. We talked about, like, I guess you just mentioned AI and using that to create content. Ryan, I think you did a demo of like you created a part of an episode, just using AI to recreate your voice and things like that, we'll see a lot more of that. I think one of my last picks was about AI written content becoming more and more believable, because you can just generate entire fake profiles fake people. So I think we're gonna hit a limit on like, fake content, and that that push for authenticity will will rise. Because when everybody can just produce high quality content, or high quality content, then like, what is good content at that point? So that that's my prediction. I think it'll take a few years to play out. But we'll see. Definitely more of that in the coming future. Yeah,

Ryan Burgess
I love that. You said that. Jim, I think that we're already seen snippets of that in just in some of the content that's out there. I'll I'll pick on tick tock for that is I think that there's more people trying to almost get away from that, like, Instagram is absolutely like the high quality like, yeah, to make sure that it's perfect. That's where it what it feels like, tick tock seems to be like going the other direction, or at least the content creators, like you see people like taking a video of themselves talking in their car, to give you more of that illusion, like, Hey, I'm on the go. I'm not, you know, sitting in a studio trying to to build this piece of content. So I think people are starting to do that more. I think another thing that I love Augustus brought up was like short form, and long term or short form and long form content. I think with advertisers, my guess is like, I'm starting to see things like tick tock, which was short form, encouraging more long form, like I think they've up to, I can't remember what the was 10 minutes for the video, or e or an hour or something ridiculous. But it's also so that now, like, it seems what YouTube did is you can now shove ads in the middle of the content, right? Like you're in the middle of a show. It's like the same as we grew up on cable TV. It's like, Alright, I'm in the middle of my show. And then I got the 10 Minute, you know, 10 minutes in and I got a commercial break. And I feel like that's going to happen more and more. These platforms need to make money. They're leaning on ads. So that's, that's a big revenue generator. So I think that we'll see more of those things like, Yes, we had short form, but like, Wait, is that working for ads? Maybe. But if it's not, how do we get more ads? Cool. All right. Well, that seems like a good place to, you know, leave our episode and dive into pics of things that we've found interesting. Want to share with you all. Augustus you want to start us off? Sure.

Augustus Yuan
Thank you. I would love to go. Yeah, my first pick, I might have picked it before, but I wanted to pick it again. It's have I been poned.com website. This is a great website to know if you've been if one of your emails or personal information was exposed in a data breach. And there was a really, really big one, there is a massive one that happened recently. up so you know, just just, you know, make sure make sure to keep your identity safe and like just be informed if you're self, you know, implemented to FA I can't stress that enough. Yeah, I care about it because my name is pretty unique. So but yeah, everyone should and then My My second pick is actually from the podcast called call her daddy. There's this episode. I wasn't sure you know, my fiancee, she, she was like, oh yeah, this is great episode I would call her daddy. I was like, What is this about? But anyway, so they have an episode called about navigating friendships. And I just thought it was such a great episode talking about like, what it's like when you're an adult? And how do you prioritize friendships? And how do you even go about? No setting those boundaries or expectations? Like when you become an adult, a lot of what I'm realizing is a lot of stuff happening. And it's hard to make time for everyone and everything. And you know, spoiler, you can't make time for everything. So you really need to, like set those expectations. And sometimes you have to do with your friends. So check that out. Right on surely What do you have for us?

Shirley Wu
Yeah, I love Oh my gosh, this is pics. Um, I feel like I feel like like the first one is so helpful. And then the second one is, I feel like so relevant to our conversation about social media and where we spend our time and how we prioritize our time. Mine's not that serious. And so last month, Netflix put out Pokemon concierge. Us. I don't know if people have seen it is so here, I guess this taping is stop motion. I think it's like four episodes. It is adorable. Like it is beautiful. He hits all of the nostalgia, but also hits. If you love beautifully crafted things. I'm sorry, I'm not a salesperson. And I'm really bad at pitches. But if you like Pokemon, and it's Wow, I'm really bad at pitches, if you like put them on, please. Um, and then the second pic I have is in a very similar vein. And I don't know if people have seen me and Sakis latest film his quote unquote last film his like fifth last film that he came out of retirement for me just called boy in the heron. And I would love to hear your thoughts about it, if you've seen it, or if you haven't seen it. Um, I think it's worth watching for the beautiful cinematography, which is a weird word to say for an animated film, but it was beautiful. And I don't think I can say much more without spoiling the plot. And my last pick is a Chinese artists that I came across last actually a few years ago and got to see an exhibition of his last year. And his name is Tiger will a tongue tie what tongue there we got what Tang, I'll put the link in. And he is really cool in that his medium is gunpowder and fire. And so his medium is, um, I think one of the most publicly known work that he's been commissioned to do is the fireworks during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. That was all these fireworks of these big footsteps arriving at the stadium. But my favorite work from him is a word called Sky ladder. Where he I see John nodding, where he it's been like a 20 year project that he was finally able to realize I think in 2016 for his grandma I think for his grandma's 100 birthday or 105th birthday or something like that. Where he built this like ladder and put all the I guess fire works along it and then lit it up and let it drift up to the sky. Absolutely beautiful. And there's a documentary about it on Netflix. This was a very Netflix heavy set a pixel

Ryan Burgess
jam What do you have for us?

Jem Young
All plus one skylight it's it's amazing. It's like stunning. worth a watch for sure. I have three picks today and for some reason they're all about AI. I don't know they are a bit on a kick. The first one is a blog from Simon everything. Simon Wilson the person who last year coined the term hallucinations from from a I just one of those things, but it's a good rundown of stuff, or the blog title is called stuff, we figured out about AI in 2023. And for me, it was not super plugged into the space, it's a really good overview of kind of just the advances in AI that have been happening. It's one of those spaces that every month something changes, so it's pretty hard to keep up. So that's a pretty good, just overview of all the things that have happened in kind of where we're headed in AI. My second pick is also about AI. But this one's about the New York Times lawsuit against open AI and Microsoft. So I guess for those who don't know, the New York Times is suing open AI and Microsoft for essentially stealing their content and being able to reproduce it without attribution and license. So the the link I put in the show notes is like, actually the brief they filed with the court, what's normally like, you're like, why am I going to read a court brief that's really dry, it's a really good rundown of like, how AI works, how LLM was work and a really digestible way. Because remember, they're writing for a judge who does not know technology. So like, it's really, really approachable. And then New York Times goes into why this is copyright theft, why modern AI models are stealing from them, in their, in their view. And it's a really good, you know, intellectual debate about AI and like, we all this stuff we take for granted and how they actually train their models and things like that. So, one, the implications of this lawsuit will be like, it's really gonna change the industry one way or the other, too. It's a really approachable read New York Times. Of course, being writers are really good at writing. So if you can see through the first couple of pages, you'll probably get to learn a lot about the space. And my third pick is more on the come on side of things. It's about a for those who know me or listening to our front unhappier regulars. I'm a big fan of Formula One. Generally, all things racing, I'll probably watch it if it's on. There's a Formula E team. So Formula E is the kiss if you want to call Formula One but all electric, so not as fast and hasn't really caught on as well, but still doing interesting. Anyways, I digress. There's a Formula E team that hired a virtual AI influencer, which is also on the rise to which like we didn't even touch on in this episode of social media. But they've now fired if you could fire a virtual AI influencer because they they hired this woman to be a virtual influencer in a sport that like, does not have good gender representation. Like it's it's atrocious. So they got all this backlash because they're like, We need more women in the sport and in the field in general. And you instead of hiring one, you just hired a fake one instead. Like it's just ridiculous. So they deserve all the flack they got for that. But oh, come on. Come on. In those are my picks

Augustus Yuan
is yeah,

Ryan Burgess
good call on that one being like almost an anti pick at that point, Jem Jeez, all right. I have two picks. There's one actually, they're they're both related for this topic. The one is a podcast episode from the podcast. fluster clucks, it's really about like, it's more of a parenting type podcast, but they do this episode. And it's not very long. It's on the mastering the skill of disappointing people. And to me, this is very relevant for us in the social media world, where Jim said it like you're getting messages all the time. I can't keep up or respond. Like it's setting boundaries, right? Like, it's like, you can't respond to everything you can't feel like you have to and so some of it is just like recognizing and building your own boundaries. But they there share some really good insights in that and I think it was like 15 minutes, like it's not a long listen. So it's worth checking that one out. And then, you know, since we're talking social media, I was like, wait, I can you know, tell you to subscribe to my YouTube channel to get my drone videos. So I have a link in the show notes if you actually do want to see some of those videos. You can subscribe to my YouTube channel feels so weird to say but I just did it. I feel like I need to be like I've heard I've seen YouTubers be like mash that Like button and LIKE SUBSCRIBE, like, I'm learning all the lingo now. I've just been slow on like watching a lot of YouTube, but lately I have been so there you go. Welcome social media episode on front end happier. Well, well, thank you all for listening to our episode. You can subscribe to us on our YouTube channel at @frontendhh you can follow us on Twitter at front nhh front end happier.com really whatever you like to subscribe to podcasts on any last words,

Augustus Yuan
no follows

Jem Young
Trix I love it