Instead I can remember online topic focused forum boards, of which some I had numerous daily interactions with the same people over years. These online forums made no pretense about replacing real life social dynamics and yet they were still so much better for real social experiences than the social media that replaced them at that time.
To me social media has always felt artificial for people who shout into a vortex hoping for attention.
But that was 20 years ago.
None of my friends at the time used it (or even MySpace) and I didn’t even have an account, so I found this very odd. The first time I realized it may have actually been popular was when a couple sorority girls came in and wanted me to make an account to friend me… not to actually be my friend, but because they had a contest on who could get the most friends. I did not make an account that day, and it told me everything I needed to know about how shallow the connections were. Those were in the glory days, 2004-2005, and it was already pretty shallow in certain circles. It only went downhill from there.
Might also say more about me and my social behaviour than the social media platforms themselves, I never cared about it too much.
a bunch of ppl turned to Facebook as it was just what the mob did, but it still required to be active in groups indeed