What Comes After Social Media?

Elon Musk specializes in theatrics and drama, both of which he injected into his proposed acquisition of Twitter. Yet after months of lawsuits and counter-lawsuits, it looks like the deal is done:

Musk is expected to close the deal by Friday, October 28, putting him officially in charge of one of the most prominent social networks in the world. Musk reportedly informed bankers of his plans to adhere to an October 28 deadline in a call on Monday.

Musk has changed his Twitter profile to read “Chief Twit,” and tweeted out a statement to advertisers acknowledging that he had “acquired Twitter”—and a note seemingly designed to soothe fears that he was about to drive the site into a ditch (“Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences,” he wrote.)

Nevertheless, we can assume he will drive it into a ditch, intentionally or through inertia, because the three great social media empires—Instagram and Facebook along with Twitter—seem to be headed there in any case. (Also, he’s Elon Musk, whom the BBC described, amusingly, as “an erratic and capricious character.”) Given the manifold and well-documented pathologies attendant with the social media age, I doubt very many people are crying in their beers over the possible end of these sites—or end of their relevance. Be careful what you wish for, though: this could be bad.

Diminishing Space For News

If you work for one of the 9,000 American breweries, the loss of social media isn’t good news. A generation ago, breweries could advertise in mass- market media to reach customers. An ad or article in the local daily or alt-weekly would reach tens of thousands of potential customers. The internet opened up the prospect of reach consumers directly via websites, increasing their visibility. Later, blogs and hobbyist sites expanded their audience.

Then came social media, which was the single biggest democratizing medium ever. Tiny breweries who couldn’t afford ads appeared in a stream of content with regional or national giants. Newspapers reached audiences with blunt force, reaching a lot of eyeballs who didn’t care about beer. Social media, by contrast, used algorithms to sort people by interest, directing fans to breweries—for free!

While the media landscape wasn’t entirely responsible for the brewery explosion of the 2010s, it certainly helped. New startups knew that whatever barriers they faced, they wouldn’t include getting the word out. That part was easy with social media. Some breweries, encouraged by Mark Zuckerberg’s grandiose promises, didn’t even bother registering a web domain—they just set up a Facebook page and called it good.

Social media was also insanely successful. If a local newspaper once had penetration into half of a city’s households, Facebook was ubiquitous. By 2012, the only people who lacked an account were those who actively opted out—a small group. For breweries, all those people meeting in the same place was an amazing opportunity. Facebook and Twitter were conceived as places to share conversation, and now people were talking about breweries. Often. The advent of the smart phone meant many people were checking in daily, and sometimes constantly throughout the day.

What Comes Next?

I don’t need to document the decline except to say that it turns out human dysfunction plays out even better online than in person, and boy did we get a lot of it. For every #metoo there was a gamergate. For every popular uprising organized and elevated on social, there were disinformation campaigns designed to undermine elections. And for every fun conversation about a cool new beer, there were incidents of bullying and gatekeeping.

By Facebook’s own numbers, daily users have barely budged in five years and have been in decline since 2020. Anecdotally, users under 30 have abandoned the site, using it only to post pics and news for family elders. Twitter is actually healthier in terms of growth, though its finances are a disaster and it was never used by a mass audience (currently somewhere between a fifth and a quarter of Americans have signed up).

The problem with these sites is the thing that once powered them: other people. Unlike Instagram and TikTok, Facebook and Twitter were designed to facilitate conversation and connection. Yay—I can talk with people in Ukraine! The problem is that it meant anyone could talk back. Instagram doesn’t even allow in-post linking, which made it the first performative rather than interactive site. Now you could post without much fear of backtalk. TikTok is an order of magnitude less connective and more performative, relying on algorithms rather than personal connections to share posts. This means they’re less prone to abuse, but also way less useful for breweries trying to target their customers. And TikTok is certainly no substitute for a place where people can, say, celebrate rauchbier.

If Twitter and Facebook eventually dwindle the way MySpace and Tumblr did, that’s going to leave us in a weird space informationally. Old media is no longer a reliable way to reach readers—who subscribes to the local daily anymore? Facebook and Twitter worked because they had so many users. They need that critical mass to draw users back to the site, because the only point in posting is communication. If that dies, so do those sites—as the collapse of MySpace demonstrated. Moreover, Facebook and Twitter were uniquely good as information platforms—while TikTok is an absolute dud in that respect. (Because Meta constantly changes Instagram’s algorithm to favor whatever latest craze Zuckerberg thinks will drive use—currently it’s TikTok-imitating “reels”—it’s an unreliable marketing vehicle.) Losing Twitter and Facebook will leave a big gap in our ability to talk to each other.

I don’t have any answers about what comes next—and that’s what worries me. I use social media to drive readers to this site, just like breweries use it to drive brand engagement. I’ll keep blogging until the end times (death or societal collapse), but trying to find readers becomes a lot harder when I have to depend on entirely different and spooky algorithms—Google SEO.

Beer isn’t in a great place right now, and breweries need to communicate with their audience. There isn’t a cool new tech on the horizon to take up the slack—and old media has no answers, either. So pull out your popcorn and watch the Musk-era theatrics on Twitter. It may be briefly entertaining. But where exactly where you go to discuss what you see once Twitter dies?