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Social media is kinda… a lot right now

Plus a very important twink update

July 14, 2023

Twink Clarification 

The trailer for Timothée Chalamet’s upcoming film Wanka dropped this week. So did the music video for Troye Sivan’s latest single, “Rush.” One of these men is a twink; the other is not. A few years ago, the term “twink” broke through into the mainstream, and I don’t think we, as a culture, ever properly slowed down to clarify exactly what it means. Culture journalists were throwing the word around to describe any skinny hairless it-boy, including Timmy Chalamet. I, however, firmly feel that “twink” is a queer term. Troye Sivan is a twink. Chalamet’s character in Call Me By Your Name is a twink. Timothée himself is not a twink. 

A pic of Troye Sivan labeled “twink” next to a pic of Timothée Chalamet labeled “not twink.” 

Related note: I’m loving the unapologetically queer music and videos coming out this summer. Between “Rush” and everything Janelle Monáe is doing, summer sounds great to me. 

Platform Updates

Instagram & Threads

TikTok

YouTube

Reddit

Tumblr 

Twitch 

Snap 

Twitter

The Product 

The Dumpster Fire

Culture Movers 

Film & TV

Creator Economy 

Gaming 

Glad I Got Out

This time last year, my job at an insurtech startup was cut during a layoff. It was the last time I was responsible for managing organic social brand accounts. I couldn’t be happier about that. Organic social has always been a strange and difficult job, but it feels more challenging and frustrating now than ever at any point during my career. 

Between TikTok and Reels, you need a video content strategy to make an impact on the biggest social platforms. Even the scrappiest short-form vertical video takes time and resources to concept, produce, film, and edit. Firing off a banger tweet took time too, but there are just more steps involved in being good at Brand TikTok than there were to being good at Brand Twitter or, I guess, Brand Threads now. 

A weird back and forth between the Starbucks and Doordash Threads accounts where they are kinda flirting.  

You’ve got more platforms to manage. TikTok’s rise to popularity added one new platform to the plate. Instagram and YouTube’s reactions to TikTok complicated how you have to approach those channels. Twitter’s turned out to be a hydra that spawns new social platforms every time Elon chops off one of its heads. Even for large social teams, it’s challenging to be active on and do quality work for Facebook, Instagram (Stories, Reels, and Main Feed), Threads, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, YouTube Shorts, Snapchat, Twitter, and maybe Bluesky (if you’ve got a beta invite) or Mastodon. 

And you likely don’t have a large team. Organic social has always had a weird place in any organization I’ve worked for or closely observed. Everyone feels like it’s super important; they know they need it, but connecting it back into the other business metrics isn’t always straightforward. Does having people positively talk about your product on an app contribute to sales? Probably. Is your last-click attribution model able to show that? Nope. So companies often don’t know exactly how much to invest in organic social. Then everyone started doing budget cuts and layoffs, and all of those conversations got even more difficult. 

So yeah, I’m glad to be out of that game right now. But I’m not totally pessimistic, either. If I had the opportunity to go back into managing a social program for a brand and team I thought was really compelling, I could see myself going for it because there are exciting opportunities in this landscape. 

With the social web fracturing, it’s time for good platform strategy to shine. You can’t do quality community building or content creation work on every platform, so don’t. Getting into your audience’s niche will be a powerful unlock for brands and marketers with the savvy and patients to do it right. The newest apps don’t have mature ad network’s yet, so any brand that wants to be a first mover with one of these communities will need a kickass organic social team to make it happen. Threads content is pretty dull so far, with a lot of brands just recycling old tweets, but many of the other new spaces (including TikTok sometimes) are WEIRD. Weird means a lot of fun opportunities for good creative, and authentic community building. 

Organic social has always been hard, in part because it doesn’t have a playbook. Platforms change too rapidly for case studies to be relevant for more than a few moments by the time they are published. Social media marketers have always had to think on their feet and pivot to what’s new. That’s what made it so much fun and so exhausting for me. This moment of chaos in the social ecosystem is a massive headache but precisely the kind of environment where good work will make a big impact. 

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Bluesky Update

I’ve been enjoying the slow growth of Bluesky’s community over the past few weeks. It’s got an old-school Tumblr feel to it (everyone is silly, and there’s NSFW stuff). But it feels important to call out that Bluesky as an app hasn’t been as welcoming to all users, particularly Black users. There’ve been issues with the Bluesky dev team not responding quickly or appropriately to harassment and threats against Black users. This week folks noticed people signing up with racial slurs or Nazi references as their user names, accelerating the conversation on the app.

While building a new app is hard, and the product is technically still in beta, I think it’s pretty clear that people want alternatives to Twitter where basic trust and safety work is being done to prevent racist trolling, threats, and harassment. I’ve worked closely with trust and safety teams in the past. It’s hard work where there aren’t always clear answers. But there are also a lot of amazing people working in that field who’ve spent the last decade watching how these issues played out on other platforms and thinking deeply about how to address these big challenges. I hope Bluesky gets serious about hiring some of those people and empowering them to create and enforce good policies. Otherwise, the fun is probably over. 

Swol Zuck Is a Psyop 

I know we all hate Elon. He’s the avatar of how fragile men refuse to work on themselves and instead, retreat into reactionary politics. He’s the richest man alive and, therefore, at the top of the list when we start complaining about income inequality. He’s not funny and has a very punchable face. But Mark Zuckerberg is awful too. Please don’t let the schadenfreude of watching Threads’s dubious metrics make Elon panic over Twitter’s dubious metrics make you think fondly of Zuck. 

Mark Zuckerberg shirtless standing between two other shirtless dudes in some kind of MMA training dungeon. They are all swol. There’s a real jumpscare vibe to the whole situation. 

He’s gotten into MMA, but he’s still that guy who tried to sell you a metaverse headset so you could access a virtual world without legs. Meta is better at hiding the most vile shit on their platforms from users who don’t want to see it, but it’s still there. They gave anti-vax troll RFK Jr his account back when he announced his “let’s make my grifty views more mainstream” presidential run. Their platforms were critical tools for organizing the January 6th assault on the United States Capital. Amnesty International wants the company to pay reparations for its role in causing genocide in Myanmar. We need to view all of these platforms and the rich men who own them with healthy levels of critical thinking and skepticism. Don’t let the Zuckerberg fitness-driven PR campaign make you forget that. The troll of my troll is not my friend.