A Blast from the Past: "Looks just aren't as Important Online as IRL"

09 Apr, 2026

I recently listened to an excellent podcast episode - "Social Media: Wie wir gleichzeitig unsere Kinder und unsere Demokratie retten" (Social media: How we save our children and our democracy at the same time), which is episode 10 of the "Wind & Wurzeln" ("Wind & Roots") podcast hosted by Marina Weisband. As you may have guessed, this is a German-language podcast; if you happen to speak German, I highly encourage you to give this episode (as well as really any other episode of this podcast) a listen.

While the entire episode is excellent and well worth a listen, there was one segment in particular that gave me pause.

As part of a conversation about how young people use social media - and the current flare-up of age gating proposals in many countries worldwide - the host Marina and guest Yvonne Gerigk, an expert and researcher on media usage and pedagogy, discussed results from a 2008 youth media usage study. The early days of social media.

Edited image of an old-timey computer screen showing the word "hello" in handwritten lettering. Original image by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash.

Back then, young people indicated that common activities they engaged in online, and aspects they valued about online communities, were:

chatting with friends,
finding new friends via online communities (think, for example, around niche hobbies), and
that in those online communities, looks weren't as important as in real life.¹

Mic drop. Record scratch. That gave me pause. By which I mean, I literally paused the podcast and started taking notes ferociously.

I think we've always known, subconsciously, that this shift had occurred - from the more text-based, early online forums and instant messengers (for my fellow Millenials, think the MyBB's, phpBB's, ICQ's, and early MySpaces of yore) that have been described as "havens" for youth and other folks who might have felt ostracized in real life, like they didn't quite fit in with the popular kids - to the highly visual, highly polished, "modern" social media platforms (popular examples are algorithmic media platforms like Instagram and TikTok).

I had not heard this shift articulated this way, this clearly, before.

How did we Get Here?

This absolute 180 - from online communities at first being the great equalizers in terms of looks and appearance, to them becoming highly visual media platforms where polished looks and identities sell and draw attention - is, in my mind, a huge puzzle piece at the heart of what algorithmic media platforms have become.² And by "have become," I mean "how they have become massive sources of headaches for us as a society and as individuals."

As Yvonne says on the podcast, popular "social networks" have become platforms focused on self-presentation; digital marketplaces, essentially, meant for entertainment, attention, and capital. "Social media" have gone from being platforms of interpersonal exchange where looks were less important than in real life to looks being the centrepoint of some of the most popular algorithmic media.

For one thing, there's the fact that visual content tends to capture more attention than the average text post - it just tickles the brain in a different way.

For another, these platforms are partially a product of the technological evolution of the last two decades. It is hard to imagine a visual-first medium in the pre-smartphone era, when selfies were not a thing, and when we weren't all carrying computers with excellent cameras in our pockets everywhere we went. Fast, ubiquitous wi-fi and/or mobile data didn't exist. Once those things were in place, yes, the arrival of visual-first social networks was basically a matter of time. And that's not the issue.

It's another development, one that coincided with the arrival of the visual-first platforms that's the problem: Our attention started being commodified, on all sorts of social media platforms (including those more visual ones), and engagement - likes, follows, boosts - started to become a goal in its own right. A commodity, a currency to be extracted from users.

Oh Look, It's the Algorithms (Again)

For "creators," an entirely new category of social media users, the goal then became ever more clicks, ever more followers, ever more engagement. For those operating the platform, which are mostly US American big tech corporations, "keeping eyeballs on screen for longer" is the #1 imperative, as that means more engagement, more market share, and more ad money. The goal is to push content to people and keep them glued to the screen, not to enable genuine interaction between people.

On algorithmic platforms, what matters is content that performs. Seeing the Numbers Go Up on a post that maybe you didn't love, but that is "performing well," will have an effect on your future postings. This becomes a self-sustaining loop, one that does not favour experimentation, eccentricity, or being a regular human being with weird³ hobbies and niche interests. It favours conventional beauty, hype, curation, and performative content. You know, "building a brand."

Driven to extremes, this may then beget disturbing phenomena like body image concerns, teenagers being enticed into developing eating disorders, mental health struggles, and addiction-adjacent problematic usage behaviours. This type of content preys on our individual insecurities, our wish to be desired, to be popular. It evokes strong emotions - and thus, it bubbles to the top of the vicious cycle that involves human psychology, content sharing, engagement, and reward.

Truly a far cry from the text-based exploration of interests and communities, undistorted by algorithms deciding what we all should want to be seeing on our screens.

So... What Do We Do?

I do not think that it is purely the visual nature of some of the most popular algorithmic visual-first media platforms, nor the availability of excellent portable cameras or ubiquitous fast data connections, that are at the core of where we find ourselves today. In my mind, it is their visual nature coupled with the extractive, enshittified, "addicting" nature of those platforms that has gotten us where we are.

I don't think we'll ever go back to message boards or bare-bones, text-only instant messengers being the primary means of online networking.⁴ That's not necessarily a bad thing; being able to send voice messages, videos, and images is obviously a very useful thing, and not in and of itself problematic.

So what if we kept the visual-first platforms, but made them:

Visual-first platforms without all the shitty algorithmic, technically-not-addicting overhead? Or
Visual-first platforms with algorithms that do suggest content users may enjoy, but that are well-regulated,⁵ with sensible limits and guardrails that keep the human in mind, and serving the user at the forefront of their mission?

These are lofty goals, but - at least concerning the platforms currently at the top of the popularity pyramid - they may never come to pass, or, if they do, it would involve legislative and/or cultural change. Let's demand better even of those existing platforms, but - might be a while.

So let's move on to what we can do, right now, as individual users, without massive technological or societal change.

So... What Can We Do Right Now?

If this isn't your first Technically Good ✨ rodeo, you probably know already what one of my suggestions is going to be:

Explore different platforms.

Explore platforms that are not owned by billionaires, and whose most defining feature isn't their extractive algorithm. There will be a broader post coming on Social Media Alternatives, but for now, alternatives to explore in terms of visual-first platforms are:

Pixelfed
Loops
to an extent Mastodon, Misskey, and Pleroma

Time Travel! (Well, sort of.)

Beyond suggestions for alternatives to explore, I would like to leave you with a small thought exercise. You can do this one by yourself, right now, or later today, and it doesn't require any signups or - anything at all, really. Not even a massive technological overhaul, or the ripping-out of all known algorithmic networks overnight, or the magical sudden end of enshittification. Or capitalism.

Think about what social networking used to be. Go back in time, and think back to whatever the social networks were that you used when you first started out on the internet. Were they the same ones as now? Were they different? If they are the same ones you use now, were they as shitty as they are now? (Unlikely, but I thought I'd ask).
- What was better about those old networks? Do you miss any features they had back then? Are you wishing that some new features that were added to the current social networks hadn't been added?
- How did those networks back then make you feel? How are the modern algorithmic networks making you feel in comparison?

I've found that a lot of folks think that the Big Tech algorithmic platforms haven't changed all that much since their inception. This is very far from the truth. With the above thought experiment, I am hoping that more folks realize that it was not always thus. The modern algorithmic platforms did not start out this way. These are not god-given inevitabilities.⁶ They can change again.

The good news is, we do have agency over some of this. Like, for example, which platforms we use. We can demand better.

We can refuse to use platforms that make us feel shitty and worthless, and that make us feel like they do not value our time. We can dial down our use of platforms that make use feel like a product, or like an entity that only exists to have ~value~ extracted from it. We can remember that it was not always thus, and that there was a way to exist in an online world that wasn't dominated by algorithms and constant pressure and comparisons and a never-ending onslaught of "tailored content."

And then maybe we can inch back just a liiiittle bit closer to the positive aspects⁷ of what what social networking used to be - where looks mattered less than in real life, and where we can explore our weird hobbies and niche interests, and find like-minded folks. As people. Not as customers - or, worse, the product - to be squeezed for attention and ~value~.

Technically Good ✨