A Eulogy for Social Media

October 27, 2025

It feels like a shame.

A "generation" of social media seems separated by a mere five years. It moves and develops and folds so fast. My relationship with social media is unrecognizable to the me of 2018. To the me of 2013. To the me of 2008.

Social Media as we know it is not a long-standing, inevitable institution. There was a time before it and, hopefully, there will be a time after it. Social Media — lets say we define it as the two most perverted among us: Meta and Twitter — are only 20 years old. For some, that's their whole life. But for me, it's only half of mine. In my developing years, we had neither. Nor YouTube, and certainly no TikTok.

We did have social internet spaces: forums, websites, media hubs — all communities. To be social online was to find a space for a specific interest or inquiry. Pokemon forums. Anime art critique communities. Susan's Place Transgender Support Forums.

I'm not trying to describe a "better" time, just a different one. Social Media, as it stands in 2025, is pretty inarguably evil, sure, but I and many others enjoyed its connective benefits when it was, in fact, media to socialize on.

When it worked well, it kept me connected to friends and family, aware of events at my college or in my town. When it served me, I could reach queer people with my comics and an audience of eager readers with my posts. When it was useful, it connected me to new friends in the arts and in fandoms, and some of those friends are still my closest to this day.

And it's for these reasons — maybe nostalgic ones — that I don't speak of a post-social-media future like an exorcism.

I said there was a time before and that there will be a time after, but I don't mean that I anticipate, or even desire, a return to the before. Naturally, something new will grow from the charred earth, built by human hands in the digital landscape. I welcome that.

Maybe the same way that those of us in 2010 couldn't have predicted the shape and character of social media in 2020, we just don't know what social media will look like in 2035.

How will I communicate with the world outside my home, work, job, and neighborhood? How will I reach friends across the country and the world?

I think we won't know so long as we string the zombie along. We haven't invented whats next yet.

In some ways, I have regressed.

Look, I'm posting this essay on my website! No platform, no algorithm, just a link to a page that a human must send to another human with some kind of intention.

They must say "I read this and I think you might appreciate it!" That sounds like social media to me.

(Also, I'm writing a lot of letters. I'm subscribed to a few email lists. Choosing an audience, choosing a space. Choosing who to socialize with.)

This is maybe a small eulogy for Social Media. For me, maybe. For my personal relationship to it, definitely. To its shape and its 20-ish year long life.

Today, Instagram and Twitter aggressively assume I want to be a viral influencer instead of simply desiring to see a chronological display of the the things my friends, family, and favorite artists want to share. (It also assumes I will tolerate three ads for shit and slop in between every post a beloved human made. But that's maybe another thing.)

Bluesky attempts to capture the Twitter fallout (as do Threads,) but it mimics an already dying beast. It will succumb to the same disease.

Monetizeable blog platforms —Substack, Patreon and the like — fall or have fallen to censorship as well as hateful Nazi swarms.

I don't celebrate the death of social media, but the social media that benefited us culturally is long dead. I mourn the loss of something. I recognize that when I look to a post-social-media future. Not a future devoid of a way to be social on the internet, but a way to be social on the internet, again. Something different than this soul draining hell, anyway.

I look forward to meeting you there. Wherever it is.

-Kori Michele Handwerker

October 27, 2025