I appreciate this perspective as someone who’s been harsh on the recent influx on remakes (namely, the live action remakes), but it’s important to remember recency bias that this isn’t a new phenomenon and a reminder that many beloved movies are remakes.

I think it’s important to approach social media platforms as third space. I like to evaluate platforms through its intent, and while Im sure there are many more specific ways to slice and dice it, I view it at its core the balance between discovery and connection. 

Obviously I am no developer and lack any coding skill, but that hasn’t stopped me from trying to be a person persistent on remaining in contact with my friends with varying capabilities to keep in touch and be online. I use a private t*tter (sorry, I promise I’m working on increasing use of bluesky and other frontiers) to keep up to date with certain friends I’ve managed to convince to use as a way to passively keep up to date with other mutual close friends. This also allows certain friends to 1) share updates about themselves with less repetition 2) allows friends who get too overwhelmed with direct contact to passively acknowledge updates (likes or comments) and can follow up in text/individually accordingly 3) allows friends more nervous friends to share and “catch up” with friends via feed as much or as little as they want without worrying about bothering one another.

The reason why this has worked out is because it was low effort and I’ve already had enough people using it so it’s already been “pre-tested” and with the exception of heavier individual users, the need for discovery is low; most of my friends just want to keep in touch with other friends!

One thing I think that helps with establishing our private t*tter system is because we’d limited it, learning from our mistakes that we’d made from the death of the finsta. Something many of made in high school and uni, throughout the years you’d sacrifice community for “discovery” (i.e., you were faced with the tradeoff as to whether you wanted to maintain a more personal finsta experience where you could post more candidly, or you could share your finsta with looser connections to be nosey in exchange for less exclusivity lol).

I think regardless of platform, especially once it reaches a certain size, it’s pretty much always necessary to create options for subgroups to form. It reminds me of why content creators, particularly on youtube, often have second or third+ channels. The smaller group feels more open and supportive and thus allows the creater to feel more open to experimenting with their content at “lower risk.” 

Also while I do get the idea behind having a limited number of posts, I am also camp unlimited posts—it takes less pressure off and I think like in life it’s important to also be exposed to mundane and mid interactions lol. Sometimes low standards and mundane can bring out some real gems, making it extra special too :)