The uncanny threads.net (2023)

This is the beginnings of an essay I wrote then forgot about. I have a lot of those. So much has changed since I wrote this in 2023-ish. It doesn’t seem as relevant. Anyway, enjoy this half baked essay about how weird it once felt to scroll Threads. Haven’t been back much. I wonder if it still feels that way?

It’s difficult to write about Threads without sounding conspiritorial, because the app’s vibe feels like a conspiracy. If the so-called social web is in transition, then Threads, Mark Zuckerberg’s latest microblogging platform, is the hallway connecting the yesterweb to some unsettled (and unsettling) future. The feeling is palpable. There’s something uncanny about the platform. It’s precursory. It’s liminal.

Scrolling through the timeline, there’s a sense that what you are seeing is fabricated; that the timeline isn’t governed by popularity, or engagement, even.

Walking through a fabricated Disney Pavillion, like what you’d see in Epcot, offers a wonderful excuse to suspend your disbelief. Let the wonders of Tuscany consume your senses!

Mickey Mouse is not just a character stuck behind a TV screen, he’s your friend. Go up to him and say hi! Every cast member, every detail, every nook and cranny is deliberately crafted to provide us with a magical experience. Its all in good capitalistic fun. We can ignore the fact that what we’re actually strolling through is an elaboratly crafted Walmart.

But what makes Disney World different than, say, the boomtowns of the Wild West, is that we’re in on the show. We enjoy Epcot because people are pretending with us, not at us.

There’s a thin line between wonder and surreality. Walk through that same Disney pavilion, but this time with the expectation that you are actually in Central Italy, things start feeling eerie. The architecture looks Venetian. In the distance, the backdrop resembles a mountain range. And that wine in a plastic cup you bought in the piazza, well, it is red, I guess. (Sure hope it doesn’t unexpectedly gush out of an elevator at me.)

That’s what it feels like to scroll through the Threads app. Like, if we were able to peek behind its structure we’d discover the two-by-four planks propping up a Potemkin Village.

I thought I might be alone in this experience. But it turns out, others have this unshakable feeling that Threads is somehow not real.

(I remember having screen shots of threads posts to put here but I can’t find them anymore. If I do, I’ll update.)

Viral trends seem robotic. Popular posts feel synthetic. And by the time you hop off the app, the taste in your mouth is metallic.

There’s something off about threads.net.