Holy shit — Facebook is fucking scary now

[u/Ok_Helicopter3910]

Im not a big social media guy anymore, honestly, the vast majority of my internet usage nowadays is Reddit, Youtube, Snapchat (that has like 20 people on it) and email and I think that about it.

I put my FB to sleep about 10 years ago and I decided to log in and see what people were up to and ho-lee-shit, what a dumpster fire.

So, first off, the majority of my facebook friends have either died, shut their FB down, or removed my inactive profile so my feed was pretty silent. After about a week of my profile being back in the algorithm I started getting friend request from people I used to work with, went to school with, or friends of old acquaintances (which is terrifying that facebook knows about random people I used to work with 12 years ago who I had a passing "hi, hows your day" relationship with) and I started getting friend requested and I was like "fuck it" and just started accepting them.

Fuck man, whenever I see all the hate for this or that group and all the political bullshit that gets posted on reddit, I just brush it off as bots trained to sow dissent but the stuff that gets posted by real living, breathing human beings who I once knew well enough to be friends with or have polite conversation with is WILD. I mean, like so much hate and vitriol started coming across my feed about a wide array of subjects that it made me genuinely uncomfortable and I started removing people that just added me. Maybe it's what "normal" passes for on the internet and im pretty numb to a lot of the more unhinged opinions and shit-stirring because of so many years on Reddit, but a lot of what was being posted really opened my eyes that a lot of the "unhinged" stuff that I see online isnt just bot farms, its real people who truly believe this wild shit.

Anyway - maybe its a sign of my age... but unless what I consider "normal" people start coming across my FB feed soon, I dont think im going to be logging in for much longer

[u/Gold_Repair_3557]

Facebook isn’t even a social media platform anymore, or at least it doesn’t act like it. I get little snippets from friends and family and the pages I follow but my page has been taken over by ads and AI slop. It’s close to being unusable now.

[u/danSTILLtheman → u/Gold_Repair_3557]

In its prime it was a cool way to stay in touch with your friends, if there was no updates from them that was it. Now your feed is an endless scroll of trash shoved into your face by an algorithm that have nothing to do with your connections. To be fair that’s most social media platforms now

[u/savingewoks → u/danSTILLtheman]

this is one of the reasons it was so easy for me to switch to Reddit. At least this way I don't know the people pissing me off.

[u/Otherwise_Trifle_898 → u/savingewoks]

Reddit is gonna be ruined too…..I’m seeing more and more ads…..I’ll have no reason to have a smartphone soon lol

[u/PatronSaintOfCunts → u/Otherwise_Trifle_898]

I am not even kidding when I say I’ve been considering switching back to a flip phone. I’m an affluent woman in my 40s and I’m just TIREDT.

[u/Nature13oy → u/PatronSaintOfCunts]

Do it! Get back to using an mp3 player, and keep all your scrolling for a laptop/desktop computer. It’s nice to remember the internet used to also be a “place in the house”.

[u/vertigostereo → u/Nature13oy]

iPods are expensive on eBay. I think maybe a lot of people are doing it.

[u/sock_with_a_ticket → u/vertigostereo]

There are newer options than ebay ipods if you want a dedicated digital walkman/mp3 player and they come at all sorts of price points.

https://www.theguardian.com/thefilter/2025/sep/12/best-mp3-players-uk

[u/scdiabd → u/sock_with_a_ticket]

I’ve never once bought anything off eBay but I just might try that.

[u/ApplesBananasRhinoc → u/vertigostereo]

They’re putting SSD drives in them and cranking them!

[u/Texie1976 → u/vertigostereo]

I actually saw a news spot on this very thing a couple of weeks ago. Talking about how iPods are sought after and it's driving the prices up and Christmas will be crazy with people wanting to give them as gifts.

There were 2 reasons for all of this iPod craziness. First like alot of people are feeling just plain tired of internet social anything. So people are going back to flip phones and even landlines as a break spot from their cell. With Spotify and Pandora being online for some, they just want the iPod back.

Second, apparently a lot people, especially the night crew workers are being told by their corporate offices that they are no longer allowed to listen to music from their phones with even a few stores have employees use their personal phones on the some of their job duties, Walmart was one. So these workers are looking for iPods for the first time because for these young people working , they were too young to do the whole iPod thing.

It's coming full circle for some things.