Social media does not “create community.” That is a Zuckerbergism.
When you are in a community, you can expect help when you are down emotionally or financially. You can expect to participate in collective decisions and in collective responsibility. You matter to some people.
Social media is nothing like that. It is more like a propaganda stock exchange. The goal of propaganda is to convince people to see a topic from a certain perspective. People buy stock in some ideas by up-voting and “liking.” The innovation is in the democratisation of propaganda, not in building community.
Whenever we use terms like “on-line community” we are participating in a newspeak that is designed to distort and distend the notion of community so badly, we no longer notice that when it is gone.
It is a victory of capitalism that people confuse being customers (or members of a social media platform) with being community members. Capitalism is inherently incapable of providing community, but it is capable of convincing people that it has.
