Marginalia> [...] in that empty space, I begin to wonder: Where did all the people go? What are they all doing behind the artifice they’re showing here? Why am I wasting my time and energy wading through these shallow yet unbounded seas of nothing?
Have very much been feeling this bit lately. The social web is an evaporating ocean, leaving only an inhospitable salty death zone full of bots, shills, and influence campaigns, immitating the people that used to be around.
You don't have to if you don't want to.
"In the year 5555, your arms are hangin' limp at your sides, your legs got nothing to do, some machine doin' that for you." Zager and Evans sang these words in 1969. Now, thirty-five centuries ahead of schedule, it's never been easier to tell the world "I didn't care about this and I don't care about you."