What made me think about this is my girlfriend, who is quite vocal about the harms social media can have on the mental health of young girls, especially when influencers post heavily edited photos of themselves and their lives, which for the most part are fake.

However, she’s active on social media as well, and being quite an attractive woman, she seems oblivious to what I consider a factual statement: her own content is also causing the same kind of concerns for other women who are not as genetically blessed as she is. What she’s posting is not fake, but it is heavily curated nonetheless. She obviously knows this herself, but do her followers?

I don’t personally follow her social media, but I’d be willing to bet she hasn’t posted about being sick for a week and not taking a shower for four days. I don’t mean that as a criticism per se, but I think it highlights how little we think about the effect our own content has on others while still being quick to judge others for what they post.

Arguably, if you’re producing your own content then you’re consuming it too. It takes a lot of watch and/or listen multiple times to produce a final product which means you’re more than consuming it.

Sure. Heck, occasionally I do actually do that, like if I post a piece of information that I’ve looked up and then refer back to it later.

Yes, and I often reread my own comments and feel a deep sense of satisfaction.

My 'content ’ is almost entirely dumb comments that are often barely related to the post. Definitely not adding to the world, but hopefully no one takes it seriously enough for it to have any negative impact other than just wasted space.

I don’t post almost anything online. I mostly just comment. But even the comments I make I sometimes consume as content - I really like comming back and rereading them to enjoy how good and smart I’ve been.

I occasionally go through my old comments to see how things got received, see if I could improve my wording, things like that. General communications skill polishing. It’s not consuming as much as critically reviewing, but whatever.

Since I’m adding engagement on lemmy, and I do put some effort in to be amusing or informative or whatever (usually anyway), yes I do feel like I am helping. If I was on reddit or something, not so much.

Yes. If I can enjoy other people’s corny jokes and snarky comments, I would probably like my own too.

I don’t consciously “produce” any “content”, and calling it “consuming” seems gross and shallow.

Lemmy has actually made me more thoughtful about this. Like a lot of people here, I was previously on reddit, where most interactions were pretty toxic. Now I do try to think about how my contributions make the platform better or more useful for others.

I was a “top 1% poster” on reddit (according to them), but it was mostly garbage and reposts and “zingers” so even though it got a lot of updoots, it was not really helpful to people. There were some communities that were exceptions, where I put a lot of effort, research, etc., but they were more niche.

I already do that for nostalgia and memories, I like going through my camera roll every so often despite the fact I don’t take many pictures.

Lol, I only comment on lemmy. No insta, tiktok, Facebook, LinkedIn, pixelfed, YouTube or anything.

I also read my own comments so I really do consume my own content and circlejerk my own opinion.

There is content I’d “create” which is shitpost reposting and I’d gladly consume it. The more the better.

I am vegan (pull out the pitchforks) and am pretty vocal about it on here and used to be on the other website. I wouldn’t say I’m an activist per se, but every comment and post I make about the subject whenever it’s brought up makes me feel like I’m making a difference. If the comment resonates with someone reading and leads to fewer animals and animal-derived products being consumed, I’m happy. So yea, for sure.

Same goes for the two communities I created and mod (c/sekiro and c/bloodborne if anyone’s curious). A bot has recently helped me fill the communities with content since engagement isn’t super high from community members themselves. Before the bot, I tried to make daily posts in both communities, thinking it’s content that I enjoy so others would likely too. Since they’re still quite niche and don’t have a massive following, I think it’s definitely a good start for people interested in the games

Cool post btw. I think it’s easy to lose oneself in the daily monotomy that is life and work and stuff, so reminding oneself that participating in communities such as Lemmy is making a difference in one shape or form

I publish my music online. Since I make that kind of music because I like that genre, then I’m pretty optimistic I will like it if it wasn’t me who made it. As for comments on lemmy, reddit, etc., no so much; but I have given advice from time to time that people appreciated based on their replies. Usually it’s about music, cooking, and movies.

Do repos on GitHub and assorted messages on text-based communication platforms count as content? Because if that’s the case, then all the time, because I generally write stuff down in case I proceed to forget exactly what that function did or why I calculated this bypass coefficient like this or why for the love of fuck does vivado keep reverting to incremental synthesis and how did I fix it last time aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

As for if my random technical nonsense has any bearing on the world, not really, outside of maaaybe the demoscene if the SID stuff works out, and the few people who like reading my ramblings for some reason.