Projects - v0.1

28 Oct, 2022

Thoughts around social media and other tech that shapes our lives

I have a confession to make…

I’ve been working on different versions of this essay(s?) for quite some time. More than 2 years, to be honest. Yes, I've been running in circles and I'm not very proud of that.

Most of it revolved around my experience with social media, why did I leave Instagram, what was I thinking about when I came back, what do I think of other social platforms, etc. Most of the time it ended up becoming too personal and uncomfortable, sometimes it read very opinionated and blindly stupid and one-sided. But I still wanted to publish something around this topic.

Social media and its implications on individuals, which in turn results in community-wide behavioural changes, leading to revolutions in the way we speak, think, dress and act — these were the themes that attracted me towards product management in the first place (which is what I’ve started to do for a living since the last few months). But I often felt that I had too little expertise on the topic, and I still do. As a result, I didn’t publish anything, out of fear of being mocked for my stupidity.

But after some thought, I’ve decided to give it a go. I experienced a strange sense of thrill, often followed by satisfaction whenever I did something I was scared of doing. I’ll try replicating the same stuff here, on my blog. What's there to lose, right? Right!?

Expect some posts on the short-term and long-term implications of social media on this blog — this tiny, simple, insignificant nook of the internet. I wrote this entire post down because I’m working on some things I’d like to be accountable for, and I’ll share them sometime soon. I like to call them my “projects,” to my friends’ annoyance.

The urge to write this down rekindled itself after I saw the news of Elon Musk acquiring Twitter, and the gazillion reactions people have to this news. Almost everyone seems confused; I’m also one of those people. But still, I have some opinions I’d like to share with you, the (not-so-many) readers, who think I have something of substance to say. So that’s what I’ll cover next — what does the acquisition of Twitter by a man known for trolling people on the same platform means, and what is my idea for a platform like Twitter. After all, if a man who’s scaling EV and rocket companies is interested in buying Twitter, there should be something to it.

I’ve not been getting a lot of time to write because of my busy schedule lately. But I think I can do better — I’ll try to be more regular. So hello there, welcome back!

Also, I've decided to make a new Substack newsletter out of the blog posts which are more tech-centric in nature. So, if you're interested in some of my better essays, other than personal-blog-type-shit that I might post here every now and then, you should consider subscribing up there!