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Social Media Was Fine Until the Consultants Found It

Opening Thought

I have a gripe.

Actually, I have two gripes.

The first is social media.

The second is consultants.

More specifically, consultants who discover perfectly good words and decide they need a strategic rebranding initiative.

Take the term social media.

Why is it called social media?

It’s media.

That’s it.

Media.

We’ve had media for centuries.

When newspapers arrived, nobody ran through the streets yelling:

“Extra! Extra! Read all about it! The latest in Flattened Tree Communication!”

Radio wasn’t called:

“Invisible Voice Networking.”

Television wasn’t:

“Projected Human Content Distribution.”

And somehow humanity survived.

People understood what was happening.

A box in the corner had voices.

Then it had pictures.

Nobody needed a task force, a workshop, three focus groups, and a forty-seven-page report before naming it.

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The Consultant Industrial Complex

Somewhere along the way, we became incapable of simply naming things.

Everything must be branded.

Rebranded.

Optimized.

Monetized.

Synergized.

Leveraged.

And whatever other nonsense gets generated when consultants lock themselves in a conference room with a flip chart and unlimited coffee.

By this logic, my morning coffee isn’t coffee.

It’s a Personal Productivity Enhancement Beverage.

The dog isn’t a dog.

He’s a Household Emotional Support Platform.

The beach isn’t a beach.

It’s an Outdoor Wellness Experience Center.

At some point, we stopped communicating and started auditioning for corporate PowerPoint presentations.

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More Words, Less Meaning

The funny thing is that the more sophisticated our language becomes, the less clearly we seem to communicate.

We don’t have opinions anymore.

We have narratives.

We don’t write.

We create content.

We don’t have hobbies.

We develop personal brands.

We don’t talk.

We engage.

The more expensive the vocabulary becomes, the more it feels like we’re describing ordinary human behavior with increasingly ridiculous language.

Underneath all the jargon, we’re still doing what humans have always done.

Talking.

Reading.

Listening.

Sharing.

Arguing.

Bragging.

Complaining.

Human beings have been doing these things since one caveman scratched a buffalo on a wall and another caveman immediately replied:

“I don’t think that’s how buffalo look.”

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The Great Social Media Scam

And here’s where my real gripe begins.

Social media isn’t particularly social.

And it isn’t really media.

It’s algorithmically selected emotional slot-machine content with occasional pictures of somebody’s lunch.

You don’t necessarily see what you choose.

You see what somebody else thinks will keep you staring at a screen.

The machine studies your clicks.

It studies your pauses.

It studies your reactions.

At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if it studies my blood pressure.

I remember when the media was simple.

You bought a newspaper.

You turned on the radio.

You watched the evening news.

You picked up a magazine.

The media didn’t follow you around for six months because you briefly looked at an article about tomatoes.

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Who’s Actually Choosing?

What strikes me most is how little choice people sometimes realize they’re making.

You think you’re browsing.

The algorithm thinks it’s working.

You think you’re exploring.

The algorithm thinks it’s training.

You think you’re choosing.

The algorithm thinks it has already chosen.

That’s the strange part.

The modern internet often presents itself as a space of freedom while quietly steering the conversation.

The feed chooses.

The platform chooses.

The algorithm chooses.

And most of the time, we don’t even notice.

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The Unexpected Winner

Which brings me to blogging.

Ironically, blogging may be one of the truest forms of social media left.

When someone subscribes to a blog, they make a conscious choice.

They want to hear from that writer.

Not because an algorithm suggested it.

Not because a recommendation engine predicted outrage.

Not because engagement metrics determined it was likely to trigger an emotional response.

They subscribe because they’re interested.

Imagine that.

The internet used to work that way.

You found something you liked.

You followed it.

You read it.

The end.

No recommendation engine.

No engagement optimization strategy.

No mysterious wizard behind the curtain deciding whether today’s thoughts deserve visibility.

Just writers and readers.

A surprisingly radical concept in 2026.

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Final Thoughts

So yes, my gripe is with social media.

Not because it’s new.

Not because it’s digital.

And certainly not because it’s social.

My gripe is that we took something simple, wrapped it in consultant jargon, handed it to algorithms, and then acted surprised when it behaved exactly like an algorithm.

Meanwhile, blogging quietly sits in the corner doing exactly what social media promised to do from the beginning.

Connecting people who actually chose to be there.

Imagine that.

The newest medium may have accidentally become the old-fashioned one.

And frankly, that might be the best thing about it.

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“Somewhere between the consultant’s PowerPoint and the algorithm’s recommendation engine, we forgot that communication used to involve two people actually choosing to talk to each other.” – Kevin’s Musings