For some people who make it big that way it works out but most people get into that endless cycle of chasing likes.
Happens to me even on HN...
They deliberately put the entire focus on the photo and the photographer and not on the comments/likes/share, etc.
It's an example of deliberate product design that ecschews the trapping of more popular social media. I know there's a couple more examples that I came across recently but I can't think of them at the moment (I think SnapChat also gets some credit here to some extent).
Insta and FB have become Personal PR outlets where you make content for social validation.
On HN, you communicate, and karma can be a proxy for social validation, but it's to help you calibrate for communicating on the platform.
Karma serves the greater community by helping you understand what the community values, whereas likes serve to validate your own brand.
I think the feedback loops are similar but subtly different.
One thing I noticed here, and often elsewhere, is the more interesting conversations often end up net karma, like losses.
Why?
Well, my current theory on that is resonance vs understanding.
Likes, karma, and similar features are all about resonance. Awww, look at the baby, kitten, meme.
Useless, but for a warm fuzzy.
Understanding is harder. Where we differ and speak frankly, people often do not know how to take our words.
Intent via text is a mess!
I have come by the habit of including language to help. Like,"that was thought provoking" or, "it is OK, I just had no idea."
For me, there is almost nothing others can write that would impact me. I mean in a hurtful way. We all have options,but the number one goto seems to be righteous indignation. Honor got bent, or something like that. How dare they! You know the drill.
The moment one realizes there are more options is the moment when likes, and other tools do not matter so much. Understanding, seeking differences in perspective, our take on things can be celebrated, learned from.
One gets a whole lot more secure too.
Humor, asking questions, ignoring ugly bits to focus on interesting ones... all good options.
Chase the differences!
Understanding others can be what these social media tools are great for. That is work at first. Then, it is ordinary.
Then it is fun. Stimulating.
We can get many personal and professional benefits too.
I feel like this should be explored and taught as basic education. I got it via a close group of people with similar desires to understand others. We collaborated on these kinds of problems over about a decade. I have lists of things we people do.
I have lists of options.
I have also tried them. Wait for similar scenario, take a different oath, get a very different outcome. Manage my end of a conversation away from bad, toward good. It is nearly always possible to do.
Agency is a thing. The hardest part of all that is understanding we are in charge of our conversations. Our end of things.
They only go bad when we allow that. We have agency. It is not necessary to require others coddle us.
But, understanding all that is just not the norm. The tools center on ways to avoid doing it too. Block, downvote, etc... I rarely do either, preferring to upvote, or nothing. Just use the conversation to communicate all that.
Frank speech is not always nice, but it is nearly always high value. We want the value, but what we get are likes and other shallow trinkets.
Anyway, cultivating agency in conversation, understanding, brings security. With that, one does not use likes as any meaningful measure of worth, etc...
These realizations fixed social media for me. Non issue today.
I tend to get good value out of it when I use it. No worries about all the shallow crap.
What do I understand that I did not before? Others know things, have had valuable life experiences, can offer a thought provoking take on things...
Getting at that makes all the sense in the world.
Why are we not making tools to those ends?