Baking Soda: noun

Informal term for social media notifications which alert user to:

ads

generic content (despite term "for you")

new features in social media platform

anything that's not an actual, one-to-one social interaction

Makes the somewhat-crass analogy that just as drug dealers "step on" their product with baking soda(making it less potent but maximizing profits), so too do social media companies dilute person-to-person socialization with "fluff" such as ads and other content.

Case Study: LinkedIn (not the worst of them!)

My Last Five (non-spam) Linked-In messages:

old coworker saying something really nice

guy I went to school with introducing me to a friend of his, who shares an interest of mine

person I chatted with (& really enjoyed the company of) thanking me for my time (totally unnecessary, but very heartwarming and appreciated)

guy I ran into at a busy event following up to say it was nice seeing me

good friend of mine arranging logistics to catch up properly for first time in over a year

I am never going to stop checking my linkedIn messages. As far as linkedIn is concerned, I am "addicted" to DMs.

Which means once a week or so for the rest of my life I'm going to be see a little red dot and think, "Oh I think someone is reaching out to me" only then to be served stuff like this:

Served to me by a company who's idea of "for me" is shit like this:

More Baking Soda

I am getting mad as I write this, which tells me it's time to stop.

I really don't blame any individuals. I've met people who work at Meta. They've been nice. But it's just crazy, the state of cyberspace in 2025. How did we get here? How do we get out?

I don't really know what I'm doing with this format, but I have been taking screenshots over the past two weeks whenever I see something outrageously shit on a social platform. Here's some of what's been served to me: