A Dip into Dark Mode

Sitting down to compare the news feeds of Facebook and X, I already have opinions. I'm jumping into the deep end first, with X. I've visited the site before, mostly during the Twitter years, and was never a fan. The cacophony of disjointed thoughts from millions of individual voices, companies, networks and bots is an invitation to overstimulation. Dark Mode is the default, and I don't find it particularly easy on the eyes. Dusting off my login credentials, I instantly feel sucked into the void - the stark black background lends a clandestine vibe to the site visit, and gives me the feeling that whatever news I stumble across here isn't going to be good news. Admittedly, my personal feed suffers from a severe lack of attention. I'm following a grand total of three accounts: My son's field trip group from six years ago, plus Variety and… Funny Tees? A snoozefest of my own creation. I scroll for a moment, a photo of Armie Hammer starts to fill the page. Abort mission. Seeking refuge from cancelled celebrity chatter, I scan the home page for general headlines. 

On the right, what appear to be trending topics are listed under a nondescript "What's happening" header. The first bold link (and the only one with a photo) is for the 2024 Republican National Convention. It's an election year and even though the convention is news, I'm instantly skeptical that Elon Musk's political leanings might somehow be influencing the algorithm. This doesn't feel like neutral ground. Four more links list "RIP Corey," "CrowdStrike," "Steve Schmidt," and "Ivanka" without any explanation other than the number of posts featuring those topics, and a vague hashtag or two. Before I can investigate, "Ivanka" disappears and "Tiffany" takes her place. Three suggested accounts are listed, but they feel comically random. I really want to give X one more shot at drawing me in, so I click on "Explore" in the page menu, and I'm able to scroll through whatever has been curated for me based on my extremely limited browsing history. I'm underwhelmed now, but I suspect that with some strategic engagement and a curated following list, I could make a habit of checking X frequently for headlines and quick takes on the things I'm most interested in. As for rhetoric, I'm only seeing content related to the keywords that I'm clicking on. X seems to be, as I've experienced in the past, a mish mash of headline news and individual opinions, editorial snippets and "all caps" rants. (With a dash of targeted ads, but those are everywhere.) I can take each post as I see it, with a grain of salt. The more I interact, the more surprised I am by X's potential to present non-partisan information. Media blogger Rachel Sklar said, "Twitter (X) is an astounding platform for information, but it's a total blank slate - which means it's an astounding platform for disinformation, too." Parts of the internet can still feel like the wild west, and this is still one of them for me, but perhaps I can make it my own.

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