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How is social media related? On average, men have always been the leaf nodes on their wives' social networks.

• motohagiography 8y ago
  That would be a bold statement. However, social media takes time that imposes opportunity costs. While I can't source it now, when I read that most online daters spent 12h on the site for every real life meeting, I deleted my profiles and never went back. The performative aspect of social media makes sincere connection difficult because it makes people overly conscious about how it reflects their presented, aspirational image, and that repels intimacy. It's a panopticon where everyone lives in fear of imaginary judgement. It is a laughably narrow and perverse status signalling game, with the civic merit of a slot machine in every pocket. When you compare time spent on social media to that spent on the things I mentioned above, it would be hard to say it produces good people, let alone ones worth knowing.
• slv77 8y ago
  Men as a leaf node on women’s social networks is a relatively recent social development. The male fraternities that used to form the nexus of men’s social lives were seen as exclusionary and withered or were integrated in the 20th century. For example political parties and companies were once fraternal organizations Historically there were abundant social fraternities as well such as gentlemen’s clubs, Order of Masons and veterans fraternities. Societal sexualization of male relationships also contributed to the recent shift. Men in the 1800s would express affection to their male friends in language that would make straight men today blush. Niobe Way has done a lot of research on how this has impacted adolescent male relationships which creates the “leaf node” effect.