This is maybe more of a Social Media inspired thought. But anywhere communication is done with strangers seems to mostly devolve into conversations I get no value from. Worse, these conversations are often addictively infuriating. So, not only are they worthless but they also consume more of my time than they should.
I think there is a lot of value in learning from strangers, but chatting about it online seems to usually suck. Having a one on one conversation can be really enlightening. Reading a well thought article or essay from a stranger is great.
There are online communication channels dedicated to actually having a valuable conversation, but those are rare and require effort to maintain.
Most social media channels seem to devolve into a competition. Someone is always trying to win the conversation. These conversations give mostly no value.
This also has me reflecting on The medium is the message for Social media. Thoughts on social media does a sort of critique of Social media through this lens, but I didn’t feel like it was quite correct to me. The author concludes it is still largely good, where I feel differently.