Awesome Social Media

In this animated short film by Job, Joris & Marieke, a narcissistic social media influencer suddenly becomes invisible and loses the one thing he values more than anything – the ability to garner attention based on his appearance. It’s a funny but sad look of the shallow nature of social media. In Dutch with English subtitles.

There’s no question that extreme opinions have become more prevalent in recent years, and much of the blame is laid at the feet of social media. Kurzgesagt explores the psychology of online communication and theorizes why it’s making people less empathetic and more divided. They then provide some ideas about how we could make things better.

Since Elon Musk acquired Twitter, there’s been a newfound interest in alternative social media platforms. One of the more popular has been the decentralized Mastodon. Squirrel Monkey imagines what it might have been like if you had to install the service using 3.5″ floppy disks. Funny thing is, there’s a Mastodon DOS client.

Learn to get the most out of Facebook with this series of 11 online courses from The Awesomer Shop. Among the lessons, you’ll learn about building and engaging an audience, creating Facebook ads and boosted posts that perform, and using Facebook Messenger as a marketing tool.

“How can we prevent ourselves from getting lost in the funhouse?” Filmmaker and speaker Kirby Ferguson looks at how the barrage of social media and other information sources can affect our perception of what is real, and how you can use your instincts and critical thinking to reduce your chances of being manipulated.

Over a billion people use Facebook every day. If you want to reach your audience online, you can’t ignore those kind of numbers. This series of online courses will teach you how to build a Facebook following, create engaging content, and market with Facebook Ads. Another great deal from The Awesomer Shop.

Are you crazy about all things Internet memes? Did you scream like a goat for a solid three weeks in 2013? Did you sign up for the raid on Area 51? If you have no idea what we’re talking about, it’s time to get with the times and check out TikTok.

Get an extra dose of awesome stuff from Awesomer Media’s Pinterest channel, and follow our boards. They feature some of our favorite picks from all of our websites: The Awesomer, Technabob, and 95octane, and are updated with goodies on a daily basis.

“Anytime you combine 2 billion people in one location, people are gonna exploit that for money, power and influence.” After looking into how YouTube and Twitter are abused, SmarterEveryDay looks at the worst spot of manipulation online: Facebook.

After looking at how evildoers mess with YouTube, Destin of Smarter Every Day takes a look at Twitter and its never-ending battle against bots. He spoke with security experts at Twitter and NATO to find out how these bots work, and why they are there.

We really do our best to avoid hyperbole and overblown clickbait content around here. But if you’re a content creator and are desperate for eyeballs no matter the cost, check out Materialisimo’s brief tutorial on “guaranteed” YouTube success.

Reddit newbie MaggieePearl asked her boyfriend Jason Velasquez for advice on how to best interact with the unforgiving world of the link-sharing platform, and rather than just walk her through a few tips on Reddit etiquette, he made this video instead.

While we generally avoid covering celebrity drama, the social media war between Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman deserves a mention, as the two megastars have decided to bury the hatchet, and created promotional videos for each other’s products.

How many times have you been off on an adventure only to realize, “Shoot, I forgot to take a picture!” Snap Spectacles are the solution. These camera glasses remove the barrier between you and your subject so you can snap first-person HD photos and video.

Chris Cousins‘ animated short film uses imagery of endlessly churned-out drugs as an analogy for the addictive – and potentially harmful nature of social media. Seriously, how did something that delivers cat videos become a vehicle for manipulating global politics and distributing hate?

Squirrel Monkey’s alternative past video series looks back at how WhatsApp might have worked if it came out in the late 1980s – using an MS-DOS computer, a dial-up modem, and a pager to deliver messages to its users.

(PG-13 Language) Materialisimo demolishes the endless stream low-quality, freebooted, text-embellished videos which fill our Facebook feeds these days. Regardless of what you think of them, we blame Facebook for encouraging this crap with their algorithm.

Screen Junkies smacks down Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher’s film about the world’s largest social network, which apparently was started by some of the most antisocial people on the planet. Er wait, is this entire movie Fake News? Time to rework the algorithm.

(PG-13: Language) CollegeHumor roasts the trend of Facebook pages who freeboot videos, then wrap them in text which attempts to explain what’s going on. We understand that Facebook gives bonus points to anything that nabs video views, but damn, it’s annoying.

A Snapchat update lets a man add filters to real life in this silly video by SoKrispyMedia. Losing your face is a huge hassle, but at least he didn’t turn himself into a poop emoji. We’d abuse the rewind effect for sure.

Here’s a glimpse at what it’s like to be famous. Or at least, Instagram famous. Dutch soccer player Demy de Zeeuw runs a football-themed Instagram account with 8 million followers. Here’s how that mob responds when he posts an update. Time to disable notifications.

The folks behind the fantastic YouTube channel Kurzgesagt present yet another argument about how Facebook encourages a culture of content theft against original creators, where pirates duplicate videos, and get huge traffic from Facebook’s skewed video sharing algorithm.

(PG-13) FrinterGarden’s latest effort is the result of meticulously scouring through the darkest corners of the Twitterverse to (sort of) phonetically replicate the lyrics (and musical notes) of a song using only the names of Twitter users. More puntastic fun here.