Why is social media so humourless?

Argues that social media’s humourlessness stems from “context collapse,” a sociological problem traced to Erving Goffman and popularized by danah boyd: distinct social spheres with different norms are flattened into one public feed, so jokes calibrated for friends land as offensive when amplified. Short-text platforms modelled on Twitter intensify this by imposing tight length limits that prevent writers from signalling context or code-switching; short-form video adds other distortions through compressed argumentation. Because journalists, politicians, academics and influencers use these networks as the initial distribution layer for ideas, misreadings propagate widely and can cause disproportionate backlash or career damage. A concrete example shows how a designer’s technical point about audiobooks vs print can be conflated with elitist snobbery when context is lost, prompting attacks that miss the original argument.

This collapse degrades nuanced discourse, blocks specialist knowledge from surfacing, and distorts public understanding of complex issues, making constructive responses to crises harder. The remedy proposed is practical: reduce reliance on algorithmic feeds, seek siloed, longer-form sources - RSS, trusted websites, podcasts and topic-specific pages - so conversations can preserve context and technical detail. The piece recommends stepping away from certain platforms entirely and rebuilding habits around media that allow nuance rather than bite-sized outrage.