My Social Tab Is Empty

 

Early 2025, chilly day but some feeble sunlight cuts into the gloom, it's Friday too and I'm now being informed that my Social Tab is empty. Perhaps I should feel bad, crestfallen, desolate even. I'm just not sure what the correct way is to take this news. To be honest I've not paid much attention to social tabbing. I suspect keeping up with sociable chatter in a single email space is the idea but as ever I'm unsure as to what exactly it is, this upstart thing of an uninvited Social Tab.

I could guess or ask a friend and so understand how it might improve my life. I'm only interested in tangible benefits but they are rare at the moment. I'm a grabber. The only reward is that you fill this pale vacuum with something that's little more than a vacuum. Solid content - aka daily drivel. A sense of satisfaction follows: repeat.

Like many other on line experiences these "terms" arrive from out of the blue without introduction or warning, written on a virtual paper aeroplane than lands in your lap. A hidden language and taxonomy of terms and abstracted labels. Sometimes there is an explanation via links into some circle of hell kind of FAQ jungle but I tend not to engage, I'm content to float happily above the restless admin of the grinding gears of Google's back office google-speak. I once stood outside their building near King's Cross and made faces you know.

I also get regular emails from Google to tell me that various settings and conventions are wrong or at least not optimized - there's a mild threat that I can sense in their messages. As if all this free stuff Google provides (well I'm not paying with any real money) will be removed, quickly and without warning. Despite my obvious failings the pages remain afloat and get regular hits from Chinese and Latin American bots and the occasional real person.

Perhaps all the waggy finger warnings are designed to impress upon me the need to develop a business head, get some ads or pop ups going. Give back in some way and create more pollution. I'm not sure what to think. Is it simply a fear of missing out that keeps me going? I know nothing. One day it'll all be floating dust or sediment at the bottom of a deep, unnamed ocean.