When Social Media Felt Real

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.

Scrolling through social-media apps can be a monotonous exercise. My feeds are full of well-lit, curated posts that aim to be clickable and likable, an algorithmic bore that prioritizes grabbing my attention and persuading me to buy something. So when I open Venmo and see an old middle-school friend requesting money for “bathroom toilet paper” or “2 margs & split apps,” I smile at the reminder that the people I once knew are still known to me in such innocuous ways. It’s an experience that I share with my colleague Lora Kelley, who explores in a recent story why Venmo just might be the last true social network.

“Venmo’s feed is hardly social media at its most riveting,” Lora writes. Yet it “feels like a classic social network in part because the people on your friends list may not just be your nearest and dearest.” The simplicity of Venmo’s feed, and the feeling of real connection, makes me nostalgic for the days when YouTubers filmed with grainy cameras, and Facebook posts were stunningly routine status updates. How we live online now is different. When we look to express our vulnerability or the less glossy details of our life, it can feel uncomfortable to broadcast that to our followers—however few they may be. But the impulse to share and to be seen never really goes away. Instead, new avenues present themselves.

Today’s newsletter explores how online connection has evolved.

Keep Your Notes App Under Lock and Key

By Charley Locke

Read the article.

The Last Social Network

By Lora Kelley

Venmo has become the best way to see what the people you know are up to.

Read the article.

Social Media Is for Strangers Now

By Kate Lindsay

As Instagram and Facebook fade from relevance, the connections between friends are fading online too.

Read the article.

Still Curious?

• Twilight of the emoji : The usefulness of these formerly fun discourse pictures is on the wane, Ian Bogost writes.
• The subversive genius of extremely slow email : A revolution against Big Tech may never come. In 2022, Ian asked: Could a series of smaller interventions take its place?

Other Diversions

• Nicole Kidman’s perpetual trick
• Men on trips eating food
• The stars who came to hate their fame

P.S.

We recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. Sally R., 69, from Pacific Grove, California, writes: “After expressly asking my 6-year-old granddaughter not to use my notebook, and giving her one of her own, I came across this while scribbling notes in an art history class. Ah, the wonder of conflicting emotions: exasperation over her willful disobedience and admiration for her artful determination.”

We’ll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks.

— Isabel Fattal