I posted 300+ Threads in 3 days

A concrete answer to the question, "should I be on threads?" with zero Thread-related puns / plays on words

I got on Threads as soon as that shit went live, spending the next few hours in the haze of a dopamine-fueled daze. 

The genius of this app, your honor, is the vibrating. I have ALL my phone’s vibrations turned OFF because I am a conformist rat with no self control. But somehow Marcus Z. managed to evade my supposedly big-on-privacy iPhone’s settings and it went buzz buzz buzz in my clammy little hand as long as I had the app open.

AND BUZZ IT DID !!!! 

What follows is a collection of a handful of my 300+ ‘threads,’ in chronological order. Like all great stories, there is birth, death, resurrection and, of course, some Important Realizations About How You Too Can Use Threads To Improve Your Life and Relationships.  

I got on at about 5pm pst on Wed night. There wasn’t anyone on, really, and boy was it fun. It felt like showing up to a party you KNEW was about to be huge. Maybe if I could stake a big corner of the place to myself - Alex’s InZane Zone - I could really make some new friends here who would be so enamored by my Hot Thot Threads that they’d choose to follow me in other places!!  

Instead, it was just a lot of brands screaming at each other. I did not like this.

Wanting to voice my complaints somewhere, I posted on Threads.

I kept threading. My son asked me to play and I said ‘not now daddy is working’ and continued using Threads. 

Then came the influencers, who I did not realize I hated as much as I do: 

I had an article due ABOUT Threads at 6:30pm, which wasn’t done. I could not will myself to do it, because I was using Threads. 

Quickly and with great force, I experienced all five stages of grief:

The phone was buzzing so much I was so high on dopamine I started pronouncing it dopa-MINE cuz that shit was dope and it was, in fact, all mine. 

High off 10+ likes on several posts, I continued my attack on the influencers: 

Then I started to impersonate them. 

Lauren and Wilder went for a walk and I said I’d join in a second. I did not join in a second. I continued using Threads. 

But I did realize I had a family to support, so I quickly added up how much money I’d made on Threads from posting all of this banger content. 

Making free content for an app that doesn’t care if i live or die. Important conclusions time. 

I was no longer Alex Dobrenko, I was Threads. The whole world was Threads and I was the world. Or I could be, if I could just write the right content to capture the minds and hearts of the 30 million fucking people that had signed up by that point (a number that is now over 100 million). 

So what’s the verdict? Do I recommend using Threads as a way to Grow your Audience like Radishes in Springtime? 

No. 

So then I must be here to tell you all NOT to use Threads because it is Bad and Wrong?

Nope. 

The truth is much simpler than any thinkpiece can tell you: it doesn’t matter. None of this matters. 

Yes, it is all meaningless. But…so am I. And so are you!

This is a good thing! We have no inherent meaning so we must search for it like Viktor Frankel said in Man's Search For Meaning.

Frankel also said the space between stimulus and response is where our freedom lies. On that front, we’re fucked. The tech giants (a dumb name given that they’re not giants but sad bois) did a real good job of eliminating that space by filling it with another stimulus and another stimulus and another stimulus. 

Threads isn’t good or bad, it’s just…sad? rad? I am a dad and I am mad. 

Like, this can’t be how we’re all spending our lives, right? I vacillate from believing that to thinking ‘who the hell cares? let us eat cake and be merry while the world burns.’ 

I don't know. Could be worse. Could be better. I don't subscribe to any kind of theory that says things used to be better. That's bullshit. 200 years ago, people used to just, like, stare at flowers and go, "man we stare at flowers too much we gotta be farming." 

From a content creator’s perspective

For Thirty Full US American minutes this morning I got roped into the drama of Jonah Hill and his ex.  She said he was abusive and she posted photos of their text messages. 

I bet you wanna see them too now yea? 

WHY DO WE CARE ABOUT THAT?

I don't know Jonah. Never met him. And yet, I care more about what he said to his ex than I do about what's happening with my grandpa. This cannot be good. 

But the real problem, I fear, comes in how quickly we: 

1. FOMO the fuck out of each other by way of the app’s hype cycle (which is still in ascension)

2. Moralize ourselves and others into believing we are good or bad because we are or are not using these apps. 

How to talk to your brain about Threads 

Your brain will try to tell you that all of this stuff matters like Threads is an actual cool party you could attend with free crab cakes and airpod pros. This is not true. Threads is not a party it is a mass migration event as the citizens of Twitter et al. move to try to find new shelter in Threads Inc. 

The cool people are not there. The cool people – the actually cool people – are not on social media. They are free. They escaped, and they can’t tell us how, for doing so would render their escape null and bring them back to the void. 

Back to your brain - ok, it says Threads is a cool party, Fine. Don't disagree with your brain it hates that and will give you owies. 

So say to it, say brain, I hear you. I feel you (lol), but here's the deal - it may matter, but, as my man David Byrne once said, STOP MAKING SENSE. it makes no sense.

So, brain, dear boy, Let's stop trying to figure it out. I don't want to game it. I don't want to be better at it. I don't want to be worse at it. I want to be free of it. BUT we both know that I can't be free of it, a prisoner of my own making, trapped in the cage that Zuck built for me and you and everyone we know. 

Is it possible? To enjoy the meaningless without caring too much about it? To turn away OR turn towards and, regardless of the specifics of how and where you turn, not judge yourself or others in the process??? 

No exit, just exist

We love our farmers markets. Local! And yet we go to the biggest corporations in the world to spend our digital time. Why is that? 

Maybe we could start a riot. Maybe we could go local online? I know where they are. Things like Naive Weekly, are.na and the infinite iterations of the digital, open, cozy web. It's all around. 

But it's not as easy or FUN and Jonah Hill is not there which, I am starting to realize, is a good thing. 

If I step outside of myself right now, which I am doing now, I see me writing this on the couch while my son asks me to play. I am sad and so I take him outside, but he wants to take the stroller so now I can record this via voice memo. 

Does this make me bad or does this make me good?  

I’m just a dude. 

And all of this stuff - Threads, Notes, Bluesky, GoatTalk, and Sandscream – they are all tools of mass distraction, by which I mean that they, like weapons of mass destruction, are largely a lie used to justify bad behavior. 

So then, what’s the oil?  

Easy – it's that sting of pain you feel when you see someone else winning. Or losing. Or being wealthy, or really being anything that is not you. 

We looove that feeling. We love that hurt, that sting, the one that reminds us that hey, we may feel like shit when compared to the highlight reel of a billionaire, but at least we feel something. 

I could not resist Threads and I don't care. Let the one who is on no social platform throw the first stone. But they won’t, cuz they don’t care either. 

We are tired creatures on the decline, lonely ghosts, the waste content of the machines that would not take over even if they could. (Take over humanity? In this economy?)

You could do what I do and post unhinged stuff. 

Or post nothing. Delete your phone (yes the whole phone) and walk into a forest never to return. Nothing matters, so everything does, and remember – we are the future’s past.

We LIVE in the future's past. From the vantage point of the future, all of this - you, me, and even Jay-Z, we're all prologue, grainy tiktoks of a bygone time.

I find it calming to remember that. We live in the past, and in the past things are slower. Calmer. Simple. 

So when trying to decide what to do about Threads or really anything, ask yourself this: WWFYD. 

What would future you do?

And if that is not clear, try WWFJZD.

What would future Jay-Z do?

Still stumped? Same. Then just remember this — when the history books are written, they won’t say a goddamn thing about me or you or the guy you hate who is using threads really well (especially if that guy is me). They will talk about other dead idiots who did stuff so heinous so bad that it bears not repeating. 

And babe, that ain’t gonna be what you write on Threads.