Lifespan and natural death of social media channels

 

Something recently reminded me of the lifespan social media channels seem to live out.  People are familiar with MySpace and Google+ coming and going, but it goes beyond that.  I think Facebook is dying, and text blog posting has been dead for awhile.  I'll cover my thoughts on this, which I've probably written in a similar form here before, or at least parts of this.

My Space and Google+:  what to say; these were replaced by options that worked better.  Facebook killed My Space, and Google+ never really stood much chance.  Google gambled on the social circles function changing everything, and that never worked at all.  Then they gave up.  The sad part is that they really made the communicator function work well; Messenger just is a rip-off of Google's Hangouts, which was an evolved form of their earlier Messenger app or function.  I suppose that was based on Skype, related to the video calling, but it worked well, especially for that time-frame.

It's funny how what seemed to be computer generated image forwarding groups went inactive last on Google+, as if programs had been set up to keep that going, and everyone leaving didn't shut that off.

that's modern AI, but it was pretty similar to that

Facebook:  they shifted from trying to create a new and best case user experience to making the most money possible, and now my feed is mostly ads and promoted content.  It's no wonder that most Reddit users deleted Facebook years ago.  I post to a blog page on Facebook, and that draws some views to here, but in general I'd have to pay them to get people to see it now.  They changed that so suddenly, how their algorithm works, that you could almost tell the exact week that it shifted.  So they deserve the decline that they now experience.

Facebook groups have died in the most dramatic form, as much as inactivity can be called that.  People only want to keep discussing the same themes for so long, and algorithms changes decrease exposure for those groups.  I'm in Hawaii oriented groups as well there, since I live part-time in Waikiki, and those go completely inactive a bit slower.

a group I founded along with a Chinese vendor, and still moderate; it's dormant now

old style forums:  I miss these.  Tea Chat was the main place to discuss tea online at one point, an old forum hosted by Adagio.  They were already dead by the time they replaced the old moderators and ramped up use of marketing promotion of themselves on there.

Their time has came and went.  Someone tried to re-create it all as a new Tea Forum, but it never gained traction.  Expat / foreigner forums also died quite awhile ago, nearly a decade back now.

an interesting topic in a relatively inactive Tea Forum

Quora:  other themed sites come and go, as Quora has.  The question and answer theme only had so much potential, and it took them a half dozen years or so to extract that, and now that has been dead for a half dozen years.  You can say that it was mismanagement that killed it, that whatever approaches and programs didn't work out, and monetization always was a real problem for them.  But those sites seem to have a natural lifespan when they work out, and that form seemed to have an expiration built in.

I started two "groups" on Quora, which they called Spaces.  The site was dying when they rolled that out, as a promising last ditch effort to renew interest.  It absolutely didn't work.  If they had done so about two years earlier it might have.  I still post to those, a little, but it's just to spread out external links, which someone could possibly read there, and to add to the potential of Quora.  But it won't change anything.

Lessons learned:  I'm not so sure about this part.  Every composite thing is subject to dissolution?  That's Buddhism, by the way.  Surely we could dig a little deeper.

The life spans seem to play out in familiar patterns.  Earlier on, when a site or platform is inclined to work, it goes through an expansion phase, and whatever is novel is really developed.  Participation increases quickly.  In a mature phase that stays stable, and functions change, often in ways that don't actually work better.  Maybe that cause and effect goes mostly in one way, and once changes start to be for the worse the writing is on the wall?  

Then there's a drop-off, when it all just falls apart.  This happens quietly.  It's just inactivity, nothing too dramatic or clearly defined.  Let's examine the case of an active site and guess where they might be.

Reddit:  user base is huge in Reddit; r/tea has over a million subscribers.  Oddly that number isn't prominently shown now; I couldn't find it, and used Google to get that vague count.  Why would they hide those follower counts now?  It says there are over 300k active members there (308k weekly visitors), which probably rotate some.

Reddit changed their algorithm in the last half a year or so.  In the past it was a stream of whatever subs you followed, and whatever user posts you follow, and now they show you whatever the algorithm decides you might like, half what you follow, and half whatever else.  Sound familiar?  That's the same change Facebook made many years ago.  You can't easily customize what you see.  If you like or comment on something you're going to see a lot more of that, and there may or may not be any way to manually adjust that process.

As I see it Reddit is in the levelled off phase; functions and form are not changing much, and the changes that do occur aren't positive.  Groups (subs) discussions tend to evolve to repeat in ways that aren't typically positive.  It's easy for sensational content to gain traction, and for other topic discussion to be crowded out by that.  If the pattern holds the owners of Reddit will decide to sell the site at some point, and the new "private equity" owners will make changes to squeeze all of the profit potential available out of it, and essentially kill the site experience and the site.

Somehow on r/tea the participants prior exposure level, where they are on the learning curve for the subject, never changes, and never moves forward.  I suppose people only discuss a subject until they tire of hearing of it, and don't go through a lot of learning curve and still keep participating.  Even in groups where the discussions were advanced, and perspectives were quite mature, there was some sort of natural end point to be experienced.  That Adagio / Tea Chat forum related to real experts joining in, and the Puerh Tea Club on Facebook was based around really developed perspective input, and both are dead now.  Expat--Western foreigners living abroad--forums came and went in a similar way.

Steepster was an interesting different kind of example, a tea discussion and review site.  It worked because people really wanted a place to retain short tea reviews, of their own, and to compare notes with others.  But now they don't?  Shared interest themes sort of play out.

No more Steepster for me.  I had no idea there was ever any issue with there, and haven't checked in on that site in a couple of years.

So it's interesting how Reddit shows how that builds up to an entire site's life and death, as Quora experienced.  People tire of the specific channel form too.  Abstract things "ruin it."  You might expect the pressure of the next catchier, better formatted thing to be a main cause, but it's almost not that, or seems not to be.  Facebook groups may have killed Tea Chat, but Reddit didn't kill them, and Discord tea groups (servers) also didn't, which are now active among younger people.

Discord is sort of something else, but it's not informative to go into that, related to explaining this topic.  It's message-stream discussion groups, like earlier topic forum threads, but set up differently.  It's fine; it works well for people into that format.  It works out to be more social than older style topic threads, maybe trading out the potential for retaining information for reference as a result of the form difference.

Back to the broader perspective, the transitions we all experience build up to these site lifespan transitions.  I don't think it's all about moderators ruining things, or form changes decreasing the site's function and appeal.  There is a general pattern of development where at one point a site or platform host decides to really monetize the activity, and that's always a turning point.  It's like when McDonald's doubles their pricing over several years, while their food quality declines a little; it just doesn't work.

MySpace still exists, and my old profile does.  I was never really active on there.  It's funny that I can pull up MySpace and use it but not Steepster.  I've heard that someone was discussing renewing MySpace, again, to try to bring it back to life.  They could probably copy a lot of the early 2010s Facebook design and it would work better than FB does now.

11 years of blogging; perspective on tea culture

 

There's no compelling reason to pass on my opinion on tea themes now, just because it's back to the time of year I started blogging, but I miss writing beyond review scope here.

Rather than fill in more on how my experience has changed, since it hasn't much, I'll limit this to some thoughts on themes that define where tea culture and the tea industry is right now.

tea culture in the US:  it's not really moving forward, compared to where it was 5 years ago.  If anything a good-sized, but still limited, group of people exploring tea through social media discussion and online content consumption have went quiet.  It's natural, learning and exploring, then seeing that new range as just normal, and learning less.  Social media groups are changing, and some are dying; I'll add other sections on that.  The tea itself, preferences and options, hasn't really changed.

tea culture in Thailand:  in some ways Thai cultural development themes mirror and lag behind the US, and in others they don't.  In both countries very few people being really into tea has continued, with many joining groups, in real life and in social media, but that also leveled off.  Small event functions finally started to work locally this year, one mall-based conference oriented event in Bangkok, that finally didn't also include coffee.  Better quality version production has finally made more of a start in Thailand, lagging behind Vietnam's progress, way behind original source countries like China, Japan, and Taiwan.

tea culture online:  not different than last year; Discord groups and Reddit sub participation picks up, and Facebook groups go quieter.  One main specialty tea FB group, Gong Fu Cha, is slightly more active than 2 or 3 years ago, but vendors drive the activity, so a lot of that is marketing.  New active members there tend to be relatively new to tea, so it's right back to where online discussions were 6 to 8 years ago, exploring new types, and working out which vendors are actually good sources.  

I don't actively discuss tea online that much, beyond sometimes answering questions on Reddit.  It's harder now for me to keep learning, and my peers in background and experience have talked enough, for the most part.  I moderate a FB tea group, International Tea Talk, but it's mostly dead now, evolved beyond it's more active phase, even though it has over 30,000 members.

FB groups can still work well for organizing local gatherings

tea sources:  a new wave of Chinese vendors is driving Western facing sales to "the West," or at least trying to.  Chen Sheng Hao, a pu'er producer, and Oriental Leaf, a mixed type reseller, work as good examples.  Or ITea World is an example of a positive form with some kinks still being worked out; they used free sample distribution to engage online discussion, overdoing it for final amount of feedback in the Reddit r/tea space.  Use of novel forms of sample sets also works for them, but then ironing out uniform quality is ongoing; some versions are better than others, so value is a bit all over the place.  Selling sample sets offsets that; people should be able to tell what is better and what they like best.

I see this development as a good thing, as a potential for competition for a very limited set of main Western vendors.  Some new sources, including Western options, are selling pretty mediocre tea at medium pricing levels, and some actually go beyond that, offering novel range and good value.  Jesse's tea house, a Tik Tok based vendor, has replaced Mei Leaf, a Youtube based vendor, for drawing criticism for selling overpriced and medium quality tea.  Both vendors do serve a positive industry role in marketing tea to a new audience, and raising awareness.  That seems to get missed in the specialty tea industry, that if all the vendors only try to capture the most of a small market it will never grow.  Running standard ads isn't the only way to spread awareness and raise demand; novel forms of events can build up both slowly, bit by bit.

producer issues:  Darjeeling has been suffering due to shifting costs and demand context for years, it seems, so that's not new, but eventually the last plantation will be owned by a corporation instead of a family there.  Chinese producers seem to do ok.  A dip in the Chinese economy poses challenges, but built-up demand in China and in the West has set a strong foundation for demand for them.  

Nothing is really new; no new push for organic / sustainability themes, no new product ranges, and nothing novel related to presentation forms (eg. new compressed styles, although some experimentation continues).  Using health claims for marketing seems relatively played out, which is interesting related to tea probably really being fairly healthy.

Trump and tariffs:  this is the newest concern; a new wave of import taxes may well increase the cost of tea in the US.  Or maybe not.  Since tea is barely produced in the US at all, with limited exceptions, this wouldn't make sense, given the drive to make US companies more competitive, but not everything Trump and Republicans do is supposed to make sense.  It would be strange to have tea drinkers shoulder more tax burden; it's too small a factor to make any real difference, and doesn't relate to the broader trade issues.  But it could come across as vindictive, which would be part of the point, to escalate opposition, in theory to other ongoing unfairness.  

I doubt it will change much.  Tea costing 10 to 20% more wouldn't be a welcome change but also not so significant.  A larger new tax would sting more.

new styles, origins, something new being popular:  it's going to get harder to know what trends even are with social media becoming quieter.  There hasn't been a hot new source region in years, as far as I know; Georgia seemed novel and promising some years ago, and Nepal long before that.  Sheng pu'er keeps sucking the air out of the room related to popular range.  Surely a broader, but still small, group of well-exposed sheng drinkers has moved on to appreciating different range, well-aged versions, good quality boutique styles, and so on.  South East Asian versions gain traction, over time.  

The standard list of vendors are probably doing slightly better year to year (Yunnan Sourcing, White 2 Tea, Crimson Lotus, and so on), but this doesn't change anything.

a hybrid style Greengold Georgian white / green tea, reviewed here

inflation as a factor in the US:  probably anyone earning in the lower half of incomes in the US is struggling a bit from price increases, especially over the last two years.  Most people already buying $100 sheng pu'er cakes probably weren't in that group.  It could serve as a barrier to larger scale entry to better tea, for some, but limited awareness was already working out like that.  Specialty tea never was positioned to couple with a broad cultural form shift, eg. to benefit as coffee and craft beer had before.  If anything those other trends getting old for people might be the next main wave for tea; those interests are fine for a long time, but lots of types of preference go in cycles.

what's next?:  it's never easy to tell.  I had always been concerned that multi-level marketing would make a mess within tea exposure, but that came and went quietly (Steepology, was that?).  Intuitively new solutions like automated marketing and sales based on drop-shipping should've already happened, but didn't.  Or kind of did, but didn't gain any traction.  Automatically created content made by people who know almost nothing about tea are just too easy to spot.  

Jesse's tea business shows how just being one short step ahead of the beginner learning curve can work, and it's odd that's not more of the norm.  But then the smallest tea businesses have always struggled, and it's not easy for most people to create high quality social media content, and then use that for effective marketing.

I think earlier producer-side development progress elsewhere might consolidate within the Western markets in a different form at some point.  Vietnam has been driving better tea production and vending for a few years, and options have broadened in places like Georgia, Darjeeling, and Assam.  There's always a brief window when a new origin area emerges when novel offerings and value are both exceptional, then when demand catches up it transitions to more standard priced range.  All that happens based on small, well-organized vendors transitioning to become medium sized.  

A large foreign vendor like Moychay, the Russian version of Yunnan Sourcing, sort of, has been poised to play a larger role in Western sales for years, having established an accessible branch in the EU in Amsterdam, but they're still not such a familiar name.  Growing local demand by building pleasant tea drinking spaces and holding events supports their business, it just doesn't drive international awareness.

No one is driving any industry change or expansion.  Blog writing, like this one, have lost a lot of following, and Youtube content never gained it back.  There are thousands of people showing photos of tea on Instagram, and hundreds of people selling tea event services and training, or probably that is thousands of people globally, counting events, education, and tourism oriented options.  It's still not changing much.  Few of us take up interests and lifestyle practices by deeply exploring and going all-in on novel themes like specialty tea.  More people just drink a little tea, often moving slowly from tea-bag flavored blends on to better loose versions of flavored blends.  It's fine, but per the perspective of the other kinds of tea enthusiasts it misses a lot of potential.

A broad group of people have normalized drinking decent tea, following most of the learning curve that they ever will.  That group is broad but very limited in overall scale.  Specialty tea may never "have its moment," in a scaled-up industry demand sense, but for them it already is, every day.

I'm not usually in pictures here, here with my family

the tastings are better with visitors

Ori Puer Lab 215 Da Xue Shan sheng pu'er

I'm reviewing a sheng pu'er that I initially knew nothing about, except production date, from an unusual source.  Stephen Liu--maybe a nickname of sorts, since he uses two different names in FB?--is the head of the largest Thai Facebook tea group, with 67,000 members, and the founder of a Thai FB tea marketplace group, and he writes a blog about tea background.  He is a main authority on tea in Thailand.

I saw him giving a presentation at the recent tea expo in Central Embassy, at the Tea Atlas event.  I brought teas for two people to try, who I had met at the event the first time I visited, and didn't see either there, so I passed on some to him.  We've crossed paths online for years, so it was an odd real-life intro, sharing tea out of the blue, but it's nice to give tea to people who can appreciate it, even if they don't really like that style best.  I've been into Vietnamese teas lately; it was those.  He shared back even more tea, which is likely to be better, at least in a sense, this 200 gram cake of sheng pu'er that I'm reviewing.

I could look up more about what he has done, and who he is in relation to tea, but essentially he's a name that comes up whenever local tea themes develop.  He sells tea (I think), gets involved with functions, like that one, does some touring, and so on.  There must be plenty of academic connection to cover as well.  This write-up ran long, looking up related types for area background, and turning up a related version from the year before, so I'll skip looking into more background, on him or the tea, and get back to that later if there is more to say.

I looking up what Da Xue Shan is--which Google lens translation mentions--this listing came up first, for a 2023 Daxueshan Old Tree Pu-erh (Gu Shu Sheng Cha - cake 200 g), selling for 64 Euro for a 200 gram cake, or $70:

Da Xue Shan 大雪山 is a mountain located in Lincang Region of Southwest Yunnan. The peak (3430 m) of the mountain is covered by snow all year round. Hence its name the Big Snow Mountain. Wild tea (Ye Sheng Cha 野生茶, often called as Shan Cha 山茶 by Yunnan farmers, ) grows at the altitude around 2000-2300 m in the mountain. Although growing in the very high altitude, it germinates earlier than other common teas. In the end of March, the tea is well ready for harvesting. The Daxueshan wild tea is famous for its wild orchid flavor and mild mellow taste. Local farmers are of Li Su race which is a rare minority group in Yunnan. 

There is at least one review of a version from that local origin in a review here, but they're not much of a standard reference.  I'm not sure this version that I'm reviewing is wild origin tea; it could be, or maybe not.

I looked up a Yunnan Sourcing related area listing to get more description of it, and another related tea version, 2015 Spring "Da Xue Shan" Wild Arbor Raw Pu-erh Tea Cake:

A powerful first flush of Spring 2015 tea from 50-80 year old trees growing in Da Xue Shan area of Lincang (45 km west of Lincang City). 

Da Xue Shan aka "Big Snow Mountain" is a high altitude area and perfect for growing tea.  The neighboring "Da Xue Shan Reserve" is home to some of the oldest tea trees in Yunnan as well as Yunnan's own Black snub-nosed monkey.

...The tea is very strong in taste and aroma.  It is both bitter and astringent with a lasting huigan and somewhat over-powering cha qi.

That tea was selling for $38.50 per 357 gram cake; it's interesting that the two examples vary so much in price, with both described as wild origin tea. 

Another example from there, 2018 Yunnan Sourcing "Big Snow Mountain" Old Arbor Raw Pu-erh Tea Cake, sells for $130.  

The pricing is going to tie to quality, and to whatever other factors influence producer selling price.  I tend to take these "old arbor" / gushu claims with a grain of salt; vendors might tie selling points back to expectations per related areas, or producers might present teas as something they're not.  In general I'd trust Yunnan Sourcing more than most sources, but in the end, to me, it's about how the tea comes across when you brew it, what the character is like.  

It would be nice if the teas were grown in the forest; there's a lower chance of pesticide use in that context, and less reliance on chemical fertilizers.  That second point wouldn't necessarily change much related to risk, I wouldn't expect, but character should be better from more naturally grown teas.  There's a harshness to low elevation grown, plantation, mono-culture produced teas that were forced to produce a lot of material, harvested at volumes that are hard for the plants to sustain.

Looking further I found a 2023 example of this same tea, the same producer and formula number (215), through a familiar Western facing China based vendor, Teasenz.  It was selling for 29 Euros or $31.50 for a 150 gram cake, and they had also carried a 250 gram cake, which is unusual, the producer making two different sizes:

2023 Oripuerlab Da Xue Shan 215 Raw Pu Erh

This is a typical raw pu erh that has a light and soft taste, yet packed with intense refreshing floral aroma. The mouth-watering honey sweetness and accessible flavour makes it one of the best teas for the beginning raw pu erh tea drinker, while the complex aroma will be loved by advanced drinkers.

Lingcang, Mengku (2250m)

The 215 Da Xue Shan series, has been produced by Oripuerlab since 2013, and due to the popularity, these cakes have become part of the factory's annual production. This cake has consistently sold out for many years in a row, and this year will be no exception.

They forgot to mention strong bitterness and high overall intensity, if the 2023 is like the 2024 (based on trying it before looking up background), but to some extent all that still works.  They're from different years, but I can't imagine that they're opposites in terms of general character.  This doesn't mention plant age or the wild arbor theme directly, but growing the tea at 2250 meters in elevation implies that it's not from a standard low elevation, high production plantation.

Review:

#1:  bitterness is really pronounced; that can happen.  Floral range is positive, and promising, but this is brewed a bit too strong.  One challenge going into this was that a lot of sheng isn't really ideal for drinking within a few months of being made.  Not everything needs a decade and a half of transition, but some is much better for settling for a couple of years.  I can brew this lighter in following rounds, and that will offset this intensity, and bitterness, but it's still going to be a bit extreme.

This reminds me of trying a tea from a local shop again, from Ju Jen shop in the Paradise Park mall (in Bangkok), the Lincang version reviewed here.  That post said that it was from 2021, so three years old now, and it has settled to a nice aspect balance.  Three years ago I would imagine it would've been a bit much, too high in bitterness level, and a little intense.  This may follow the same pattern, as clearly possessing some positive aspects and character early on, being of good quality, but not quite ready in terms of an optimum.  If someone loves really high intensity and bitterness of course that's just wrong, and it's perfect when young, brand new.

#2:  easier to relate to brewed much lighter.  This flavor profile seems to remind me of that tea [as it should have, at least being from the same broad area, Lincang].  Pronounced bitterness and floral range are pretty common themes though.  It's quite drinkable made this way, brewed light, but a year or two of limited transition would make it more approachable, and enable drinking it at more of a range of infusion strengths.  

Quality seems pretty good for this.  Intensity is a bit much, and the bitterness is really something, but those aren't flaws.  Feel is fine; it has good structure.  One part of the flavor is a bright fruit note; that is nice.  It's almost lemon citrus, or at least in that range.  To me it adds a pleasant complexity, but then I always do love a bit of fruit in sheng.

#3:  warmth picks up; that's nice.  Mineral is quite strong in this, in a dry mineral range, like limestone, or something such.  It could just be my imagination since it's so early in but I swear that I can feel this tea already, the drug-like effect.  I mostly had fruit and yogurt for breakfast and that doesn't tend to offset sheng stomach impact or feel (cha qi / drug-like feel), so maybe it is real.  I really can't relate to people drinking sheng to get a buzz, but to each their own.  I'd be using drugs if I wanted drug-like effect.

Of course aftertaste experience is pronounced in this; that goes along with saying that it's intense, quite bitter, heavy on mineral, and complex in flavor range.  It's pleasant, if someone is ok with high degree of bitterness and somewhat heavy astringency, and wants intensity to be dialed way up.  Per my own preferences I think I'd love this more in about two years, after it has mellowed out a bit.  In really dry storage maybe in 4 or 5 more years, but here in Bangkok sheng changes fast.

#4:  fruit continues to evolve, with most of the flavor range in this still relating more to bitterness, mineral, and floral range.  That catchy set of bitterness, sweetness, floral flavor, and a hint of fruit is familiar enough; that works.  Aftertaste switching from bitterness to sweetness is a common theme, hui gan.  I was just thinking that it was a shame that the Ju Jen cake was so small, and almost finished, produced at half this size (100 grams, where this is 200).  That's more of a sample.  

This sheng version will probably only get better over the next few years, and I probably wouldn't hold onto more for longer, to check how it is in a decade or longer.  I suppose if it doesn't cost too much setting aside a cake would probably give good results, in another 15 years.  Or maybe it would make sense at an intermediate transition point, between 5 and 10 years, but that's hard to judge.

#5:  astringency and mineral eases up a little; the balance is more approachable.  This is still on the edgy side, a bit dry in feel, and quite bitter, so only people well acclimated to that range would like it at this stage.  Again in a couple of years that may shift; intensity will still be fine, but tones could warm a little and that challenging bitterness and feel could smooth back out.

#6:  it continues to settle well.  Over more infusions it should carry on with a slow transition to warmer tones, maybe expressing just a little more fruit, and easing up on bitterness and astringency.  It won't make it to an especially drinkable when young range, so all that is relative. 

Conclusions, additional background:

Really nice tea; I like it.  It's a bit intense at this young age, but it should mellow and be more approachable fast, over the next year or two.  For people into sky-high intensity, pronounced sweetness and bitterness, and heavy floral range this is perfect right now.

I asked Stephen if he sells this and he said that he doesn't, that it's a version he likes that he owns a lot of.  That's so nice!  This would be an ideal tea to own many cakes of; I can't imagine that it wouldn't be better and better over any length of time, even 25 more years.  And it should drink quite well over the next few years, as a younger version that doesn't need more complete aging to be pleasant.

Many thanks again to Stephen for sharing this!

AI content use in tea marketing; message discussion with AI

 

I haven't avoided this topic, but I don't have much to say to about it, so I've never mentioned it here.  People are clear on why AI text content and pictures are interesting and positive, and also what the down-sides are, that kids can use it to write their paper instead of them doing so, while learning to write, and that it displaces artists, or people creating marketing content, and so on.

A recent post in a main Facebook group, Gong Fu Cha, drew criticism for being AI generated.  It was this:

𝐘𝐢𝐱𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐏𝐮𝐫𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐒𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐞𝐚𝐩𝐨𝐭

宜兴紫砂壶

History

The Yixing purple sand teapot, also known as Zisha teapot, has a rich history that dates back to the Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD) in China. The clay used for these teapots comes from the region around Yixing in Jiangsu province. This area is renowned for its unique type of clay called "zisha" or "purple sand," which can also be red or green.

During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), Yixing teapots gained significant popularity, and many skilled artisans emerged, elevating the craftsmanship to an art form. By the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912), Yixing teapots were widely regarded as essential items for tea connoisseurs.

Reasons to Use a Yixing Teapot

1. Porosity: The clay used in Yixing teapots is slightly porous, which allows the teapot to "breathe." This enhances the flavor and aroma of the tea over time, as the pot absorbs the essence of the tea brewed in it.

2. Heat Retention: Yixing clay has excellent heat retention properties, which helps maintain a consistent temperature during brewing, enhancing the extraction of flavors.

3. Patina: Over time, a patina develops on the inside of the teapot, further enhancing the taste of the tea. This makes each pot unique to its owner and the teas brewed within it.

4. Aesthetic Appeal: Yixing teapots are highly valued for their artistic and aesthetic qualities. Each pot is often handcrafted and can be an exquisite piece of art, reflecting the skill and creativity of the artisan.

The Yixing purple sand teapot is not just a vessel for brewing tea but a symbol of Chinese tea culture, artistry, and tradition. Its unique properties and the skill required to create them make Yixing teapots highly prized among tea enthusiasts and collectors worldwide.

It seems fine to me.  Or is it?  Is there a reason why a program writing this kind of content instead of a human discussing this background is problematic?  I'll get to all that.  Is the picture itself also AI generated?  Probably, but I can't tell for sure.  This one seems to be, from the next day:

Usually I have the next half a dozen points in mind, almost immediately mapped out, based on how I've arranged related ideas in the past.  Not this time.  It doesn't help that I don't care about clay teaware at all.  It's helpful for me to narrow tea related interest, to keep the scope manageable, and that has been a good dividing line.  

I own three clay pots for brewing tea, two of which I bought in Taiwan, and one of which my wife gave me from her father owning it, who hasn't been alive for the last 35 years.  I've not even fully seasoned the two that I bought about 6 years ago; I use gaiwans.  I know very little about clay teapots, and it works out better not to learn more.  Then someday I'll probably get to it.

Then the next picture relates to tea itself.  Someone mentioned in a comment that the tea cake looks like pu'er pudding, not the actual compressed tea.  Tea cakes don't really tend to look exactly like that; the material form and texture is ok but the shape isn't.  The text content is probably AI material too, for both.  So again, what is the problem?  Next bots could be coordinating this AI content generation and posting it themselves; how would that be a further problem?

It ties to another concern I've had recently about clearly fake group request profiles, that I tend to delete from the larger Facebook group I admin for (International Tea Talk).  Why has there been a wave of new, clearly fake profile requests?  Why were they not adjusted slightly to not be so obvious about not being actual people?  Probably within months those changes will occur; they'll update their process.  

They are easy to spot due to being created in the past two weeks or so, all with a single picture (which you have to click through to recognize, that the profile contains one picture), all based on background details that don't add up (from Ukraine, but living elsewhere, educated at Harvard, etc.).  Any one of those details is reasonable, but the sets don't seem to make sense together.

It all seems to add up to a problematic shift in how we are going to be experiencing social media, very soon.  Fake profiles will be much more common than they are now, and harder to spot, and they'll be able to create and post content that won't be as obvious as those two posts were.  

Someone posting one of those two mentioned that they prefer to use AI content to not steal random photos online from others, which works in one sense.  But that would be all the less easy to spot if content was presented as created by a person instead, as long as they managed where they farmed the content carefully.  Or not carefully at all, and the programs could just track which sources content had been taken from that were flagged and deleted later.  Of course if they steal from a main vendor, or use high-profile media content, or FB group post content, that's going to get noticed, but they wouldn't even need to use human intuition to filter that, they could just go by trial and error. 

The initial obvious problem isn't the main problem, that gradually AI will replace human specialist knowledge, and even interaction.  In the past low effort drop-shipping sort of vending startups were easy to spot, and they came and went fast.  It's not so much the form that is a problem, it's that you almost certainly would be buying tea from someone who knows very little about the subject, and is probably more concerned with streamlining and automated marketing (including content creation), ordering, and fulfilment process than with what they are selling.

Later on websites, sales portals, online background content, and interaction will all be much easier to generate relatively automatically.  We are already seeing more sophisticated vending materials that are obviously AI generated.  Later on it won't be as obvious.

It's the next step after that seems to be a concern.  The online interaction in relation to this automatically generated content will be supported by more sophisticated bots.  It's easy to spot now when online marketing posts are bolstered by positive comments from fake profiles.  The dots seem easy enough to connect, but they won't always be.  Later on an ad could lead someone to what seems to be developed content related to in-depth specialist exploration of tea, with online materials documenting a supportive and interactive customer base that reinforces how good that source really is.  And it all could be fake. 

Lets consider a rather unusual example case that relates to just how far this kind of thing could go.

Making friends with AI in social media

I think I recently discussed a range of different themes with a pilot program AI profile, earlier this year.  That's still only a high probability, because in some ways that "person" seemed real.  I suspect that's because input was being mixed from what was created by a human and then re-organized and managed by a program.

Maybe the context doesn't matter, but I can include that.  It was on Quora, a question and answer site that I had been more active in over the past, and still frequent.  I've created two Quora Spaces there, one about tea (Specialty Tea) and general cultural themes related to different national cultures (About Foreign Cultures), and have answered lots and lots of questions.  It seems as well to not flag the profile or add details that effectively do so, but the "shared interest" related to one of a dozen or so odd running themes I've written about here over the last year or two, but not tea.

I think I commented on something posted, then that "person" responded, then reached out about it through message, and we talked from there.  How would it not be obvious if it was really a person or not?  I think a lot of the starting point content was human generated, that initial discussion was created around what one would normally say about themselves, or respond to standard questions or starting points.  

Then there was a bit of limited continuity related to discussion flow; they didn't talk by messages as a person would, closely linking discussion themes.  This was explained away in terms of a contextual theme.  One of the first AI discussion programs, not so long ago, masked that the "person" was really a program by making them a teenager, which would explain away limited communication ability and inconsistency.  It was something like that, established as a base context early on, just not that.

It seemed like the mix of blending human created input with use and message functions by a program really worked.  It would be possible to have a person write out a number of responses or longer passages that tell a really compelling personal story, just a fictional one.  Written in the right way a number of content passages could have great depth, and really link together, then with most discussion content not holding up to that level.

It wouldn't even need to be fictional; there is no reason why I couldn't convert my own perspective, background, and life experiences into a relatable, convincing AI language model program, designed to discuss things with others.  It would help if I built in a relatively severe personal limitation, to mask inconsistencies and errors that would occur.  

It's not the one that probable-program I talked to used, but "coming clean" about experiencing mental health issues in the form of depression, anxiety, or manic episodes would work.  Then lapses in answering or discussing things consistently would be understandable.  The empathy of the person "it" talks to would kick in, and the person in discussion with it would be less likely to call out the program on not making complete sense, or forgetting things.

You could even have the program blame people when they repeated themes, for being repetitive, or forgetting points already made.  A little would go a long way with that; the more unpleasant a discussion experience would be the less likely it might be to continue.  This was actually an approach used in that discussion, cross-referencing repetition.

In my own case it would work to develop themes and discussion points related to my own interests, about running, or tea, and so on.  Getting a program to interact in the form of a normal conversation would be very difficult.  Chat GPT can mirror content creation very well now, but the flow of conversation is something else.  Any program model would be quite rough to begin with.  

How would you keep making adjustments to that?  You would create a profile on somewhere like Quora and practice.  Then you would watch out for when the function didn't work, I suppose especially related to when someone finally called you out on being a program.  After some discussion that "person" raised the issue of others accusing it / them of sounding like an AI, in kind of a cool twist, seemingly fishing for feedback.  

Or maybe it was a person, right?  Maybe the personal limitation they described makes them sound exactly like an AI, with the same kind of odd speech patterns, inconsistency, and range and discussion continuity limitations.

All of this is a lot more sophisticated than a bot posting about liking a tea would need to be, to create fake and misleading marketing content, identified as discussion instead of first-person product marketing.  But people are watching for that sort of thing already (and to a lesser extent moderation programs are); that's the problem flagged by these posts, in most of the comments responding.  Those people used AI generated images and some AI generated text content, essentially presented as what it was, and others immediately questioned if this was allowed under group rules.  

It's not prohibited in that group yet, as far as I know, because it just started appearing.  Then it's a bit scary that people are already populating these groups with hundreds if not thousands of fake members, profiles set up for some yet unknown purpose.  In the past it would've related to farming "likes," and it's probably partly that, but who knows what else is intended, or will become possible in the next year or two.

Another example; a scammer profile shows how far and fast this can develop

Someone just posted in a group related to Hawaii, where I live part of the time, asking a question, about surfing.  It looked odd, how they worded it, but their name, profile picture, and the question all looked pretty legit, until you looked deeper.  Then it was all clearly fake.  People commented that they were a scammer, but even before that I glanced at the profile to see why their comments seemed odd, worded unnaturally (which can just relate to someone using English as a second language).  I would assume the people flagging the account as a scammer related to getting direct messages, but that wasn't completely clear.

The pictures were of a Ukrainian model, with a very American name (along the line of Rose Smith, just not that).  One tell was the "person" being from California City, California.  That's a real place, with a population of 15,000, but foreigner scammers tend to mix things that make sense with what doesn't, like assuming that a city named after a state would be a conventional place to be from, without checking that it's really a very small town.  

Then even at a glance other parts of their profile didn't add up; an earlier feed post was about working as a runway model, and another related to being from Ukraine, both of which were not listed on the background.  The person was listed as a clothing designer at The Gap, linking to a Gap profile that had a few hundred likes, with one picture posted, so not "that" Gap.  A related website link was broken, pulling up a Chinese language notice that the site wasn't actively supported.

The rest is more about where I'm going with this; the profile was created in 2009, with those pictures uploaded in 2019 and 20.

Everyone already knows that there are a lot of fake accounts on all social media platforms, there to be used for farming likes, purchasing followers or friends, or for whatever other purposes.  For one to be that old it seems likely that the people using it, probably scammers, hacked into either an old and inactive account or took over an active one, which someone then gave up on using.  Posting stolen content years in advance related to laying a foundation for using the accounts.  They probably have hundreds set aside for such use, so they can initiate all sorts of related discussions and schemes, and then lose nothing when Facebook moderation shuts them down.

So far that's all pretty standard stuff.  When we see marketing content draw enthusiastic feedback from lots of profiles it looks like that's what this is, when people comment on how great a product looks, or they post linked mentions to notify their "friends" about it.

Once AI gets a little more sophisticated this will open up brand new forms of "sock puppeting," using secondary, alternate profiles to support points made in posts.  It seems so dodgy that it's hard to imagine tea vendors using this approach.  If someone is selling some odd drop-shipped product maybe they would go this route, paying for bot profiles to post lots discussion feedback and testimonials about how an off-brand shoe design or pair of pants is so unique and groundbreaking.  But for tea?  We aren't there yet.

I have tried teas from sources that seem to make a start towards that though, from people who know nothing about tea, using cut-and-pasted website marketing content, selling very moderate quality product versions, positioned somewhat randomly in relation to what the tea really is.  Once all that gets pushed a couple of steps forward the sites will be much cleaner, the text and image content much better, and packaging and vending forms more developed.  From day one it could include ample testimonial input, all made up, with social media posts populated with feedback from many satisfied customers.  

Bots could become much more adept at working backwards to navigate group rules; it wouldn't take much development for them to be better at that than most vendors now are.  You would think that a Darjeeling producer could write about issues or background related to Darjeeling, to post that as discussion, only implying that they can also sell related teas, but it's not like that now.  It's starting to be, but AI based bots could become better at that game than people in no time, maybe by the end of this year.

Luckily people aren't completely redundant, yet; we still need to function as consumers.  The bots can't develop their own financial resources and consumption demand requirements, or take personal satisfaction in online exchanges.  Once they do people will finally become obsolete.

The natural endpoint of social media groups and platforms

 

A thought just occurred to me that I'll share here, based on noticing yet another disturbing trend in following social media.  It's nothing as dire as AI interaction and fake profiles poisoning the general experience, instead something not troubling at all in comparison.  

It's this:  a lot of types of social media exchange seem to take up repeating, narrow forms, which I'm claiming here could relate to the groups heading towards their own natural end.  

It sounds like pure speculation based on nothing at all, right?  Exactly, but let's go there.

Is there even a need to describe how this relates to Facebook use, and groups?  Essentially all of the subjects I follow, and all the related groups, feel a bit played out.  People have experienced finding shared interest channels and new discussions within the last half dozen years or so, and then those groups evolved to go a bit quieter, or to drift off topic, with lowest common denominator sort of input ruining things, or ads, if moderation didn't adjust for that.  

Lots of what look like interesting news stories on Facebook are really just click-bait ads, where you need to keep scrolling to eventually find out that the title doesn't match the story conclusion.

I'll get back to more FB specifics after considering problematic issues with two other platforms.

Quora

For a platform / site like Quora it's a little more complicated.  That's a question and answer theme site, like an expanded version of the old Yahoo Answers.  Of course the first 10,000 obvious questions have already been asked and answered, in dozens of forms for most.  And monetization attempts have came and went, each negatively impacting the feel of the site more than they seemed to earn the site owners revenue.  

I'm really talking about something else here though, the feel, and natural shifts in forms of use.  Consider this example:

Sean Kernan is the most popular "Quoran," with over a billion content views, 10 million in the last month.  His current profile tagline is Quality over Quantity, and then oddly his last post is about Leonardo DiCaprio dating young women.  This could've been an insightful topic answer 10 to 15 years ago, but almost no one has now failed to already see mention of this subject in social media posts, if they are active anywhere at all.

All of that is fine; the point I'm slow to make here is that his formula for writing popular content has been noticed by many others, and broadly adopted.  It takes up a catchy theme that can be treated in a short space, like this, uses an eye-catching image to draw attention, makes one or two trivially insightful points, and closes with twist ending.  In this case that Reddit chart (mentioned) is the insightful content, and Sean also mentions that women much younger than him probably wouldn't share common perspective with him, and communication might be a problem.

The problem?  As more and more people adopt this form there is less and less to read in feed streams of popular answer posts.  The form gets repetitive, which many people must notice.  These just aren't substantial, informative answers, but they seem to represent the current norm, over subject experts talking about what most people don't already know.  In Sean's next post he answers a question about what he would wish for and it's to be able to fall asleep quickly.  Fine, quite practical, and as always well written, but this is how Quora goes now, not saying much, as Facebook group posts generally don't.  

At least the form is not infuriating, trading off catching interest by triggering contempt, a pervasive form of trolling across all social media now.  Here's an example of that I see from time to time (on Facebook):

Initially posts following this theme about mixed martial arts by comparing less daunting looking fighters with actors and such, but in this case this is just trolling.  Conor McGregor was a UFC champion at 145 and 155 pounds, and Brock Lesner was a heavyweight UFC champion, and stand-out college wrestler.  Conor couldn't beat Brock in any kind of combat competition at all, especially a street fight.  It's a "shitpost," funny because it's not true kind of theme.  Then it could be regarded as funny that most people commenting take it seriously, at least ostensibly.

  

These two forms are example of natural evolutions of communication / post forms that would eventually lead to disinterest in those platforms.

Isn't it clear why?  In one case trivial forms of light communication work to gain notice and viewership, but those would become boring.  In another example posts with no real content, just falsely communicated meaning, would eventually draw no reaction at all, after someone responds to dozens of such posts.

Reddit

Reddit is dying of another cause; let's look into that.

The Joe Rogan sub probably started out as a fan group, people talking about interesting guests or ideas covered on that podcast, but now it has evolved into a Joe Rogan hate group, or mostly related to trolling.  It has a million followers, so a good number, but the top 100 Reddit subs all have at least 11 million followers.

The first post that comes up on pulling up the group feed (just now) is about Akash Singh, a so-so comedian who is really the sidekick of Andrew Schulz.  I do find him a bit annoying, but it must be hard for comedians to carve out their own space in a crowded entertainment segment, so in a sense you can't fault him for being edgy in whatever ways he tries out.  Comments on this recent thread aren't about hating Joe, which are more typical, but all trash Akash instead:

He's not all that funny, as comedians go, but that's fine.  He works well as a podcast co-host, as a sort of straight guy, and some of what he says is insightful.  He seems like an ok guy.

In another clip from that podcast he commented about the social media trend of people randomly punching women, saying that at first they seemed to only be white women, so it was funny, but then it was concerning when applied to other races, since his wife might be involved.  It's a joke; it's supposed to be funny that he is insensitive.  It's not a good joke, but it would be hard to work out material in real time on a podcast, versus trying out jokes and then refining them.

This picture is more typical, Joe Rogan edited down to look much smaller than a guy who fights at 135 pounds (Dominick Cruz), so that Joe would be under 5 feet tall in this edit.  But the comments usually hate on him for his views, for selling out and becoming more conservative, or supporting nonsense for his own gain, like hosting Tucker Carlson.

In one sense I think Joe Rogan has to be free to have his own opinions, and to share them, and shouldn't be held to an unreasonable standard for being well-informed or mostly right, in his role.  In another sense he really has drifted to hold less and less considered and reasonable takes as he moves towards standard and often questionable right-wing thinking.  He should be called out and looked down upon for that, for being influential and losing a normal baseline.  He was essentially an anti-vaxxer during covid; some of those kinds of opinions actually matter, nudging people towards decisions based on low-quality random hearsay.

Not all of the Reddit subs are degrading into a shadow of their former scope and form, of course.  But it seems to me that Reddit gets worse, not better, and people being edgy to draw reactions increases while reasonable discussion drops off.  Whole subs (sub-Reddits or groups) can devolve as a result, and that happens all the time.  

Maybe a different example and problem is a better example for Reddit:  people often copy and paste old posts or posts from elsewhere to draw upvotes, a category of karma, the equivalent of Facebook likes.  If it's interesting content that's not so bad, but as often the same posts re-occur over and over.  Taken together tone or theme shifts in groups and repetitive and low effort posting degrade the Reddit experience.

Returning to the point

Trolling is also problematic, people saying negative things to get attention, and AI programs posting as a person, for whatever purposes.  Aggressive comments are normal.  

Beyond all that patterns of normal interaction seem to become routine, falling into these typical repetitive forms, which are less interesting and contain less actual content than earlier genuine discussion had.

Some of this relates to the same ground having been covered so many times before.  In travel groups, for example, people post the same general questions that others have been posting for years, so that it's hard to not just advise them to search for the other 100 threads covering the same theme.  That same thing comes up in tea groups, or any special interest groups I'm in.  Other groups are more ruined by those negative posting themes, people being edgy to draw a reaction, so that places centered on discussion of philosophy and Buddhism became unpleasant and impossible to follow years ago.

I've co-founded a popular Facebook tea group, and a small local area theme tea group, and created two Quora spaces, and all of them have gone a bit quiet.  Both individual groups and platforms seem to live out life-cycles.  It's possible for mechanisms and themes to trigger renewal, as can occur in an individual real-life life, but in general stagnation and decline set in.  

7600 followers and it's dead quiet; that's normal

Google Plus stopped changing to support renewal and that whole platform died.  Very early in social media history My Space got renewal all wrong and changes killed that platform.  For many years afterward I would go back and look at those two places, virtual ghost-towns, and I think My Space still exists now, while Google Plus doesn't, beyond as an archived subscriber access form.

Short videos / YouTube shorts / Tic-Toc / Instagram and Facebook reels / stories

The latest transition for many platforms is adding short videos as a main feature theme.  Typically an algorithm will emphasize this content, but it's already a popular form without being boosted.  

It's easy to consume 30 seconds or shorter video content.  One strange twist on Tik Tok and YouTube shorts is splitting the video to include a half section of someone playing with kinetic sand, or some other visually stimulating, low-information content.  It's seemingly there to help distract a child so their attention span can last for the full 30 seconds.

this article attributes this as starting on Tik Tok

I don't know what this short video theme means in relation to the rest of what I've been discussing.  Maybe reading in general is on the way out.  One might guess that many main platforms switching to the same content form drops out some distinctiveness among any of them, but then it may just be that it's a popular form now, and there is no other deeper meaning.

Conclusions

Maybe I'm all wrong about this, and platforms and groups don't evolve into repeating communication patterns leading to their decline.  Maybe they just experience a natural lifecycle separate from all that, based on whatever causes, maybe mostly natural transitions in interest.  This is something I've only been noticing and thinking through recently; maybe this take isn't one I'll stick with.

Some of it could be my own burn-out related to these repeating forms, and too much social media contact.  I'm doing a lot with real life lately but still manage to check in online a good bit, and the repetition of forms and content themes are both annoying.

One might expect that for me being a group founder and moderator, and for participating in expat forums a good bit over more than a decade, that these social media lifespan transitions in forms would be more familiar.  They definitely follow typical patterns, but I'm not sure that they have to.  

It's interesting how fast main communication channels for specific topics can switch, or at least could in the past.  Back around 2008-10 I was active in following IT service management process discussions, and those would switch the primary place they took place at least twice a year.  The same people would shift together.  I've been following online tea discussions for much longer, and only over the last 3 to 4 years have those seemed to stabilize, settling into Discord groups and Reddit being active and other places tapering off, with app based communities as a small exception.  

Broad platforms, as I've mostly been discussing, have longer lifespans.  Decline can take many years.