Scrolling is over

And Apple just announced what's next

Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.

For the best experience, read this in 3D glasses. —Kate

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Jason Parham came into the ICYMI studio to chat “international bestselling author” Quan Millz and why, exactly, people read him.

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Bluesky, once lauded as the new Twitter for people who couldn’t stomach still using Twitter, is losing steam. The platform has earned a reputation as an echo-chamber for left-leaning scolds, and its daily like count is dropping. Threads, Meta’s attempt to capture former Twitter users, has yet to generate a cultural moment and, like Substack Notes, has developed its own kind of insular culture that is generally cringe and difficult to engage with.

Threads is a mecca of Millennial brain rot

Twitter, meanwhile, has continuously shed users since Elon Musk bought it in 2022 and is (anecdotally) full of porn. Instagram and Facebook are still chugging along, of course, but since I deleted my Facebook earlier this year, Instagram has started to feel like a bit of a chore.

I hardly scroll the main Instagram feed at all anymore, for the same reason that people were complaining about it three years ago. It’s just influencers and people talking like influencers; everything is presented like an advertisement or marketing and it’s just so uninteresting. These days, I hop on to Instagram, respond to DMs, click through a few Stories, click around my own Stories and Grid for my daily exercise of imagining what people think about me, and then leave.

This seems like the inevitable result of a bunch of apps that have spent the past five years trying to to be more like each other, rather than trying to figure out how to do anything new. You have two choices: TikTok or Worse TikTok. And the Twitter clones were just that: Dupes of a platform founded in 2006 that are now wondering why they aren’t making waves in 2025.

No beloved platform has ever been replicated. Often, their demise signals the beginning of a new era of the internet, and we’re currently in a sort of digital conclave for what that is. If interacting with social media through scrolling goes the way of Twitter, what’s next?

@carmensandiego666The next phase of social media will look a lot different. Are we ready for it 😬?? #marketing #socialmediamanager #algorithm #socialmediacontent #contentstrategy

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I think Apple may have just announced the answer.