In a sad story out of Los Angeles, CA, 22-year-old Patty Watts asked her friends if they think she’s “shadow-banned” on several platforms, when in reality, she’s just bad at social media.
“It’s so odd. My tweets are only getting five to ten likes when they’re actually super insightful and fresh,” said Watts, who self-identifies as a micro-influencer. The tweets in question include a photo of a bird with the caption “mood vibe” and the inexplicable sentence, “snaps if you like milk!”
Sources confirm that when the latter tweet did not perform well, Watts did not revisit her twitter strategy nor question whether she was cut out for the craft, opting instead to tweet it again, this time in all caps: “SNAPS IF YOU LIKE MILK!”
When her TikTok of a poorly rehearsed dance to the non-trending song “Get Low” by FloRida did not take off, Watts came to a solemn conclusion.
“I must be shadow banned,” she said, even though this theory assumes she is making content relevant enough to be censored.
Watts even joined a Facebook page dedicated to creators who felt their work was being silenced by Big Tech but did not put two and two together when she realized many of them were grassroots organizers and activists.
One member posted about how they were worried a mutual aid fundraiser on TikTok had been shadow-banned, and Watts commented, “Totally know what that’s like. Barely anyone saw my makeup routine video and the only comment said, ‘bad makeup.’ They’re silencing us!”
“Sure, I know that Patty’s videos are terrible,” said Watts’ childhood friend, Maxine Ng. “But it’s much easier to agree that she’s being ‘shadow-banned’ than it would be to explain why no one cares about her lasagna recipe. Who puts potatoes in lasagna?”
Dr. Maya Kinsley at the UCLA Institute for Online Communities confirmed that the algorithm of each platform does privilege certain content. “But the Watts kid?” Dr. Kinsley continued, “Yeah, her stuff is just dog shit.”
At press time, Patty confirmed she would not let the poor performance of most of her content get her down, even though she absolutely should and everyone is begging her to do exactly that.
