558 The Age of Social Media Is Ending
It’s over. Facebook is in decline, Twitter in chaos. Mark Zuckerberg’s empire has lost hundreds of billions of dollars in value and laid off 11,000 people, with its ad business in peril and its metaverse fantasy in irons. Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has caused advertisers to pull spending and power users to shun the platform (or at least to tweet a lot about doing so). It’s never felt more plausible that the age of social media might end—and soon.
它已经结束了。Facebook正在衰落，Twitter陷入混乱。马克-扎克伯格的帝国已经损失了数千亿美元的价值，并解雇了1.1万人，其广告业务岌岌可危，其元宇宙幻想也被打入冷宫。埃隆-马斯克(Elon Musk)对推特的收购导致广告商撤资，强大的用户回避该平台（或至少在推特上大谈特谈）。社交媒体时代可能会结束，而且很快就会结束，这种感觉从未像现在这样合理。
peril
/ˈperəl/，严重危险，名词，英英释义为：serious danger
例句：
The country's economy is now in grave peril.
现在，这个国家的经济陷入了严重危机。
plausible
/ˈplɔːzəbl/，（借口或解释）有道理的；可信的，形容词，英英释义为：(of an excuse or explanation ) reasonable and likely to be true
例句：
Her story sounded perfectly plausible.
她的说辞听起来言之有理。
Now that we’ve washed up on this unexpected shore, we can look back at the shipwreck that left us here with fresh eyes. Perhaps we can find some relief: Social media was never a natural way to work, play, and socialize, though it did become second nature. The practice evolved via a weird mutation, one so subtle that it was difficult to spot happening in the moment.
现在我们被冲到了这个意外的岸边，我们可以用新的眼光来审视把我们留在这里的那艘沉船。也许我们可以找到一些解脱。社交媒体从来都不是工作、娱乐和社交的自然方式，尽管它确实成为了习惯。这种做法是通过一种奇怪的突变而演变的，这种突变是如此微妙，以至于当下很难发现它的发生。
second nature
第二天性；习性，英英释义为：something that you do very easily and naturally, because it is part of your character or you have done it so many times
例句：
Observation with me is second nature.
观察能力是我的第二天性。
The shift began 20 years ago or so, when networked computers became sufficiently ubiquitous that people began using them to build and manage relationships. Social networking had its problems—collecting friends instead of, well, being friendly with them, for example—but they were modest compared with what followed. Slowly and without fanfare, around the end of the aughts, social media took its place. The change was almost invisible, but it had enormous consequences. Instead of facilitating the modest use of existing connections—largely for offline life (to organize a birthday party, say)—social software turned those connections into a latent broadcast channel. All at once, billions of people saw themselves as celebrities, pundits, and tastemakers.
这一转变始于20年前左右，当时联网的计算机变得非常普遍，人们开始使用它们来建立和管理关系。社交网络有它的问题--例如，收集朋友而不是与他们友好相处--但与随后发生的事情相比，它们是温和的。慢慢地，在没有大张旗鼓的情况下，在上世纪80年代末，社交媒体取代了它的位置。这种变化几乎是看不见的，但它产生了巨大的影响。社交软件将这些联系变成了一个潜在的广播渠道，而不是促进对现有联系的适度使用--主要是用于线下生活（比如组织一个生日聚会）。一下子，数十亿人把自己看作是名人、专家和时尚人士。
fanfare
/ˈfænfeə(r)/，（为庆祝而在媒体上的）喧耀，名词，英英释义为：a large amount of activity and discussion on television, in newspapers, etc. to celebrate sb/sth
例句：
The product was launched amid much fanfare worldwide.
这个产品在世界各地隆重推出。
A global broadcast network where anyone can say anything to anyone else as often as possible, and where such people have come to think they deserve such a capacity, or even that withholding it amounts to censorship or suppression—that’s just a terrible idea from the outset. And it’s a terrible idea that is entirely and completely bound up with the concept of social media itself: systems erected and used exclusively to deliver an endless stream of content.
在一个全球广播网络中，任何人都可以尽可能频繁地对其他人说任何话，而且这些人都认为他们应该有这样的能力，甚至认为扣留这种能力相当于审查或压制--这从一开始就是一个可怕的想法。而且这个可怕的想法完全和社交媒体本身的概念联系在一起：建立系统并专门用于提供无尽的内容流。
at/from the outset (of sth)
从开始，英英释义为：at/from the beginning of sth
例句：
I made it clear right from the outset that I disapproved.
从一开始我就明确地说我不赞成。
But now, perhaps, it can also end. The possible downfall of Facebook and Twitter (and others) is an opportunity—not to shift to some equivalent platform, but to embrace their ruination, something previously unthinkable.
但现在，也许，它也可以结束。Facebook和Twitter（以及其他）可能的衰落是一个机会--不是转向一些其他类似平台，而是接受它们的毁灭，这在以前是不可想象的。
A long time ago, many social networks walked the Earth. Six Degrees launched in 1997, named after a Pulitzer-nominated play based on a psychological experiment. It shut down soon after the dot-com crash of 2000—the world wasn’t ready yet. Friendster arose from its ashes in 2002, followed by MySpace and LinkedIn the next year, then Hi5 and Facebook in 2004, the latter for students at select colleges and universities. That year also saw the arrival of Orkut, made and operated by Google. Bebo launched in 2005; eventually both AOL and Amazon would own it. Google Buzz and Google+ were born and then killed. You’ve probably never heard of some of these, but before Facebook was everywhere, many of these services were immensely popular.
很久以前，许多社交网络在地球上行走。六度 "于1997年推出，以普利策奖提名的一部基于心理学实验的戏剧命名。它在2000年互联网崩溃后不久就关闭了--世界还没有准备好。2002年，社交网站Friendster从它的灰烬中诞生，第二年是MySpace和LinkedIn，然后是2004年的Hi5和Facebook，后者是针对特定学院和大学的学生。这一年还看到了由谷歌制造和运营的Orkut的到来。Bebo于2005年推出；最终AOL和亚马逊都将拥有它。Google Buzz和Google+诞生，然后被扼杀。你可能从来没有听说过其中的一些，但是在Facebook普及之前，这些服务中有许多是非常受欢迎的。
Content-sharing sites also acted as de facto social networks, allowing people to see material posted mostly by people they knew or knew of, rather than from across the entire world. Flickr, the photo-sharing site, was one; YouTube—once seen as Flickr for video—was another. Blogs (and bloglike services, such as Tumblr) raced alongside them, hosting “musings” seen by few and engaged by fewer. In 2008, the Dutch media theorist Geert Lovink published a book about blogs and social networks whose title summarized their average reach: Zero Comments.
内容共享网站也充当了事实上的社交网络，使人们能够看到主要由他们认识或了解的人发布的材料，而不是来自整个世界。照片共享网站Flickr是其中之一；YouTub--曾被视为视频的Flickr--是另一个。博客（和类似博客的服务，如Tumblr）与它们并驾齐驱，主办 "杂谈 "的人很少，参与的人更少。2008年，荷兰媒体理论家Geert Lovink出版了一本关于博客和社交网络的书，书名概括了它们的平均影响力：《零评论》。
Today, people refer to all of these services and more as “social media,” a name so familiar that it has ceased to bear meaning. But two decades ago, that term didn’t exist. Many of these sites framed themselves as a part of a “web 2.0” revolution in “user-generated content,” offering easy-to-use, easily adopted tools on websites and then mobile apps. They were built for creating and sharing “content,” a term that had previously meant “satisfied” when pronounced differently. But at the time, and for years, these offerings were framed as social networks or, more often, social-network services. So many SNSes proliferated, a joke acronym arose: YASN, or “yet another social network.” These things were everywhere, like dandelions in springtime.
今天，人们把所有这些服务和更多的服务称为 "社会媒体"，这个名字如此熟悉，以至于它不再有意义了。但在20年前，这个词还不存在。这些网站中的许多都把自己定位为 "用户生成内容 "的 "网络2.0 "革命的一部分，在网站和移动应用程序上提供易于使用、易于采纳的工具。它们是为创造和分享 "内容 "而建立的，这个词以前的意思是 "满意"，但发音不同。但在当时，以及多年来，这些产品被框定为社交网络，或更常见的是社交网络服务。如此多的SNS激增，出现了一个笑话式的缩写。YASN，或 "又一个社交网络"。这些东西无处不在，就像春天里的蒲公英。
As the original name suggested, social networking involved connecting, not publishing. By connecting your personal network of trusted contacts (or “strong ties,” as sociologists call them) to others’ such networks (via “weak ties”), you could surface a larger network of trusted contacts. LinkedIn promised to make job searching and business networking possible by traversing the connections of your connections. Friendster did so for personal relationships, Facebook for college mates, and so on. The whole idea of social networks was networking: building or deepening relationships, mostly with people you knew. How and why that deepening happened was largely left to the users to decide.
正如最初的名字所暗示的，社交网络涉及连接，而不是发布。通过将你的个人可信联系人网络（或社会学家称之为 "强关系"）与其他人的此类网络（通过 "弱关系"）相连接，你可以浮现出一个更大的可信联系人网络。LinkedIn承诺，通过穿越你的关系人的连接，使求职和商业网络成为可能。Friendster对个人关系如此，Facebook对大学同学如此，等等。社交网络的整个理念是建立网络：建立或深化关系，主要是与你认识的人。如何以及为何加深关系，主要由用户自己决定。
From：The Atlantic
中文翻译源于机翻
总结
peril [n] 严重危险
plausible [adj]（借口或解释）有道理的；可信的
second nature 第二天性；习性
fanfare [n]（为庆祝而在媒体上的）喧耀
at/from the outset (of sth) 从开始