Congratulations! You're on Free Republic which is . . . a form of social media.
But FR isn’t a popularity contest by how many friends you have or hown many likes you receive or how many tweeters you have following you.
Not in the contemporary sense.
Prior to the advent of modern social media (e.g. Facebook and Twitter), you had bulletin boards (BBS) and web forums wherein you could pick what sub-forums you wished to browse. You could read a post about dogs or cats or ferrets and at no point were you forced to participate in the forum. If you had an insight or helpful comment to make, you could. Likewise, if you wanted to be a idiot and post your negative views, you could. However, at no point were the contents of those forums posted to a public board. They weren’t editable by the reader population, and no one could force you to read a “status update” on the board unless you configured your client to do so. Participation was completely voluntary.
Now, as outlined in the article, Facebook pages are replete with inanities, stories about the person’s life they hope others will read about and be as enthralled with as they are/were. Updates are forced to “friends.” It’s like a shrine to one’s self and not informative to any particular thing outside of the narcissist posting. Same thing with Twitter. It’s all engineered to promote self-aggrandizement.
Free Republic is a membership forum in which participants read a news article (or vanity) and others are allows to post their comments. This is nothing like social media in the sense that Dr. Ablow is discussing and is more akin to the Elks Lodge or VFW Hall of older days where people sit around and discuss current events in a digital format.