Imagine a social network where only pleasantries flow endlessly: "Nice to meet you," "That's wonderful," "Looking forward to connecting." A space where no one speaks their truth, where only superficial goodwill is exchanged. Would that be a comfortable utopia? Or a suffocating dystopia?

The Everspring Thought Experiment

Everspring (Eternal Spring) — a concept for a social network where the fresh, tentative atmosphere of a newly launched service continues forever. Like a classroom frozen in the tension and politeness of an entrance ceremony, it's a space stuck in the stage before real relationships begin.

This thought experiment poses a crucial question: Why don't real social networks become spaces of pure, unadulterated affinity like this?

Friction is What Drives Social Media

The answer is clear: Conflict and friction are what make social media a living space.

The reason high-anonymity, self-presentation platforms don't become Everspring-like worlds of superficial harmony is that controversy and viral outrage generate engagement. Anonymity unleashes aggression, and the desire to express difference creates clashes of opinion. Affinity alone can't keep people engaged. Everspring is a stagnant, dead world. Real social media lives through friction.

Commercialized Affinity: The Stagnation of Instagram and Threads

What about social networks like Instagram and Threads, flooded with small-business advertising?

This represents a different kind of stagnation from Everspring. The pseudo-affinity of "So beautiful!" and "Supporting you!" is merely commercial greeting, mutual promotional networking. For business reasons, no one offers honest criticism. Self-presentation converges on templates like "mindful living," competing not through difference but through conformity. There's only the binary of buy/don't buy, and no real discussion emerges.

This is Everspring's affinity commercially solidified into a frictionless marketplace of stagnation.

The Third Calm: Bluesky's "Gentle Existence"

Yet Bluesky reveals a different dynamic.

Food photos, travel snapshots, pet pictures, complaints hardly worth sharing. No commercial intent, no conflict generated — just softness. This differs from both Everspring's superficial greetings and small-business promotional affinity.

What exists here is a culture of shared thinness of meaning. Deep significance is absent, but warmth is present. An affirmation of existence: "I am here." A space for gentle sharing of existence without conflict or commerce. A third calm — a place for the circulation of mellow memes, neither a battlefield of friction nor a commercial social hall.

Particularly intriguing is how this third calm actually functions in "Burusuko" (ブルスコ), the veteran Japanese Bluesky cluster. The community of early users who joined during the invite-only era has created something that is neither Everspring's superficial politeness, nor X's intense confrontation, nor Instagram's commercial mutual validation. There, a distinctive cultural sphere has formed where people share trivial daily events and respond to each other loosely. A space where the density of meaning is thin, but the warmth of relationships is genuinely present — that is Burusuko.

Conclusion: Three Phases of Social Media

This thought experiment reveals three phases of social media:

• The Space of Friction: A dynamic but exhausting world where conflict and controversy generate engagement

• The Space of Commercial Affinity: A stagnant marketplace where promotional greetings have become fixed

• The Space of Gentle Existence: A becalmed sharing space with thin meaning but present warmth

Everspring as a fictional social network cannot be realized. Why? Because pure affinity alone cannot satisfy humans. We seek friction, we seek commerce, or we seek meaningless "gentleness." A perfectly polite spring might actually be a nightmare no one desires.

However, the third calm exemplified by Burusuko can serve as a refuge for the modern social-media-weary individual. It's not a nightmare of eternally lingering spring, but a comfortable place where seasons flow gently.