I think maybe it's from spam, and social media changing social protocol. It used to be rude to ignore others. But that was when the world was small.

Then everyone got spammed. They got flooded with junk, and learned to ignore it. Ignoring email was then normal, if it was spam.

Then social media changed relationships to "follows", where you do your own thing and people watch you, and you watch them, but you're not really connected.

This also increased people's friend count from a handful to thousands. Attention became much more scarce, and people are more selective of what they spend it on.

Put it all together, and people can view all messages now as spam. They're distanced behind a screen, with hundreds of people interacting with them, so they only give attention to what feels best.

If your message doesn't feel intensely rewarding to respond to, then you're just spam. You're not a person, your message is just another piece of media vying for their attention.

The result is, nobody matters anymore. Nobody really connects or cares. Attention goes to the most shallowly exciting. Everything is spam.

Talking online used to feel more fulfilling. Text messages had weight. Now there's way more people, but it's all hollow. Unless you're the most popular, most exciting, people can skip right over you.