In the past, social media was like a digital regulars' table with a wanderlust function: you could find out what was going on with old school friends on Facebook. Instagram was the business card for your next road trip on a mountain bike. Linkedin was a source of inspiration for the career ladder. And Tiktok? Well, there were just funny clips - light, spontaneous, charming.

Cut. Today, there's not much left of this ideal platform world. Facebook? A digital meeting place for old-timers with a rage factor. Instagram? Now an endless loop of glossy life that doesn't exist. Linkedin? A self-help center for narcissistic business gurus. And TikTok? An abyss of superficiality, cut in 15 seconds.

Welcome to the chamber of horrors of digital society. 

And yes, we admit it: we at Ride can't avoid it either. Not because we want to. But because the industry demands it. Because while we strive for content with substance, many marketing departments in the cycling industry and tourism are primarily concerned with follower numbers and interaction rates. While traditional media use market research to try and determine reliable readership figures, the bare figures from social media platforms are nodded at without reflection.

The main thing is reach. The main thing is buzz. Anyone who doesn't post their content on social media is effectively non-existent. But what remains? Semi-silly comments under our posts that make you wish the internet had an emergency stop button. Female mountain bikers who show more skin than attitude for a little more visibility. And top athletes who flush themselves into the timeline with interchangeable and repetitive stories because that's just how it's done. To be honest, I'm increasingly disgusted by this social media world.

That's why we're seriously discussing taking Ride out of the whole circus. Not defiantly, but consistently. We make a high-quality, well thought-out medium. Why should we link it to platforms that have long since become part of a social problem? Because social media is no longer a harmless gimmick. It is an accelerant for polarization, vanity and loss of reality. And it's high time we pulled the plug. It would be important to get off these platforms to take away their significance. But no one is taking the first step. Not even us. We currently lack the courage to do so.