I call social media “tobacco companies of the mind.”
All of it is toxic. All of it is manipulative. It’s all designed to addict you (“maximizing engagement” is code for addiction) to feed you ads and propaganda.
It destroys relationships, ruins people’s attention spans, and eats people’s time. It’d also the main driver of political hyper-polarization because that’s what maximizes engagement.
In the end it leaves nothing to show for itself. Books, movies, even radio and TV leave behind a cultural legacy. Social media leaves nothing because there is nothing worth saving. It’s barely even worthy of being called media.
I’ve watched it evolve since MySpace and over time it has only become less intelligent, more polarizing, less actually social, and more addicting.
Burn it all down.
Edit: TikTok seems like it’s currently the pinnacle of hyper-addictive trash. I predict the next iteration beyond TikTok will drop the pretense of social entirely and just use AI to generate personalized streams of addictive filler. It’ll be the mental equivalent of the tub or “Flaturin” the idiots eat on Idiocracy. Just addictive vapor to act as a medium for ad delivery. YouTube is kinda already heading this way.
All of it is toxic. All of it is manipulative. It’s all designed to addict you (“maximizing engagement” is code for addiction) to feed you ads and propaganda.
It destroys relationships, ruins people’s attention spans, and eats people’s time. It’d also the main driver of political hyper-polarization because that’s what maximizes engagement.
In the end it leaves nothing to show for itself. Books, movies, even radio and TV leave behind a cultural legacy. Social media leaves nothing because there is nothing worth saving. It’s barely even worthy of being called media.
I’ve watched it evolve since MySpace and over time it has only become less intelligent, more polarizing, less actually social, and more addicting.
Burn it all down.
Edit: TikTok seems like it’s currently the pinnacle of hyper-addictive trash. I predict the next iteration beyond TikTok will drop the pretense of social entirely and just use AI to generate personalized streams of addictive filler. It’ll be the mental equivalent of the tub or “Flaturin” the idiots eat on Idiocracy. Just addictive vapor to act as a medium for ad delivery. YouTube is kinda already heading this way.