is social media a net negative for humanity? \ stacker news ~FiresidePhilosophy

is social media a net negative for humanity?

1796 sats \ 5 comments \ @stack_harder 7 Oct FiresidePhilosophy

I try to avoid the trap of thinking things were better in the past, but I can't help but think they were FAR better before Instagram and ticktok specifically.

we had apps, we had smartphones, we had basically all the same convenience level. people read blogs, people watched stuff on youtube, it was fine, people weren't in a constant state of anxiety. facebook was ok, it wasn't a fucking conspiracy polarizing cesspit of ads and stuff , you could talk to friends, you saw their stuff on your feed, it was basically fine, not great, but ok.

then came insta and, honestly, it just brings out the worst in people, a constant need to flex and pander, show off a fake life. the rise of thots doing nothing, aspiring to be nothing, just showing some tit and letting the simps do the rest. from then on, every meal or experience became fodder for insta. now it's just a simp feeder for OF and other trash.

especially what i hate about insta is it forces people to compare themselves and comparison IS the theft of joy. just gets young people into a warped reality out of the gate.

then there's tiktok which i probably hate maybe as much as insta because it has just obliterated the human attention span.

maybe i only focus on the bad and I'm not seeing the good content, but i don't know man.

my kids friend was showing her some shittoks the other day and it was like watching some adah-addled monkey hitting one 30 second clip after the next. it was literally scary. like how in lab experiments that give mice a little hit of sugar when they press a button and they just orgasm themselves to death.

what do you guys think? personally, i think if insta and tiktok just went away like magic, life would be objectively net positive and much better, compared to say, youtube, where i believe life would be worse without it.

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32 sats \ 1 reply \ @ZezzebbulTheMysterious 7 Oct

Social media sucks. Yes it’s probably a large part of the downfall of society.

Delete accounts and live a good life.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @stack_harder OP 8 Oct

i keep facebook as there are expat groups i am in and get news and recommendations which are very useful and then just use nostr for some hardcore bitcoin talk lol

32 sats \ 1 reply \ @User21000000 7 Oct

I think you can’t put that genie back in the bottle. If they went away someone would create it. I don’t like YouTube for doing shorts wrecking a good thing

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @stack_harder OP 7 Oct

it's true, we're stuck with it and all the ramifications. it does suck that youtube did shorts, but they saw the addicting power of tiktok and naturally couldn't help themselves

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SwearyDoctor 7 Oct

no.

neither social media nor smartphones are; the control of major social media by multinational corporations, in service of the US government, is. That's what optimizes them for engagement, that's what controls, blocks, throttles, and censors content to fit US government and multinational corporation interests and that's what nudges users to silly dance videos as a way to draw attention away from everyhing that's going on.

Like with actual drugs, the governments may say that they have to "regulate and control" them to "save the children", but that's been facade in both; the US government has been the world's largest drug dealer and a major partner in drug cartels worldwide. (just as a case in point, decades of "trying to control the poppy growth in Afghanistan" were "unsuccesful" while the US controled it, while after US retreat the production plummeted to almost nothing). The US is also the largest social media sedation dealer.

(It doesn't 100% work; the decentral upload, a core of the business model, stuff that's not sedative still gets through, which is why they're all scremaing for censorship and control now; because as horrible as the algorithms are, stuff still gets through).

Social media isn't a problem per se. With more social media like SN and nostr, and more corporate social media suicide through overt censorship and users fleeing, you'll see the induced adhd decline.