I’m not sure if social media is a symptom or the cause. The moment techbrodouches figured out they could manipulate people for money is the moment that things went bad. They embarked on a concerted campaign of making their wares indispensable, killing off the alternatives, so they could tighten the screws at our leisure.
Facebook is known to employ their algorithm to generate division and anger, for example. Because this gets them more ad clicks. Legacy media, already on shaky ground ethically speaking (“if it bleeds, it leads”) was thoroughly gutted by the need to feed the algorithm so they could get the paltry cents to Facebook’s and Google’s dollar. And the general sloth of people who would rather not do the work of finding a new place to go once the place they’re at has become evil, finishes the mess.
I remember I used to have friends in MMOs, webcomic forums, chat rooms, messenger apps. The real friends being ones we knew on multiple platforms.
I feel like something broke in the way we make connections and has been declining for decades and social media is just one of the newer symptoms.
I’m not sure if social media is a symptom or the cause. The moment techbrodouches figured out they could manipulate people for money is the moment that things went bad. They embarked on a concerted campaign of making their wares indispensable, killing off the alternatives, so they could tighten the screws at our leisure.
Facebook is known to employ their algorithm to generate division and anger, for example. Because this gets them more ad clicks. Legacy media, already on shaky ground ethically speaking (“if it bleeds, it leads”) was thoroughly gutted by the need to feed the algorithm so they could get the paltry cents to Facebook’s and Google’s dollar. And the general sloth of people who would rather not do the work of finding a new place to go once the place they’re at has become evil, finishes the mess.