The mind rotting, infuriating miasma of social platforms
The mind rotting, infuriating miasma of social platforms
I know there's a bit of disconnect by me writing this on an actual social platform, but it's Beehaw - so it's cool.
Lately I've been getting away from Facebook again. I have friends and family on there who are sharing less than savory thoughts. Thoughts of fear, uncertainty, doubt, and even worse: the fettid stench of hatred. I went on there and decided to try and rationalize through status updates, but found myself becoming more frustrated, more angry myself.
I took a break from it the last couple of days and I feel better now. I've shared a couple of articles, but only articles of interests within tech and creativity. I felt like I'm landing a lil bit.
But now I made the mistake of accidentally pressing a notification on my phone... from Twitter (and no, I refuse to call if "X").
I was lead right to a post where some of my countrymen were snarling at a news article where some politicians were praising certain Palestinians who were fighting for their freedom from oppression and apartheid. The thread was full of videos from certain terrorist groups in Palestine unrelated to the actual people being praised, along with irrelevant subjects about battery manufacturing and green energy.
I'd just like to say that despite the crazy things my friends and family have said, even the crazy things I've said, does not have the same pure hatred that I read from that thread. I felt my anxiety bluster up as I mustered the gumption to reply, stating that I wondered why they were sharing videos of people who had suffered apartheid and persecution and blatantly ignoring what the state of Israel has been doing.
I'm now considering just deleting Twitter altogether, as I really don't use it that much. I used it only for a couple of choice accounts from good people who say wholesome things, but I've noticed that their updates don't show up anymore. I feel like Musk is monetising all the worst parts of human behaviour and that scares the ever loving crap out of me.
Say what you will about Facebook, and I'm very critical of Meta and Zuckerberg myself, but doesn't Zuckerberg seem a tad more... adjusted? Even though Facebook has been caught funneling people into extremist echo chambers I don't think I've ever seen anything as bad as what I'm seeing on Twitter right now.
I have friends and family who swear that social platforms in them selves is the source of the toxicity that is found on them, but as we can see on certain federated platforms (with strict CoC's of course) that isn't always the case.
Oh sure, we can talk about dark design patterns, micro dopamine feeding through doom scrolling and attention fishing notifications until the cows come home, but I think we all know that the internet - and by extension social platforms - is a big old mirror we hold up to ourselves.
It's like a reflection into our very minds and we don't like what we're seeing. We scream into the mirror at some imaginary antagonist, a sick and twisted being that stares back in disgust, but all we really are seeing is the reflection of ourselves.
Anyways, no point to all this. Just wanted to get that off my chest. I hope you are doing well and that you are treating yourself kindly.
Thanks for reading.
The thing about Twitter/X is that the algorithm has always been tailored to get the most interactions, which very typically leads it to feed you things that get you angry. I can’t imagine what it’s like post-musk ownership.
Facebook & Reddit are the same. I’ve never really used Instagram or TikTok so can’t really vouch for either of those.
I’ve seen people I’ve known since childhood whom I always thought were really lovely post really xenophobic content. I’ve watched others fall into the traps of “real social dynamics” and the likes of whatever crap Jordan Peterson was spewing at the time. Heck, I’ve even seen people whom have always been quite chill “go with the flow” types try to start arguments on these platforms.
I realised that a lot of things are posted very deliberately to enrage you. Depending on who posted it, they could also be attempting to control the way you think, too. Getting people angry is the best way to coerce them into compliance.
If you find yourself getting angry at something you’ve seen on social media, think about why that might have posted in the first place. I generally find that the angrier people are in the comments the more likely it was posted to influence how you think about the subject.
When I still used fb I was always worked up about a thing or another. It completely ruined the relation I had with some close family and the damage it has done to my parents' generation and a lot of my generation is just heartbreaking. It's like digital crack.
Oh, the last paragraph hits hard. I've gone the hardcore route and deleted all those apps and just use lemmy as social media - and it's bad enough here. I realized how much of a smartass I am myself. How often I reply to stuff I could just leave alone. So I just try and uphold my self-imposed quality standards of writing: if it doesn't add positive quality to the discussion just don't add it.
And the family and friend thing? I guess I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it, as with leaving certain sites I lost contact with a lot of people. It was a very conscious and also tough thing from my side to not connect to anyone from the real world through this channel. But then, a lot of drama just has disappeared from my life. I don't really need to know what all those people are doing, have time to focus what I want to do instead - because lately, I have scrolled so much and done so little and it is leaving me unsatisfied. Also, the constant input from online what one could be doing and the pressure to share the results with others was leaving me stressed out.
Now as my instance is small and slow I'm through new posts and comments quickly and sometimes think about stuff for a day or two before responding to someone. It's a much better quality of discussion and matches my real life speed of life much better.
So I just try and uphold my self-imposed quality standards of writing: if it doesn’t add positive quality to the discussion just don’t add it.
I agree. It's better to give a positive reply, make someone feel good about themselves or lend a sympathetic ear than it is to get into an argument. Downside is that there are plenty of discussions where I would like to weigh in, but can't think of a good way to do so without making matters worse. I'm not always the best with words and it does tend to end with me writing a long reply but hitting cancel at the last moment.
Thing is, in the end I just want people to be happy to participate and to feel that their contributions are valued. And hopefully that the positive attitude rubs off and it'll get passed on to others.
All the commercial social networks (those based on adds) thrive on anger. As anger drives engagement, while happiness does not. Because happy people don't doom scroll and angry reply.
Also, people who have shit opinions of the world don't have people to yell at in real life as that shit gets old real fast and people stop being in the same room as them. I think every family has that relative...
So social media gives them the avenue to scream at the world that people can't/won't walk away from.
Yea. It’s mirror but one of those bendy ones at a amusement park and with a monochrome tint too , so the image it throws back is one of its own making as much as it is of us. Nature v Nurture basically.
That being said, I’m pretty sure any given online space I’ve seen has always struggled with civility unless it was a community very focused on something relatively objective in the real world.
So I think there’s something to be said against the human capacity to congregate in the very open and free form structures of the internet. Much of our social feedback mechanisms are just taken away.
I’m pretty sure any given online space I’ve seen has always struggled with civility unless it was a community very focused on something relatively objective in the real world.
Yep. There have been trolls sice the days of BBS.
For the same reason, angry people want attention, even if it is negative.
The difference between modern social media and old school forums is that on forums, the discussions are the important thing and there was usually a mod who was passionate about keeping things on topic and worked to rein in the trolls.
Where as, as I said in the first comment, on social media engagement/serving adds is the driving goal. Add in the fact that the sheer scale of things like fb and twitter make moderation basically impossible, so in time the angry troll win out.
Even though Facebook has been caught funneling people into extremist echo chambers I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as bad as what I’m seeing on Twitter right now.
Maybe you haven't, but mileage really, really varies on this. Facebook has literally been used to actively incite genocide against ethnic minorities. Not just once, but for years on end despite being alerted many times to what was going on.
Disturbingly, Zuckerberg's excuse was essentially that they were too cheap to hire moderators who spoke the language of the genocidaires, and too greedy to forgo a presence in those countries.
When the Rohingya Genocide was investigated by the International Criminal Court, Facebook added insult to injury by actively impeding the investigation.
It's something I've been noticing as well. Ad- driven profit means exposure above all, which results in more provocative contents resulting in more engagement, positive or not...
There will be a time we look back at early 21st century's internet and listen from the younger generations "how could anyone do this?". In fact, lots of non-internet issues too, but...
I'm tired. I used to believe that more information always meant good and that free access for everyone will "free humanity from ignorance", as the common narrative from 1990s went. Now? I am tired. I am tired arguing with my older relatives about something they read from 'yet another obviously biased source'. I am tired of being called names and being threatened for trying to just l talk. I am tired of having my name and my face (as a naive social media user in 2000s) being plastered all over the place and have strangers come and say "why can't you go back to $place, $racist_word". I am tired of believing. It's like people are, as Zuckerberg says, dumb fucks. Even proud of it.
But yet, I don't want it to end this way.
It's not that people are dumb, but that they're numb. People seek easy answers to their problems when they can't handle reality.
Yesterday I was sitting at a bar while this African dude blamed all of Africa's ills on "white people". Dude didn't know about the IMF loans, belt and road initiative and thought Oamar Gedaffi would have saved Africa from the clutches of dirty, old white Europe, like he could have paid for everything and become the hero Africa needed - you know, idolatry. I just sat there and took it, more or less, because he was not what we'd call an intellectual.
If you do however sit and talk with African intellectuals it's clear it's more complex than that. Economic and judicial precedence, African feudalism, corrupt governments making deals with the west and China, misappropriating loans and pushing the cost over to the people in the form of austerity measures which yields no taxes for infrastructure and whatever taxes they do collect partly goes to the default, partly into the pockets of the corrupt officials and their lackeys. Add to that having to sell raw resources at cost as a result of said defaulting, yielding literally no profit for any companies or any raise in median wage and then turning around and going "evil westerners, evil white people".
You sort of feel bad in each instance, because the former is aggressive and downright disrespectful against the country they are in because of victim mentality being part and parcel of African propaganda, and the latter is just emotionally worn down because they always have to argue with the former and correct other westerners who are either subverted or overt racists, torn between two polls like a horse ripping them apart.
In both cases I just let them bend my ears. I don't accept that from my family though, because they are not only dumb, numb and zealous, but privileged.
At the same time, they get fed with propaganda, FUD and disinformation that they swallow every day - because their easy easy to all of their ills is nationalism and Jesus and they will harp on about how Hamas and Palestine are one and the same, because they also pine for the days of theocracy, what with being under educated and frustrated out of their gourd about things they can't or rather won't understand.
They all bury their heads in the sand and scream their cries of agony, like confused plants that subsist off misery. The world that we built is literally insane and it drains every last one of us.
I guess you're right. I had a similar experience, but from the opposite perspective. There was a prominent case of racist attacks in my area and I was trying to talk about it, to my group of friends nonetheless.
I had to accept that other people won't share the same exact values as myself, even if I believed it was the right cause. They were the 3rd party, the disengaged and occupied with their own life businesses. Its not that I "abandoned my beliefs", but learn to identify proper audience and tone it down when it wasn't the case.
It's the modern life and it's complexity I'm afraid. Salaries, taxes, credits, insurances, permits, licenses, etc - it's too much to handle all at once. Some choose to focus on what they can afford to with what little remains of their energy after an exhausting work shift. I can't really blame the individuals caught in this.
I don’t really have anything else to add, but just want to say thank you for such an accurate and on-point post.
There are pros and cons to social media. Can we at least try to keep it not hateful?