Let's talk social media... To me, social media is the downfall of society today. "Influencers" online do nothing but lost fake photos, which leads to envy and depression amongst teens and young people. It's all fake. Everyone wants to put on their best show to be an influencer, and when people can't measure up, or when they realize they can't take that vacation of a life time like their friend, they get depressed and angry. On Twitter, especially Twitter politics, people are putting these statements out, in limited characters, and it's just there. Twitter is not a way to communicate. You can't have a conversation. And because of the character limit, you're essentially forced to have a click bait headline, or something controversial. This leads to hate and rage. Snapchat is a whole other monster. I won't even go there. Pictures that "disappear"? Yeah, let's sell that to our children.. And now that all these companies have billions, they're hiring minds to ensure that you'll keep using them. Call me old school, but I think social media is killing us all. Do yourself a favor and stay away. Let's be people again, as evolution intended. Let's have more meaningful conversation. Let's get outside and do some hard work. Let's grow things. Let's build something with our kids. Show them how building something today can bring enjoyment for an entire lifetime, and how a post on social media is forgotten in a day.
so you are specifically talking about the US and not in general? but social media is not only used in the US...
I get the sentiment, there's a lot of crap on social media...especially in our current outrage culture that we have going on. However, we don't see what happens to George Floyd without social media, we don't see what happens to Ahmed Aubrey without social media, we don't hear about a lot of injustices without social media. But, it's not just injustices, we have more access to points of views (good and bad) than we ever have had...that's not a bad thing. Sure, we have to filter through a lot of crap to find what we are looking for, but it's better than being presented one side and not really getting a chance to find that other side. As far as hate being able to spread faster...sure...but, that hate would be there with or without social media. The KKK managed to rise without social media, as Al Queda, Stalin, Hitler, and many other dictators and terrorist groups. I'd say that Social Media is helping us identify those groups/people faster and allow us to take action before something extremely bad happens. I do get the argument against social media, but i think we're still in a period of adjustment to new technology. Once everyone sort of figures out the best ways to utilize these technologies, things will settle down a bit. By that, I mean, when outrage culture begins to die down a bit.
I think people are losing the ability to differentiate between performative and substantative communication, and twitter with a large dose of facebook are the two worst for that. And to give an example of that is black lives matter vs all lives matter, on the basis of substance it's really only the communists and white supremacists that disagree with either, but as a performative matter, it ended up turning into a sideshow that really meant i belong to group A or B. And why i think twitter is the worst is the format makes it impossible for the topic to be substantative, so it's literally training people's brains to shortcut all meaning, like living in a world where everything you speak is buzzwords, and since we think in terms of language, we end up thinking in those terms.
This is an excellent counter post, to what I believe is an honest conversation that we should be having. As is @RayRay10 's. I can respond better tonight, when not at work. I appreciate the well thought out response.
I’ve heard several people I know say they’ve delegates their Facebook accounts. I guess it’s the Wild West on FB. I don’t use it, personally. I only recently started using Twitter. I didn’t know there were two ‘T’s so I couldn’t get it to work. I don’t tweet or retweet. This forum is as far as I go with putting out my political views.
ok, so in general. But is society really as a whole going “down”? The social media medium has done good also, when it’s used to spread good information and link to more extensive in depth info for example. It’s a way for many to gain more knowledge and information. That’s extremely valuable in my book. To the point where the harm you mentioned (and there is) isn’t enough imo to devalue it. we are learning. Fake and misinformation should be labeled and flagged. I hope there are client level tools to filter out what you don’t want - rated G for kids for example. Bots and spam should be shutdown faster. Promotion and ads should be clearly labeled as such. Rumors control? And so on... As we get better at reducing the downside of social media, the medium can become a huge tool for advancement of society.
I think if you live in an alternate reality you create through this mini supercomputer you hold in your hand, your actual reality will be pretty crappy.
the brain active attention span is limited - buzz word level. Social media medium exposes that human limitation. A cure is to become aware of it. Mindfulness is a great tool against buzz level pick up and reaction. Mindfulness itself spread due to social media attention on it as a powerful tool. At the end of the day, you can’t simply tell people to put it down, walk away... but you can give them more tool to handle it in a better way and for their benefit.
depends on how powerful that super computer is we may be in a simulation ourselves.... wait, maybe that's why it's so crappy
I would be curious if right wing "hate twitter, like facebook" and left wing "like twitter/hate facebook". I like twitter. Especially great for sports news and fantasy football. Lots of political news and commentary as well. While some dislike the 140 character (now actually 280 characters) limit, I also think it partly is a benefit because it drives people to get to their point. You can always string tweets if needed. And also link to a longer document if needed. Which also is a benefit... being able to get a quick summary and then read the attached or linked document when convenient. One other benefit of twitter is the sheer immediacy of it. Even schools use twitter to communicate weather closings, sports event changes, etc. Law enforcement uses to alert people to emergencies, dangerous situations, etc. And the immediacy helps with all important trade or other player move news.
The whole fake news part of social media concerns me a great deal. I don't think there is any way to combat it. Once you start censoring, and you start policing, you are opening yourself up to a potential inherent bias. I love the immediacy of Twitter for sports and breaking news. I just think it's terrible for politics. And I think the political regime that we have has weaponized it. Of all social media, I think Twitter is the best, most likely. What my biggest concerns are, though, is the effects that social media will have on society and our kids. What will a generation that grew up on social media look like? How will the general mindset of that generation be affected when they strive to be these fake people whose images are pure veneer? A lot of you guys have pointed out the good aspects of it, and I appreciate that. The question I have is, how do we combat the fakeness or it, without overstepping boundaries (i.e. threatening fake executive orders)? I'll be honest, when I posted this, I wasn't thinking so much the political or positive news ramifications to it, but more the mental and societal aspects of it. Appreciate the discussion. And I figure it's nice to get away from the other stuff for a while.
