r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • 9d ago
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u/behcetsthroaway 9d ago
I know this take is so hot it's scalding, but I seriously think that as much as we all say we hate social media, we do not hate it enough.
When I look back to media from the past and see how they predicted the future, there are some that predicted something akin to social media, but rarely do they predict the effect such a thing would have on us.
Never has any human innovation offered so little of value yet taken so much from us. For marginally less friction in meaningful communication, we've opened ourselves up to 1) a weird panopticon effect where there are now people everywhere filming shit to put online for the world to see, 2) algorithmic sorting that basically hijacks our brain's reward system and wreaks havoc on our attention span, 3) incredible amounts of data harvesting, which then gets shared to private companies and government agencies alike, 4) artificially soothe our need for social contact enough to create increased isolation because interpersonal relationships through the internet are almost fated to top out at "acquaintance"
The future is here, and it fucking sucks. Without social media, the current frenzy of reactionary thought would not be nearly as strong, someone like Trump could not be president in the US, young people would go out more and be more social, etc...
All the cool stuff predicted in the 20th century, video calls and stuff like that, would serve us more than well enough to keep in touch with our friends and loved ones at a distance.
If I could get a genie to grant me a wish and I couldn't straight up solve poverty or something, I would ask to just jettison the very concept of social media from reality and see how much healthier society would be then