We are sick of the current digital world. There is a trend of people writing about it.
By viewing it from different angles and reflecting on it in their very own ways, people are organically finding ways to heal from the dopamine trap, by escaping from the endless scroll cage, canned algorithms, and fast-food short videos."
I have a theory: what was scarce once, is not anymore.
Social networks make people tired/satisfied/overwhelmed of "interacting online", and in the worst possible way: passively, not producing anything and just consuming it.
The “satisfied” part is the most harmful imo. This is what causes lack of actual social interaction and real friendships. Loneliness is on the rise as friendships are on a decline, this is a byproduct of social media gratification
The other more obviously negative components tired/overwhelmed are more of a hangover effect people have after over indulgence. But they’re addicted so ultimately always go back for more (most people).
It’s weird for me to witness as I never indulged in social media and could always see it for what it is. I watched my wife use and just classified it as a huge waste of time (and had some not so fun, “get off your phone” conversations along the way). Some people are finally coming around to it but a lot of damage has been done and a lot of social fabric has eroded.
I'm not sure the tired/overwhelmed hangover effect is necessarily from social media. I like to think most of my time spent on the internet is productive,reading documentation and cs articles/papers for the most part and i still get that hangover feeling.
That’s mental fatigue from learning and being engaged on a topic for a duration. Maybe some additional from screen time/blue light fatigue. But it used to happen after studying for hours pre-internet.
Just my hunch, but post student life, I think many people are not actually using the internet regularly the way you describe. Only a small percentage of people are doing productive tasks, it’s mostly leisurely consumption
There's a noticeable difference to me between exercising my thinking skills and feeling mentally exhausted versus consuming lots of media and feeling "hungover".
I get that exhausted feeling after any hard day at work. On the other hand, scrolling through reels for about 30 minutes gives me a headache. If I spend over an hour on YouTube, I also get a similar feeling, but only if that time was spent watching many different videos. If I watched one 2 hour video, I feel fine.
True in real life, too. Whenever someone random comes up to me and tries to engage in a conversation, my guard goes up because 9 times out of 10, they are trying to sell me something or scam me. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a woman, where your “safety” alarms are also sounding.
Spontaneous, innocent chit chat is dead, both online and offline because everyone’s hustling now.
Counter example: yesterday I took the train and ferry from london to dublin. Trains are a great way to meet new people, especially if you're sitting facing each other. Person opposite me was interested in the maths book my son was reading. Turns out he's an interrailing applied maths student from Scandinavia. We had a great chat for hours and exchanged numbers. My faith in humanity is not dead yet.
Counter-counter example. When my wife was new to the city she took a bus ride and a girl randomly made contact with her. They hit it off and talked for the whole ride. My wife thought this girl sounds really nice, they actually got into deep conversations, and wanted to exchange numbers so they could hang out some time. Then she asked if she had heard about the book of mormons…
Sorry to hear that. But I was responding to the comment that "Spontaneous, innocent chit chat is dead, both online and offline because everyone’s hustling now". Just one counter example is needed to prove that statement false. Of course, maybe my new contact will betray me and turn out to be a proselytising fundamentalist, but not yet...
It sucks because the social aspect of social media has been bent and twisted into squeezing every bit of money out of it. In some regards, people are being forced to consume. Companies do anything they can to manipulate users into continual consumption because it generates money for them.
Even worse now? Companies are rewarding people when users interact with their content. Now people are enticed to create content that purposely angers people so they comment on their content.
I've deleted all of my accounts now - it was just too fatiguing to try and weed your way through the constant pushing of content to get you to watch or interact with instead of what YOU want to see or watch. YouTube is notorious for that. How many times have you gone to the site and instead of searching for something you went there for, you get completely sidelined into something because they present you with a ton of videos that fit what you're interested in?
In the immortal words of Joshua: "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?"
I always think it is frustrated kids showing off how "rebel" they are, by not following basic grammar rules.
It automatically loses my attention and respect. I can't take it seriously.
We should start generating non sense information to feed up these hungry crawlers.
The problem is that they will keep working to find a way to mimic human behaviour to get the real data.
They forgot to mention that the number one cause of death is a disease associated with by a lack of physical activity or prolonged periods of sitting or inactivity.
