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Doomscrolling ourselves to death

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Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#321

Post by LogicFailsMe »

genghisjahn wrote: post #233
Aurornis wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have in essence deleted the vast majority of my social media accounts years ago, but stayed a passive and rather anonymous consumer on Reddit, X and YouTube Most of the people I’ve known who struggled with doomscrolling had established a similar set of social media sites at their worst point. I think we’ve seen so many articles about how social media is bad that reference mainstream sites like Facebook and Instag…

My opinion, anything driven by an algorithm is inherently bad. It’s hard giving up those sites, not because that’s where the people are but because we are all addicted to them. If you switch to mastodon or pixelfed, you’ll find good stuff there, but you won’t engage with it as much because it’s not algo driven, which to me is a win.

With an open API, there are IMO paths to an LLM* cultivating one's algorithmic feeds to only show you what you actually want to see as opposed to engaging you by enraging you, but without regulation, the social media companies will block that by any means necessary.

And then, even if you did achieve a truly personalized feed, there will be accusations you're limiting your worldview to a filter bubble**. And sure, you are. Still beats algorithmic rage-baiting. It's up to you to figure out how much you wish to engage IMO, not some tech company or virtue signaling concern troll influencer.

*An LLM is an algorithm too, duh.

**https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#322

Post by MarkusQ »

pessimizer wrote: post #244
talon8635 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is it you want to know?

Yes. That was the weird claim. I find hundreds of books about each thing I want to know about, and don't have the time in my life to read even a tiny fraction of them. What are these interests that fall entirely outside of the range of things that people have written about? To be clear and honest: I don't think it's really true in the way it's meant. I think people have gotten in this mode where they're only interest…

Not the OP, but I'd disagree. It's pretty easy to find the edge of what's been written about, even starting from "the feed" (but this works with pretty much anything).

Start with some topic that people are posting about, a book you are reading, or even just something you overhear. Pick a claim that's being made, and ask your self: where does this claim come from? is this true? how do they know this? Don't stop until you find a solid answer or the trail goes cold.

Amazingly often, the trail goes cold, and you find no one has written anything definitive on the question you've been asking. This bubble we've created has disturbingly thin walls, and only our herd mentality is holding us back from popping our heads out.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#323

Post by MarkusQ »

lelandfe wrote: post #169
vzmax wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before social media I remember people who had entire conversations just quoting tv shows, movies, and commercials. Which shows they quoted was their personality. I think it is much worse with social media, the content is a lot more niche and the algorithms a lot more addictive. It's not so much the weird stuff they say, I think that is fairly normal, especially the younger you go. It's the inability to do anything in…

Everyone gets their own echo chamber now. I want a TikTok-era Bowling Along examining the impact modern single feed social media has had on group participation in the new generations...

Is that a typo or a proposed title for the sequel.

(Even if it's a typo you should probably claim it as a sub-conscious coinage, since it's quite clever.)

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#324

Post by somenameforme »

teiferer wrote: post #154
somenameforme wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a time, not that long ago, when cocaine was 100% normalized. It was a regular ingredient used in everything from basic OTC remedies to, most famously Coca Cola which was Cocaine + Kola nut. And Coca Cola itself was based on Vin Mariani, a wine mixed with cocaine that was drunk or endorsed by everybody from Popes to Thomas Edison and Ulysses S Grant. It was also regularly offered for free to laborers by empl…

> most famously Coca Cola which was Cocaine + Kola nut. That's a common misleading myth. Early coca cola was coca leaves and kola nut. Yes, the former contained cocaine alkaloids. But it's different from saying you take a soda and mix it with cocaine. The dosage wasn't comparable to a snorted line today.

I think this is akin to arguing that saying coffee has caffeine in it is misleading, because it's not the same amount as one might get in a powdered concentrate of pure caffeine. Yeah, but it does have caffeine in it and Coke did have cocaine in it. And the effective dose was significant.

It was marketed precisely on this point; it being a "nerve stimulant", "brain tonic", cure all for hysteria, melancholy, and more. There's a great article on it here. [1] Coke also got defensive on this point because not only was it referred to as "dope" and other such drug implicit terms, but people also began pointing out the issues with coke and cocaine.

Nobody knows exactly how much cocaine was in the original concoctions, but it is known that they began rapidly reducing the amount once the issue started being discussed. Of course I can also see that being argued as evidence of them having a bunch (oyyy, shut it down!), or indeed having a negligible amount (bahh, let's nip this nonsense in the bud). Either way it had a very non-zero amount, and people were consuming it in absurd quantities. If you believe Coke's response, 90% of all businessmen were "constant patrons."

[1] - https://clickamericana.com/topics/food-drink/cocaine-laced-c...

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#325

Post by charamis »

lensecat wrote: post #318
latexr wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. As a society, we have this silly habit of dismissing criticisms of incoming societal shifts because previous ones “turned out fine”. We grab the most extreme of the bad contrarian takes of the time and use it to ridicule the position as a whole. We often ignore those previous shifts were influenced by the criticisms of the time (not all of them bad) and that how it turned out was a result of the push and pull…

I also think we underestimate the adverse side of changes we already live with. Would it really have been possible with a president (crypto)-scamming his voters in the 1950s or -60s US, or is that a result of televised media? Read "Amusing ourselves to death" for exemple; written as a criticism of TV-media in the 80s but even more applicable on the short-form content of today. Put Toqueville in a time-machine. Would…

Exactly, so even the argument that everything turned out fine eventually, is not that valid. We could say that, only if we could compare “now” with a hypothetical parallel present where things stayed the same.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#326

Post by teiferer »

somenameforme wrote: post #324
teiferer wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most famously Coca Cola which was Cocaine + Kola nut. That's a common misleading myth. Early coca cola was coca leaves and kola nut. Yes, the former contained cocaine alkaloids. But it's different from saying you take a soda and mix it with cocaine. The dosage wasn't comparable to a snorted line today.

I think this is akin to arguing that saying coffee has caffeine in it is misleading, because it's not the same amount as one might get in a powdered concentrate of pure caffeine. Yeah, but it does have caffeine in it and Coke did have cocaine in it. And the effective dose was significant. It was marketed precisely on this point; it being a "nerve stimulant", "brain tonic", cure all for hysteria, melancholy, and more.…

> I think this is akin to arguing that saying coffee has caffeine in it is misleading

I don't agree. I don't know anybody snorting caffeine lines and it doesn't have all the connotations of an illicit drug either.

> It was marketed precisely on this point

Sure, but that was then, not today. That mismatch is part of why this outrage is misplaced.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#327

Post by kart23 »

wasn’t there a moral panic in the 18th and 19th that kids were reading too much? that books would rot the minds of the newest generation. i’d like to see that history addressed a little better. Part of me is sympathetic to this, I do agree that movies, media has gotten painfully simple. But at the same time, young people are working incredibly hard, richer than older generations were at their age, and technology and culture is definitely moving incredibly fast from my POV.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#328

Post by dzonga »

mass literacy without critical thinking begat communism - which had massive detrimental effects on the world.

maybe the elites like the journalists e.g author above - who wanna control thought & media - in a roundabout way unleashed a beast they can't control - social media - which turns people into passive consumers. now the people can't be controlled at all - massive apathy due to social media. Trump 2016, Brexit etc was the result.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#329

Post by sellmesoap »

colechristensen wrote: post #129
mikestew wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s…not weird, that’s just a turn of phrase that’s in the same category as “that’s what she said”.

eventually you lose most of your friends, your neuroplasticity dies down, you stop trying to look cool, fall out of the zeitgeist, and whatever strange things the kids are saying these days becomes annoying because you've stopped participating in culture and it starts to scare and confuse you

I check a lot of those boxes, Abe Simpsons said it best [0], but I get to keep a weather eye on the new lingo through my kids. I remember being a teen and a lot of jibba-jabba that followed, stuff that came up from my people didn't stick, but I can catch up with them and drop a phrase and we all have a laugh. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9578844-i-used-to-be-with-i...
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