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Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion

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Re: Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion

#41

Post by 3form »

> These are the last days of social media, not because we lack content, but because the attention economy has neared its outer limit — we have exhausted the capacity to care. ...

I feel like the core problem is that the platform just die out in time on their own. It was Facebook's issue for years and years now, and such a fate will come to others, too - if only because people who used these platforms eventually statistically grow up and realize they have better stuff to do, and influx of new generations is limited.

Then the generation and promotion of trash is just a symptom in order to hide the fester underneath for as long as possible.

What it doesn't mean is that social media will necessarily die in time; I expect that new platforms and methods will take over, as Discord and federated blogs mentioned in the post do. The reason being that the youngest generations still have attention to spare and social needs to be met. Further, as my generation is the last one to experience the wonders of digital disconnect in their childhood, the ones to come are already born into world where certain phenomenons outlined here are normalized.

Re: Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion

#42

Post by lurk2 »

3form wrote: post #41

> These are the last days of social media, not because we lack content, but because the attention economy has neared its outer limit — we have exhausted the capacity to care. ... I feel like the core problem is that the platform just die out in time on their own. It was Facebook's issue for years and years now, and such a fate will come to others, too - if only because people who used these platforms eventually stati…

> These are the last days of social media, not because we lack content, but because the attention economy has neared its outer limit — we have exhausted the capacity to care.

No one goes to the beach anymore—there are too many people there.

Re: Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion

#43

Post by lukan »

Popeyes wrote: post #33

The problem is that people are addicted to tension, by raising tension it fills a need, but the release of that tension is also addictive. Social media is just uppers and downers churned over and over. In one moment you can see some guy assassinated and then a box full of puppies rolling around and being cute. But that tension is only present at the extremes. The point where social media failed was when the governmen…

"The point where social media failed" was rather when most agreed to pretend that the services are for free and our attention may be hijacked by advertisement companies who have the goal of maximizing your engagement, meaning making you addicted.

Re: Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion

#45

Post by awesome_dude »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #31
mantas wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even the connecting like-minded people turned out to be crappy echo chambers

It's the ads and the bot farms. And the weaponisation for political ends. There are corners of the Internet where people meet on smaller forums to talk about subjects of mutual interest, and those remain functional and interesting, sometimes even polite.

When I first started using Usenet, a couple of decades ago now, I initially thought that everyone was like-minded, and polite, but then discovered that all the political noise that we now see on Social Media.

That is, there's not actually anything new in that political discourse (literally, it was all libertarians, gun lovers and free speechers threatening/bullying anyone that disagreed with them then, like it is now)

There were even "wars" - the Meow Wars were long dead history when I were a Usenetter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meow_Wars

I have often wondered why such a thing hasn't arisen again, on things like twitter.

Re: Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion

#46

Post by closewith »

m_fayer wrote: post #40
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the ads and the bot farms. And the weaponisation for political ends. There are corners of the Internet where people meet on smaller forums to talk about subjects of mutual interest, and those remain functional and interesting, sometimes even polite.

Just like in the real world, commercialized social spaces descend into manipulation and hollowness. Social spaces online that aren’t (very) commercial, like this one, can work well enough.

HN is just as much of an echo-chamber as anywhere else. You just like the opinions being echoed.

Re: Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion

#47

Post by 3form »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #31
mantas wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even the connecting like-minded people turned out to be crappy echo chambers

It's the ads and the bot farms. And the weaponisation for political ends. There are corners of the Internet where people meet on smaller forums to talk about subjects of mutual interest, and those remain functional and interesting, sometimes even polite.

It's sorting by score rather than anything else, in my experience. Makes it largely opinion-forming on the participants.

Re: Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion

#48

Post by riffraff »

austin-cheney wrote: post #2

> Social media was built on the romance of authenticity. It never felt authentic to me. It always felt like a computer algorithm to create unnatural echo chambers at the full blast of a firehose.

There was no algorithm in the original Facebook and Twitter.

The echo chamber you got was the same you get in real life: your friends and family may share your pov and bias.

Re: Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion

#49

Post by close04 »

roomey wrote: post #9

Fall, or Dodge in hell, by Neil Stephenson has a take on this. The internet is flooded with slop and rage-bait on purpose. So filled as to be unusable, like a firehose of shit. So in there comes a role if "editor" whose job it is (you pay them) to only give you, well not even what's "true", rather what reflects your world view. So which editor you have becomes a factor in how you live, where your educated, your statu…

Doesn’t this just reinforce your echo chamber? Your “editor” only gives you stuff you want to see not the stuff you need or should see.

And once you empower someone to gate or filter your access to information, what’s stopping them from treating you like the product for a better paying customer, like today?

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