This comments section is so full of examples illustrating what the OP is critiquing that it's depressing.
How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity
91–100 of 284 posts
Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity
#92We are at this point where we need to “Turn on, tune in, drop out” again. This mass media circus of social media and influencers doesn’t help anyone except their own self centred interests. Fair to say this is easier in Europe where we don’t have the propaganda firehose but I think it’s time to switch off US friends
There's some truth to this because "Culture is not your friend, man." Ironically though it really needs update, maybe more like turn off, tune out, rise up?
Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be clear, if I were in charge, there would be significantly more banning and moderation on all platforms. I am arguing moderation is more politically feasible in small communities, not that is any more or less ethical.
"virtues" is just a loaded word now unfortunately.
Let’s bring it back! I think being honest is good!
Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity
#94More succinctly:
The Nash equilibrium of public discourse on social media is extremism and polarization ...
... because for each individual, the way to get more clicks and influence is by becoming more extreme and polarizing.
Sigh.
Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity
#95Trying to talk reason to multiple sides makes you an outcast.
Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity
#96I don't quite get the connection between the premise and the conclusion. Sure, influencers get rewarded by social media algorithms for polarising content, but most people are not influencers.
And the influenced are rewarded by the influencer that is validating their polarized views. You also might be putting too fine a point on "influencer". A relative of mine on Facebook might be a kind of "influencer"—at least with regard to his small cadre of family and friends that follow him.
You can look at it it this way, but why your small circle of family and friends would reward polarizing opinions? If anything, I have seen people losing real life relationships by not knowing when to stop in online arguments
Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity
#97The main issue for me is the size of our platforms. If the owner of a platform tries to enforce a set of virtues, it will always be seen as censorship by a fraction of its users. That fraction will increase as the user base increases, as the alternatives diminish, and as the owners govern with more impunity. I personally think these loud users are immature, disrespectful, anonymous cowards, but my opinions are irrele…
A better solution to this would be to fragment within social media platforms. Allow users to post any content that's legal within their local jurisdiction. And give other users easy tools to create their own "filter bubbles" so that they don't see content which they personally consider insane or offensive. This would allow the social media platforms to sidestep political debates about censorship.
I have wondered if the long term trajectory of social media is as a locally governed utility, similar to energy or water. I would love a boring page landlocked to my neighborhood. Obviously there would the NextDoor "Karen" issue, that would need to be addressed somehow...
Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity
#98The author writes, “You end up in a world where changing your mind becomes impossible because you've built your entire identity around being right”. Yet social-media personalities regularly do a 180° turn on some issue (e.g. pro-Ukraine to anti-Ukraine or vice versa) and still keep their following and ability to monetize it. Social media is full of parasocial relationships; followers are in love with an influencer’s…
> Yet social-media personalities regularly do a 180° turn on some issue ... and still keep their following and ability to monetize it. And they asserted that they were totally right the entire time. That's how. And the sheep kept on following them.
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Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity
#99A lot of this goes away when you stop spending so much time on social media, which is a very poor reflection of "reality." Part of the problem is that there are a number of people who can't really look away, because they've built their livelihoods on it. Traditional media in many ways has come to rely on it too. Unfortunate mistake. Prominent figures on social media change their minds all the time, but they'll re-scu…
> A lot of this goes away when you stop spending so much time on social media, which is a very poor reflection of "reality."
It mainly "too much time of political social media". You can always tell.
What you find is that a lot of people will be repeating talking points and/or catch phrases without putting much thought into it. A lot of this is fed to them by people who are essentially evangelists and many of these people I am convinced are given they talking points, because they all say the same thing at roughly the same time.
> Prominent figures on social media change their minds all the time, but they'll re-sculpt their reality around the basis that they were always right anyway
They can do that if they are getting a decent turnover of new viewers. That doesn't work too well when their fanbase is declining.
If you look into the UFO land which is the worst for this and the most obvious because often the claims are ridiculous. What often happens is that someone will be outright exposed for being a fraud e.g. someone proves that a video was fake. They will then disappear for a few months or maybe a few years. During that time, many more new people would have filtered into the community and many won't look into that person's background.
Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity
#100The author writes, “You end up in a world where changing your mind becomes impossible because you've built your entire identity around being right”. Yet social-media personalities regularly do a 180° turn on some issue (e.g. pro-Ukraine to anti-Ukraine or vice versa) and still keep their following and ability to monetize it. Social media is full of parasocial relationships; followers are in love with an influencer’s…
I have been a small content creator for 10 years now. I've been hampered a lot by actively discouraging these types of parasocial relationships - every now and then I'll get a gaggle of followers that spend entirely too much time on my crappy content or my personality/posts and I get extremely weirded out to the point I want to stop doing it entirely. Everyone tells me I'm doing it wrong, but I swear, 10 years ago it wasn't as much of a thing to create a cult around yourself on social media or streaming platforms. Now it's the primary monetization path.
I've even gone so far to say to more than one person, "look, I like and appreciate you really like my content or my personality, but, you don't know me at all, I don't know you, and honestly, we're not friends, no matter how much you want that to be the case. That isn't to say I dislike you, but you need to be more realistic about the content you consume, and if this hurts your feelings a lot, I'm sorry, but this content probably isn't for you."
Then there's the type of content creator that gets a following by being a huge jerk to their fans - I don't like that either. I just tell them to treat it like a TV show. It's not real, the character in the show doesn't know you or like you. Unfortunately for today's youth and media landscape this is an utterly foreign concept.