Relating with social media
On why social media won't save us and my personal journey to healing from its scars
Relating with social media
Sean Parker, Facebook’s founding president, said: “The thought process that went into building these applications ... was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’”
How Social Media Shortens Your Life
In a 2017 interview, Facebook’s founding president Sean Parker said:
“The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, … was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’ And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while. […] It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”
Because self-promotion sucks. It is actually very boring and not that fun to produce TikTok videos or to learn email marketing for this purpose. Hardly anyone wants to “build a platform;” we want to just have one. This is what people sign up for now when they go for the American dream — working for yourself and making money doing what you love. The... See more
Rebecca Jennings for Vox Media
And so we get on the Facebook merry-go-round, boosting our posts, counting our followers, and creating ever more content in the hope of being noticed. There are so many other ways to make an impact and earn trust. Much of what we take for granted in our marketing toolbox was considered a risky innovation just a few generations ago. It’s worth
... See moreSeth Godin • This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn To See
The Flattening
open.substack.com
“We’ve been too busy reacting that whence forgotten how to respond”
How does one start a new business or sell a product in a world without advertising?
How do you scale something fast enough through just word of mouth to get out of the red?
If I open a new bakery, is it predatory to send a pamphlet to the nearby houses? Should I just sit quietly and hope that enough people notice?
How do you scale something fast enough through just word of mouth to get out of the red?
If I open a new bakery, is it predatory to send a pamphlet to the nearby houses? Should I just sit quietly and hope that enough people notice?
mertd • Advertising and marketing have ruined *society*, the internet is just one of a l... | Hacker News
Ah, the age old question!
A lot of social media these days makes me feel like I’m doing it wrong; I’m not going to the right places or wearing the right thing or doing the right workout (or any workout tbh). Sure, it’s kinda an obvious takeaway about a common feeling, but what was less obvious to me is how this week’s contributor Alex Dobrenko characterizes this experience:... See more
There’s no urgency to idleness. Why not be idle tomorrow, once you’ve finished everything you have to do today? You will never get a midnight text reminding you to do nothing. You will never get a calendar invite to do nothing.
On the idea of idleness. Of actively not doing in response to a world where everyone is obsessed with doing as much as possible.
Few, if any, of this moment’s apparently unstoppable tech platforms will survive for long. The people on them will eventually leave—when they’re forced to do so by the continuous degradation of their experience, or because they’re forced to do so because their governments put the hammer down, as Brazil recently demonstrated—or sometimes when they... See more