what is Social Media doing to us?
Articles about social media platforms and their effects on society.
Jerod Morris and
what is Social Media doing to us?
the internet isn’t some alien force that descended upon us.
It’s just us, but bigger.
It’s just us, but bigger.
The Original Sin of Everything
the GPS/mapping function of the phone is quite useful — but apart from that, our phones really aren’t doing much that our computers don’t do, they’re just portable and thus available to disrupt any potential boredom.
Anne Helen Petersen • Culture Study | Anne Helen Petersen | Substack
via Sam Kriss: A chaser: “Not using a phone taught me what a phone is really for. It’s not for communicating with other people, getting directions, reading articles, looking at pictures, shopping for products, or playing games. A phone is a device for muting the anxieties proper to being alive.”
From 2016 onward, the sense of the internet as a transparent information organizing agent has been in decline. After the algorithms, you could not have a curated, chronological feed of your follows. After the Cambridge Analytic scandal, fears over disinformation and misinformation dominated discussions of our new communications technologies. After 2020, it was no longer a conspiracy theory that the federal government was involved in online censorship. The Elon Musk’s Twitter Files and Mark Zuckerberg’s public apology for caving to pressure from the FBI have corroborated digital dissidents’ accusations.
Social media basically brought us to something like an oral culture: - We're not illiterate in the sense that we can't read, our writing approximates our speaking - Our writing isn't as complex because it doesn't function like text used to - We both archive everything and trust…
Bo Burnham (the musician comedian) on the business of social media:
"[Social media firms are] coming for every second of your life...And it's not because anyone is bad, it's not because anybody in this company has evil plans or is trying to do this, they're not even doing it consciously. Their entire model is growth. They’re coming for every second
... See moreI do think that social media is largely a trap... for users and for brands. It’s purposely built to create insecurity and false proxies, metrics that get people to work for free to support the business model of the social media companies, as opposed to their own goals.
When Wendy’s or Oreo cookies pulls some sort of stunt on a social media platform,... See more
When Wendy’s or Oreo cookies pulls some sort of stunt on a social media platform,... See more
Rachel Karten • What Seth Godin Really Thinks About Social Media
Seth Godin on social media
A few more years and my mind wasn’t suited for much else. I was anorexic and had no friends; I was absolutely killing it online. I had developed all these health issues and begun posting hospital selfies, crying selfies, depressive bathtub selfies. I was sick and sad. I’m fangirling, a girl said when she recognized me on the subway. I’m spiraling, ... See more
August Lamm • My Year of Tech and Relaxation by August Lamm
tank my stats and save my life
But if some shadowy global elite really wanted to keep a population docile, impotent, and entertained, what better tool could they ask for than the iPhone?
Chris Rudzki • Playing With Guns
We turn into each other’s audience, judging from afar. We become each other’s data harvesters, knowing who went where, at when and with whom. We even become each other’s digital oppressors: we form a limited perception of who we think someone is based on what they post, and when they do something that doesn’t conform to the imposed image of them, w... See more
Sherry Ning • Stop Looking At Each Other
the danger of social media isn’t that we are being watched. it’s that we become watchers.