Social-media brainrot

the word ‘brainrot’ isn’t even an exaggeration

a recent meta-analysis study showed evidence that short form videos:

- lower your IQ

- make you anxious

- make you stressed

- induce mental illnesses

The architecture of digital platforms encourage us to consume information because it’s in front of us, not because it’s relevant. On Twitter, nothing has to be remembered, studied, applied, or reflected on. It’s an environment that promotes distracted thinking and superficial learning.

Many things in modernity are brain dead, but I can’t think of anything worse than the short form dystopias of TikTok and Instagram. They’re materially making people dumber, breeding addict behavior (particularly in the young) and ultimately ruining the lives of normies. It’s depressing to think about the countless kids who might have started garage... See more

Search engines — the window into the web for many people — top their results with pages containing thousands of words of auto-generated nothingness, perfectly optimized for search engine prominence and to pull in money via ads and affiliate links while simultaneously devoid of any useful information.

Social networks have become “the web” for many... See more

The messaging about social media is so confusing. On one hand, it’s the domain of the embarrassingly anti-intellectual, attention-hungry, vain, stupid, trollish... Yet on the other hand, social media can also supposedly propel people to the presidency and shape an entire generation’s opinion on geopolitical issues. So what does it mean to advocate... See more