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?
Reframing the “Social Media” Problem As an Attention Crisis
medium.com
A personality sketch of the marginal user
Here’s what I’ve been able to piece together about the marginal user. Let’s call him Marl. The first thing you need to know about Marl is that he has the attention span of a goldfish on acid. Once Marl opens your app, you have about 1.3 seconds to catch his attention with a shiny image or triggering... See more
Here’s what I’ve been able to piece together about the marginal user. Let’s call him Marl. The first thing you need to know about Marl is that he has the attention span of a goldfish on acid. Once Marl opens your app, you have about 1.3 seconds to catch his attention with a shiny image or triggering... See more
Ivan Vendrov • The Tyranny of the Marginal User
perfect portrait of our pathological interolerance of friction
Part of the reason social media has felt even more “flattening” to one’s identity
Is because social media has shown its benefit towards economic mobility
You can’t sell 50 things. You gotta sell 1, really well. And when that “widget” is the self -> you gotta package it neatly
Reggie Jamestwitter.comWe live in a time when more interesting ideas, concepts, people, and places can fly by in the space of one 30 minute TikTok binge than our ancestors experienced in the entirety of their localized illiterate lives.
Even the guy who invented the infinite scroll later regretted it. These interfaces are not designed to help you—swiping and scrolling are rarely the best ways to do anything. They aren’t designed to solve your problem, but actually aim to prevent closure, and create an illusion that there are still infinite choices available to you.
Our feeds are designed to “prod the would-be attender ever onward from one monetizable object to the next,” he writes. This has had a deadening effect on all kinds of culture, from Marvel blockbusters that optimize for attention minute to minute, to automated Spotify recommendations that push one similar song after another.