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?
Knowing you live in a magpie culture is worth keeping in mind. If, as Isaiah Berlin once said, “foxes” are people who know many little things, and “hedgehogs” people who know one big thing, then the more recent “magpie” is someone who knows nothing yet manages to maintain a beautiful nest of ideas that aren’t theirs.
We live in a culture of magpies
provocative - on how the only people that are famous on social media are 1) famous to begin with or 2) people unbothered by minor theft of ideas because stealing other people’s content is the only strategy that can reliably build large audiences from scratch on websites with high content demands.
the internet is the greatest device for opening up the world ever devised. It is democratising and enabling. But that assumes its users draw on it to aid System 2 thinking. Plainly, there are times when we use it to inform key decisions – to find out about an illness, to research a holiday, to track a scientific breakthrough. But in the main the... See more
Will Hutton • We need a social media with heart that gives us time to think
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.
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 moreBut an unbounded information landscape is not an unalloyed good. Because social media does not favor accuracy or balance or diversity. It favors clicks. The more engaging and enraging the content, the more clicks it receives.
Scott Galloway • No Mercy / No Malice
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