2 ms·

The cultural narrative has shifted to the right? All I hear from my red-state family is how basically the world is coming to an end because the country has vee

The cultural narrative has shifted to the right? All I hear from my red-state family is how basically the world is coming to an end because the country has veered so far to the left. I live in SF and things here always seem to be drifting leftward as well, but of course this is probably left HQ so I guess that's not surprising. That said, some of my farthest left friends in San Francisco are convinced that some kind of extremist right-win revolution is about to happen, and one of them literally moved to Canada in fear of it. I don't say any of this to disagree with you. Rather, I say this because I feel like something weird is going on in the world. There doesn't seem to be much consensus about what's going on around us - like people aren't living in the same reality. As for me it seems like mostly life is just going on like it always has - but I deleted social media a while back and quit watching cable news... I think unplugging from that made me realize it's all a giant circus and a lot of people are getting roped into various factional hallucinations and sort of losing touch with reality. But I just don't get how it's become so pervasive, and it leaves me questioning how you can even know if anything is true or not. Okay, side tangent over... carry on...

jtms 8y ago
Deleting social media is, I think, one of the absolute best things one can do for their mental health right about now.
malandrew 8y ago
Well basically all the metrics, A/B testing and optimization technologies built by companies like Google, Facebook and a load of other smaller tech startups found their way into the hands of people running media companies. Google Analytics probably did the most to set this trend as blog after blog started using it to understand how to drive traffic. Now that the media has these tools, their content becomes subservient to getting those eyeballs, clicks, time on page and repeat visits. What has all this taught us? That nothing drives metrics like anger and rage, so anger and rage is what the opinion industry produces. Furthermore, cognitive dissonance costs you eyeballs, so the tendency is to further self censor your content to avoid anything that might upset the increasingly sheltered worldview of your audience.

jtms 8y ago

Deleting social media is, I think, one of the absolute best things one can do for their mental health right about now.

malandrew 8y ago

Well basically all the metrics, A/B testing and optimization technologies built by companies like Google, Facebook and a load of other smaller tech startups found their way into the hands of people running media companies. Google Analytics probably did the most to set this trend as blog after blog started using it to understand how to drive traffic. Now that the media has these tools, their content becomes subservient to getting those eyeballs, clicks, time on page and repeat visits. What has all this taught us? That nothing drives metrics like anger and rage, so anger and rage is what the opinion industry produces. Furthermore, cognitive dissonance costs you eyeballs, so the tendency is to further self censor your content to avoid anything that might upset the increasingly sheltered worldview of your audience.