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Social media seems to drag everything down to the lowest common denominator. The only barrier of entry to express your opinion is to register on Twitter, which
by papito 7y ago
Social media seems to drag everything down to the lowest common denominator. The only barrier of entry to express your opinion is to register on Twitter, which is not a barrier of entry.
In the past, one had to be published in a magazine, a paper, or show up on TV - not an easy task, just to say something.
Then we had blogs, which was a vast improvement in giving people voice, but at the same time a very good center ground. Setting up a blog, and then writing an entry is not that enjoyable. You need to really have something to say to go cross that bridge.
Now, however, you just open up your app and go "LOLZ LOLZ STUPID LIBS R SO TRIGGERED MAGA". Done.
Social media is where social conscience goes to die, so yes, I believe it.
There is a very good reason why the tornado of lies we hear from the VERY top of our government, and in fact, governments, is because social media brought down the attention span to zero. It's not that they became better liars - people just no longer critically process information, and move on to the next thing.
- errantspark 7y ago> social media brought down the attention span to zero > people just no longer critically process information, and move on to the next thing Sadly I don't even think this is true. I think "people" in general have always been like this, and social media hasn't really changed that. You mentioned the barrier to entry dropping to zero. I think most of these issues are almost solely a result of that. The intellectual bias that used to be present in "the discourse" has been erased. The politicians/CEOs no longer have doubts, there's no reason to hedge. They know exactly how easy it is to manipulate the populace.
- papito 7y agoWhile I see your point, I also believe the sheer shameless lies were not possible before 2007, pre-mobile and pre-twitter. People would consume the info, slowly, and have time to process it. Now, the you know who says something like, "you know, that seems shady, someone should look into it", and leave it there. And then just burry that under another never-ending stream of lies. I think both are really interlocked. Low barrier of entry = a flood of info = low attention spans as a defense mechanism to deal with it.
- smbowner 7y agoThis is a really good point. The pace of shameless lying is so fast it's impossible to keep up. Even if you're paying attention you can't keep it all straight in your head. You have to be a real time BS processing machine these days. And that simply isn't possible.