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I believe this trend has existed on different platforms for a long time. I remember in the 90s when it was trendy to have OCD or to be depressed. Part of being

I believe this trend has existed on different platforms for a long time. I remember in the 90s when it was trendy to have OCD or to be depressed. Part of being young seems to be finding a way to differentiate yourself and be special as is emphasized by our culture.

crooked-v 5y ago
The difference between now and then, or even just now and the Livejournal days, is that "the algorithm" is actively pushing this content at people, instead of it merely being something they can come across.
- comboy 5y ago
  Yeah, good old times of 3 TV channels and 2 newspapers which you could come across. The algorithm of giving you what you prefer when there are too many choices is inevitable. Alternative is a bunch of people deciding what it should and should not give you. It really doesn't matter who those people work for.[1] Positive feedback loop and information bubbles are not great but "the algorithm" is really not worse in this regard than leaving in a small village. 1. The algorithm is still a bunch of people but that's orthogonal to your point. People will prefer algorithms fitting their needs better and they are able to switch (yes monopolies, but that's a different thread already).
  - iratewizard 5y ago
    Older media is far less socially degenerative to consume. Even modern media standards are higher than much of what I have personally seen children consume on YouTube kids. The 3 TV channels and two newspapers never ran programming that features Spiderman and Elsa having diarrhea after sexually suggestive themes.
    - comboy 5y ago
      Really? Spiderman and Elsa having diarrhea is that much worse than presenting family model with woman being a washing machine and kids getting beaten by their dad? Nutella is a healthy breakfast and all cool kids smoke cigarettes. Shut up and do your job. As far as I remember standards were not higher. They were different. Plus really, the cartoons I remember were full of stuff like find a sleeping pills in parents cabinet, give somebody as a joke, put a pin on a chair so somebody sits on it etc. Racism everywhere. Stuff that is even hard to find nowadays because they had to scrub it. Sexually suggestive themes, like have you watched lion king? Or anything really... it seemed to be way more explicit. We luckily tend to remember past as better than it was. There's also nostalgia element and there's cultural difference. Just like there are different cultures around the globe and most think that other ones are gross, the same happens in the time dimension. edit: to be clear, things could be better, we should point out what's wrong and try to fix it, but with some more decent optimization function than "proximity to good the old days"
      - cj 5y ago
        The fundamental difference is that today you can hypertarget content at individuals, and successfully modify specific behaviors and beliefs at scale. This was not possible to do at scale 10+ years ago.
        comboy 5y ago
        I agree with that difference but I'm not sure it's fundamental. To me more fundamental is access to information that anybody has above certain age. Yes you still need to know how to interpret it, that's one of the most valuable skills nowadays, but in the past you had just no way of fact checking and doing more research on what has been given to you apart from spending hours in library which would not be very productive unless you were interested in some relatively popular chunk of history. You get served stuff targeted at you but it's just information, and you have a way to put it in a bigger context. It was not possible before. The fact that you learn about unknown unknowns through a magic giving content box is also amazing. It is not perfect and have its issues, and I would love for everybody to just garden their homepages which I could visit like it's .. oh shit well 30 years ago, but I'm not sure I want to spend time on gardening mine when I can learn so much instead.
- mc32 5y ago
  It's funny (odd) to see the shift in thinking in youth from, the media is the enemy and they want to feed us how to think from before the internet (think punk bands) and now where people can't live without media they fully know is automanipulated and is actively manipulating them. Sid Vicious must be rolling in his grave. It's fascinating!
drdec 5y ago
Everybody goes through this kind of thing when they first encounter the definitions and symptoms of psychological disorders. It's just that at the moment TikTok is the medium and as usual people blame the medium for the message.
- DiggyJohnson 5y ago
  I think everyone here is aware that this phenomenon isn’t new. What the concern is has to do with scale, and whether this old problem is about to get a lot worse with new technologies. I tend to agree with this, I think the way information scales these days makes this much more dangerous a phenomenon.
cwkoss 5y ago
"Neurodivergent" is becoming a subcultural identifier. Ive seen some tiktoks where the creator makes a statement like "the neurodivergent urge to <common human behavior>" or "neurodivergent people love <sensation that most people like>" It's very odd IMO. Feels a bit like religious evangelism.

crooked-v 5y ago

The difference between now and then, or even just now and the Livejournal days, is that "the algorithm" is actively pushing this content at people, instead of it merely being something they can come across.

comboy 5y ago
Yeah, good old times of 3 TV channels and 2 newspapers which you could come across. The algorithm of giving you what you prefer when there are too many choices is inevitable. Alternative is a bunch of people deciding what it should and should not give you. It really doesn't matter who those people work for.[1] Positive feedback loop and information bubbles are not great but "the algorithm" is really not worse in this regard than leaving in a small village. 1. The algorithm is still a bunch of people but that's orthogonal to your point. People will prefer algorithms fitting their needs better and they are able to switch (yes monopolies, but that's a different thread already).
- iratewizard 5y ago
  Older media is far less socially degenerative to consume. Even modern media standards are higher than much of what I have personally seen children consume on YouTube kids. The 3 TV channels and two newspapers never ran programming that features Spiderman and Elsa having diarrhea after sexually suggestive themes.
  - comboy 5y ago
    Really? Spiderman and Elsa having diarrhea is that much worse than presenting family model with woman being a washing machine and kids getting beaten by their dad? Nutella is a healthy breakfast and all cool kids smoke cigarettes. Shut up and do your job. As far as I remember standards were not higher. They were different. Plus really, the cartoons I remember were full of stuff like find a sleeping pills in parents cabinet, give somebody as a joke, put a pin on a chair so somebody sits on it etc. Racism everywhere. Stuff that is even hard to find nowadays because they had to scrub it. Sexually suggestive themes, like have you watched lion king? Or anything really... it seemed to be way more explicit. We luckily tend to remember past as better than it was. There's also nostalgia element and there's cultural difference. Just like there are different cultures around the globe and most think that other ones are gross, the same happens in the time dimension. edit: to be clear, things could be better, we should point out what's wrong and try to fix it, but with some more decent optimization function than "proximity to good the old days"
    - cj 5y ago
      The fundamental difference is that today you can hypertarget content at individuals, and successfully modify specific behaviors and beliefs at scale. This was not possible to do at scale 10+ years ago.
      - comboy 5y ago
        I agree with that difference but I'm not sure it's fundamental. To me more fundamental is access to information that anybody has above certain age. Yes you still need to know how to interpret it, that's one of the most valuable skills nowadays, but in the past you had just no way of fact checking and doing more research on what has been given to you apart from spending hours in library which would not be very productive unless you were interested in some relatively popular chunk of history. You get served stuff targeted at you but it's just information, and you have a way to put it in a bigger context. It was not possible before. The fact that you learn about unknown unknowns through a magic giving content box is also amazing. It is not perfect and have its issues, and I would love for everybody to just garden their homepages which I could visit like it's .. oh shit well 30 years ago, but I'm not sure I want to spend time on gardening mine when I can learn so much instead.
mc32 5y ago
It's funny (odd) to see the shift in thinking in youth from, the media is the enemy and they want to feed us how to think from before the internet (think punk bands) and now where people can't live without media they fully know is automanipulated and is actively manipulating them. Sid Vicious must be rolling in his grave. It's fascinating!

drdec 5y ago

Everybody goes through this kind of thing when they first encounter the definitions and symptoms of psychological disorders. It's just that at the moment TikTok is the medium and as usual people blame the medium for the message.

DiggyJohnson 5y ago
I think everyone here is aware that this phenomenon isn’t new. What the concern is has to do with scale, and whether this old problem is about to get a lot worse with new technologies. I tend to agree with this, I think the way information scales these days makes this much more dangerous a phenomenon.

cwkoss 5y ago

"Neurodivergent" is becoming a subcultural identifier. Ive seen some tiktoks where the creator makes a statement like "the neurodivergent urge to <common human behavior>" or "neurodivergent people love <sensation that most people like>" It's very odd IMO. Feels a bit like religious evangelism.