4 ms·

I wonder how much of this can be explained by social media? Feels like a feeling of impending doom with climate change could also be a factor. Also, I'd really

by cowpig 4y ago

I wonder how much of this can be explained by social media? Feels like a feeling of impending doom with climate change could also be a factor. Also, I'd really like to see this trend in a broader context. How much did these kinds of indicators dip during, say, the great depression?

trgn 4y ago
Very little. This has been an ongoing process, it's called modernity. It's the evaporation of reality due to mass media and commoditization. It's a reductive process that turns actual people into widgets, the adaptation of man to machine. Human relations, since these cannot be quantitied, are transmuted into transactions that can be measured, quantitied, monetized. Affection, intimacy, loyalty thus become replqced by countable things like swipes, nft drops, car infotainment packages, yoga cruise experiences, ... The matrix is real. Not that we are living in a computer (thats just stupid), but that we are being reduced to particiption in algorithm, mere conduits of information. That malaise, hard to pinpoint but ongoing since 150 years, is the driver of the social recession
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  I genuinely fail to see how social media does not fit perfectly into the description of mass media commoditization in modernity.
  - trgn 4y ago
    For sure, it fits into it, apologies if I gave the impression it didn't.
robocat 4y ago
> Feels like a feeling of impending doom with climate change could also be a factor. My generation in my country feared nuclear war and economic collapse (15% inflation when I was growing up). Each demographic has its own impeding doom: climate change fear is new, but I don’t think there is more fear than the past. I think people in the US from my generation had communism to worry about, and communists probably worried about the US. The big change is social media and mass media driving more fear - hard to measure the difference though - does our capacity for fear remain constant regardless of input? Edit: and when I think of the fear in the lives of my friends, their personal situation is far more critical than any distant fear of global warming. Their kids, their job, their marriage, their parents, their friends, their status. I am interested in the demographic differences because that give good hints as to cause and effect.

by cowpig 4y ago

trgn 4y ago

Very little. This has been an ongoing process, it's called modernity. It's the evaporation of reality due to mass media and commoditization. It's a reductive process that turns actual people into widgets, the adaptation of man to machine. Human relations, since these cannot be quantitied, are transmuted into transactions that can be measured, quantitied, monetized. Affection, intimacy, loyalty thus become replqced by countable things like swipes, nft drops, car infotainment packages, yoga cruise experiences, ... The matrix is real. Not that we are living in a computer (thats just stupid), but that we are being reduced to particiption in algorithm, mere conduits of information. That malaise, hard to pinpoint but ongoing since 150 years, is the driver of the social recession

DiggyJohnson 4y ago
I genuinely fail to see how social media does not fit perfectly into the description of mass media commoditization in modernity.
- trgn 4y ago
  For sure, it fits into it, apologies if I gave the impression it didn't.

robocat 4y ago

> Feels like a feeling of impending doom with climate change could also be a factor. My generation in my country feared nuclear war and economic collapse (15% inflation when I was growing up). Each demographic has its own impeding doom: climate change fear is new, but I don’t think there is more fear than the past. I think people in the US from my generation had communism to worry about, and communists probably worried about the US. The big change is social media and mass media driving more fear - hard to measure the difference though - does our capacity for fear remain constant regardless of input? Edit: and when I think of the fear in the lives of my friends, their personal situation is far more critical than any distant fear of global warming. Their kids, their job, their marriage, their parents, their friends, their status. I am interested in the demographic differences because that give good hints as to cause and effect.