22 ms·

It's quite hard for me to judge this topic because I am so thoroughly convinced that social media is toxic for mental health. I think unfortunately it has beco

• frostburg 4y ago
  I also agree that this is probably true, but it doesn't mean that his arguments are good.
• tmikaeld 4y ago
  > Everyone's in a gang and god help you if you aren't everyone will have a go at you Is this really a modern-tech thing? More like, it's easier and in the open now.
  • badkitty99 4y ago
    [dead]
  • ethanbond 4y ago
    Yes tech does fundamentally change this. Prior to social media, the set of everyone’s gang options was defined by a relatively small geographic area. This means people were largely looking at and likely caring about the same reality, same set of problems, same considerations around the problem, same individuals in mind, etc. Now you have people forming quasi-religious conviction on issues that are not directly relevant to them whatsoever and looking at completely distinct “data” to inform those opinions. Elections will continue to get gnarlier and gnarlier because they’re one of the few occasions we need to converge and reconcile our different realities. Between elections, we take refuge in completely distinct information environments than the people who live literally next door. This is completely new. Started with radio, amplified by TV, perfected by internet media.
    • tmikaeld 4y ago
      That's a very good point, social media has made it a LOT easier to invent issues that isn't really issues but just a topic for bullies to rally around.
    • DrThunder 4y ago
      Yeah... but alternatively you can easily find a group of like minded people. I suppose you could argue this just fractures society more though. People migrate off into groups of others they agree with and don't even bother trying to coexist anymore.
      • ethanbond 4y ago
        Correct. It’s certainly not without its benefits, but even those have an insidious side.
• rqtwteye 4y ago
  I think social media amplified trends that were there before. I remember when I came to the US in 2000 it was pretty fashionable to say “I am angry” all the time. And the hatred at politicians was pretty pronounced too. And the cable news was already spreading fear and anger. Personally I think modern media starting with cable TV allowed hatemongers to easily reach large groups. The internet just made it much worse. I just wonder how we can get out of this. My main observations are only from the US but the thinking that there are “others” who can’t be understood or talked to but need to eliminated is quite deeply ingrained in a lot of people.
  • q1w2 4y ago
    It's also important to remember that there are specific threat actors in other countries who spend many many millions on polarizing western countries by amplifying the most extreme voices in their online forums. AI is going to take this to a new level.
    • JustSomeNobody 4y ago
      I don't think enough people realize this. Or they think it simply isn't common. > AI is going to take this to a new level. We truly won't be able to tell the "fake news" from the real.
    • Slava_Propanei 4y ago
      [dead]
  • brandall10 4y ago
    24 hour cable news, where news became entertainment, definitely sowed the seeds of this. There is a great movie from the 70s called Network that predicted the slide of society in this direction.
    • hudsonjr 4y ago
      Yes once upon a time 24-hour news meant 25 or 30 different news stories covered in a an our. Now it seems like 5 or less stories in a day, and most of it is panels and "experts" spouting vitriol.
• bradleyjg 4y ago
  Twitter really is the worst. At least the other platforms have some good mixed in with the bad. It is nice to stay vaguely connected to people in a sort-of holiday card way. Twitter has nothing to redeem it. Even in communities where there’s attempts at substantive conversation the medium makes a horrible mess to follow.
  • rjmunro 4y ago
    I think it depends on who you follow (which filter bubble you are in). Try unfollowing everyone who is not an actual personal friend (or use a pinned list to see only their tweets).
    • bradleyjg 4y ago
      I have Facebook and Instagram for that, depending on the age of the friend. On Twitter these same people are much more likely to post a hot take than pictures of their kids or pets. The platform draws out toxicity even in otherwise easygoing people.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      • vehemenz 4y ago
        The Meta products are more beholden to their demographics, unlike Twitter. Most of my family and friends stopped using Facebook around 2015, and Instagram is predominantly for young people, vain people, or photographers.
  • zamnos 4y ago
    Not sure why you're ignoring the various official and unofficial accounts which use Twitter to distribute information during natural disasters which has saved lives, in a way that RSS can't replicate.
    • bradleyjg 4y ago
• calvinmorrison 4y ago
  Yeah. Its not social media - its media in general
• msla 4y ago
  > There has been a complete loss in any interest in meeting a middle ground There's no middle ground between wanting to kill someone and wanting to let them live in peace. If a person thinks someone is a born child molester (a "groomer" in the modern Newspeak) and that person thinks the punishment for child molestation is death (as is fashionable in Florida of late) there's no way they can meet that person in the middle. And that, sadly, is not new, either, as Matthew Shepard demonstrated so memorably in my own lifetime, but things are rather coming to a head now that sexual and gender minorities are forcing their longstanding plight into the public eye. They don't die quite as quietly now, in other words, and the great mass of people is more sympathetic to them now than it ever has been in the past. This, naturally, makes their would-be killers feel a bit persecuted. > and like the use of stocks in medieval times the concept of cancellation is much more power than any reality. Here we go, right on cue. The notion of being run out of employment for holding the traditional bigotries is a bit new, isn't it?
  • AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
    [dead]
  • rayiner 4y ago
    > There's no middle ground between wanting to kill someone and wanting to let them live in peace. If a person thinks someone is a born child molester (a "groomer" in the modern Newspeak) and that person thinks the punishment for child molestation is death (as is fashionable in Florida of late) there's no way they can meet that person in the middle. You can start by pulling back from the obvious rhetorical flourishes. We can acknowledge that social liberals aren’t literally child molesters. At the same time, can you acknowledge that parents in Florida don’t want to put anyone to death, but simply don’t trust what liberal teachers will tell their kids about sexuality? Like is it possible for you to acknowledge that folks in Florida don’t want to kill sexual minorities, but are also wary of a resurgent sexual revolution that could change the behaviors of kids who aren’t born gay or trans? Like can you seriously deny that there is an emerging trend of sexual identity becoming a form of self expression? https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/19/health/pronouns-guide-for-parents-wellness/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/19/health/pronouns-guide-for-par... It’s instructive to note that society did reach a broadly acceptable middle ground when it came to same-sex marriage. In the 1970s and 1980s, when the science was not well established, radicals wanted to use same sex relationships as a vehicle to deconstruct social norms around gender and marriage more broadly. The shift in the 1990s to refocus on same sex marriage was a deliberate, and in liberal circles controversial change: https://www.salon.com/1998/11/30/cov_30int https://www.salon.com/1998/11/30/cov_30int. And of course that’s the view that won. Obergefell is a paean to traditional marriage that bears little resemblance to how radical academics conceived of sexual orientation either then or now.
• azangru 4y ago
  > Everyone's in a gang and god help you if you aren't everyone will have a go at you. Don't you have to be sufficiently active or prominent on the social media to be attacked? (Yes, I remember the example of some hapless lady who tweeted "hope I won't get aids" before departing to Africa. I don't know how active she had been on twitter, or how typical the subsequent annihilation of her is.)
  • throwaway2847 4y ago
    Definitely not, if you reply to a sufficiently famous person in a way they dislike there's always a risk they'll (in)directly turn their followers against you.
    • taeric 4y ago
      I mean... this would happen in any place where you get to sound off against someone famous. Right?
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • oh_sigh 4y ago
    Nope - look at the central park bird watcher/dog incident or the SA aids lady as you mention - both of them I guess had a social media presence, but it was along the lines of 50 followers, probably just the people they were friends with in real life. But also being in a gang doesn't even protect you. Lots of intragang cancellations, if the gang seems you to hold the wrong values for the gang. Eg Lena dunham
• SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
  > There has been a complete loss in any interest in meeting a middle ground I disagree that this is a new phenomenon per se. There’s always been resistance to some aspects of a middle ground. Consider the case of Anita Bryant, who advocated that not being allowed to discriminate against homosexuals was a violation of her rights as a mother and as a “normal” American. She advocated for homosexuals to be ousted from schools and other environments because in her mind being gay was a corrupting force on children. This was well before the internet. I also think the concept of cancellation is curious because it’s so fickle and stochastic. On one hand the lady who called the cops on a black man filming her choking her dog still doesn’t have a job 3 years later. On the other hand known sexual harasser comedians are selling out tickets like nothing happened. Hard to square that circle, and I wonder if there are more studies to quantify this phenomenon.
• taeric 4y ago
  Oddly, I used to have the same view of sports. Growing up where I did, it was common for folks to be fanatical on their local college sports team. Such that they get mean to folks from their "rival" schools and are generally trash talking to everyone else. It was so bad, that I certainly thought that was how you were supposed to be. Pick a side and be aggressive to the opponents when watching the game. Goal was to make them do worse, so that your team would do better. It even makes sense in that regard. However, that is ridiculously unhealthy. And it easily bleeds into other aspects of life. Heaven help you when you go watch some middle school team sometime, parents are being terrible to their kids. Worse to other's kids. Does this mean sports are unhealthy, though? I'm convinced, right now, that that is definitely not the case. But I can also easily claim we tend to have unhealthy relationships with these topics.
  • molotovh 4y ago
    Note that in your example, it's not the athletes that are being toxic (usually), it's the spectators. It's common for sports fans to say things like, "we're playing Los Angeles next week" or "we picked up so-and-so in the draft" when there's really no "we" about it. The speaker is not involved in the action in any way other than as one observing it. But using that language makes them feel included in something bigger. And sometimes the brain starts to believe you really ARE part of that bigger thing, and you start taking actions to reinforce that belief. (And I want it noted that I'm very much including myself in this assessment. This is not some "nerds > jocks" kind of thing. As an American football fan myself, I've made a conscious effort to stop saying "we" specifically because this has started to bother me.) So no, participating in sports isn't unhealthy. Succumbing to the delusion of participation as a spectator, that's what becomes unhealthy.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • taeric 4y ago
      Ish. Trash talking is a huge thing in sports. Similarly many prudish administrators go out of their way to punish the players for celebrations and such. Edit: And I'm curious how this relates to the topic at hand. Not that I think it is unrelated, but specifically how. We seem to be in rather strong agreement that it is the relationship with a thing that is unhealthy, with regards to sports. Why or how would that be different with regards to social media?
• SoftTalker 4y ago
  How is twitter a prison. You can just not use it. I've never had an account there, and never used it other occcasionally reading a linked tweet in my web browser.
• mock-possum 4y ago
  So if social media is toxic for mental health, why am I immune? What’s special about me?
• heresie-dabord 4y ago
  > I am so thoroughly convinced that social media is toxic for mental health. The social media business is definitely a toxic, failed replacement for social discourse. Perhaps young citizens are driven to despair by this and their distress is an early indicator that we are failing as a society to provide adequate education and humanity. As an adult citizen, I am almost driven to despair. Consumer enclaves do not replace community.