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This is why blocking and muting (especially "mute words") are essential on social media. You have to be intentional about the diet of language you feed your bra

This is why blocking and muting (especially "mute words") are essential on social media. You have to be intentional about the diet of language you feed your brain, just as you have to be intentional about the diet of food you feed your stomach.

faeriechangling 3y ago
I thought for the longest time I could tune it all out, that I was calloused. It's only in hindsight that I see how much of the toxicity I willingly looked at deeply affected me. Mostly because I started believing that everybody was like the worst, loudest people on the internet and believed what they did.
purple-leafy 3y ago
Why not just get rid of social media? That’s what I did. Well, I have a hackernews account but that’s it
- inatreecrown2 3y ago
  do you watch YouTube videos?
  - purple-leafy 3y ago
    Increasingly less. I’m giving away my tv tomorrow lol. I realise YouTube is just as bad with its influencers
- modeless 3y ago
  There is a lot to be gained from social media, once filtered. It's not all bad.
  - purple-leafy 3y ago
    I think there is lots to gain from Wikipedia, but increasingly social media is being gamed and politicised and manipulated. For me the cons outweigh the pros heavily. I don’t even read the news. I feel incredibly free and happy with basically no online presence. Best I’ve ever felt. All I need is Wikipedia, hacker news, and a couple of books. Coding and coding books gives me all I need. Next step is to buy some GPUs to get away from hosted LLMs and start running them locally. Then I am truly free and information dense and self sufficient
vasco 3y ago
I think this is the wrong take. A discerning reader can read all manner of crap and know its crap. It can even learn how to avoid doing the same styles of mistakes in the future by reading it. So it affects you, but in unpredictable ways. Not like you're trying to say like "read bad things -> become bad". To give you a specific example (lets not call it crap this time). I've read more communist literature than I can list right now and I'm a social democrat and think Marx is full of flaws and communism is a hugely flawed economic system. You are shaped by what you read, but not in the basic "you'll agree with what you read".
- modeless 3y ago
  That's not my argument and I don't think it's the article's argument either. "You are what you read" doesn't mean you agree with what you read any more than "you are what you eat" means you'll turn into a potato chip. My point is more like, do you want to devote a bunch of your thinking time to arguments about communism or politics in general? Maybe you do and that's great, but I very much don't. I've thought about politics plenty in the past and formed my opinions already. I'm not a politician and don't care to evangelize my political beliefs. I have very limited time these days and I want to spend that time thinking about other things. Things that matter to me. I follow people who post useful and interesting things on those topics. However, those people also frequently discuss politics. And although I know those posts aren't why I follow those people, seeing them constantly makes them impossible to ignore. I end up spending time thinking about stuff I know I don't want to spend time on, even later when I'm not reading it. So I mute the words "liberal", "conservative", and a whole lot of others. Now I can follow those people but still spend my time thinking about the things that matter to me instead of politics. And over time, that literally changes my brain.

faeriechangling 3y ago

I thought for the longest time I could tune it all out, that I was calloused. It's only in hindsight that I see how much of the toxicity I willingly looked at deeply affected me. Mostly because I started believing that everybody was like the worst, loudest people on the internet and believed what they did.

purple-leafy 3y ago

Why not just get rid of social media? That’s what I did. Well, I have a hackernews account but that’s it

inatreecrown2 3y ago
do you watch YouTube videos?
- purple-leafy 3y ago
  Increasingly less. I’m giving away my tv tomorrow lol. I realise YouTube is just as bad with its influencers
modeless 3y ago
There is a lot to be gained from social media, once filtered. It's not all bad.
- purple-leafy 3y ago
  I think there is lots to gain from Wikipedia, but increasingly social media is being gamed and politicised and manipulated. For me the cons outweigh the pros heavily. I don’t even read the news. I feel incredibly free and happy with basically no online presence. Best I’ve ever felt. All I need is Wikipedia, hacker news, and a couple of books. Coding and coding books gives me all I need. Next step is to buy some GPUs to get away from hosted LLMs and start running them locally. Then I am truly free and information dense and self sufficient

vasco 3y ago

I think this is the wrong take. A discerning reader can read all manner of crap and know its crap. It can even learn how to avoid doing the same styles of mistakes in the future by reading it. So it affects you, but in unpredictable ways. Not like you're trying to say like "read bad things -> become bad". To give you a specific example (lets not call it crap this time). I've read more communist literature than I can list right now and I'm a social democrat and think Marx is full of flaws and communism is a hugely flawed economic system. You are shaped by what you read, but not in the basic "you'll agree with what you read".

modeless 3y ago
That's not my argument and I don't think it's the article's argument either. "You are what you read" doesn't mean you agree with what you read any more than "you are what you eat" means you'll turn into a potato chip. My point is more like, do you want to devote a bunch of your thinking time to arguments about communism or politics in general? Maybe you do and that's great, but I very much don't. I've thought about politics plenty in the past and formed my opinions already. I'm not a politician and don't care to evangelize my political beliefs. I have very limited time these days and I want to spend that time thinking about other things. Things that matter to me. I follow people who post useful and interesting things on those topics. However, those people also frequently discuss politics. And although I know those posts aren't why I follow those people, seeing them constantly makes them impossible to ignore. I end up spending time thinking about stuff I know I don't want to spend time on, even later when I'm not reading it. So I mute the words "liberal", "conservative", and a whole lot of others. Now I can follow those people but still spend my time thinking about the things that matter to me instead of politics. And over time, that literally changes my brain.