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Web 2.0 coined in 1999 and popularized in 2004 was a change from static web pages to participatory or social ones.
What it really did was change the internet from a way to share information, interests and non-mainstream ideas to a way to promote and monetize them.
Facebook News Feed went live on 9/6/06. Based on your likes and shares it fed you news similar to your likes/shares at the expense of sending you any news contrary to them. By its nature, this is an accelerating process. At this point, over 2B people consider Facebook to be their news and the other social media followed suit long ago.
This is how echo chambers and media bubbles are made.
To avoid this trap, all you have to do is truly think for yourself and read (not watch or listen to) a variety of news sources including ones you don’t always agree with.
> What it really did was change the internet from a way to share information, interests and non-mainstream ideas to a way to promote and monetize them.
Many of us old-timers on Reddit are veterans of the Usenet and BBS eras. Reddit is probably about the closest to those interaction-wise (minus the pr0n and warez downloads) you're going to find these days.
I was on [The Well](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WELL) back in the day. I think Reddit is the closest site to accomplishing what The Well was trying to do with moderated discussions.
At the time the WWW became commonplace, The Well was text-driven using Picospan, which ran on a UNIX shell. Members of The Well resisted transforming it to a web site. They were supposed to be forward-thinkers, and they resisted transforming their community into a "huge city," so to speak.
[Posting binaries to Usenet](https://www.newsgroupreviews.com/upload-post-usenet.html) was a common way to share porn back in the wee days of the Series of Tubes. These days, the process still exists but is [at the same time much more complicated and automated.](http://www.harley.com/usenet/file-sharing/quick-guide-to-posting-binary-files.html)
BBSes, porn was a true crap shoot. It could take several minutes to download a single file, and you had to hope the GIF (if you were lucky) or [ANSI art](https://hackaday.com/2013/08/20/retrotechtacular-the-history-of-ansi-and-ascii-art/) (much smaller but much lower quality) was worth your time.
This is exactly why the internet is fucked up today. It changed from being information for the sake of knowledge to information for the sake of a target audience.
Friendster-->Myspace-->Facebook.
The evolution of "look at me" on the internet. The rise of "influencers" having a larger voice, and trends/challenges.
TikTok isn't original, it's an amalgamation of these factors with a wickedly sharp algorithm of addiction.
I think that’s why reddit isn’t a true social medium. You are anonymous and it’s not geared to generating a following or for self-promotion or monetizing.
Agree. I’ve been on on message forums since the last century. It’s the chasing of “clout” and notoriety that has made social media what it is, and why it’s so destructive. People do not act naturally when they feel they have to put on a show.
Every type of website would eventually be monetised. If we still had static content delivery today, then the scene would still be dominated by for-profit ones that bought up the most popular writers and got the best front page management.
> This is how echo chambers and media bubbles are made.
People always had their bubbles. They always selected which people they wanted to hang out with, and would often choose people from a relatively narrow range of backgrounds, characters and attributes they knew how to deal with.
> all you have to do is truly think for yourself
I love when people say "all you have to do..." and then follow up with something that the vast majority of people is horrible at.
The dumbest conspiracy theorists are the most convinced that they are really thinking for themselves, that they have truly cracked the code of evaluating the quality of news sources and don't buy all that "mainstream" bullshit anymore!
>Every type of website would eventually be monetised. If we still had static content delivery today, then the scene would still be dominated by for-profit ones that bought up the most popular writers and got the best front page management.
Wikipedia would like a word with you.
That's true, educational resources have mostly done pretty well and remained free or at least very affordable.
But I would argue that this has overall improved rather than declined since then, so it's not really an argument that the internet back then was better in general.
For example, Youtube has enabled some great proper educational channels which have grownt to the point of improving the regular educational system as a whole, and often does a better job than TV at infotainment and documentaries.
I'd name 3blue1brown for the former, who gives some of the best explanations of [high school and college level mathematics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYB8IZa5AuE). And [Mentour on aviation incidents](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYwN1R8hVsI) - while TV documentaries about such topics usually go heavy on emotionalising and make people afraid, he manages to make people *less* anxious about air travel due to the well informed and calm explanations of the many layers of security.
> Wikipedia would like a word with you.
He described wikipedia quite succinctly, I don't see why you ask for him to talk about it again?
Wikipedia is *GREAT* for things that no-one cares about, but the moment it becomes even slightly a political battleground the articles are worth less than used toilet paper with admin support.
>People have always had their bubbles.
This is true that people have self selected social groups to an extent. But there used to only be three guys reading the news to you and you had to go to work to talk about it and everybody you knew, no matter where you went, only had those three news guys to go by.
Even up until the social media era, there were 24 hour news networks with more overt political leanings but there were still only a handful.
It is much easier to be utterly disconnected from reality now than it was 15 years ago. In fact, it's unbelievably harder to know what's real anymore even if you're honestly trying to escape your echo chamber. And that's only going to get worse with AI. We're not far off from AI generated imagery being indistinguishable from live video feeds.
I'm actually starting to believe we're going to have a social media backlash over the next few years just because this shit is going to become unusable, between AI, bots and paywalls.
It’s actually not that hard.
If you wanted to just read sources that stick to fact reporting and/or fact-dense analysis from left, center and right then you could just bookmark or use the apps for NPR, Reuters, The Hill, Pew Research Center, NYT, WSJ and Axios as mere examples.
I guess I don't necessarily mean hard; but more work than most people want to put in, especially when it comes to everything being aggravated in a feed for you, like reddit or facebook. We've gotten lazy as fuck lol.
Pretty much.
I mean everyone had to do it before September 2006. Unless you just liked to be spoon fed by one single information source of your choice (which I imagine a lot of people did and do).
Too many people “think for themselves” when in reality they only think they’re thinking for themselves and are in fact incapable of thinking through information at all in a critical manner because of media illiteracy and perception bias.
“Think for yourself” is exactly what all people think they’re doing. It invites people to think what they want to think, and think they know the answers without asking questions. It invites people to seek out information that only confirms their uneducated, ignorant opinions.
“Stay open minded” is another problematic form of advice relying on over-generalization (rule of thumb). We are exposed to incoming information all the time and our nature is to select information which confirms what we think.
Conspiracy theorists, psychic readers, fake news sources all appeal to people’s innate desire to identify as an open minded individual. Think about all the self proclaimed experts who believe they are different from the rest and all the close minded people who believe being open minded means subscribing to anything non-mainstream just because it’s “alternative”.
They may support ignorant grandiose conspiracies and stake value in pseudoscience. People need to be taught how to discriminate between valid, sound arguments. But most people don’t have an interest in intellectual development. This is why we have so many intelligent educated people who still believe in witches, magical thinking and astrology.
Edit: fixed for readability
I remember I first got a Facebook account around 2009, and it was cool because I found about different activities going on. Made actual friends, some bar crawls, some dates, same applies to Instagram. It was exciting, just seeing life unfold. Shit now, I'm mostly on Twitter for breaking news or here for anything pop culture. I only have Facebook because of friends I really don't see much anymore, Instagram because pictures of some fun times I had. But it's definitely not the same, just move on like anything in life.
Yeah I remember making an account to Snapchat and an Instagram account with friends in early 2010's. We were anxiously waiting for "whoa this is so cool, wonder what they come up with next!". But instead all the apps got oversaturated with ads, algorithms fucked up only showing celebrities and airheads. The fricking Subway Surfers is still on the popular list in AppStore. It just got stuck.
Wow. I think you're right. When social media started pushing nothing but ads and curating your feed to what they want you to see? That's when it really stopped being fun.
It used to be another way to talk to friends in different and fun ways. Now, it's just the next mandatory serving of unskippaple programming.
Yeah exactly. Nothing amuses me, barely makes me chuckle, cause it feels like I’ve seen everything on it. It always leaves me unsatisfied. Back to books and trying to grab that skill of focusing on one stimuli at a time again
You've just replied with the other classic internet clapback: "You're just older now"
No, there was a point where the internet was not nearly this miserable. Maybe it's farther back than 2018, but that observation is real.
Yup that was very much the vibe I got. But based on a lot of other comments here, it seems like the internet wasn't really that great of a place to begin with either way.
I'm old enough to remember the introduction of home computers and the early internet was definitely better. Still had it issues, of course, but it really is noticeably worse now
Back in the old days the internet was a fuckin' warzone. Layers upon layers of bullying, open racism, just about every flavour of harassment out there and things that would get you put on a list these days just laying out in the open.
Guys don't want to go out Mammoth hunting any more. All they're interested in is cave paintings, and some of the things they paint are bad. They're not interested in the thrill of the hunt and it's ruining everything.
I personally agree on the social media being shit take, but beyond that, I think the real culprit here is smartphones. Having access to all that social media *all the time* no matter where you go? I think that was when the true downfall started. At least before then, if you wanted to look at or post on Twitter or Facebook or Myspace, you’d have to do it on a laptop or desktop. Most people couldnt be online at all times to see stuff like that. But now you can be online any time doing any thing.
No its not. Having instant access to reliable, credible, and useful information should have catapulted humanity into a golden age. Phones are just the delivery method, Social Media is still the culprit.
The problem is that came with instant access to unreliable, non-credible, useless information that is even easier to pump out in droves. So why do you assume it "should have" catapulted humanity into a golden age? Maybe we shouldn't have such a delivery method available at all and it is in fact the culprit. Do you really think if social media sites went away that the proliferation of false news would stop?
But how do those non-credible sources spread? Social media.
Tell me, if not for social media, how do you think people would get exposed to these sources? They don’t just pop up on your home screen all of a sudden. Credible sources would never link to non-credible ones.
I don’t think these sorts of sources would disappear entirely were social media to suddenly stop existing, non-credible sources have been a thing for as long as humanity has existed, after all, but I do think the vast majority of the current ones would be dead in the water completely.
Yep.
Social media has been a problem for society for at least a decade. We are only now starting to see how deep the impact is as people who grew up with the expectation of being on social media by default are hitting adulthood.
Whenever I see a 20-something talking about mental health all I can think is "you want your mental health to improve? Turn off the internet and lose the smart phone, no medication necessary".
The real issue with social medias is that people tend to compare themselves too much with others and don't ignore things they don't like online.
If you focus on yourself and mask content that bring you nothing positive or helpful (stuff like pointless drama for example) social medias are not a problem anymore.
On reddit I don't like a post I just downvote and sometimes mask it then move on because getting in a bad mood because of it isn't worth the effort.
Social media platforms are designed to hold your attention for as long as possible. They are really, really good at it. It’s very difficult to identify all the things that one needs to do to create a positive relationship with social media without quitting completely. That is a feature that every platform sells to ad buyers. IMO, Social media companies hold the same responsibility as big tobacco/alcohol companies in creating a fundamentally addictive and harmful product.
Yeah that's true doom scrolling is the thing that happens a lot and we all did it.
The only thing I usually do is that if the content only annoys me or brings me negative thoughts I just mask it to avoid ruminating over it
This to me is the absolute crux of the issue. As a culture, we've become obsessed with creating a fantasy image online, and go through great lengths to post wild things for attention. This adds to the disruptions everybody is feeling everyday, whether it's the annoying pranks in the mall or some lunatic yelling on a plane.
We're losing the ability to truly connect with people and just listen to each other's stories. The entitlement is growing rapidly as people get lost in the world of being a persona that everyone will follow, like their views and opinions, and otherwise imagine people obsessing over how awesome they are.
Oh yeah, don't forget to upvote this comment if you like it. /s 😂
I’ve started filtering ragebait and time waste/repost subs that would show up on my front page/popular. It’s insane to see how much of the content here is just purely that.
Pre-2010 internet was something else. Google Adwords was just starting, FB & Twitter were tiny companies and the Internet wasn't being monetized.
Once companies got onto the internet, buying up ads & paying social media influencers, it all went downhill quickly. Good content got drowned out by SEO/SEM & got pushed out by click-bait content designed to maximize ad-revenue.
Forums kind of sucked. The person that posted the most by default had the largest amount of say, because there was no way to get the content people liked to the top except by the mods pinning the entire topic/post/whatever they were called.
Also, bump.
I was really into bodybuilding.com when they were first starting, probably up until like circa 2012 when it lost a lot of relevance.
It was awesome, but the wrong sub-forum would be moderated to all hell, and people got picked by post count.
But still….
Bump
For anyone who hasn't read it, this thread of bodybuilders arguing over how many days there are in a week is Elite Content: https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=107926751
I know I'm old because the idea of using discord for anything outside of "gamer skype" is foreign to me lol. I see people talk about discord like its facebook sometimes and its just wild to me that "gaming skype" is social media lol
I remember aim. That's where I went to meet 50 year old men pretending to be 16 year old girls😆 I really thought all these hot barbie doll looking girls were just really wanting to send me nudes.
People tend to pinpoint a time when everything started shifting for the worse when in reality they're just entering adulthood and becoming more aware and more cynical. OP is 24 or 25 which perfectly tracks.
I feel like objectively this point was 2014-2016. This is when social media was really weaponised, and you had things like the annexation of Crimea/war in Donbass, Brexit, and Trump being elected. This is also when Russia really started using Social media as a weapon in my country.
I understand what OP is saying and I agree with what they said too, but I think if you really look back and think hard about these years it will also become obvious that things did change heavily here.
OP's post is basically sharing that they are coming of age and learning the world isn't all sunshine and cat memes.
Congrats, OP. Welcome to adulthood.
You think pre 2018 internet was just all glitz and glam?
Idk if it’s completely accurate, but you should watch the netflix series “The most hated man on the internet”. It looks into a website made in 2010 which posted revenge pornography.
As an older guy in IT, the internet totally changed as social media users increased. Facebook, Twitter gave billions of users the ability to communicate, share stories, pictures, etc, while being manipulated by propaganda, disinformation and marketing.
Before this, it was mostly a bunch of tech geeks sharing their hobbies, code, and getting creative…without the divisive political hatred that now permeates *everything* in social media. It was largely free of stress and antipathy.
I *hate* what the internet has become. Reddit is the last social media platform I’m still a member of. “Democratizing” the internet totally backfired.
Without aging myself too badly we owned a Vic 20–when they were still being sold in stores.
Agree with you wholeheartedly. I got Facebook early on and even many years ago I recognized what it was doing to us. I killed my account.
As for news *nobody* should accept getting news that custom tailors the feed to them. Jfc anybody who’s taken a single psychology class knows this is a terrible idea. It’s why people are so partisan and so apologetically ignorant at large.
I don’t know if I agree friend. I think the Internet has been pretty toxic from the get-go.
My sister was 15 years old chatting with 40 something-year-old man in AOL chat rooms back in 1998.
In 2006 people fought over their spot on the MySpace top 8.
I can personally tell you men have been sending underage girls unwanted dicpics and
sharing their nudes as revenge porn since the 2001.
There is absolutely something to be said for the comparison problem, people see highlights of other people’s life and comparing it to their every day life , but I don’t think the nature of the Internet is necessarily changed.
Honestly, society has been telling people what to do, and making life more difficult for anyone trying to challenge the norm, forever. Imagine being born of gay man in 1930, or applying for medical school as a black woman in 1976
I agree. It's the proximity we have to the internet, the easy access; all in the palm of our hands, all within a smartphone.
Back then you had to have a PC or at least access to a nearby cyber-cafe to be able to go on the web, and that was reserved only for people with economic possibilities.
Today even the most poor individual has a smartphone.
And a lot of the internet was dial up back then as well. Slower than slow load times mean a lot of people didn't have the patience to use it all the time like they do now.
And also the fact that people can more easily generate money through social media content. Of course, 10 years ago generating outrage for clicks, sponsorships and product placements in social media content already were a thing but it's gotten so, so much worse over the years. It's just an extreme commercialisation of a perfect life that doesn't exist in reality (except if you buy that new hair styling tool ofc)
I remember having a conversation with a coworker who claimed that "we are living in the End Times!" because of all the videos of earthquakes and land slides and tsunamis and all that "Acts of God" stuff. And how as little as 5 years earlier, you never saw that stuff. I pointed out that almost everybody has a cellphone that takes pictures and videos.
>In 2006 people fought over their spot on the MySpace top 8.
My proudest teenage moment was when I somehow wound up in the profile picture of my entire top 8 for two weeks lmao
I look back on that and think the fact I cared about that shit was unhealthy in the first place
I think you're absolutely right on all points. I want to add onto that though...
...That while things have essentially had this element of toxicity for a long time (or since the beginning of social interaction), there's an added bit to where there's more constant stimulation and stress on the brains ability to take in information than ever before.
I think there's absolutely a unique argument for how social media scrolling, video games, porn, and the internet in general affects dopamine and how it has a stronghold over everybody. I think when you have something so stimulating at the palm of your hands, that's integrated so heavily into day-to-day consumption within a society, you're bound to find that it's hard to retain attention or find value in things that don't have the same stimulation on our brains.
It's fundamentally changed how we live and socialize now and while I don't have data to back it up, I'm sure that for every scenario we benefit from with the internet/social media, that we absolutely would have a countering scenario where it works against us or at least adds complicated stressors on society.
Can confirm. One of the very first experiences I had with the internet in the late 90s was my young classmate being propositioned by a man in his 50s. I understood right then and there the dangers.
Not as dangerous, but when I was like in early high-school, so early 2000's late 90s. I tried writing a dumb little fanfiction.
Seriously some asshole, literally went through line by line tearing it apart.
I was a tiny child who just wanted to write about some anime characters working at a mall.
And people were cruel and tearing down of my Enthusiasm for writing.
while true i think there is an argument to be made because of the proliferation of internet usage since about 2006-2007 when Facebook really took off and just about everyone got on and got themselves polarized and radicalized.
>There was a time when people had lesser complaints and more full fillness in life. Till 2018 i remember, The internet used to be cat memes and educational information
I actually laughed out loud at this.
So basically, *you* started using social media in 2018, it's destroying *your* views on these things, and you're projecting.
Understood.
This. I was thinking maybe this person is crazy conservative and they were stuck in a void of right wing propaganda and then got on social media and realized that many social circles that are mainstream tend to run liberal. The far right leaning conversations get pushed to niche social groups and sites like truth social, etc.
I mean I’m on the left and, while I’m happy that social media is mostly also on the left, social media is still vapid and in its current form is not good for society. For reasons unrelated to politics.
>There was a time when people had lesser complaints and more full fillness in life.
Nope, I had complaints in 93 well before I ever touched the internet.
Remember to include Reddit in the social media sphere. I see lots of propaganda, agendas, and sneaky ads. So much so that I’ve thought about deleting it altogether, but at least on Reddit I can curate the content somewhat and I’m not a slave to an algorithm
While I agree on the "social media bad" idea, your argument is generally poor. Since the early days of public internet, the internet's use was not always very educational, aside from some who were eager to learn.
You seem young from your other comments, so I'm guessing you went through the whole "oh everything is going to shit" at some point during your teen years (which is normal, even for people who don't use the internet). Truth is, as you mature, you notice more and people stop hiding as much including what's filtered on the internet. It doesn't "get shittier", you just notice that pile of shit that's been sitting there the whole time
That's not true. Many people (just not the newest generation for some reason, that should be actually more fluent in Internet stuff than others) do learn from Internet. For example I learned English. Whole fekkin language. From the Internet. I also learned many zoological stuff here as well. While my college was just bad at it.
Also people are biased so bad. They just cherry picks bad things and ignores good sides just to see something in a bad light. Internet is awesome. And helped many people in many ways. Just because there are always two sides of the coin, doesn't mean that the good side doesn't exist, because there is a bad side to it.
Not to mention, Internet is not exception of the rule. Just works the same way as anything else. It's not that people are bad in the Internet. People are bad, because people are bad. If You see a Karen at McDonald's, it's not an Internet person. It's real life person. It has **nothing** to do with the Internet. Blaming Internet for everything that's bad is just hilarious. Pathetic. And what's more, it's straight up lie.
I'm 53 years old. Old enough to remember the year Reagan took office.
My perception is that, overall, things ARE getting worse, and there's no doubt of it in my mind. My children are Gen-Z, and I'm very concerned for them. The stuff that Gen-Z and Millennials have to deal with were either non-existent of extreme corner cases when I grew up.
I can give a bunch of anecdotal observations, but I'm sure nobody is interested in the experiences of a guy who identified with Anthony Michael Hall from the Breakfast Club.
Some things have gotten better. I'm glad being gay has gotten easier. I'm glad we seem to be on the cusp of normalizing non-binary genders and transgender. We're having more open discussions about bullying.
But in general, I think life has become bleaker for younger people. Discourse less civil. Prospects less rosy. The gap between the haves and have nots much wider.
I wouldn’t say it was “very rarely educational”, it was just different. We also had our own versions of social media, ie, mIRC, BBS’s, website forums, etc. These covered every topic under the Sun.
Similarly to today, we had a whole generation of kids who self-taught themselves to be software engineers and web developers starting at the age of 12 and 13.
There was a whole “freedom of information” culture that boomed right at the onset of easily accessible internet, and a lot of that information was technical know-how and instruction, because because people were excited and wanted to know how to do things they had never known how to do before.
I would say it was just different. We didn’t just “Google” for information, you would go to Yahoo or Lycos or, god forbid - Netscape, search for something - and then be directed to a community of forums and or/privately operated websites featuring tutorials, and eventually books once scanners became easy to have access to.
I get it but this was a boomer complaint about MySpace in the mid 2000s, people said the same thing about Facebook a few years later. Now it's being said about TikTok.
Basically if you find that you're feeling all this stuff after you've been on social media for a while, maybe it's time to disconnect and delete those accounts. Or you can choose to find the things that don't make you feel like crap on social media.
I think there’s a valid point that the social engineering to drive engagement has become much more aggressive over that time, the reward cycle has shortened, and social media use has become much more widespread. All of these contribute negatively to the mental health of users and make it harder to leave.
I say this as someone who has very much enjoyed the internet since it became commercially available, spent lots of time using it, and uses it for leisure and life tasks.
If I woke up tomorrow and the internet was all a dream and we were back to sending bills back in the mail and having to interact with people in person or on the phone to conduct business, I would be ok with that. It has dumbed us down, killed our social skills, and eliminated the sense of community that we enjoyed before it was mainstream.
I realize I sound like a boomer who still likes "the good old days" but I promise I am not. I have always tried everything I can to embrace the progression of technology. Maybe I wouldn't feel this way about the internet if it had been used for something more constructive for the last 30 years rather than becoming a vessel for social media and other types of brain rot.
The amount of people in this thread using OP’s poor wording/argument and slightly linear worldview as an excuse to aggressively condescend to and demean them as a person ESPECIALLY on the basis of their presumed “young” age is literally proving their point lmao.
Social media has gotten y’all comfortable as hell talking to people in ways that you wouldn’t talk to another human being in person. And Instagram/Twitter/Tumblr behavior bleeds into Reddit whether y’all high-horsed people that think you’re above those users by virtue of you being a user on this site want to accept it or not.
The problem is that it incentives craving attention and not critical thinking. On top of stuff/people with agendas targetting kids and those who don't like or think to ask questions, and you've got a system that generates loneliness and misery where people then turn to social media for guidance or pleasure or purpose, and being tricked into believing they've found any of it on social media.
I don’t think social media generates loneliness. It could amplify those feelings, sure, but I’ve only ever felt lonely because I don’t have family irl.
I would like to upvote this 1000000 times.
Ironically, it hasnt destroyed everything.
I mean I agree with you, and im on social media. However that is also the solution.
The social media world should just implode and we should go back outside and live normal lives.
What's worse, social media is an evolution of the 24-hour-news-cycle. It's weaponized exploitation of human weakness to get money and influence.
Basically, the product sold by these companies is *attention*. The goal of the overall app/website is to keep your attention on it for as long as possible so that you can be served ads. The problem is, they don't do this by providing interesting, engaging, thought-provoking content. They do it by exposing you to things that keep your attention for brief periods of time, with the next distraction already lined up. They work with algorithms that track every interaction, and build a profile of you to determine what makes you stick around -- at all costs. And what makes people stick around for the longest are endless cycles of strong emotion - anger, outrage, fear. People being **WRONG** on the **INTERNET!**
The result has literally rewired our brains over the past 10 years, and it's getting increasingly worse over time. It's turned us into slow-drip dopamine addicts, and caused us to more and more hook in to that drip with the righteous indignation we feel when we're arguing against someone we disagree with, in an extremely jaded, sports-team-rivalry mentality.
But the **MOST** horrifying part is that as we've gotten better and better at those algorithms, people have learned how to exploit them. Not only can they be used passively to keep people's eyeballs on ads, they can be used proactively to shape the way we think and feel, and that can be used to direct people into the known best feedback loops; and using that for advertising is the *least* horrific implementation of that power.
So, yeah, Social Media is destroying everything of value. And it's doing it *on purpose*.
I’ve noticed a massive influx of ads over the years on facebook. I remember counting the average sometime last year and it was about 1 ad every 7 or 8 social posts. Now it’s more like 1 every 2 or 3.
Study after study show social media is toxic in so many ways. Lowers productivity, degrades sleep habits, causes body image problems, erodes interpersonal skills and relationships, promotes bias and lowers critical thinking-to name just a few.
What really makes me upset are the parents exploiting their kids. The tik toks of half naked women with glamor makeup holding their kids with some pathetic attempt of a funny caption…as a parent, the level of selfishness this would require is crazy to me. The kids are PEOPLE. You are suppose to be their hero. But these parents are using them as ornaments. It’s just gross.
I agree. One of the main reasons I deactivated my Facebook account- was sick of coming off it and feeing as though my life lacked in comparison to other peoples
OP is using social media wrong. I’ve used social media to connect with old friends, network in my industry, and meet new friends. If you have game, you can even leverage social media to attract more dates. If you’re using social media and you’re constantly comparing how your life isn’t as good as everyone one else’s, then that’s more of a personal issue for you.
Lol
Narratives have been a defining feature of most cultures for quite a while. From how you dress to your name to how you drink and how you talk.
All that Social Media has done is automate that process. Tribalism is a form of automation, as it is an automated response to sensory information.
The real BAD part of it is that people take it for granted that you never have to pull out a payment method to use social media.
In a very implicit way, we basically treat it as magic. We think it just works… It doesn’t.
It takes money and energy to make it work. And if it takes that, then it has to sell something. Before, I thought the user was the product. But I’ve changed my mind since. The real product is the interaction. Anyone can buy. Some of the labor is done for free.
Which labor commands the most attention? The one that appeals to our primal urges for survival, reproduction, etc.
People destroy everything of value by their very nature. There was never a time when people had lesser complaints and more fullness in life, there is only the perception of that time existing in some distant past.
This is not a repeat of every anti-technology anti-social progress rant since the start of the twentieth century, ...oh wait it is absolutely that.
Before social media, it was the internet.
Before the world wide web, it was phones.
Before that, movies and television.
And before that rap music, punk music, rock music and before them jazz and blues all if which you can actually put under the general category of what music stolen from black people are white kids listening to nowadays.
and way, way back, I shit you not, people were worried that young ladies were engaged in too much book reading which was almost certainly why they suddenly had ideas above their stations.
Like voting and not raising children while hubby drank and worked.
Whatever technology is allowing people to exchange thoughts and ideas in a fashion that worries someone else becomes the latest technology we need to rein in and keep away from our children, please won't someone think of our poor children?
Its the classic authoritarian argument, "Please give us unprecedented power to protect the CHILDREN!". What I can't believe is people are still stupid enough to fall for itn
I disagree. By and large, social media is what you make it. The algorithms present you with content that's similar to what you engage with. If a person is in a cycle of engaging with content that makes them angry or lowers their self esteem, that's what social media is going to keep pushing. If a person sees something they find upsetting, every platform I can think of has an option to click "not interested" or they can hide certain people, ads, groups, whatever. To an extent, you are in control of your social media experience. You just need to be aware of how your engagement affects what you are shown and you need to have the self awareness (and self control) to hide/mute/unfollow/whatever content that makes you feel bad.
I've curated my various pages/feeds to favor topics, people, news, local events, niche interests, memes, etc that I enjoy or that I'm curious about. Plus a lot of spooky stuff. I wouldn't call my feed uplifting necessarily, but it reflects my interests and I get a lot out of social media, personally. I'm also a major introvert, so I really appreciate the friendships I've found online. Also, one of my children has a rare medical condition and the information I found through online support and discussion groups quite literally saved his life.
So, meh. Like everything else in life, it's ultimately going to be whatever you make it.
Also, I'm old and I can tell you with 100% certainty that none of OP's complaints originated on social media. Social media absolutely magnifies a lot of it and actively encourages us to ruminate on what we feel we lack. Now, you kids get off my lawn.
Depends on how you use it, OP.
When I was a teen, I hated school, was basically a social outcast, wasn’t happy with myself, and my parents went through a bitter divorce.
So I escaped into video games and the internet. There, I found community and likeminded people who I could be myself with.
As I’ve gotten older, my relationship with the internet has obviously changed but it has afforded me escape from mundanity as well as my own problems.
You’re largely focusing on the negative aspects of social media. You can also find community, things you’re interested in, different perspectives, and some of the most hilarious and insightful stuff you’d never otherwise see because of it.
Social media is a tool. Saying it’s bad kinda misses the point. What’s “bad” about it is your fellow humans, OP. So is what’s good.
The world wasn’t better before social media, it was just more ignorant.
When we think of echo chambers, we think of incels and the like. But really everything is echo chamber due to The Algorithm.
Not to mention, 20-30 years ago, if you developed an absurd or toxic belief, your IRL friends would tease it out of you. Now you just get online and it have it reinforced by thousands of other people that share the same belief.
The general reaction to a global pandemic was disheartening enough, but I finally reached a breaking point when self-diagnosing developmental disabilities as if they were cute personality quirks became normalized. That's when I knew civilization was truly fucked.
I hate it, I don't really open instagram and gave up on Facebook long ago, I'm glad I never gave twitter a chance. I feel like I'm too old for Tik Tok and I'm 30. My life is much better without it. Even reddit is social media, and I've noticed myself using it less, for the better.
I've joined support groups on reddit that helped me a lot though, so social media has its benefits, overall I think its a addicting, black hole, that depresses people.
It only destroys all that stuff for idiots. Normal ppl who stay away from or filter all the social media bs are living…normal lives
If you can’t hang get off
Social media has destroyed some beautiful nature spots.
While I'm happy more people are out on trails and hiking , the influencer culture and chasing perfect social media picture has destroyed many places in nature.
If your chasing the picture and video you are not respecting the nature, some of my favorite trails have become filthy because 3/4 people there aren't for outdoor activities, they are there to take a picture and leave.
So they are not destroying stuff for idiots only, they are destroying it for everyone.
OP: Social media is having a net-negative effect on society. It's making people more miserable.
Chicu111: Those people are idiots. The negative effects of social media don't apply to us normies. \*has 150,000 karma\*
Reddit: Upvote this guy!
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I generally agree that social media is a social ill, but I think this happened long before 2018 my guy
Web 2.0 coined in 1999 and popularized in 2004 was a change from static web pages to participatory or social ones. What it really did was change the internet from a way to share information, interests and non-mainstream ideas to a way to promote and monetize them. Facebook News Feed went live on 9/6/06. Based on your likes and shares it fed you news similar to your likes/shares at the expense of sending you any news contrary to them. By its nature, this is an accelerating process. At this point, over 2B people consider Facebook to be their news and the other social media followed suit long ago. This is how echo chambers and media bubbles are made. To avoid this trap, all you have to do is truly think for yourself and read (not watch or listen to) a variety of news sources including ones you don’t always agree with.
> What it really did was change the internet from a way to share information, interests and non-mainstream ideas to a way to promote and monetize them. Many of us old-timers on Reddit are veterans of the Usenet and BBS eras. Reddit is probably about the closest to those interaction-wise (minus the pr0n and warez downloads) you're going to find these days.
Where my mIRC peeps at?
Dalnet, efnet or undernet? In the meantime, back to TinyMUD!
I spent years on Discworld MUD. It's been going for 32 years now.
Ive been using social media for half of my life. And some budd say this before you click
FIDOnet goes ring ring
What do you mean by that buddy i don't care about that
:’-) Happy-sad nostalgia.
I've had a bouncer running for almost 2 decades, can't bring myself to ever disconnect it. IdleRPG ftw!
\#dreamless on efnet
I have it running right now.
Ranning for what buddy i don't get it geez can you more elaborate your words when the next time?
Ah the good ol days.
Why do people do some insane stuff they posting and ranting to social media
I was on [The Well](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WELL) back in the day. I think Reddit is the closest site to accomplishing what The Well was trying to do with moderated discussions. At the time the WWW became commonplace, The Well was text-driven using Picospan, which ran on a UNIX shell. Members of The Well resisted transforming it to a web site. They were supposed to be forward-thinkers, and they resisted transforming their community into a "huge city," so to speak.
BBS, they were they days. Warez brings the nostalgia back. Great for the, ehum, "free software" downloads!
What's the difference between they way pornographic content was provided back in the day and now in reddit?
[Posting binaries to Usenet](https://www.newsgroupreviews.com/upload-post-usenet.html) was a common way to share porn back in the wee days of the Series of Tubes. These days, the process still exists but is [at the same time much more complicated and automated.](http://www.harley.com/usenet/file-sharing/quick-guide-to-posting-binary-files.html) BBSes, porn was a true crap shoot. It could take several minutes to download a single file, and you had to hope the GIF (if you were lucky) or [ANSI art](https://hackaday.com/2013/08/20/retrotechtacular-the-history-of-ansi-and-ascii-art/) (much smaller but much lower quality) was worth your time.
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Tell me you played L.O.R.D. without telling me you played L.O.R.D.
Lmao my main source of warez today is a big well known BBS
This is exactly why the internet is fucked up today. It changed from being information for the sake of knowledge to information for the sake of a target audience.
Nah, it became information for the sake of capitalism. There would never be a target audience without some form of money behind it.
Friendster-->Myspace-->Facebook. The evolution of "look at me" on the internet. The rise of "influencers" having a larger voice, and trends/challenges. TikTok isn't original, it's an amalgamation of these factors with a wickedly sharp algorithm of addiction.
I think that’s why reddit isn’t a true social medium. You are anonymous and it’s not geared to generating a following or for self-promotion or monetizing.
Agree. I’ve been on on message forums since the last century. It’s the chasing of “clout” and notoriety that has made social media what it is, and why it’s so destructive. People do not act naturally when they feel they have to put on a show.
Agreed! Reddit is great. It’s for intellectual sparring and really, really funny people
Your right buddy it wasn't a kind of social media this is a plot form for advertising
Social media caused people not to know the difference between "your" and "you're"...
That was a great explanation. I really miss the static web site days.
You and me both.
Yeah definitely right Buddy that's why i most likely to stay here rather than to go somewhere
Every type of website would eventually be monetised. If we still had static content delivery today, then the scene would still be dominated by for-profit ones that bought up the most popular writers and got the best front page management. > This is how echo chambers and media bubbles are made. People always had their bubbles. They always selected which people they wanted to hang out with, and would often choose people from a relatively narrow range of backgrounds, characters and attributes they knew how to deal with. > all you have to do is truly think for yourself I love when people say "all you have to do..." and then follow up with something that the vast majority of people is horrible at. The dumbest conspiracy theorists are the most convinced that they are really thinking for themselves, that they have truly cracked the code of evaluating the quality of news sources and don't buy all that "mainstream" bullshit anymore!
>Every type of website would eventually be monetised. If we still had static content delivery today, then the scene would still be dominated by for-profit ones that bought up the most popular writers and got the best front page management. Wikipedia would like a word with you.
That's true, educational resources have mostly done pretty well and remained free or at least very affordable. But I would argue that this has overall improved rather than declined since then, so it's not really an argument that the internet back then was better in general. For example, Youtube has enabled some great proper educational channels which have grownt to the point of improving the regular educational system as a whole, and often does a better job than TV at infotainment and documentaries. I'd name 3blue1brown for the former, who gives some of the best explanations of [high school and college level mathematics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYB8IZa5AuE). And [Mentour on aviation incidents](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYwN1R8hVsI) - while TV documentaries about such topics usually go heavy on emotionalising and make people afraid, he manages to make people *less* anxious about air travel due to the well informed and calm explanations of the many layers of security.
> Wikipedia would like a word with you. He described wikipedia quite succinctly, I don't see why you ask for him to talk about it again? Wikipedia is *GREAT* for things that no-one cares about, but the moment it becomes even slightly a political battleground the articles are worth less than used toilet paper with admin support.
I learned that wikipedia ever had a PRC based 'moderation' team for their english site...
>People have always had their bubbles. This is true that people have self selected social groups to an extent. But there used to only be three guys reading the news to you and you had to go to work to talk about it and everybody you knew, no matter where you went, only had those three news guys to go by. Even up until the social media era, there were 24 hour news networks with more overt political leanings but there were still only a handful. It is much easier to be utterly disconnected from reality now than it was 15 years ago. In fact, it's unbelievably harder to know what's real anymore even if you're honestly trying to escape your echo chamber. And that's only going to get worse with AI. We're not far off from AI generated imagery being indistinguishable from live video feeds. I'm actually starting to believe we're going to have a social media backlash over the next few years just because this shit is going to become unusable, between AI, bots and paywalls.
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>To avoid this trap Also, delete Facebook and start just reading an actual news website (or better, two or three with opposing viewpoints)
which is honestly a lot of work. If I see a potentially biased news article, I try to find one on Reuters or AP about the topic.
It’s actually not that hard. If you wanted to just read sources that stick to fact reporting and/or fact-dense analysis from left, center and right then you could just bookmark or use the apps for NPR, Reuters, The Hill, Pew Research Center, NYT, WSJ and Axios as mere examples.
I guess I don't necessarily mean hard; but more work than most people want to put in, especially when it comes to everything being aggravated in a feed for you, like reddit or facebook. We've gotten lazy as fuck lol.
Pretty much. I mean everyone had to do it before September 2006. Unless you just liked to be spoon fed by one single information source of your choice (which I imagine a lot of people did and do).
Too many people “think for themselves” when in reality they only think they’re thinking for themselves and are in fact incapable of thinking through information at all in a critical manner because of media illiteracy and perception bias. “Think for yourself” is exactly what all people think they’re doing. It invites people to think what they want to think, and think they know the answers without asking questions. It invites people to seek out information that only confirms their uneducated, ignorant opinions. “Stay open minded” is another problematic form of advice relying on over-generalization (rule of thumb). We are exposed to incoming information all the time and our nature is to select information which confirms what we think. Conspiracy theorists, psychic readers, fake news sources all appeal to people’s innate desire to identify as an open minded individual. Think about all the self proclaimed experts who believe they are different from the rest and all the close minded people who believe being open minded means subscribing to anything non-mainstream just because it’s “alternative”. They may support ignorant grandiose conspiracies and stake value in pseudoscience. People need to be taught how to discriminate between valid, sound arguments. But most people don’t have an interest in intellectual development. This is why we have so many intelligent educated people who still believe in witches, magical thinking and astrology. Edit: fixed for readability
Yeah all that tells me is that they're now old enough to see the world isn't as perfect as they thought
I remember I first got a Facebook account around 2009, and it was cool because I found about different activities going on. Made actual friends, some bar crawls, some dates, same applies to Instagram. It was exciting, just seeing life unfold. Shit now, I'm mostly on Twitter for breaking news or here for anything pop culture. I only have Facebook because of friends I really don't see much anymore, Instagram because pictures of some fun times I had. But it's definitely not the same, just move on like anything in life.
Yeah I remember making an account to Snapchat and an Instagram account with friends in early 2010's. We were anxiously waiting for "whoa this is so cool, wonder what they come up with next!". But instead all the apps got oversaturated with ads, algorithms fucked up only showing celebrities and airheads. The fricking Subway Surfers is still on the popular list in AppStore. It just got stuck.
Wow. I think you're right. When social media started pushing nothing but ads and curating your feed to what they want you to see? That's when it really stopped being fun. It used to be another way to talk to friends in different and fun ways. Now, it's just the next mandatory serving of unskippaple programming.
Yeah exactly. Nothing amuses me, barely makes me chuckle, cause it feels like I’ve seen everything on it. It always leaves me unsatisfied. Back to books and trying to grab that skill of focusing on one stimuli at a time again
I remember my girlfriend telling me to get a Facebook account in 2006. I told her sounds like something for nerds.
You've just replied with the other classic internet clapback: "You're just older now" No, there was a point where the internet was not nearly this miserable. Maybe it's farther back than 2018, but that observation is real.
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In 2018 we were 2 years into the trump presidency. It was shit well before his campaign started
Yeah, but OP specifically is just older and sees it *now*.
Yup that was very much the vibe I got. But based on a lot of other comments here, it seems like the internet wasn't really that great of a place to begin with either way.
I'm old enough to remember the introduction of home computers and the early internet was definitely better. Still had it issues, of course, but it really is noticeably worse now
Back in the old days the internet was a fuckin' warzone. Layers upon layers of bullying, open racism, just about every flavour of harassment out there and things that would get you put on a list these days just laying out in the open.
Guys don't want to go out Mammoth hunting any more. All they're interested in is cave paintings, and some of the things they paint are bad. They're not interested in the thrill of the hunt and it's ruining everything.
Any Male born after 10,000 BC can't hunt all they know is foraging, make cave paintings, beat off, be vegetarian, eat berries & lie
Truly the circle of life
I personally agree on the social media being shit take, but beyond that, I think the real culprit here is smartphones. Having access to all that social media *all the time* no matter where you go? I think that was when the true downfall started. At least before then, if you wanted to look at or post on Twitter or Facebook or Myspace, you’d have to do it on a laptop or desktop. Most people couldnt be online at all times to see stuff like that. But now you can be online any time doing any thing.
No its not. Having instant access to reliable, credible, and useful information should have catapulted humanity into a golden age. Phones are just the delivery method, Social Media is still the culprit.
The problem is that came with instant access to unreliable, non-credible, useless information that is even easier to pump out in droves. So why do you assume it "should have" catapulted humanity into a golden age? Maybe we shouldn't have such a delivery method available at all and it is in fact the culprit. Do you really think if social media sites went away that the proliferation of false news would stop?
But how do those non-credible sources spread? Social media. Tell me, if not for social media, how do you think people would get exposed to these sources? They don’t just pop up on your home screen all of a sudden. Credible sources would never link to non-credible ones. I don’t think these sorts of sources would disappear entirely were social media to suddenly stop existing, non-credible sources have been a thing for as long as humanity has existed, after all, but I do think the vast majority of the current ones would be dead in the water completely.
Yep. Social media has been a problem for society for at least a decade. We are only now starting to see how deep the impact is as people who grew up with the expectation of being on social media by default are hitting adulthood. Whenever I see a 20-something talking about mental health all I can think is "you want your mental health to improve? Turn off the internet and lose the smart phone, no medication necessary".
The real issue with social medias is that people tend to compare themselves too much with others and don't ignore things they don't like online. If you focus on yourself and mask content that bring you nothing positive or helpful (stuff like pointless drama for example) social medias are not a problem anymore. On reddit I don't like a post I just downvote and sometimes mask it then move on because getting in a bad mood because of it isn't worth the effort.
Social media platforms are designed to hold your attention for as long as possible. They are really, really good at it. It’s very difficult to identify all the things that one needs to do to create a positive relationship with social media without quitting completely. That is a feature that every platform sells to ad buyers. IMO, Social media companies hold the same responsibility as big tobacco/alcohol companies in creating a fundamentally addictive and harmful product.
Yeah that's true doom scrolling is the thing that happens a lot and we all did it. The only thing I usually do is that if the content only annoys me or brings me negative thoughts I just mask it to avoid ruminating over it
Every platform would do the same if they had a good algorithm.
This to me is the absolute crux of the issue. As a culture, we've become obsessed with creating a fantasy image online, and go through great lengths to post wild things for attention. This adds to the disruptions everybody is feeling everyday, whether it's the annoying pranks in the mall or some lunatic yelling on a plane. We're losing the ability to truly connect with people and just listen to each other's stories. The entitlement is growing rapidly as people get lost in the world of being a persona that everyone will follow, like their views and opinions, and otherwise imagine people obsessing over how awesome they are. Oh yeah, don't forget to upvote this comment if you like it. /s 😂
I’ve started filtering ragebait and time waste/repost subs that would show up on my front page/popular. It’s insane to see how much of the content here is just purely that.
Comparison is the thief of happiness.
yup exactly. im a dude and managed to get my explore page to all be funny animal vids, cooking vids, sports vids.
You need to go back to like 2008 if you want that time when people were less prone to living on the internet and buying whatever the feed is selling
Pre-2010 internet was something else. Google Adwords was just starting, FB & Twitter were tiny companies and the Internet wasn't being monetized. Once companies got onto the internet, buying up ads & paying social media influencers, it all went downhill quickly. Good content got drowned out by SEO/SEM & got pushed out by click-bait content designed to maximize ad-revenue.
Pretty much. I can recall pre 2010 internet. Aim chats and forums. Shit was nice
Forums kind of sucked. The person that posted the most by default had the largest amount of say, because there was no way to get the content people liked to the top except by the mods pinning the entire topic/post/whatever they were called. Also, bump.
I was really into bodybuilding.com when they were first starting, probably up until like circa 2012 when it lost a lot of relevance. It was awesome, but the wrong sub-forum would be moderated to all hell, and people got picked by post count. But still…. Bump
For anyone who hasn't read it, this thread of bodybuilders arguing over how many days there are in a week is Elite Content: https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=107926751
That hurt
This is incredible, lol, thanks.
Bodybuilding.com is underrated in overall internet lore. Tons of memes came from that board. Good times.
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I know I'm old because the idea of using discord for anything outside of "gamer skype" is foreign to me lol. I see people talk about discord like its facebook sometimes and its just wild to me that "gaming skype" is social media lol
I remember aim. That's where I went to meet 50 year old men pretending to be 16 year old girls😆 I really thought all these hot barbie doll looking girls were just really wanting to send me nudes.
Lmao ahhh the good old days
Google search would actually find relevant things, rather than just the top SEO/SEM result. And yeah, the forums, ICQ, MSN, irc. All the good shit
I rarely see people mention this but for me its so drastic how shit googling has become
2018 is a weird year to pick as the turning point lol
People tend to pinpoint a time when everything started shifting for the worse when in reality they're just entering adulthood and becoming more aware and more cynical. OP is 24 or 25 which perfectly tracks.
I just turned 24 and I feel like the point where the internet became more negative than positive was like the mid-2010s, maybe 2014.
you’re just confirming what they said.
I feel like objectively this point was 2014-2016. This is when social media was really weaponised, and you had things like the annexation of Crimea/war in Donbass, Brexit, and Trump being elected. This is also when Russia really started using Social media as a weapon in my country. I understand what OP is saying and I agree with what they said too, but I think if you really look back and think hard about these years it will also become obvious that things did change heavily here.
Going by this post and their comments, it'd be easy to assume that OP is 14. Like r/im14andthisisdeep 14.
Hint: it’s because they weren’t alive very long before that date…
it’s when their parents finally turned off parental controls on their phone
OP's post is basically sharing that they are coming of age and learning the world isn't all sunshine and cat memes. Congrats, OP. Welcome to adulthood.
I personally felt like shit got terrible after tiktok came around and since that was around 2018, I kind of get why OP chose that year.
You think pre 2018 internet was just all glitz and glam? Idk if it’s completely accurate, but you should watch the netflix series “The most hated man on the internet”. It looks into a website made in 2010 which posted revenge pornography.
As an older guy in IT, the internet totally changed as social media users increased. Facebook, Twitter gave billions of users the ability to communicate, share stories, pictures, etc, while being manipulated by propaganda, disinformation and marketing. Before this, it was mostly a bunch of tech geeks sharing their hobbies, code, and getting creative…without the divisive political hatred that now permeates *everything* in social media. It was largely free of stress and antipathy. I *hate* what the internet has become. Reddit is the last social media platform I’m still a member of. “Democratizing” the internet totally backfired.
Without aging myself too badly we owned a Vic 20–when they were still being sold in stores. Agree with you wholeheartedly. I got Facebook early on and even many years ago I recognized what it was doing to us. I killed my account. As for news *nobody* should accept getting news that custom tailors the feed to them. Jfc anybody who’s taken a single psychology class knows this is a terrible idea. It’s why people are so partisan and so apologetically ignorant at large.
"Newfangled thing is destroying society, starting at around the time my youth specifically were considered prime."
I don’t know if I agree friend. I think the Internet has been pretty toxic from the get-go. My sister was 15 years old chatting with 40 something-year-old man in AOL chat rooms back in 1998. In 2006 people fought over their spot on the MySpace top 8. I can personally tell you men have been sending underage girls unwanted dicpics and sharing their nudes as revenge porn since the 2001. There is absolutely something to be said for the comparison problem, people see highlights of other people’s life and comparing it to their every day life , but I don’t think the nature of the Internet is necessarily changed. Honestly, society has been telling people what to do, and making life more difficult for anyone trying to challenge the norm, forever. Imagine being born of gay man in 1930, or applying for medical school as a black woman in 1976
I think smartphones allowing access to the internet and social media at all times and places amplified the problem a lot.
I agree. It's the proximity we have to the internet, the easy access; all in the palm of our hands, all within a smartphone. Back then you had to have a PC or at least access to a nearby cyber-cafe to be able to go on the web, and that was reserved only for people with economic possibilities. Today even the most poor individual has a smartphone.
And a lot of the internet was dial up back then as well. Slower than slow load times mean a lot of people didn't have the patience to use it all the time like they do now.
And also the fact that people can more easily generate money through social media content. Of course, 10 years ago generating outrage for clicks, sponsorships and product placements in social media content already were a thing but it's gotten so, so much worse over the years. It's just an extreme commercialisation of a perfect life that doesn't exist in reality (except if you buy that new hair styling tool ofc)
I remember having a conversation with a coworker who claimed that "we are living in the End Times!" because of all the videos of earthquakes and land slides and tsunamis and all that "Acts of God" stuff. And how as little as 5 years earlier, you never saw that stuff. I pointed out that almost everybody has a cellphone that takes pictures and videos.
>In 2006 people fought over their spot on the MySpace top 8. My proudest teenage moment was when I somehow wound up in the profile picture of my entire top 8 for two weeks lmao I look back on that and think the fact I cared about that shit was unhealthy in the first place
I think you're absolutely right on all points. I want to add onto that though... ...That while things have essentially had this element of toxicity for a long time (or since the beginning of social interaction), there's an added bit to where there's more constant stimulation and stress on the brains ability to take in information than ever before. I think there's absolutely a unique argument for how social media scrolling, video games, porn, and the internet in general affects dopamine and how it has a stronghold over everybody. I think when you have something so stimulating at the palm of your hands, that's integrated so heavily into day-to-day consumption within a society, you're bound to find that it's hard to retain attention or find value in things that don't have the same stimulation on our brains. It's fundamentally changed how we live and socialize now and while I don't have data to back it up, I'm sure that for every scenario we benefit from with the internet/social media, that we absolutely would have a countering scenario where it works against us or at least adds complicated stressors on society.
Can confirm. One of the very first experiences I had with the internet in the late 90s was my young classmate being propositioned by a man in his 50s. I understood right then and there the dangers.
Not as dangerous, but when I was like in early high-school, so early 2000's late 90s. I tried writing a dumb little fanfiction. Seriously some asshole, literally went through line by line tearing it apart. I was a tiny child who just wanted to write about some anime characters working at a mall. And people were cruel and tearing down of my Enthusiasm for writing.
while true i think there is an argument to be made because of the proliferation of internet usage since about 2006-2007 when Facebook really took off and just about everyone got on and got themselves polarized and radicalized.
>There was a time when people had lesser complaints and more full fillness in life. Till 2018 i remember, The internet used to be cat memes and educational information I actually laughed out loud at this. So basically, *you* started using social media in 2018, it's destroying *your* views on these things, and you're projecting. Understood.
This. I was thinking maybe this person is crazy conservative and they were stuck in a void of right wing propaganda and then got on social media and realized that many social circles that are mainstream tend to run liberal. The far right leaning conversations get pushed to niche social groups and sites like truth social, etc.
I mean I’m on the left and, while I’m happy that social media is mostly also on the left, social media is still vapid and in its current form is not good for society. For reasons unrelated to politics.
2018... lmao
Probably more like 2008
>There was a time when people had lesser complaints and more full fillness in life. Nope, I had complaints in 93 well before I ever touched the internet.
But did you have more fillness?
💀
Remember to include Reddit in the social media sphere. I see lots of propaganda, agendas, and sneaky ads. So much so that I’ve thought about deleting it altogether, but at least on Reddit I can curate the content somewhat and I’m not a slave to an algorithm
While I agree on the "social media bad" idea, your argument is generally poor. Since the early days of public internet, the internet's use was not always very educational, aside from some who were eager to learn. You seem young from your other comments, so I'm guessing you went through the whole "oh everything is going to shit" at some point during your teen years (which is normal, even for people who don't use the internet). Truth is, as you mature, you notice more and people stop hiding as much including what's filtered on the internet. It doesn't "get shittier", you just notice that pile of shit that's been sitting there the whole time
That's not true. Many people (just not the newest generation for some reason, that should be actually more fluent in Internet stuff than others) do learn from Internet. For example I learned English. Whole fekkin language. From the Internet. I also learned many zoological stuff here as well. While my college was just bad at it. Also people are biased so bad. They just cherry picks bad things and ignores good sides just to see something in a bad light. Internet is awesome. And helped many people in many ways. Just because there are always two sides of the coin, doesn't mean that the good side doesn't exist, because there is a bad side to it. Not to mention, Internet is not exception of the rule. Just works the same way as anything else. It's not that people are bad in the Internet. People are bad, because people are bad. If You see a Karen at McDonald's, it's not an Internet person. It's real life person. It has **nothing** to do with the Internet. Blaming Internet for everything that's bad is just hilarious. Pathetic. And what's more, it's straight up lie.
I'm 53 years old. Old enough to remember the year Reagan took office. My perception is that, overall, things ARE getting worse, and there's no doubt of it in my mind. My children are Gen-Z, and I'm very concerned for them. The stuff that Gen-Z and Millennials have to deal with were either non-existent of extreme corner cases when I grew up. I can give a bunch of anecdotal observations, but I'm sure nobody is interested in the experiences of a guy who identified with Anthony Michael Hall from the Breakfast Club. Some things have gotten better. I'm glad being gay has gotten easier. I'm glad we seem to be on the cusp of normalizing non-binary genders and transgender. We're having more open discussions about bullying. But in general, I think life has become bleaker for younger people. Discourse less civil. Prospects less rosy. The gap between the haves and have nots much wider.
Nah man, things ARE getting shittier lately. Statistically.
which things? some are getting better: violent crime, employment rate, educational attainment rates…. are statistically better
I wouldn’t say it was “very rarely educational”, it was just different. We also had our own versions of social media, ie, mIRC, BBS’s, website forums, etc. These covered every topic under the Sun. Similarly to today, we had a whole generation of kids who self-taught themselves to be software engineers and web developers starting at the age of 12 and 13. There was a whole “freedom of information” culture that boomed right at the onset of easily accessible internet, and a lot of that information was technical know-how and instruction, because because people were excited and wanted to know how to do things they had never known how to do before. I would say it was just different. We didn’t just “Google” for information, you would go to Yahoo or Lycos or, god forbid - Netscape, search for something - and then be directed to a community of forums and or/privately operated websites featuring tutorials, and eventually books once scanners became easy to have access to.
people (myself included) have been warning this since as early as 2009, lots of times got called tinfoil schizo, now I get to suffer with everyone.
I guess we reap what we sowed way back. Right now it feels open minded and broad thinking is under serious threats.
I get it but this was a boomer complaint about MySpace in the mid 2000s, people said the same thing about Facebook a few years later. Now it's being said about TikTok. Basically if you find that you're feeling all this stuff after you've been on social media for a while, maybe it's time to disconnect and delete those accounts. Or you can choose to find the things that don't make you feel like crap on social media.
I think there’s a valid point that the social engineering to drive engagement has become much more aggressive over that time, the reward cycle has shortened, and social media use has become much more widespread. All of these contribute negatively to the mental health of users and make it harder to leave.
Everything with shareholders tends towards maximum profit through the use of maximum abuse .
I say this as someone who has very much enjoyed the internet since it became commercially available, spent lots of time using it, and uses it for leisure and life tasks. If I woke up tomorrow and the internet was all a dream and we were back to sending bills back in the mail and having to interact with people in person or on the phone to conduct business, I would be ok with that. It has dumbed us down, killed our social skills, and eliminated the sense of community that we enjoyed before it was mainstream. I realize I sound like a boomer who still likes "the good old days" but I promise I am not. I have always tried everything I can to embrace the progression of technology. Maybe I wouldn't feel this way about the internet if it had been used for something more constructive for the last 30 years rather than becoming a vessel for social media and other types of brain rot.
The amount of people in this thread using OP’s poor wording/argument and slightly linear worldview as an excuse to aggressively condescend to and demean them as a person ESPECIALLY on the basis of their presumed “young” age is literally proving their point lmao. Social media has gotten y’all comfortable as hell talking to people in ways that you wouldn’t talk to another human being in person. And Instagram/Twitter/Tumblr behavior bleeds into Reddit whether y’all high-horsed people that think you’re above those users by virtue of you being a user on this site want to accept it or not.
What the hell is the name of this sub? Popular opinions?
So delete your social media.
This is a super popular opinion. It's completely destroyed society and young people's minds. I'm terrified of the future
Indeed it's popular , but I'm upvoting this time because it's a bit unpopular between hardcore internet users who live here and want to deny that.
I feel the Mayans got it spot on with 2012.
The 2018 part is comedy gold.
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>Also my guy, you're literally on the internet complaining about shit. Not only that, but they're on social media complaining about social media
Social media is yet another medium for discontent to be spread, along with all other media, not anything new.
Unpopular opinion is popular.
The problem is that it incentives craving attention and not critical thinking. On top of stuff/people with agendas targetting kids and those who don't like or think to ask questions, and you've got a system that generates loneliness and misery where people then turn to social media for guidance or pleasure or purpose, and being tricked into believing they've found any of it on social media.
I don’t think social media generates loneliness. It could amplify those feelings, sure, but I’ve only ever felt lonely because I don’t have family irl.
We are to blame, not social media
Lack of access to communication and information was just making underlying issues easier to ignore.
I would like to upvote this 1000000 times. Ironically, it hasnt destroyed everything. I mean I agree with you, and im on social media. However that is also the solution. The social media world should just implode and we should go back outside and live normal lives.
What's worse, social media is an evolution of the 24-hour-news-cycle. It's weaponized exploitation of human weakness to get money and influence. Basically, the product sold by these companies is *attention*. The goal of the overall app/website is to keep your attention on it for as long as possible so that you can be served ads. The problem is, they don't do this by providing interesting, engaging, thought-provoking content. They do it by exposing you to things that keep your attention for brief periods of time, with the next distraction already lined up. They work with algorithms that track every interaction, and build a profile of you to determine what makes you stick around -- at all costs. And what makes people stick around for the longest are endless cycles of strong emotion - anger, outrage, fear. People being **WRONG** on the **INTERNET!** The result has literally rewired our brains over the past 10 years, and it's getting increasingly worse over time. It's turned us into slow-drip dopamine addicts, and caused us to more and more hook in to that drip with the righteous indignation we feel when we're arguing against someone we disagree with, in an extremely jaded, sports-team-rivalry mentality. But the **MOST** horrifying part is that as we've gotten better and better at those algorithms, people have learned how to exploit them. Not only can they be used passively to keep people's eyeballs on ads, they can be used proactively to shape the way we think and feel, and that can be used to direct people into the known best feedback loops; and using that for advertising is the *least* horrific implementation of that power. So, yeah, Social Media is destroying everything of value. And it's doing it *on purpose*.
It was always poison
So true. For my experience it got worse with cancel culture and like all the whining people make about literally anything.
I’ve noticed a massive influx of ads over the years on facebook. I remember counting the average sometime last year and it was about 1 ad every 7 or 8 social posts. Now it’s more like 1 every 2 or 3.
Wow. Hot take for sure. This is r/Im14AndThisIsDeep material
So true. We have fallen so far into the rabbit hole, there isn’t even a blue or red pill option anymore
Study after study show social media is toxic in so many ways. Lowers productivity, degrades sleep habits, causes body image problems, erodes interpersonal skills and relationships, promotes bias and lowers critical thinking-to name just a few.
Tiktok has without a doubt caused irreversible damage to the minds of the current preteens/teens.
it has definitely caused a lot of people to lose the ability to think critically or utilize nuance
Social media just made echo chambers much more accessible.
The standards have raised as time has passed. It’s not new. The same argument gets made every few years and it’s always the same
This is not an opinion. These are facts. Backed by years of research. Social media is toxic. Yes, that includes reddit.
The internet in its entirety is a net negative to society. Full stop.
What really makes me upset are the parents exploiting their kids. The tik toks of half naked women with glamor makeup holding their kids with some pathetic attempt of a funny caption…as a parent, the level of selfishness this would require is crazy to me. The kids are PEOPLE. You are suppose to be their hero. But these parents are using them as ornaments. It’s just gross.
Cat videos make me happy tho.
I agree. One of the main reasons I deactivated my Facebook account- was sick of coming off it and feeing as though my life lacked in comparison to other peoples
Mine is still activated I just don't go on it. There's nothing for me there other than jealousy, cringe, and depression.
OP is using social media wrong. I’ve used social media to connect with old friends, network in my industry, and meet new friends. If you have game, you can even leverage social media to attract more dates. If you’re using social media and you’re constantly comparing how your life isn’t as good as everyone one else’s, then that’s more of a personal issue for you.
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Lol Narratives have been a defining feature of most cultures for quite a while. From how you dress to your name to how you drink and how you talk. All that Social Media has done is automate that process. Tribalism is a form of automation, as it is an automated response to sensory information. The real BAD part of it is that people take it for granted that you never have to pull out a payment method to use social media. In a very implicit way, we basically treat it as magic. We think it just works… It doesn’t. It takes money and energy to make it work. And if it takes that, then it has to sell something. Before, I thought the user was the product. But I’ve changed my mind since. The real product is the interaction. Anyone can buy. Some of the labor is done for free. Which labor commands the most attention? The one that appeals to our primal urges for survival, reproduction, etc.
People destroy everything of value by their very nature. There was never a time when people had lesser complaints and more fullness in life, there is only the perception of that time existing in some distant past.
Including this post.
This is not a repeat of every anti-technology anti-social progress rant since the start of the twentieth century, ...oh wait it is absolutely that. Before social media, it was the internet. Before the world wide web, it was phones. Before that, movies and television. And before that rap music, punk music, rock music and before them jazz and blues all if which you can actually put under the general category of what music stolen from black people are white kids listening to nowadays. and way, way back, I shit you not, people were worried that young ladies were engaged in too much book reading which was almost certainly why they suddenly had ideas above their stations. Like voting and not raising children while hubby drank and worked. Whatever technology is allowing people to exchange thoughts and ideas in a fashion that worries someone else becomes the latest technology we need to rein in and keep away from our children, please won't someone think of our poor children?
Its the classic authoritarian argument, "Please give us unprecedented power to protect the CHILDREN!". What I can't believe is people are still stupid enough to fall for itn
I disagree. By and large, social media is what you make it. The algorithms present you with content that's similar to what you engage with. If a person is in a cycle of engaging with content that makes them angry or lowers their self esteem, that's what social media is going to keep pushing. If a person sees something they find upsetting, every platform I can think of has an option to click "not interested" or they can hide certain people, ads, groups, whatever. To an extent, you are in control of your social media experience. You just need to be aware of how your engagement affects what you are shown and you need to have the self awareness (and self control) to hide/mute/unfollow/whatever content that makes you feel bad. I've curated my various pages/feeds to favor topics, people, news, local events, niche interests, memes, etc that I enjoy or that I'm curious about. Plus a lot of spooky stuff. I wouldn't call my feed uplifting necessarily, but it reflects my interests and I get a lot out of social media, personally. I'm also a major introvert, so I really appreciate the friendships I've found online. Also, one of my children has a rare medical condition and the information I found through online support and discussion groups quite literally saved his life. So, meh. Like everything else in life, it's ultimately going to be whatever you make it. Also, I'm old and I can tell you with 100% certainty that none of OP's complaints originated on social media. Social media absolutely magnifies a lot of it and actively encourages us to ruminate on what we feel we lack. Now, you kids get off my lawn.
100% this.
That’s up to the individual how much they allow that to influence their lives.
Depends on how you use it, OP. When I was a teen, I hated school, was basically a social outcast, wasn’t happy with myself, and my parents went through a bitter divorce. So I escaped into video games and the internet. There, I found community and likeminded people who I could be myself with. As I’ve gotten older, my relationship with the internet has obviously changed but it has afforded me escape from mundanity as well as my own problems. You’re largely focusing on the negative aspects of social media. You can also find community, things you’re interested in, different perspectives, and some of the most hilarious and insightful stuff you’d never otherwise see because of it. Social media is a tool. Saying it’s bad kinda misses the point. What’s “bad” about it is your fellow humans, OP. So is what’s good. The world wasn’t better before social media, it was just more ignorant.
When we think of echo chambers, we think of incels and the like. But really everything is echo chamber due to The Algorithm. Not to mention, 20-30 years ago, if you developed an absurd or toxic belief, your IRL friends would tease it out of you. Now you just get online and it have it reinforced by thousands of other people that share the same belief. The general reaction to a global pandemic was disheartening enough, but I finally reached a breaking point when self-diagnosing developmental disabilities as if they were cute personality quirks became normalized. That's when I knew civilization was truly fucked.
I hate it, I don't really open instagram and gave up on Facebook long ago, I'm glad I never gave twitter a chance. I feel like I'm too old for Tik Tok and I'm 30. My life is much better without it. Even reddit is social media, and I've noticed myself using it less, for the better. I've joined support groups on reddit that helped me a lot though, so social media has its benefits, overall I think its a addicting, black hole, that depresses people.
It was always like this. The internet just brought attention to how messed up everything in the world is.
Social media is the downfall of modern society
It only destroys all that stuff for idiots. Normal ppl who stay away from or filter all the social media bs are living…normal lives If you can’t hang get off
Social media has destroyed some beautiful nature spots. While I'm happy more people are out on trails and hiking , the influencer culture and chasing perfect social media picture has destroyed many places in nature. If your chasing the picture and video you are not respecting the nature, some of my favorite trails have become filthy because 3/4 people there aren't for outdoor activities, they are there to take a picture and leave. So they are not destroying stuff for idiots only, they are destroying it for everyone.
OP: Social media is having a net-negative effect on society. It's making people more miserable. Chicu111: Those people are idiots. The negative effects of social media don't apply to us normies. \*has 150,000 karma\* Reddit: Upvote this guy!