Does anybody else get very annoyed every time they go on Facebook and scroll through the feed? We live in a social media instant gratification world that causes everybody to make instant emotional decisions and judgements on situations and people without knowing any actual facts or context. I feel like Wall Street teaches you to make decisions using every fact and data point that you can find. While you will always have incomplete information, at least you are trying to put as many pieces together as you can in making your decision on a company, management team, deal, or whatever.
Does anyone else get annoyed at the division and assumptions made after a 5 second cell phone video? I mean it seems like people are unable to even listen a point other than what they believe in today's society. Isn't a liberal arts education in theory supposed to teach you how to debate, listen, and think critically to form a well-rounded view? Now these same institutions are firing or condemning professors for having views or opinions because some "offended" student speaks out? Like what the hell is going on here?
People are burning down cities after seeing a 30 second video of a person being shot by police when we have no idea wtf happened. What was the background of this person? Why were the cops called? Why was this person running away from them? What information do we actually know about the situation? Burn it down baby! Burn it down!
For those that are older and wiser than myself, what do you think about society today relative to 10, 20, 30 years ago?
Somebody once said (I think Bezos?), "Social media is a nuance destruction machine". Most people nowadays aren't mentally equipped to practice critical thinking. We're all becoming bunch of brainless sheeps. All I hear nowadays is just "Bah bah bah".
To a certain extent, this pattern can be seen throughout the history. Through whatever channels of mass communication people had, AKA the media, all sorts of propaganda were being thrown around. This dates back to the beginning of civilization. For instance, the ancient Assyrians carved paintings and writings of their conquests and mass murders to let people know that they were to be feared. They didn't always depict the truth, but it got the job done for a while. In a way, various mythical stories about any historical events fall under the same category: They were spread through the whatever forms of media that was contemporary to depict an event/person/group in a certain way that a certain interest group wanted.
Why does this work? People see and people react. This phenomenon is one of the basic building blocks of human psychology. Especially when it comes to political matters, somehow people perceive it as relating to their own survival. When it comes to survival, the pre-frontal cortex, the rationale part of our brain, is overridden. And we act based on our emotions, which is of course connected to our instincts.
You might ask, if the media was always used to spread false and/or incomplete views, then how is social media any more damaging? I suspect that the issue with social media, the reason why it destroys nuance, is the fact that it "democratizes" complex ideas. I put the word "democratize" in quotes because social media allows for complex ideas to be spread to the general public but at the expense of true understanding of such concepts. For example, everyone is throwing around words like "socialism", "Marxism", "neo-liberalism", "Fascism", etc... as if they know what they mean. But in truth, most people don't understand what they are talking about. They understand the general feeling of the words, but not their true meanings nor the nuances that follow.
This kind of shallow understanding is allowed to go unchecked because most people on social media are interacting with either 1) people who are equally as uninformed, or 2) people who spread distorted views out of their own interests. No one is their to tell people "No, you're actually wrong". Once you've become indoctrinated, you most likely aren't willing to listen to views different from yours because you're not used to listening to other viewpoints, it's just very uncomfortable. Eventually, you end up in your own bubble.
I think this is just one of the consequences of the "destruction of nuance" + certain political/social agenda that was pushed (I guess we can call it post-modernism). The reason why "post-modernism" gets a bad rep (and deservedly so) is the fact that its biggest proponents are all about suppressing other views, which again is something we saw throughout history from the beginning of civilization. For some reason, many post-modernists are the so-called "intellectuals" teaching humanities and social sciences at liberal arts colleges. Personally, I'm surprised and disgusted by the gall of these people because colleges were probably the only place they were allowed to spread their own views throughout the Cold War, as many post-modernists also happened to be borderline Communists or Socialists. Now they want to suppress other views at a place that was nice enough to allow them to keep their own views? Ungrateful jerks. Incidentally, I think these people were able to gain so much influence in colleges because for some reason, younger people tend to gravitate towards more "left-wing" views.
Great discussion. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
interesting, bump.
While the premise of your post is good, the example you brought up is unfortunate to say the least. Repeated reactionary behavior is like dumping trash - if you don't take the last one way, eventually you have too much of it stacked up. This is what minorities are experiencing in the U.S.
As for the start of the post, I'm not sure who even spends time on Facebook anymore. I haven't heard anyone talk positively about it in ages because it's littered with advertising now. If you wanted to see some ass, you'd go on Instagram. If you wanted to see some debate, you'd go on Twitter. There's no niche to even use Facebook anymore besides those few dating sites that use your Facebook friends to find dates for you (dating friends of friends).
But indeed - we do sit there and make small, rash decisions on the smallest amount of info. A single angle and some lighting can turn a 6 to a 9. We post our best moments on social media and I think at times we don't do a good enough job reminding people of that.
> As for the start of the post, I'm not sure who even spends time on Facebook anymore.
I assume the poster was referring to all social media.
I know so many who just deleted all of their social media. they are so much happier now.
I believe we are firmly on Crisis of the Third Century territory. It's only downhill from here.
Comparing the Crisis of the Third Century that brought to its knees one of the most powerful empires in history to a handful of temporary and relatively harmless riots is, at the very least, quite a stretch.
My opinion is that the root cause of the crisis of the third century was that the empire no longer produced men talented and charismatic enough to have the entire empire's support. Trump's presidency was the start of our crisis because it was the first event where the division became so thick you could cut it. It started with the division in the media and has now manifested in state and cities completely defying and actively mocking Trump. Let us remember that the U.S. actually unironically lost territory for a couple of days (CHAZ), not unlike the early gothic raids that got quickly squashed in the beginning. But the signs are there. Trump can't unite the whole country together and the next president will either be Trump or Biden, none of whom will be able to get control over the entire empire.
If an empire can't be subdued by one man, two empires it will become. That's literally the history of mankind and there is absolutely no reason to believe this time will be different.
If you haven't before, you should watch
from an interview with Chamath Palihapitiya, one of the bigger names that exited from Facebook. He straight up lays out he thinks that social media is tearing apart the fabric of society and he refuses to let his own kids go anywhere near it.Good stuff. Thanks for sharing
I’m just gonna make as much money as possible and move back to South America or Asia. Too much pandering in the us to people with no skills who want things handed to them. Downside of latam of course is violent crime so maybe Asia it is
Where exactly would you go in South America?
Brasil of course. São Paulo is an amazing city.
virtue signaling, 18-22 something-year-olds who think they're important, too much time on people's hands.
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