Re:Instagram Is Facebook Now
by thelettere on Thursday December 02, 2021 @11:05PM
(#29426505)
Social media ≠ social connection, for the most part (i.e. the proportion of time spent messaging vs. passively viewing is skewed towards the latter).
That's why it's trash - it's a pseudo-relational avoidance of both the greatest rewards of connection but also - crucially I suspect - of its most painful liabilities (i.e. no one's heart is broken if a pseudo; relationship ends).
And since humans are naturally biased more towards avoiding loss than seeking gain, social media takes over the world and online becomes the default place to hang out.
A world which in aggregate no one wants becomes a reality because of narrow preferences repeated over and over again and at scale.
Why is it trash also? I'm sure there's a lot of interesting psychology to unpack there. It's just trash if one thinks we need to dedicate ourselves to "higher purposes" and anything else is "lowly" and "denigrating". As if whatever one chooses to do in their free time, that doesn't hurt anybody, and is just a little human drama in a watchable package that maybe we miss during day to day, as so much of a job life is dry, and that makes us connect to our inner humanity is "trash".