Re:Something is wrong with my generation, i.e. what happened...
by mikeash on Sunday September 16, 2012 @06:47PM
(#4530649)
The social pressures are still there. My social feeds aren't crammed with pictures of food, because I will hide, unfollow, unfriend, etc. anyone who does such stupid crap if they don't respond to a gentle request asking them to stop.
Are social networks enabling this bad behavior to a greater extent than before? I doubt it.
The threads here seem to be a combination of uninformed, speculative, and pointless. The irony of engaging in shallow internet discussion to complain about people using the internet for shallow activities appears to be lost on basically everybody.
That's not the only point though. People are shallow and over time due to cultural conventions they have been conditioned to tone it down. People who yell "Hey everyone, I just ate a $30 hamburger! Check out how awesome I am!" in a group of friends in real life will quickly find out they don't have many friends left. So there is a bit of feedback and regulation of this tendency. Online social networks don't have that feedback, everyone broadcasts shit nobody cares about but they is usually no feedback (say body language) that would let the person know "yeah nobody cares, stop bragging, it is obnoxious".
There have also been some interesting comments here that I enjoyed, so I don't quite get the "ashamed" part.