Back To Brick (downgrading/cutting out tech)

[Sebastian Cobb]

It's not just social media - even the traditional news media pretty much does the same. Twitter, Facebook, Tucker Carlson - same thing.

They exploit the same insecurities (as does advertising) but I think the interactions and micro-rewards through things like social media can 'gamify' it in ways that traditional news doesn't. It's the same techniques used when fruit machines give you a small win and a dopamine hit to keep you playing.

[Blue Jam]

Nah fuckit. I love technology, me. Technology's fucking great.

[Noodle Lizard]

I'm in the On Cinema At The Cinema group on Facebook and it's a lovely place. No one hates anyone. People just laugh at the idea of internet drama, and make fun of crappy old films. I'm also in another FB group called "The Renaissance Experience" where people post beautiful works of art all day.

I don't believe that the "machine" requires people to act petty and feel inadequate. I think those people would find ways to act petty or feel inadequate regardless.  Sure, people do have different levels of notoriety in the aforementioned groups, and yes some people seek out recognition and in-group fame - but crucially, no one is a cunt about it.

I never saw a thread on that Netflix documentary "The Social Network", but for the record I thought it was overblown chicken licken crap.

Of course it's not as simple as "it's all toxic and evil and horrible", else nobody would have ever used it. But I think it's fair to comment on how its ubiquity may have impacted the lives of everyday users, as well as how much (often negative) influence it can have. Of course in your own research into and fascination with certain types of internet communities, you're probably more familiar than most of us with just how grim it can get.

As much as some niche Facebook groups might be pleasant places full of pleasant sorts, that doesn't really negate the measurable negative impact social media services tend to have on a lot of people. It seems anyone who decides to do proper studies on it tends to come to roughly the same conclusion (my opinion on increased accessibility to internet porn has recently been forced to change for similar reasons - much as I'd love it to be, it's clearly not really "fine").

I also thought the Netflix documentary was overwrought bumcheeks for the most part, not to mention annoyingly misleading about some things, but I think there's enough evidence to suggest that the increased use and advancement of AI algorithms are designed purely to increase and maintain engagement, and unfortunately they appear to use our worst human instincts against us since that tends to be most efficient. "Feature, not a bug" etc.

Of course I don't exactly go around campaigning about it. I understand almost everyone finds value in it to some extent, but if a friend of mine were having a difficult time psychologically, decreasing time on social media would probably be one of my first suggestions.

[Kankurette]

Nah fuckit. I love technology, me. Technology's fucking great.

I think the trick is to make it work for you. Like one person mentioned earlier about how they got the algorithms to show them fun, interesting things about space etc.

[MoreauVasz]

I was very very online for about fifteen years.

I was on here for a bit, on a couple of other forums and then mostly twitter. Twitter started out great but seemed to get progressively worse every single day I used it. I got sucked into a couple of online beefs which, I think, were more about me working my way out of various communities. I look back on those times and whole I regret the emotional energy expended, my main regret was lacking the courage to say 'whatever, you people are boring' rather than falling out with said communities to the point where I seemed to spend entire days rolling my eyes at them.

So I cut the chord on social media completely. Shut my blog, uninstalled the apps, blocked the sites on my phone and desktop, basically allowed those friendships to organically die off because one, of the weird things about online friendship is that it tends to be platform dependent. I spent about 18 months just being in the world and while my mood has improved and my thinking is a lot clearer,  habits are really hard to break. I don't doomscroll on twitter but if my brain can find another activity that generates strong negative feelings in response to minimal physical effort then it will fucking latch onto it and keep me there.

One of the reasons I came back here was trying to find a way of doing stuff online without it consuming me.