Social media’s structure (and goal) is to put us into a perpetual state of outrage: “The most visible and consequential form of compromised ‘daylight’ we see in the digital attention economy is the prevalence and centrality of moral outrage.”
Social media is filled with “inspirational quotes” that are often nonsensical gibberish, or as one professor suggests “pseudo profound bullshit” 🙂
Being “pretty” has tremendous advantages for those who leverage social media. The “pretty privilege” concept is seldom discussed yet plays a critical role in who is followed and liked on social media.
Post lots of selfies on social media? Others may view you more negatively than those who do not post lots of selfies.
Twitter is for hostile people to be outraged, Facebook is for the boring and Instagram is for the good looking people who live perfect lives (or not really).
Social media is a frictionless platform for the dissemination of propaganda messaging. Seeing what just took place in the past few days, can you imagine the firepower about to be unleashed during the next national election in the U.S.? The brutal propaganda messaging on social media threatens to take down democracy.
“The international news coverage of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest fires has been a complete disaster. News outlets published inaccurate yet easily verifiable “facts” about the number of fires, declaring the situation “record-breaking” and “unprecedented.” Social media lit up with misleading claims about the loss of planetary oxygen supply…”
Social media is just one big bonfire of idiocy. Thanks to social media, we have only about 30 minutes to save the world from something.
Social media idiocy reached new highs of absurdity the past few days – the Amazon fire hysteria was a big fat social media scam. But it seems no one shouting on social media is hearing that message.
Social media has gone utterly insane about fires in the Amazon region of Brazil-virtually all of them contain false information. NASA points out that over their 15 year satellite-based observing history, the fire situation in the Amazon is average. But the falsehoods have blown up to the point that internationally known politicians are calling for action!
Social media is a bonfire of idiocy.
Twitter does not represent the views of the people: it represents the views of a very tiny minority of angry and miserable people (most tweets come from about 2% of the population, a group that seems to very outraged and angry). There is a word for this: it’s miserablism, or the philosophy of pessimism and the enjoyment of being miserable.