The Monotony of Social Media

Person checking social media. Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

Abstracting human interaction using software has caused many problems that didn’t exist before.

It’s obvious, a lot of interactions on the Internet occurs through social media, letting you send friend requests, chat, or share memes and photos. However, abstracting human interaction using software has caused many problems that didn’t exist before.

When the Internet started, many people created their own websites because that’s was the thing you must have if you want to be cool, and a lot of these websites was just blogpost-like where the users shares their hobbies like movies, sports, books, videogames, etc. This motivation made more unique and human websites, where you can meet someone and their likes or dislikes.

Now, with the boom of social media in the middle of 2000’s, people prefer to connect just searching for a name or looking the friends of their friends, and send friend requests to try and connect. That was cool at the start, as anything new, but the problems started when companies like Facebook (now Meta) or Google (with YouTube) needed to monetize their platforms, mostly with Ads.

And of course, that means that they needed to suppress, censor or ban anything that could be harmful for society, like hate speeches or stupid challenges that could risk people’s lives.

But, the bat thing about this, is that they homogenize almost everyone, forcing them to act as the algorithms keeps recommending users with likes and comments, guiding the people to act like someone else, and so.

Now almost everyone does mainly two things, post photos about their “perfect” lives or share memes, and don’t get me wrong, it’s ok to enter to social media and try to disconnect for your job or problems, but using this every day as instant escape instead of confronting your own problems could be harmful in the long term, isolating you from the need of socialize in real life, with real people, and thinking that everyone has a perfect life.

No, EVERYONE has problems in their lives, even more than yours, but social media algorithms promotes mainly “positive vibes only” and all that shit that in big dose is hamrful for our minds.

And don’t mention the censorship and shadow-banning if you post something controversial, it could be something that should not be tolerated like incite hate to a group, or it could be something that don’t everyone agrees but it could be useful think a little about it, but still being controversial.

Should everyone can tell what they thinks? Yeah, always if doesn’t promotes hate or hurt other people or animals.

They’re reports like Twitter promotes hate in the algorithm, and Meta knows that Instagram increases anxiety and depression on young people, and actually; promotes it… as all negative feelings keeps you on the social media interacting with others, as that’s what those companies sell, your data and time to advertisers.

I recently heard a video talking about this topic, and that would be cool if we go back as the starts of the Internet where people created content as a hobby, instead of looking for validation through likes and comments, being more authentic persons instead of products.

Should software solutions replace human interactions? I think not, but it’s too late for almost everyone, but if you’re reading this, start changing your life first if you want to be honest with yourself.

Blog inspired by “Why does every personal website look like this now?” by Eric Murphy on YouTube.

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Posted: July 17, 2023