Not meaning to be rude with this phrasing, but uh, I am significantly younger than you, born around the time you graduated HS… and yep, I have the same, gut, “this seems weird” reaction.
I was a terribly bashful nerd in the early/mid 2000s, and even I lost my v-card as either a 16 or 17 yo.
Thats a drop from half of kids literally fucking around in HS, to just a third, in only the last 10ish years.
I dunno if such data exists going back to when you were in HS, I’d imagine it would have been closer to around 6/10 back then (though thats just a spitball guess), but yeah, the decline has been shocking to me as well.
…
IMO, the main thing that is destroying mental health is… and again, I say this as an early tech adopter, tech nerd, who had a mySpace account, who was one of the first with a Facebook account…
The cause of this is mutlifactorial, general economic decline and precarity are huge factors, but the main problem is our modern social media based digital environment, and how it trains people to act.
Brainrot is a real thing, short form video content reduces attentions spans, makes you more anxious, less confident / have lower self esteem, rapidly propagates mis and disinformation, promotes narcissism and just literally retards rhe development of functional social behaviors.
…
That, and the destruction of ‘third places’, and then the subsequent enshittificstion of dating apps.
In your day, people could afford to go take a car and hangout somewhere they had some privacy, away from their parents at least, some area where people would go and hang out and just socialize.
Those physical spaces do not exist anymore, they all have paywalls people can no longer afford.
No average kid can afford a car on a summer job anymore.
…
Then, as things digitized, realworld meetups and hangout areas began to decline, dating apps happened.
They were good for a time, but then the people running them realized that you actually make more money as a dating app by making it something you keep coming back to, hiding people you may actually jive well with behind paywalls, that what you actually want is to create a rollercoaster of ‘almost worked out but didn’t in the end’ type relstionships… as that produces your most reliable dating app customer.
These are smart data science people running these things, they know what they’re doing.
They don’t say what I just said outloud, because it would be bad for their branding and marketing.
IMO, what is going on that is destroying mental health, and again, I say this as an early tech adopter
i think you forgot a word or more in that sentence
[the internet / social media] literally retards the development of functional social behaviors
I have the same opinion, and i say that the internet takes attention away from functioning social forms of behavior. in other words, the internet feeds off people’s attention, but that reduces inter-human contact too. because human contact needs attention
Ok, sorry to double post, I’ve fixed up the original comment more, to hopefully make more sense.
But uh, yeah.
It is really weird to be in the position of having grown up as an awkward tech dork… and now like, I have uncommonly good interpersonal social skills by the standards of many Gen Z, and a lot of Gen A.
It is just a mindfuck.
I realized in about the mid 2010s that algorithmic based content platforms just were pushing the most extreme and outrageous and infuriating kinds of content, because that is the content that best results in user retention…
And when I realized this, I swore off much of it, deleted a bunch of accounts, and highly constrained and curated what was left.
Most other people did not realize this and allowed it to normalize, and now, at least in the US, the result is a largely illiterate, immature, and anti-intellectual society that is highly conspiratorial, and treats all of reality … as if it was a reality tv show.
People call me crazy, but I say that our society has been mass brainwashed, basically mentally neutered, acting increasingly neurotic and violent and irrational.
People call me crazy, but I say that our society has been mass brainwashed, basically mentally neutered, acting increasingly neurotic and violent and irrational.
No i’m not calling you crazy, i actually see it the same way. Social Media is a mass brainwashing tool.
The reason why elon musk acquired twitter is because he saw it as an “social engineering” challenge, after having already taken up classical engineering challenges (tesla). the reason is because the rich see it as exactly that: society is a system that can be manipulated and twisted into shape.
that’s why the fediverse is so important btw. sothat we can hold dominion over the information we consume and share.
I’ve just been told that by many Americans who are actively losing their minds trying to balance their car payment, insurance, recent medical disaster, loss of income, etc, all while spending 6+ hours a day on whatever particular algorithically designed and manicured for them slop content app telling them who to be angry at and what items to buy to give them the desired personality.
I very much agree the fediverse is very important…
But I think that Elon actually primarily bought Twitter out of a massive, massive sense of insecurity.
He needs to be widely loved and adored and seen as ‘a cool guy’, so he just bought the platform so that he could be in control of his own personal adulation/worship machine.
In my opinion at least, everything else is secondary to, is an outgrowth of, is a cynical tactic that may shift at any time… all to primarily prevent his own ego from collapsing.
Not meaning to be rude with this phrasing, but uh, I am significantly younger than you, born around the time you graduated HS… and yep, I have the same, gut, “this seems weird” reaction.
I was a terribly bashful nerd in the early/mid 2000s, and even I lost my v-card as either a 16 or 17 yo.
https://www.cdc.gov/yrbs/dstr/pdf/YRBS-2023-Data-Summary-Trend-Report.pdf
Thats a drop from half of kids literally fucking around in HS, to just a third, in only the last 10ish years.
I dunno if such data exists going back to when you were in HS, I’d imagine it would have been closer to around 6/10 back then (though thats just a spitball guess), but yeah, the decline has been shocking to me as well.
…
IMO, the main thing that is destroying mental health is… and again, I say this as an early tech adopter, tech nerd, who had a mySpace account, who was one of the first with a Facebook account…
The cause of this is mutlifactorial, general economic decline and precarity are huge factors, but the main problem is our modern social media based digital environment, and how it trains people to act.
Brainrot is a real thing, short form video content reduces attentions spans, makes you more anxious, less confident / have lower self esteem, rapidly propagates mis and disinformation, promotes narcissism and just literally retards rhe development of functional social behaviors.
…
That, and the destruction of ‘third places’, and then the subsequent enshittificstion of dating apps.
In your day, people could afford to go take a car and hangout somewhere they had some privacy, away from their parents at least, some area where people would go and hang out and just socialize.
Those physical spaces do not exist anymore, they all have paywalls people can no longer afford.
No average kid can afford a car on a summer job anymore.
…
Then, as things digitized, realworld meetups and hangout areas began to decline, dating apps happened.
They were good for a time, but then the people running them realized that you actually make more money as a dating app by making it something you keep coming back to, hiding people you may actually jive well with behind paywalls, that what you actually want is to create a rollercoaster of ‘almost worked out but didn’t in the end’ type relstionships… as that produces your most reliable dating app customer.
These are smart data science people running these things, they know what they’re doing.
They don’t say what I just said outloud, because it would be bad for their branding and marketing.
i think you forgot a word or more in that sentence
I have the same opinion, and i say that the internet takes attention away from functioning social forms of behavior. in other words, the internet feeds off people’s attention, but that reduces inter-human contact too. because human contact needs attention
Ok, sorry to double post, I’ve fixed up the original comment more, to hopefully make more sense.
But uh, yeah.
It is really weird to be in the position of having grown up as an awkward tech dork… and now like, I have uncommonly good interpersonal social skills by the standards of many Gen Z, and a lot of Gen A.
It is just a mindfuck.
I realized in about the mid 2010s that algorithmic based content platforms just were pushing the most extreme and outrageous and infuriating kinds of content, because that is the content that best results in user retention…
And when I realized this, I swore off much of it, deleted a bunch of accounts, and highly constrained and curated what was left.
Most other people did not realize this and allowed it to normalize, and now, at least in the US, the result is a largely illiterate, immature, and anti-intellectual society that is highly conspiratorial, and treats all of reality … as if it was a reality tv show.
People call me crazy, but I say that our society has been mass brainwashed, basically mentally neutered, acting increasingly neurotic and violent and irrational.
No i’m not calling you crazy, i actually see it the same way. Social Media is a mass brainwashing tool.
The reason why elon musk acquired twitter is because he saw it as an “social engineering” challenge, after having already taken up classical engineering challenges (tesla). the reason is because the rich see it as exactly that: society is a system that can be manipulated and twisted into shape.
that’s why the fediverse is so important btw. sothat we can hold dominion over the information we consume and share.
Oh I didn’t think you were calling me crazy.
I’ve just been told that by many Americans who are actively losing their minds trying to balance their car payment, insurance, recent medical disaster, loss of income, etc, all while spending 6+ hours a day on whatever particular algorithically designed and manicured for them slop content app telling them who to be angry at and what items to buy to give them the desired personality.
I very much agree the fediverse is very important…
But I think that Elon actually primarily bought Twitter out of a massive, massive sense of insecurity.
He needs to be widely loved and adored and seen as ‘a cool guy’, so he just bought the platform so that he could be in control of his own personal adulation/worship machine.
In my opinion at least, everything else is secondary to, is an outgrowth of, is a cynical tactic that may shift at any time… all to primarily prevent his own ego from collapsing.
Derp, I did, I am also editing and expanding more to this in realtime, hold please lol.