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October 08, 2015

We're Maladapted to Social Media's Metrics for Relevance

Posted at 10:48 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink

Comments

It appears that whenever a tragedy occurs where multiple people are involved, the news media/commentators unknowingly will influence others to commit similar or worse atrocities in the near future. Mentally dysfunctional individuals will desire to commit heinous crimes for pleasure and/or notoriety.

Posted by: Bud | October 08, 2015 at 05:03 PM

Numeration is dehumanisation. We have become a society that, as you pointed out, measure our worth by comparing our "stats" with others. It's become a human game of "Top Trumps". What's worse is that we measure ourselves using metrics imposed on us by powerful corporations. What they decide we can do, we do, and we are grateful whenever a new feature is added, allowing us a trivial new form of expression in the rigid framework they impose upon us. Isn't that all just a little bit pathetic? It's why all the advertisements for these social networks are so universally up-beat and positive - because they want to obfuscate the simple fact that using their networks is the opposite of freedom, the opposite of natural interaction, working against human creativity and imagination. Considering the vast numbers of people involved in these networks, it is inevitable that there are occasional "success" stories of people doing something positive via the system, but those cases are rare. No, thousands of your "likes" or tweets will not stop Syrian children being gassed to death by Assad.

We as a people are not free and haven't been for a very long time. Unless it happens to be something you genuinely believe in, every distraction vying for your attention is working against you. Spare time is a commodity that is becoming too rare for us to waste on organisations wanting to earn money from collecting and trading our personal data.

Posted by: Ulysses | October 09, 2015 at 07:48 AM

I'm so brainwashed by my middle class status that I take pride in having a credit score that's over 800; thus I feel "elite."

Posted by: herculodge | October 09, 2015 at 08:22 AM

Wishing you 20,000 twitter followers and world peace, although I'm not sure in what order.

-Garrett

Posted by: Garrett | October 11, 2015 at 08:55 PM

Thanks, Garrett

Posted by: herculodge | October 11, 2015 at 10:01 PM

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