#writes a long post on the microblogging website complaining about social media

[onewomancitadel]

I think it's really really funny that a few years ago if you mentioned any of the potential evils of social media use you were summarily flogged in public for yucking someone's yum and people just trying to get by, and now every other post is 'omg Tumblr is a HAVEN in this time of INTERNET APOCALYPSE, Tik Tok/Twitter is poisoning peoples' MINDS, notification systems game your attention span!' oh is that so?

I agree that there are sometimes bigger things you need to be worried about. But social media is social, and it reflects social dynamics. Which, as social creatures, has a pretty big impact on us. It's just annoying when hedonism is such an incoherent philosophy and we're trying to protect people from the wrong things. And the reality is that you can keep doing things that you might know aren't the best for you but you can also curate the way you interact with these platforms lol. I even know people who left Tumblr because they felt even that small amount of online interactivity was 'bad'.

I am glad the conversation has opened up a bit though, no fingerwagging. I also think that looking at the ways in which social interactivity online is good is as beneficial as looking at the bad: yes, it's true that the Internet opens up for more inclusivity (housebound people, like the disabled, have the opportunity for more interaction) and like with the case of Tumblr, clearly there's something to this whole thing of sharing creativity. Lol

It's interesting to watch it evolve though. I do get annoyed when it swings in the other direction and introduces neurobabble or flatly reduces the issue to 'social media bad!' with all the accompanying clickbait of being someone with a slightly different marketable lifestyle, though. The problem with that - and any other lifestyle someone is trying to sell you on the Internet - is that it's all in the doing, and you don't overnight transform into the Right Person. It's not really how life works. This is why I think the individual journey matters, not the person who accrues all the correct behaviours from certified influencers. Hence issues with social media.