[delecti]

You're seriously generalizing. I only met my wife because of services like this; we met on Instagram and got to know each other over Twitter. I have other friends I similarly met and keep in contact with mainly over Twitter. I'm very glad the services exist.

There are alcoholics who have dozens of drinks a week and there are people who responsibly augment a night of socializing with a drink or two. Alcohol isn't fundamentally irredeemable because some people develop problems, and neither is social media.

[wu-ikkyu]

You're generalizing in the same way you accuse. Meeting people is not limited to either social media or alcoholism.

[delecti]

My point was not that meeting people is at all related to alcohol(ism). My point was that both social media and alcohol can be used responsibly in beneficial ways.

[beaconstudios]

but alcohol is not backed by a company containing thousands of engineers whose job is to make it more addictive.

[travem]

Are you being sarcastic (serious question). Alcohol itself is chemically addictive and there are likely orders or magnitudes more people in the alcohol industry trying to make their alcoholic beverages more attractive (and thus spreading addictive substances further into the population) to consumers. It's an industry that easily tops over 1,000 Billion dollars globally.

[beaconstudios]

read my reply to the other comment.

[delecti]

I know what you're saying, but there's plenty of marketing behind alcohol, and it's already addictive to the point that withdrawal can literally kill you.

[beaconstudios]

marketing doesn't make the product itself more addictive. Alcohol is physically addictive, but so is the dopamine hit you get from many social networking features. The point I was trying to make is that AFAIK no-one's trying to make alcohol the product more addictive, where there are many very intelligent people working to make Facebook the product more addictive.

[apatters]

Alcopops are a recent example of the alcohol industry finding a way to make their product more addictive (by adding sugar, another addictive substance).

[ascorbic]

That's not about making it more addictive. It's about expanding the market by making it appealing to people who don't like the taste of alcohol.