[cableshaft]

Also, if you end up having to announce your take on every "bad" thing that happens, your feed becomes nothing but commentary on the bad takes, almost always identical to everyone else, and you dillute or lose what makes you interesting in the process.

I've seen this in my own feed. Any time some "bad" person is exposed, I'm almost guaranteed to scroll past 30 almost identical takes on it by the same 30 people on my friends list. I click them, and 80% of their feed is just their takes on the daily outrage du jour. I don't really know who they actually are as people anymore, unless this is the entirety of their being now.

So now as a general rule I don't post anything about current events on social media, and stick with things actually about myself. I might make a comment on someone else's post sometimes, but not post about it myself.

I will probably make an exception here or there about climate change, because in my opinion that subject is being way too glossed over by society as a whole and is a much larger and more imminent threat than "this person did a bad thing and we must shun them now".

[jrmg]

The meme of "if you don't speak up, you're complicit" is part of this.

I appreciate the sentiment, but there are just too many (terrible!) inequities in the world to live by this and not have it be a full time preoccupation.

[parafactual]

Also, is social media really the best way to take action against terrible inequity? I would think if one believes the uninvolved are complicit, they would also look for more effective methods than saying something is bad on Twitter.

[thewakalix]

Related: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/19/nobody-is-perfect-ever...

[colechristensen]

I have been thinking about this and related things for a long time now, while I haven't quite got the hang of putting it all together into words, this is my take on the current subject:

Humans have a need for a certain kind of emotional high, that in whatever way, people find a source. Some people find it in competition, drugs, sex, music, art, creation, fear, ... there's probably a whole taxonomy in there.

One of the ways people find it is in social displays of moral superiority. People hated this about organized religions and left in droves, and yet here we are with the exact same behavior.

There probably was a very valid evolutionary reason why this is so prevalent in humans, but like most things that make us feel good, uncontrolled they get taken to terrible extremes.

The point is recognizing that this behavior is a need finding a source of stimulation. If you want to fix it you have to find better sources for that feeling and recognize what is happening... and distribute that recognition into the public consciousness.

[ttonkytonk]

...And some of the "sweetest" emotional highs come at the expense of other people, sort of like the most savory food seems to be derived from animals.

I want to be careful not to "speak something into existence", as I heard someone say recently, but it occurred to me this morning that if someone is your enemy, you probably derive pleasure from their pain. I kind of feel like our society is in denial that many of its members are "soft mutual enemies" of a sort. It seems if things went wrong (e.g. food shortages etc.) it could become a serious problem. (Personally I "pray for my enemies" when I'm in my right mind, but I have doubts as to whether it makes up for the vitriol when I'm not.)

As for the parent's post's concern for global warming, using less can be emotionally satisfying.

And if big oil is standing in the way, maybe they should be offered the position of producing solar energy systems. (Similarly if drugs were legalized it might make more sense to offer the cartels the position of distribution.)

[sklearncowboy]

To me the easiest way to understand social media is to read Freud's Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. It is a brilliant book as it is really just Freud commentating on The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind by Gustave Le Bon.

The most basic idea is once you join a psychological group you stop being fully rational and mostly act on emotions driven by the group.

Everything just makes sense after digesting parts of that book.

The part you mention about organized religions is also just the group.

[BeFlatXIII]

That’s why I quit Twitter. I use to have four topic-specific accounts. However, it eventually ended up that I was seeing the same outrage du jour on all four and that’s when it was time for me to leave.

[Fogest]

I've "muted" quite a few people on various social media apps who essentially just are reposting some quote or post from someone else who is outraged about xyz current woke topic. Almost daily these people will share some new thing to be outraged about.

Of course do they actually ever do anything beyond sharing a post and acting like a good person? Nope. I don't see these people volunteer, donate, or do anything except share crap. So when they are someone I know in some way I just mute them instead of unfollowing.