[netsharc]

> Before I knew it, a not-insignificant percentage of each day was being dedicated to responding to idiocy on social media.

I feel like this is an addiction, the high from noticing "Oh my god, you god damn idiot, let me write why you're so stupid, oh I'm so glad I'm not as stupid as this person!". Getting the validation from other people is even more thrilling. I guess it's why social media mobs are so "popular" too, there's even a book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_You've_Been_Publicly_Shamed

Or should that be "were popular"? Luckily Twitter is close to death now.

I have a feeling it's related to loneliness epidemic ( https://duckduckgo.com/?q=loneliness+epidemic ) and people looking for their connections not through friends ("I need to be vulnerable? no way!") but by anonymous participation in online communication/shit-flinging-fest of every comment section.

Covid was also interesting, you got to walk around in public and think "What a fucking idiot, I'm glad I'm better than that person", and it worked both ways, someone wearing a mask? What a sheep! Someone with no mask? "Must be a stupid Trump voter!". Someone with their nose showing outside their mask? Etc, etc...

[tombert]

I think it might be a combination of a addiction, and a sort of “technological immaturity”, which is why the number of posts on social media would be dropping.

I am 33 years old, born in 1990. My parents were kind of geeks so we got the internet pretty early, around 1992~1993 (give or take a year…it was 30 years ago!), so for pretty much my entire life I have had the internet and have been using it for about as long as a person can have used it. As a result, while cool, I think the internet isn’t as cool to me as it might be to nearly anyone older than me.

Social media came to prominence when I was around 15 (~2005/2006), and it was a novel and unique thing that 15 year old Tom thought was pretty cool, but I wonder if the people born into a world with social media are somewhat immune from the novelty of it.