it really is that damn phone (internet/social media rant)

i'm absolutely not the first to talk about this, but i'd like to give my 2 cents on the topic, and express my frustration.

i've seen and heard the teens and young adults around me talk about how depressed and bored they've been, and about how they close certain apps only to re-open them immediately after, how they can't function without doing multiple things at once. it all just makes me realise how little people actually know about the corporate battle for monopoly over attention spans.

i'm not saying phones and social media are a bad thing, i think they were incredible inventions -- providing us with the ability to connect with people even thousand of kilometers away, giving us almost unlimited amounts of information just under our fingertips, but i do often wonder if that is exactly what our downfall will be.

ever since covid -- when everyone was forced inside and made to rely on the online world -- it introduced people to a whole new world of websites and entertainment, a place where you could interact with anyone from anywhere. but it also introduced big corpos to the amount of profit they could make off of simply making sure that the users of these platforms continue to use them, especially through the means of short-form content.

short-form content isn't a particularly new thing. musical.ly was released in 2014, vine in 2015, and douyin in 2016. vine would then discontinue in 2017, and the parent company of douyin, bytedance, would take over musical.ly and transform it into tiktok in 2018. this isn't mentioning other microblogging and SNS platforms.

however, in 2020-2021, which was known as peak covid years, we saw instagram come out with reels (later added to facebook in 2022), and youtube released youtube shorts. short-form videos soon became something you could consume on most well-known platforms.

going back to the surge in boredom and depression in youth -- of course, short-form content isn't the only major factor of world-wide mental health decline, but it does exemplify it a lot with things like 'rage-bait', ai-generated content + the rising belief in the dead internet theory, social media algorithms pushing titles and content of negative topics because that's what gets the most engagement and ad revenue. people let go of long-term gratification because there is such little effort to scrolling, and such quick dopamine production, and even if the happy feeling goes away, you can just keep scrolling because there is an endless amount of videos to get that amused puff of air through your nose. 

the internet exemplifies anger and depression, whilst also being a coping mechanism against it. and the only profiters are billionaires who only want to further separate the wealth gap between them and us.

i feel that social media has also made people needlessly cruel. a mask of anonymity to protect you while you waste energy arguing with people on the internet, letting you stay stuck in your confirmation bias because the all-knowing AI is programed to cater to your beliefs and ideology, and if you type enough keywords in your google search bar, surely you'll find some obscure article that agrees with you, maybe even a facebook group. 

the dilution of serious terms about serious issues gets them turned into memes and needlessly thrown around in every disagreement because the constant usage of them desensitises people to the actual implications; accompanied by unnecessary therapy speak to make it sound like you're the smartest in the twitter thread.

and who needs real life friends when you've got chatgpt? it'll never rival your beliefs, it knows all of your favourite shows, it mimics your typing style, and it's basically you. why would you need anyone other than yourself? it totally doesn't steal your personal data and gives it to the government to know all of your deepest darkest secrets to make you more vulnerable into being exploited by big corpos and governments. (this is sarcasm if you couldn't tell.)

the lack of empathy in people upsets me a lot. it's jarring to see it in the people i'm close with, and especially in my own younger brother. 

the internet was a wonderful invention, until the people at the top who have never financially struggled a day in their life saw it as a way to get even more money. 

less about social media specifically. not to be that guy, but i really do hate how online everything has become. i understand that it was mostly because people couldn't go outside during covid to do their legal business and what-not, but it annoys me how little people need to go outside and actually talk to people nowadays.  i think it also contributes to the loss of 'third places' for people, and how socialising with people without knowing them prior or having some kind of end goal is seen as a kind of weird thing to do irl, if that makes sense.

automated/AI calls annoy the hell out of me too. LET ME SPEAK TO A REAL HUMAN PLS!! i've been trying to start getting my big boy pants on and going to stores physically to make enquiries, but i often can't actually do it because of the weather and unreliable transportation. (summer in australia rn, i am BOILING)

anyways, i feel like this is a very long and negative blog post, and i'm sorry about that, so i'll try to end it on a more positive note.

it's not like this everywhere with everyone! seriously, people are a lot more normal outside than they seem. most normal people aren't online, LOL.

i've met plenty of wonderful people on social media sites. i'm grateful for spacehey to let me meet people who share the same concerns as me, and let me and other people unwind from mainstream apps. with the current enshittification of the internet, it does seem like a lot of people are starting to move away from the chaos of social media, and more into the real world, which makes me very hopeful. 

i encourage all of you to pick up more artistic hobbies to combat the need for constant streams of dopamine. my personal favourites are reading, story-writing, drawing, music-making, and messing around with old and cheap clothes to make them look cooler.

time and hope are still on our sides. we will make it through this, and we can make our circumstances so much better just by persevering. 

not sure if the category i put this blog under is correct. if you've made it this far, thank you so much for reading! wishing you a great day/night.