Social Media: It’s role in spreading epidemics of mass hysteria
Social media has become a vector for epidemics of mass hysteria.
A dumb incident coupled with social media spirals out of control to create a community filled with outrage
Woman makes a dumb remark about a teen girl’s t-shirt. This in turn is blown up on social media and quickly devolves into a community of outrage in the real world and takes on a life of its own.
Social media: 2 years ago, Google shut down the blog, email and all services of a prominent statistician
In 2017, without warning or recourse, Google shut down all services associated with Salil Mehta, a professor of statistics, editor of a statistics journal, author of a best selling book on statistics, a former Obama administration official and later, a polling statistics adviser to the Trump campaign. His offense? He ran a blog about mathematics! Google, Facebook and Twitter have become the totalitarian governments of the 21st century, stifling speech their algorithms choose to flag. Unlike us peons, Mehta is well connected and a huge outcry caused Google to reinstate his account.
Social media: Social media puts us into a state of perpetual outrage
Social media’s structure (and goal) is to put us into a perpetual state of outrage: “The most visible and consequential form of compromised ‘daylight’ we see in the digital attention economy is the prevalence and centrality of moral outrage.”
Social media and the cult of “pseudo-profound bullshit” (heh!)
Social media is filled with “inspirational quotes” that are often nonsensical gibberish, or as one professor suggests “pseudo profound bullshit” 🙂
“Pretty Privilege” explains much about Instagram
Being “pretty” has tremendous advantages for those who leverage social media. The “pretty privilege” concept is seldom discussed yet plays a critical role in who is followed and liked on social media.
Research study finds those who post lots of social media “selfies” are viewed negatively by others
Post lots of selfies on social media? Others may view you more negatively than those who do not post lots of selfies.
Twitter is for hostile people to be outraged, Facebook is for the boring and Instagram is for good looking people who live perfect lives (or not really)
Twitter is for hostile people to be outraged, Facebook is for the boring and Instagram is for the good looking people who live perfect lives (or not really).
Climate communications: The Amazon fires pseudo news panic illustrates how easy it is to throw an election via social media
Social media is a frictionless platform for the dissemination of propaganda messaging. Seeing what just took place in the past few days, can you imagine the firepower about to be unleashed during the next national election in the U.S.? The brutal propaganda messaging on social media threatens to take down democracy.
Climate communications: “Commentary: Everything You’ve Heard About the Amazon Fires Is Wrong – Tennessee Star”
“The international news coverage of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest fires has been a complete disaster. News outlets published inaccurate yet easily verifiable “facts” about the number of fires, declaring the situation “record-breaking” and “unprecedented.” Social media lit up with misleading claims about the loss of planetary oxygen supply…”
Social media is just one big bonfire of idiocy. Thanks to social media, we have only about 30 minutes to save the world from something.