Any citizen of the social internet knows the feeling: that irritable contentiousness, that desire to get into it that seems almost impossible to resist, even though you know you’ve already squandered too many hours and too much emotional energy on pointless internet disputes. If you use Twitter, you may have noticed that at least half the posts seemed intent on making someone—especially you—mad. In his new book, Outrage Machine, the technology researcher Tobias Rose-Stockwell explains that the underlying architecture of the biggest social media platforms is essentially (although, he argues, unintentionally) designed to get under your skin in just this way. The results, unsurprisingly, have been bad for our sanity, our culture, and our politics.

On this topic, an increasingly popular one as the social media economy convulses in response to Twitter’s Elonification, the preferred tone is either stern jeremiad or, for the well and truly addicted commentator (usually a journalist), a sort of punch-drunk nihilism much like that of someone who declares he’ll never quit smoking even though it’s going to kill him. Rose-Stockwell, by contrast, keeps his cool, pointing out that social media is full of “angry, terrible content” that makes our lives worse, while carefully avoiding any sign of partisanship or panic.

  • OceanSoap@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    This was what The Social Dilemma, the Facebook documentary front Netflix was about.

    What was well and truly wild is that, despite everyone I know watching the documentary, most still to this day do not wait or attempt to look for the whole picture. The trial of Kyle Rittenhouse is a great example. There are still people to this day who believe he shot black people, for Christ’s sake. Whether you agree with the outcome of the trial or not, to refuse to think you yourself easily fall for propaganda is outrageous.

    People watch The Social Dilemma or read this artical and still think it only applies to those whom they disagree with.