Authoritarians and tech CEOs now share the same goal: to keep us locked in an eternal doomscroll instead of organizing against them, Janus Rose writes.
On this server we are often victim of this stuff, i hope we can all improve
Who knew that changing your profile pictures, sharing hashtags, and finding like minded people in your bubble to doompost with to tell eachother youre right doesn’t actually address any real problems. Another way this was described is called the Information–action ratio… Which essentially means “meant to indicate the relationship between a piece of information and what action, if any, a consumer of that information might reasonably be expected to take once learning it”
Back in the day, most news was local which meant that the information you were given could lead to actionable results directly. Now because you have the entire world beamed at you instantly, everyone is bombarded with information where no real action can be taken. This leads to a feeling of helplessness, which in turn causes this cycle of denial and inaction to accelerate. It’s all very much an intended effect of the modern news cycle. Over time it leads to a certain collective numbness towards very real issues and in a way kind of normalizes things by making you forget the past. Just think about the major stories over the past few months and how many of those are largely gone out of the current narrative. This is all by design and based on years of psychological studies and social engineering.
I don’t entirely disagree with your assessment, but at the same time I think you may be overlooking some benefits of at least federated social media.
Mainstream news and corporate social media are omitting more and more information about the world that doesn’t benefit their aims. With a keystroke they can kill important news that might incite people to act, while pushing news and ideas that will pacify and normalize what is effectively dystopia.
There are many places in the world where it’s difficult to find likeminded folk, such as deeply rural areas in red states. Seeing that there are others out there can be a huge mental relief, and may even help them connect with others to enact direct action with.
Federated Social Media by its nature cannot be controlled for the sake of corporate interests, which is unfortunately a rare trait at this point in time. What this can effectively become is a new Citizen Controlled Media, as described by Noam Chomsky. This will become essential to spreading news of real events and ideas on how to resist while bypassing the corporate filter.
Who knew that changing your profile pictures, sharing hashtags, and finding like minded people in your bubble to doompost with to tell eachother youre right doesn’t actually address any real problems. Another way this was described is called the Information–action ratio… Which essentially means “meant to indicate the relationship between a piece of information and what action, if any, a consumer of that information might reasonably be expected to take once learning it”
Back in the day, most news was local which meant that the information you were given could lead to actionable results directly. Now because you have the entire world beamed at you instantly, everyone is bombarded with information where no real action can be taken. This leads to a feeling of helplessness, which in turn causes this cycle of denial and inaction to accelerate. It’s all very much an intended effect of the modern news cycle. Over time it leads to a certain collective numbness towards very real issues and in a way kind of normalizes things by making you forget the past. Just think about the major stories over the past few months and how many of those are largely gone out of the current narrative. This is all by design and based on years of psychological studies and social engineering.
I don’t entirely disagree with your assessment, but at the same time I think you may be overlooking some benefits of at least federated social media.
Federated Social Media by its nature cannot be controlled for the sake of corporate interests, which is unfortunately a rare trait at this point in time. What this can effectively become is a new Citizen Controlled Media, as described by Noam Chomsky. This will become essential to spreading news of real events and ideas on how to resist while bypassing the corporate filter.