Trump, Tech Weirdos, And The Republican Crusade For Cultural Dominance

https://www.offmessage.net/p/trump-tech-weirdos-republican-cultural-dominance

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That problem is as follows: Social media was never entirely utilitarian, even in its earliest forms. It was invented and popularized and refined by social misfits and weirdos—people who would never thrive on the basis of interpersonal skill—for the purposes of devaluing qualities like social capital, grace, and emotional intelligence.

Even in its earliest iterations we were invited to enter their world, where social interaction is atomized, digitized, and frequently anonymized. To spend more time alone, nurture purely virtual communities, and build reputational clout on the basis of carefully constructed avatars. We didn’t recognize it a couple decades ago (or at least I didn’t) but the antisocial qualities of what we call social media were there from the jump. The initial harms were just small.

Today we attribute an epidemic of loneliness, particularly among younger men, to algorithms, and the easy availability of algorithmic forms of entertainment (gaming, streaming services, social media) that are both addictive and require no human interaction. The algorithms know our habits and tastes. They can make solitude feel fast paced. And because they’re also ubiquitous, they make it harder for truly sociable people to find companionship, as well. Too many of their potential companions are busy scrolling.

We fixate on this epidemic for the harm it might do to people’s mental health, and perhaps to their politics. But an epidemic of loneliness, or of choosing to be alone, necessarily implies a disturbing sequela: the lost muscle memory of pro-social behavior.

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