The weird place that the internet is, a clip from Bo Burnham, social networks are overpowering society

For a long time now, a thought in my mind has been simmering about the fact that we should not be inundated with our online social networks. Twitter feels overwhelming to me. TikTok is endlessly entertaining which seems wrong. Instagram is full of ads and fake lifestyles, FOMO + FUD are its main recipes to make you want to keep using it.

This clip from Bo Burnham really captures the thoughts concisely:

This has been on my mind for awhile now.

I think social networks have a problem right now, capitalism and social networks don’t work well together.

If we look at some non-capitalist social networks, they are pretty healthy. One of the least “networky” examples of this is SMS, whether you use iMessages on Apple products or SMS on androids, it’s a closed network where you’re not seeing interesting, controversial, or viral content from non-network members (where network is your own network, not the overall network). There’s also the older version of social networks like MySpace that were great at keeping you interested in only your own network, not engaging with the whole network.

I believe there’s room for some sort of a hybrid network where the people within the network are not incentivized to post inflammatory things just to get attention.