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posted by martyb on Friday June 19 2020, @09:43AM   Printer-friendly
from the only-the-lonely-can-play-♫♫ dept.

Tech and social media are making us feel lonelier than ever:

You've had a social day. Two hundred Facebook friends posted birthday messages, your video of Mr. Meow shredding the toilet paper stash got dozens of retweets, and all the compliments on your latest Instagram selfie have you strutting with an extra swagger. Still, you can't help but notice an ache that can only be described as loneliness.

That we feel this way even when hyperconnected might seem like a contradiction. But the facts are clear: Constant virtual connections can often amplify the feeling of loneliness.

"Internet-related technologies are great at giving us the perception of connectedness," says Dr. Elias Aboujaoude, a Stanford University psychiatrist who's written about the intersection of psychology and tech. The truth, he says, is the time and energy spent on social media's countless connections may be happening at the expense of more rooted, genuinely supportive and truly close relationships.

If virtual socializing cannot substitute for the real thing, will social media prove out to be nothing more than a fad of the late 20th and early 21st centuries?


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Lagg on Saturday June 20 2020, @05:17PM (7 children)

    by Lagg (105) on Saturday June 20 2020, @05:17PM (#1010422) Homepage Journal

    I wish I could see willful malice in the way you do. It'd make me feel better as silly as that sounds. Because at least then this asymmetric warfare on the mind as you put it, would have an originating chess master. But I truly feel like that isn't the case. I fear it's more a matter of people losing the war with themselves internally and turning to utterly irrational group think which contradicts itself because of the elements within having their own agenda. Often for petty money, hence the tendency to cull the groups involved until there's no one left but unquestioning tools that one of your links tries to express. Or they start cannibalizing themselves when they run out of enemies to fight (or when they think there aren't any more).

    Like, what I'm trying to say is I have no doubt there is willful malice with a decent chunk. But I think in general a lot of people are scared children in a sandbox that fear the fact that life is an ongoing aimless ouroboros that is up to you to make meaning out of. You are the god of your sandbox. People become fearful when they grasp that, the true essence of adulting as it were. Religion isn't so much the in-thing these days so people are finding new preachers, idols and churches. New hymns and prayers to say "amen" to. I see the analogs everywhere and it horrifies me frankly. But I think it's because of responses to basic stimuli at the end of the day when it comes to this stuff.

    The policy and spec people in the corporations behind these sites are empty vessels that accumulate cash with no ultimate end goal or understanding besides that's what they're supposed to do to prove they're better than other people. Even if at the end of the day it ultimately means nothing when it comes to the true business of life between oneself and the jungle. Those people are just as close to it as anyone else is. And I believe that provokes deep unstated fear. And they compensate by doing the only thing they're good at. Often failing at that too. (What the US has allowed to float to the top of leadership proves my point here better than any long statement ever could)

    So, the social media sites turn into hellholes of insincere dialog that doesn't even originate from the mind of the person who's typing it. Because the execs see that the sort of... Death of the soul being called conversation happening on these sites provoke engagement. i.e. posts get Likes and people get subscribers when they participate in the bible-thumper-style parroting of hymns, prayers and amens. Then they refine this style of engagement over and over again until it starts training people themselves until they're worse off than listening to propaganda channels when doing chores all day.

    --
    http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
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  • (Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Monday June 22 2020, @04:56PM (6 children)

    by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Monday June 22 2020, @04:56PM (#1011155) Journal

    "I wish I could see willful malice in the way you do."

    so it's all random and unintentional?

    I can hardly believe you think that, or anyone does. It all follows the direct lines of power and cultural hegemony, zuck trades the entire history(probably nicely trimmed by his higher ups in the hegemony) of private messages on facebook as part of deals.

    Do you even know what Palantir is and Peter Thiel does? Reputation management? Mark Monitor?

    https://archive.is/YxuED [archive.is] org vs ethos
    shill response package
    https://archive.is/IZsOB [archive.is] standard response
    https://archive.is/rWnr8 [archive.is] forums
    https://archive.ph/EdHYz [archive.ph] jtrig explained
    https://archive.is/iOckl [archive.is] eglin info
    https://archive.is/Hwtzh [archive.is] voat shills
    https://archive.is/ZAK08 [archive.is] admitted shill
    https://archive.is/zXqBM [archive.is] cointelpro facts
    https://archive.is/toJtg [archive.is] twitter bots academically analyzed
    https://archive.is/T4nXC [archive.is] 25 disinfo
    https://archive.is/8iqjM [archive.is] agent rage
    https://archive.is/fYnfb [archive.is] propaganda model
    https://archive.is/vdVn5 [archive.is] alt saidit
    https://archive.is/uZI5P [archive.is] hopeless
    https://archive.is/SoybE [archive.is] apple bananas
    https://archive.is/8TQss [archive.is] organic promotion
    https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths [meaningness.com]
    https://meaningness.com/comment/2493#comment-2493 [meaningness.com]

    You need to review all of these, and take this one other thing into account, I can promise you I have been set up on at least 3 awful, waste of time dates by OkCupic with police, and never had a good date with someone who actually matched with me.

    I dont know how you can rationalize this fact away, maybe I am a disinfo agent who hates okcupid, or despite racking up quite a few upvotes here at this site and elsewhere, and writing book after book on these topics, that I am all imagining it, or something.

    The algorithms are not just fixed to work for only approved people, they are fixed to ruin and infiltrate the lives of non-approved people, and those non-approved people are the ones who might have any capacity to change, or may actually be the rightful leadership of your culture,

    who you have only never heard of because it was an attack on you that you did not believe was possible.

    And so you say things like you say "it is just the sum of human frailty and stupidity", which to me, despite your many words, sounds to me like the analysis of a child who has never left their house, and can hardly fathom the grim reality, and so needs to be sheltered.

    Meanwhile the person who might be able to help you is banding on your door asking for help because they are being actively hunted, and you say "but i see no malice, just a disorderly mob hunting down a random person."

    This was the same as our last exchange, you refuse to see what I am telling you 100x from 100 different directions, and I can hardly imagine anyone so willfully unintentionally ignorant yet who can write so well.

    Color me puzzled. Most schills cant write as well as you can, or go to the effort of even trying to refute what *is already revealed in academic journals in the meme I posted* of how and why they operate in communiies *just like this one*.

    And you will note now there are 10x stories here a day, most hardly even news, and this is across all such sites, making the chance of more than 5 people seeing this conversation almost null. That is not an accident, it takes far too much effort and is far too coordinated.

    • (Score: 2) by Lagg on Monday June 22 2020, @06:44PM (5 children)

      by Lagg (105) on Monday June 22 2020, @06:44PM (#1011196) Homepage Journal

      Man, we've been through this dance before. You know I respect your perception of things but you have way too much paper trail for me and you see this as a coordinated intel op/counter-op. I don't think it's all accidental or random at all. Any more than I think those little cell-things in our body's ecosystem are accidentally interacting with each other based on previous stimuli. People with agendas can push it, but at the end of the day it doesn't connect into any grander conspiracy so much as selfishness or a frantic desire to prove oneself "better" than the next guy that spreads recursively because the wider population sees someone they perceive as an "authority" (and this is why we shouldn't do this, recognize authority) do it, thinking that is the truth for what defines an ultimate quest in life and so go forth and try to do the same themselves. The abhorrent clusterfucks that result are like tumors or cancers in our bodies. Growth that stops making sense and turns on itself. It's growth either way, and none of it is what you would call random. But it isn't malicious on the part of the cells involved either. They're replicating data they bounced off.

      I'm quite aware of Palantir the company and artifact, and they both horrify me. But this doesn't change what I just said in the least. If you look at the soft bellied cowards with deer-in-headlights fear in their eyes who run it, it strengthens the point if anything.

      Now, as human beings we're supposed to be using our advanced cognition to be better than the finite state machines we sprouted from. Some of us aren't doing very well at that. But I do not believe for a moment there is a grand villain involved so much as a scared little group of bratty children that need to be bitch slapped either literally or proverbially until they understand they are precisely the same number of levels removed from the jungle.

      You know I respect you but also know I'm not going to review all those links and get lost in a maze of self-constructed narrative. We've been through this. My whole thing with regards to the internet right now is gaining a better understanding of my fellow people without turning to external references and rhetoric. Everything external in this manner is a clusterfuck authored by a significant amount of people that choose to submit to weakness in fearing an ultimate villain. When in reality what they fear is scared children who notice the whole class is looking to them for an answer, and the just making shit up. Thinking that the liquidity ultimately means anything when they meet the hungry man they cheated in the middle of a jungle.

      I strongly respect your position because the mentality it represents keeps our government in check. But fearing those who fear you is fallacy. Remember that. And please consider this quote that sticks with me forever and always:

      "Politicians need religion even more than a hermit in retreat. If a hermit acts out of bad motivation, he harms no one but himself. But if someone who can directly influence the whole of society acts with bad motivation, then a great number of people will be adversely affected."

      --
      http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
      • (Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Tuesday June 23 2020, @04:22PM (4 children)

        by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Tuesday June 23 2020, @04:22PM (#1011613) Journal

        shills never read, ignorant people never read, at some point I dont care which is which.

        If all you have done is skin/item trading websites for steam, I would need to hear a lot more about your work to respect it enough to try to parse sentences like this:

        "People with agendas can push it, but at the end of the day it doesn't connect into any grander conspiracy so much as selfishness or a frantic desire to prove oneself "better" than the next guy that spreads recursively because the wider population sees someone they perceive as an "authority" (and this is why we shouldn't do this, recognize authority) do it, thinking that is the truth for what defines an ultimate quest in life and so go forth and try to do the same themselves. The abhorrent clusterfucks that result are like tumors or cancers in our bodies. "

        I am being stalked. My agenda is for it to stop and I talk about it because it is a strategy for my personal safety, to seek assistance.

        I do not really even know what you are talking about besides to say what I think doesnt matter, which is what every shill say, so if this is the best you have, yawn.

        • (Score: 2) by Lagg on Tuesday June 23 2020, @05:06PM (3 children)

          by Lagg (105) on Tuesday June 23 2020, @05:06PM (#1011639) Homepage Journal

          I've not really done anything but try to engage with you in good faith and you're just falling back to rhetoric like the others on here who devolved into doddering old-fuckery. I don't even understand how two of my steam-related jobs out of a 14 year career is relevant here besides for another post I made that you're clearly obsessing too much over.

          If you want to sit there like a typical cowardly little american shit, then by all means do so. I apologize for trying to engage with you in good faith. Since that appears to be what you take issue with, that I respect your opinion but also have my own.

          --
          http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
          • (Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Thursday June 25 2020, @01:46PM (2 children)

            by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Thursday June 25 2020, @01:46PM (#1012396) Journal

            you did not engage in good fatth, you just negated everything i said and refused to read or consider anything i presented as evidence

            as a programmer if the best contribution you have made is to help people trade their fantasy hats from video games, you should have gone into landscaping and made more difference on the world mowing lawns.

            But at this point I know what you are.

            If anyone is reading this wants to see a real static site, follow my username and you will find one, and if you want an example of a bullshit psyop avatar lagg.me will demonstrate that for you quite nicely.

            • (Score: 2) by Lagg on Thursday June 25 2020, @04:10PM (1 child)

              by Lagg (105) on Thursday June 25 2020, @04:10PM (#1012459) Homepage Journal

              Once again: Continue building your pin-up and red string universe around yourself to distract from the very real con artists stealing out from under you every day while you lick them in the boot in return for it and say "thank you daddy".

              You are a typical, wilting little American pussy. And I am exhausted of sharing a country with your kind. You stupid unaware fuck. Acting like a scared old man with a psyche that collided with that of a child. Just like the rest of this country.

              --
              http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
              • (Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Friday June 26 2020, @02:50PM

                by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Friday June 26 2020, @02:50PM (#1012859) Journal

                Your theory that the entire police state and totalitarian trend, as well as the traitorous tie ins with israel, are just due to aggregate human weakness butterfly having a convergent butterfly effects is manifestly stupid.

                I cannot believe anyone is that stupid without being paid to pretend to be that stupid.