I just watched this documentary. Have any of you seen it yet?
It certainly is eye opening and I am now afraid to go on the internet and/or facebook.
If you have seen it, let's talk about it.
Hugs,
Mysteria
xo
I watched it last night. It is kind of eye-opening. We were already cutting down on Facebook, which is my primary social network. I'd already deleted the app from my devices and hadn't gone on the site in days, and days since the time before.
I work in IT, but not anywhere near the social networking space. I've always understood at a high level that if i'm not paying for something, somebody is still making money off of me somehow. I've never been one to click ads, so i kind of discounted most of the worry. TSD does make me take pause though.
The two biggest points for me were users as products and the social ramifications of addiction and self-worth derived from these platforms.
I think that the most troubling thing is how pervasive and manipulative platforms have become, utilizing the psychology of persuasion and addiction against their users.
It's troubling how many people naively think they are above the self-worth problem, or aren't addicted, primarily because they won't put it to the test, or because admitting that they were deriving self-worth would be admitting a weakness or failing. And it's not just tweens having these problems. Tweens are just the first generation that were raised with these platforms since a young age.
I have these addictive behaviors. Most people I know do too. It's just so pervasive (which TSD articulates clearly).
Now I'll try to connect this to Lush...
If you're a lush writer and catch yourself checking "My Stories" a few times a day to see how many people are reading your story - you might be seeking that dopamine hit. I've only published 2 things on Lush and already catch myself doing this, and it's not like I'm getting hundreds of views a day. This points to the desire/addiction to wanting to know what others think about us (or in this case our creations) that is addressed in TSD. Writers and creators (like Instagram users) are often prone to this desire to be "liked", especially hobby creators who can't look at the buckets of cash they've earned and derive worth from it. Since writing is personal, having your writing liked has a deep ingrained value of self-worth.
Some just write for themselves without worrying about what others think about their work, but for every one of those unicorns, there's a herd of people that do care and do take that negative comment or score too seriously. That doesn't make scoring evil. It's just something to take pause and think about.
To me, that's the point of TSD - to make people think.
Sorry if I digressed trying to connect to the lush social network, but well, it IS a social network of sorts, albeit without most of the sophisticated monetizable addictive qualities. The ads are pretty static and don't really hook me, but I generally have a "i don't want to click on ads" philosophy. I don't know if that's true for all.
TSD may have sealed the deal for me going premium. ;)
