totalreview

[totalreview]

decent read though they miss some obvious stuff. they also focus more than i would on like certain social phenomena yes but like they ultimately i think come down to saying meh it's just the way of the algorhithm in a way that doesnt sit right with me. I feel like i would add a whole second thesis that a second prong of the problem has to do with the kinds of relationship we have with other people since covid (and somewhat beforehand too ig). like, theres this rise in celebs interacting w ppl on social media way back when. and there's the rise of early internet celebs and later microcelebs, which felt like a celebrity but in a special niche way no matter how big they were. and because of the nature of internet content, parasocial relationships skyrocketed. nowadays you have to practically encourage it if you want to 'make it big' or whatever. and with twitch and tiktok in particular, you're often interacting with creators that may have extremely small audiences, so what you say can have a huge impact. hell, creators who respond to more comments have their content shown to more people. so alltogether youve got these microcelebrities that feel like friends that you can actually interact with! and then lurking in the back this whole time we have people going viral for doing silly things, yes, but also more importantly!!! lots of memes of stock photos of ppl. not inherently bad. but we are now very good at projecting whatever we like onto faces that we see repeatedly until theyre no longer human faces theyre just vague concepts. a readiness to dehumanize the people in viral content and project new stories and ideas onto combined with a sense of entitlement to interacting with a person on top of a population that's reeling with trauma and economic chaos and social unrest and a heavy heavy incentive to cash in on a trend means that like, yeah, lots of people are going to cross the first line, but a lot will just keep going until theyre screaming outside your front door. most of these ppl never even intended to end up on these platforms! couch guy didn't plan to be on camera, caleb didn't even really exist and certainly didn't ask to go viral. the problem runs much deeper than what the article goes into but the points it makes are definitely not superficial. Fucked up shit