Search Results: overwhelming life

I think social media is seriously, and subtly ruining the way we perceive, learn, and interact with others.

Negativity - Back in the day, people would simply talk about stuff to their neighbors and friends. Now you have an audience of millions of people and trolls, saying stuff they wouldn't say in real life. This exposes people to more negativity, which makes them more negative in real life.

Info overload - Humans have a limited amount of mental energy, so we can only do a few things if we are to do them to the best of our ability. This means it is much easier to see new stuff, but also to get overwhelmed and sidetracked with it.

I think the change the internet went through over the last several years is simply "centralization". Everything became MORE interconnected, so the tools that made that possible became much more powerful. (facebook, twitter, tumblr, also google/yahoo going further back)

There's a parallel here with the evolution of human society. We used to be hunter gatherers, and changed to agriculture, which could support MANY more people. Farming societies were more interconnected and centralized, much like new internet. Hunter tribes were more dispersed and decentralized, like the old one.

However, anthropologists unanimously agree that agriculture brought a massive increase in inequality. I also read that some Native American tribes would kidnap people from the agricultural European settlers. A lot of these people who made their way back, would actually yearn for the lifestyle that the Natives lived, despite having been forced into it.

Basically, I think there's a universal driving force towards ANYTHING getting centralized, but a lot of people sort of know that it's more enjoyable when it's not. Obviously our society has been centralized for a long time, but the internet has only become so relatively recently. So I think it's an interesting question, especially for the older folks here.