The Toxic World Of Social Media
How to avoid being sucked into the sludge of hate and doom.
This one ought to be interesting. As you read this post, I suggest reading it from a lens of how can this be helpful to you and help you navigate the world better. This is a hot button topic for a lot of people and there's a lot of people who feel like it's a personal attack against them whenever someone mentions that social media has become a toxic garbage dump.
Let me explain why I'm writing this. The world is becoming more and more hateful, negative, self-destructive, and toxic. A lot of that can be attributed to social media. Everyone has the chance to jump online and hide behind a profile that many times doesn't have their true identity exposed, and they can act like a total POS. These disgusting people spread their trash around and a lot of them get enjoyment out of it. I can't tell you how many times I've seen nasty attacks made against a person or a group just because that person gets personal satisfaction from acting that way.
I've also seen people do things like air out their dirty laundry on social media. Anything from personal problems that shouldn't be discussed in a public forum to things like family drama. So many people has lost their sense of decorum. Many people do it because they just want to get attention. They get a dopamine rush from this crappy behavior.
The point of this letter is for me to explain to you what you need to watch out for and why you should avoid getting mixed up in any of this stuff. I mentioned on my YouTube channel recently that any hateful behavior would get a person blocked. Normally, I would just call someone out for their BS behavior, but now I've got to the point where I just have no interest in insulting a troll. Fortunately, there's only been a couple people that were acting that way in the last few months.
Now, let's talk about the stuff you have to pay attention to.
First, it's helps to apply a different lens when you're looking at something on the internet. Look at what someone is saying from the context if they're being authentic. The world is full of fake people, fake content, and fake intentions. I like YouTube a lot because a lot of the people that I watch make great, in-depth content that has a lot of value and many of them do a good job at making you feel like they are personally talking to you.
I came across a channel recently that was related to tech because I've been looking at expanding some of my software stack. This channel had a person that was comparing pieces of software and was heaping praise on specific pieces of software being mentioned in the videos. I scrolled through the description and noticed there was a pile of affiliate links. This was way more than I see on most channels, and looked to be at least 20. There was no value in the description and it was just full of random crap.
I found a couple other videos from them talking about similar software and how it was so great. Something seemed off about how they presented it, so I was looking at the comments shortly after the videos had started. There's was quite a few comments of people pissed off at them for pushing this software due to a sponsorship and not talking about the issues that it had. I can tell you I'll never bother watching that person's channel again. It felt like my time had been wasted because that person just wanted to make a quick buck off their audience and didn't give a damn about providing anything valuable.
There are a ton of other examples I could give, but that's a good one that relates to authenticity. There is finally an awakening in a lot of people that are fed up with the fake garbage that gets pumped out. I find myself watching some YouTubers and I like their videos even if I don't agree with much of what they say because they do it in a way that's real.
Second, you have to be careful to not compare yourself and your life to what you see on social media. This is especially the case with platforms like Instagram. The authenticity aspect also applies here, but this is more relevant from the comparison perspective. There's a lot of influencers on platforms like Instagram that'll post pictures of them living the high life and getting to do fun stuff all the time. That doesn't show you the whole picture though.
Usually, there's two types of people that do that. One is someone who worked their ass off for years behind the scenes that no one saw or knew about. Then they come out of nowhere and look like an "overnight success." The other type of person tends to be someone who is putting up a smoke screen to try to make people think they're successful, but they put thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on a credit card thinking they'll impress people and be able to make it big and become the next hot influencer.
The second type of person will fizzle out like a sparkler stick. The first type of person isn't someone you should compare yourself to, because it'll rob you of your will to drive forward and become the best version of yourself. I see way too many people try to compare their chapter 1 to someone else's chapter 10.
Third, you have to have a solid level of self awareness and make an effort to not let yourself get caught up in the BS. By far, the worst social media platform that I see right now is Twitter (Yes, I know it has a new name, but I refuse to use it). That has got to be one of the most angry and toxic garbage social media platforms that's ever existed. What's interesting is that it's also an amazing place to make connections and does well for business content too. It all depends in how a person uses it.
This could also be applied to any other social platform, but Twitter is the easiest example for this. You could get lost in the sea of hate there or you could use it for something positive, get in there, make some good posts, and get out unscathed.
I've seen a lot of people that feel like it's their mission in life to try to correct the thinking of someone else online and get in an insult war. This behavior is ridiculous. You both will leave the interaction dumber than when you started and will just have wasted more of your life.
If you're someone that does this, let me give you the blunt truth. No one cares about who your favorite politician is or why you think you're right and everyone else is wrong. You can hurl insults around all day long, but nothing will change and you're only making your life harder. If you don't even have the power to have a positive change in your local community, what makes you think you can change anything by wasting life away on a social platform and a world wide scale? You could take all that energy and attention and do something positive and meaningful.
Fourth, and the last point I'll talk about, is the increasing amount of doomposting. Now I'll be the first to admit there's a lot of bad stuff going on in the world right now and I don't like to see it happening, but I also know I can't change any of it.
You'll find whatever it is that you seek. If you seek out videos talking about how everything is falling apart and there's no good left in the world, then you'll start to believe that. To make it worse, the social media algorithms will just show you more content like it and then you end up in a horrible feedback loop that'll just poison your mind.
There's other examples of stuff I could talk regarding this, though what I gave paints a solid picture.
I'll wrap this up now. There's a lot of good left in the world, but a lot of people don't see it because they get blinded by the garbage and they let it destroy them. I think most people would be very surprised at how much of a difference they'd see in their lives if they just stopped scrolling through social media and stopped listening to all the garbage news that gets pumped out. The only reason this content gets pushed out so much is because so many people love the drama.
Look for the good stuff that happens. It's out there even if you don't think it is.
That wraps up this week's TED Talk! I hope you got some value and new perspective out of this and you go about your next week looking at this with a new lens. See you next Saturday! 🍻
P.S. If you're looking for something that can have a positive impact on your life, take a look at some books. I've got some great recommendations on my website. If those aren't of interest to you, you can find a lot of great options on places like Audible.