Covid was nothing compared to social media
Analysis and Opinion
By Joe America
Some lakes have too many nutrients and grow a pretty but deadly green algae swarm that generates neurotoxins that kill fish and other creatures and mess with human health as well.
Social media is like that. It looks pretty, it’s everywhere, and it’s messing with our minds. It is also infesting mainstream media which is now a subset of the electronic world, not the other way around.
The thing is, you are sick and you don’t even know it. So am I but I’m working to recognize the illness, see in what ways people are sick, and take steps to protect myself.
The disease is a form of mental illness. Scarily, it is contagious. Obsessive compulsive disorder of sublime dimensions, a global dark magician at work, computers in charge.
Data is just data, a whole lot of 0s and 1s. But it can be arranged to look like legitimate information even when it is garbage. People develop opinions and shove them into the data stream as information. A lot of it is illogical, wrong, or manipulative. Not knowledge. A lot of it is emotional. It’s fascinating that dry 1s and 0s can be configured so that they influence the emotive receptors of the human intellect. And boy do they. Hate and love abound, wayward 1s hitting a nerve, wandering 0s sparking a rage.
This dirtstream can be viewed as a single entity, an electronic blob encompassing earth in a netting of nonsense masking as knowledge, and leading to increasingly dangerous decisions like that horrid man Trump running the United States, and Filipinos being quite oblivious as to the way their voting choices keep them poor and struggling while they are having fun pretending they are big shots on tick tock.
Here’s what we need to do.
- Recognize the blob has infested our thoughts.
- Recognize that it is in control of our lives, through its influence on others.
- Undertake exercises to improve our immune system, like reading and staying within sane arenas.
- Build a value system that does not accept the dirt that the blob tries to normalize.
- Take actions to keep the dirt out of our intelligence, like block trolls and understand fallacies.
- Build compassion into our lives to ward off the hate mechanisms of social media.
- Develop courses for schools that teach awareness, care, and solutions.
You may have ideas of your own about how we can better protect ourselves. Please share them in the comment section below. It’s a part of the cure.
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Cover photo produced by Word Press image generator using the article as a prompt.
The Society of Honor by Joe America 
TIL
https://simonw.substack.com/p/december-in-llms-has-been-a-lot
Just sharing.
Without a context relating it to the Philippines, the blog article, or discussion, it is considered spam. Kindly explain how it is relevant or I shall delete the post and return you to moderation. As editor, I have a job to do here.
Still thinking of an 8th
1 to 7 are recignition, acceptance and avoidance steps.
Maybe 8 and Beyond goes to facing the blob and shrinking it from within . This is the role of those who were enveloped by blobs before
Like an AA discussion and follow through and progress monitoring.
Ah, yes, very good. I never got to “how do we get out of it” and considered 8 to be for defense. If it is possible to get out, that’s where it would start. Unfortunately, I think it is like learning to walk upright or using the hands for toolmaking, rather a permanent part of who we humans will become. And that is snarling angry warmongers operating on beliefs, not facts or logic.
Getting out of vicious cycles of social media is like getting out of any bad habit by replacing it gradually with good habits. That can be challenging because bad habits have a way of “fighting back” when you try to eliminate them. One might even need to address what one is missing inside that leads to the bad habit, because otherwise, a new bad habit might replace the old bad habit. For instance, people who get caught in conspiracy theories might have huge issues with their own lives that they are fleeing from. People who are too deep into social media might be lacking offline social lives, which was the case with many during the pandemic. People who believe nearly anything on social media might not be well-informed in the first place.
FOMO or fear of missing out is another human weakness social media tend to cater to. It took me some practice to just NOT click on clickbait. And even recognition of own weaknesses, which is why I DON’T have Tiktok, that would totally break my attention span.
Re attention span, I had to gradually force myself to READ (offline read) first better tabloids, then serious papers, then books in these recent years. The instant gratification one gets from quick information on social media, the comfort of having stuff told to you instead of reading can make one’s mind into the equivalent of a physical couch potato. One feels mentally like astronauts who were in top gun condition but can’t stand up after some time in zero gravity.
Joining the bashing bandwagon thinking that they would be safe from bashing from co-bashers.
No matter what is that phenomenon or bad habit called is also a sad reality.
That is common in bullying situations as well
The online world mirrors human real-life interactions.
Except that they are amplified in an unhealthy manner.
Part of it is that technology makes things TOO EASY.
Both in terms of costs and consequences.
Plus, socmed is designed to utilize human weaknesses.
Like advertising or scamming but much more powerful.
That last paragraph, Irineo, is brilliant. Spot on. Should be taught in schools. I think it’s why blog readership is down. I know for a fact people click like on the Twitter headline but never read the article.
Learning how to walk before you run is important.
This is in recognition of gradual but constant changes.
Social media can make you think you are already walking on water while you are walking less and less in reality.
Gen Z has partly recognized this as they have the term “delulu” aka delusional.
What is terrifying is that socmed algorithms will become more powerful when fed with AI and when people start using VR more.
Many thanks again.
For me, I limit my Twitter or X usage.
As for FB
I no longer post long posts especially when there was the FB Notes feature.
As for blocking
I did plenty on X
It is harder to block on FB
Because most of the time your friend list include relatives and friends of relatives.
But I use the “nothing personal rule” if I have to.
One can unfollow people or put them on a 30-day unfollow on FB without unfriending or blocking them outright.
I don’t miss X anymore. Anything really important comes up on someone’s FB after a while, or someone mentions it here. Those who are temporarily OA on FB get unfollowed for 30 days, and the permanently OA are unfollowed permanently.
I have a separate tablet for most socmed that I turn off and don’t take on vacations. When I am outside, my default rule is heads up anyway. I don’t look at my mobile. I strive to practice full mindfulness of my surroundings. The more offline, the better is becoming my rule.
As for the rest, one can determine after a while what sources one relies on more.
It is the same as choosing which newspapers or columnists one has more trust in.
Many thanks for all of the above.
Welcome, just sharing here on socmedaholics (not so) anonymous.
Some other stuff I do is subscribe to reliable sources for international news, national German news, and local (Bavarian and Munich) news. Old school email bulletins I read quickly and go deeper if needed.
For Philippine news, I am subscribed here, of course, at henerallunacy and MLQ3. By now, I see that we here have analyzed nearly everything there to exhaustion, Joe’s approach of trying to map out what can be done and hoping those who can initiate action are inspired by it is right. Getting worked up by the latest stuff and posting it all over the place like many we know might make us feel good but doesn’t really change a thing, in fact some of the griping about minor mistakes of Marcos Jr. is remiscent of the griping about PNoy nearly a decade ago, very petty.
Nailed it.
Took the nails right out of my mouth.
Nice one
Having preferred news outlets or having trusted columnists are not enough to inquirers . Best to surf other news source too. US media tend to ignore the Hunter Biden issue at Burisma’s board . A news outlet from Germany published this report 5/16/2014
https://www.dw.com/en/who-are-hunter-bidens-ukrainian-bosses/a-17642254
That is an excellent example of the way social media love conspiracy theories, and that justice in the US has become like justice in the Philippines, subject to political gamesmanship and rotten dirty tricks. Hunter Biden was used to get at Joe Biden. Fearmongering, lies, and politics, all later revealed. Wikipedia is a solid source of information on cases like this, rather than a one-off article from 11 years ago that has only one useful bit of information. “Hunter Biden was a private citizen and that his job had no impact on US policy.”
Here’s Wiki. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biden%E2%80%93Ukraine_conspiracy_theory
We indeed live in dirty times.
Yes, and because of all the garbage in the river of social media, one has no choice but to limit what one wants to know – for the sake of one’s sanity.
Yes, in the Men in Black movie, tabloids are closer to the truth when it comes to aliens, but maybe LCPL_X is an alien from Inday Sara’s planet, and we don’t even know it, so might as well use the neuralyzer on oneself at times 😉
I was thinking about that earlier this morning, how to categorize media and even individuals as to how badly they are infected by dirty data, or beliefs and self-interest over truths and facts that are in robust context. The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times normalized Trump after skewering Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. They are infected. They have billionnaire owners who look a lot like Musk, where values have been eroded or sold for self-interest or their peculiar set of facts.
Among commenters here, most are fact-searchers and context builders. not infected except at the fringes. Your method of shutting out the fringes seems very healthy to me. Chempo and I7sharp seem badly infected to me. Well, any Trump voter has really bad information, bad values, or emotional neediness, so that is a good thermometer. LCX is an incubator of beliefs over facts which can be dangerous or work like anti-venom, and therefore do a good deed. I think in this forum, it’s more the latter. He provokes, we chatter and build insights.
Yes I do understand how it was played, Mr. Trump got impeached on this issue. It obscured underlying facts why Mr. Christopher Heinz, the stepson of Mr. John Kerry, got out from the partnership with Hunter and Devon Archer. Lobbying in Congress is not illegal , there are PR firms that are available , as in this case Blue Star Strategies was used. Whatever the report was, it was set aside by the Obama Administration.
I am curious to the how and why of the news content, reason to look for another news outlet other than the mainstream/corporate media.
Thanks for the response .
Merry Christmas Sir and to your family and to the TSOH contributors.
Thank you, Isk. Merry Christmas to you and yours, and best wishes going into the new year.
I live in Germany and am interested in the Philippines. I am satisfied with what German news offers me with regards to Germany and what with the blogs I mentioned say about the Philippines. US matters only are important to me as to how they affect these two countries. This means I could care about just as much if Hunter Biden is screwing Ukrainian escorts. Probably what Musk says and does is more important now that Trump is coming into power. Unlike many people nowadays, I don’t think I am a global analyst thanks to socmed infos.
Political affairs in the US always fascinates me as well as in the Philippines. In the US, Mr. Trump got impeached for a quid pro quo, and America has a President elect convicted felon. Is it not interesting ? And Pres. Biden pardoned his son for other trouble that may have had happened from 2014.
As for Mr. Musk, with more than 200 million followers, it is a bit scary to the establishment; exposing the inserted spending bill that killed the lobbyists’ projects.
As to the Philippines, I have a front row seat watching live streaming videos ; both the senate and house inquiry, unfiltered events.
One can see a lot of trees but still not discern the actual forest. I prefer to spend my time differently as I don’t think I am Robert Ludlum.
What I can see is connections between politics and business abound, and for me, it depends on what effect they have on a nation, the matter below being a prime example that matters far more over HERE than what Hunter Biden did or did not do:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schr%C3%B6der#Relations_with_Russia
Former Chancellor Schröder making a decision favoring Gazprom and laying the foundation for Nordstream, then joining the board of Gazprom just after his term ended, was legal yet very damaging to German energy interests as it created dependency.
Elon Musk tweeting that only the far-right AfD can save Germany has caused Germany that usually doesn’t care about foreigners commenting on its elections to get quite annoyed. My personal opinion is that he probably barely understands German politics.
BTW, DW, which you quoted, is the Voice of Germany and clearly government-owned. So much for a conspiracy to hide stuff. And as for Philippine house hearings, probably what happens behind the scenes matters even more, so I choose not to spend time on them.
Musk wanted the budget killed to take out the part that restricted investments in China. He wants to expand into China, cars, data centers, other engagements. He got what he wanted which is a bit scary. He went beyond lobbying. He was willing to shut down government to get what he wanted. The debt ceiling argument thrown out by Trump was rejected but provided so much smoke, few saw the fire.
I love the countryside of your adopted country. Was in Paderborn in the mid 80’s, when at that time one needs to be in East Germany to reach West Berlin.
Ang kakahoyan at kagubatan ay preho-preho lang para sa akin, kung sa bilyaran, kahit saang angulo sipatin, kapag naibuslo, ‘yun na!
Social media can make you think you are already walking on water while you are walking less and less in reality.
I admit to being in this boat. Other names for this: subliminal trance by a gifted rhetorician; eisegesis to gifted writer; Pollyana syndrome, etc.
This socmed-induced mass mental illness doesn’t really happen in countries where the people have better things to do, mostly related to needing to prioritize survival. While the Philippines is a developing country where most Filipinos are poor, I think it needs to be acknowledged that even among most of the poor D Filipinos, their lives are “comfortable” enough that they can devote time to consuming social media and misinformation. E Filipinos, being in desperate straits, are focused on survival based on my observations and are less likely to be active consumers of social media trends (if they even have a smartphone at all).
Now that I’ve asserted that most Filipinos, just like most Americans and Europeans live a “comfortable” life (meaning, not starving) and so dedicate vast amounts of leisure time to mindless scrolling, I’ve made other observations about people living in the “comfort” of societies that pedestal decadence and consumption:
1.) The more “comfortable” people are, the more they are likely to want to desperately believe that they are living in a dangerous place and time. These false beliefs justify violent, out-group exclusionary and anti-social behavior, whether done by the persons themselves, or by them appointing an avatar to “punish” the “enemies” on their behalf.
2.) In a world of less trust in authorities from the breakdown of civil society, people have become distrustful and paranoid, goaded on by malcontents online adding fuel to the discourse. A shared reality is no longer the basis of understanding between different groups because there’s always someone online who “agrees” with us. Just think how people commonly search for information to confirm their prior biases rather than to challenge their own beliefs. The affected people then turn to conspiracy theories to make sense of the world.
When I first experienced the Internet, I thought this technology would revolutionize the world and allow people anywhere on Earth to connect to each other. Indeed I made many friends on my local BBS, then around the world in forums and games. But who could’ve predicted that the profit motive of the Internet being “free” and ads-driving would mean engagement was prioritized. And what other emotion that elicits such strong engagement than outrage, fear, wanting “enemies” to be punished. The more the Internet connected humanity together, often the further the Internet pushed humanity apart.
Life lived in person is real. Life on the internet is a Matrix condition in which we are plugged into a whole lot of deceits and unreality. Click-seeking has destroyed rationality, as you point out. Overlay that with political ambition and greed and we have a whole emotional/intellectual information system that is flat out warped, filthy, enraging, and logically unhealthy.
Some people seem to have a tendency to prefer unreality though. My cohort was the last before the digital revolution and certainly with all the misfortunes that befell on the cohort it seems we emerged mostly fine and grounded in reality. My friends and colleagues straddle into GenX and to me it seems most Westernized GenX and their GenZ children are the afflicted with the “digital disease.” My theory is that GenX largely grew up on comfort, escaping financial calamity at crucial points in their life, while feeling alienated and entitled despite living in times of excess. They seem to have passed that onto their children.
These types of people have an acute lack of self awareness and introspection. There is little empathy for others who are not within the circle. Even the common GenZ accusation of “delulu” often is used unironically to accuse others of being out of touch, when the accuser is the one who is out of touch. There is a fantasist mentality of wanting things to be provided without the requisite hard work, then throwing tantrums when they do not receive. The result is two generations that collectively make the public discourse worse. It’s no surprise to me then that these two generations more easily fall prey to the base human emotions of resentment and rage that fueled the rise of demagogues and false prophets who promise them everything is easy and “Only I can fix it.” Perhaps the root of digital illness and mental deficiency is a yearning for being spoiled by a parent who allegedly was “never there.”
Oblivious, for two generations. Susceptible to the illogic and destructiveness of the dirtstreams. Filipino voter ignorance is real and largely out of the control of the voters. But Americans and others (including a lot of Filipinos) falling for distortions and lies seems to have complicity. Knowledge and clean data exist. but refusing to read critically is a data killer from the getgo.
GenX as a whole weren’t known for their critical thinking. GenX is better known for their rebellious nature, which impulses of instantaneity and hedonism, which a formative period of comfort and excess can only allow. This is reflected in habits like eating out, instant microwave food, hyper-consumerism on credit card debt. So they unsurprisingly feel upset when the easy credit dried up after the 2008 global financial crisis. GenX made great music though.
Personally I see many parallels and echoes between Filipino and American culture that mostly exist at the subconscious level. The Philippines for better or worse often emulates the US, and what happens in the Philippines seems to me to echo into the US later. Two nations still tied together with a cultural tether, I’m sure much to the chagrin of more extreme Filipino nationalists.
Social media and our modern culture of “clips” has degraded mental focus to the point where people often can’t even pay attention long though to watch a nightly news hour anymore. Instead people watch clips, often out of context. GenZ’s mental focus is often worse, having grown up on short-form video social media apps that serve content in 15 second clips. TikTok is the big boogieman, but it’s important to remember that TikTok’s predecessors were American social media apps like Vine and Musical.ly, the latter which formed the basis of TikTok’s algorithm.
In this culture of short attention spans, outrage sells, and influencers both harmless and nefarious have figured out how to hack people’s brains to be on a constant outrage cycle. A hacked brain is constantly on edge, in permanent fight-or-flight mode. People living in relative safety, yes even in Philippine informal settlements, “feel” that there is more danger than is actually present. When people are unsure of what the danger actually is, but they feel fear, they turn to authoritarianism to solve their perceived problems because people are in a semi-permanent state of mental and emotional disorientation. But it’s when people are disoriented that forces that would have bad intentions have room make their move. The only way to get out of the disorientation loop is to largely disengage from social media. I did that long ago, when Facebook started changing their corporate purpose. I don’t think I’ve posted on Facebook for 10 years.
Makes sense. I dropped off Facebook on my personal account long ago because FB was cross-feeding potential friends between the personal and JoeAm accounts putting my anonymity at risk. I dropped off the JoeAm FB a couple of years ago because it was too much opinion and it became exhausting to try to battle the nonsense. Today it is easy to see the broken thinking that it encourages, and the emotionalism. I’m stunned that highly intelligent people go off on tangents because of conspiracies and anger. Then they block out data that contradicts their beliefs. Truly a world of zombies.
Ah to prevent cross-tracking especially with Meta, you’d need to have two totally sanitized devices (virtual machine on a single device is fine) with their own IP address. Then you need to never interact between devices and accounts. I block most web tracking at the router level using a plugin on my router, but it can be done on a cheap Raspberry Pi as well (about $25; just the basic RPi is fine). Have JoeJr look up “Pi-Hole + Raspberry Pi.” Might be a fun little project for him. Can also run Pi-Hole on a regular PC but a Raspberry Pi uses mere watts of power (even a power bank or small solar panel) and is cheap enough for the job.
It’s amazing that the more technically advanced humanity has gotten, with the world’s information at our literal fingertips, making all our lives more comfortable and easier, the more humanity yearns to become like Medieval peasants purposefully believing in fantasies. It’s almost as if humans are hardwired to prefer not knowing, refusing to use our mental faculties that set us apart from more base life forms. Though I’d argue that spending so much time trying to fit together a jigsaw puzzle of contradicting conspiracy theories takes a lot more mental work than just accepting Occam’s Razor and the simplest explanation. Many conspiracy addled people I know are actually quite smart, and are being willfully ignorant. I reckon it’s a mental illness.
Yes, that’s my deduction as well. It is not normal and unhealthy. Therefore, a sickness. Symptoms are addiction, anger, and illogical thinking.
OT, a review by genealogy and history vlogger Mighty Magulang of the recent Filipino movie The Kingdom. Summary of what she said for those who aren’t into YT videos:
1. It is a what if scenario of an uncolonized Philippines today
1a. The Kingdom of Kalayaan is ruled by a Lakan, a warrior-king
1b. Vic Sotto plays the Lakan, so it is also a Sottocracy
1c. It has some aspects similar to the Thai monarchy
2. It is not a modern society, unlike present-day Thailand
2a. The precolonial social strata are unchanged
2b. The outcast played by Piolo Pascual is a total outcast
2c. The punong babaylan (chief priestess) is part of the royal council
2d. The number of tattoos one has shows ones merit (outcasts may not tattoo)
2e. Justice is retaliatory. If you kill two, you and one of your family members die
3. The Kingdom of Kalayaan is Master of The Seas as it never lost its maritime culture
4. Mighty Magulang asks if a unified state would have come to being or not
4a. She mentions that all speak poetic Tagalog without Spanish or English words
4b. She does mention that English is spoken in Kalayaan as it is modern times
5. I would add a few points
5a. I wonder why there was no major modernization, unlike in Thailand
5b. If the movie is a bit critical, it isn’t covert Marcos propaganda after all
5c. It does have a touch of Wakanda, it seems.
Again OT, another joeam.com classic:
Merry Christmas everyone!
A fine article, thanks Irineo. I can’t even remember writing these things, but I suppose I did. A wonderful holiday article. I think I’ll share it elsewhere. Merry Christmas to all!
Merry Christmas and a Blessed 2025 TSOH!