2 May

I’ve criticised the use of social media as a personal space over many years. It’s not a personal space, though that’s overwhelmingly how it gets used. Peoples’ social lives are now transacted on these platforms. They’re not just sharing here, that’s the wrong concept. The platforms are shaping their lives. Their lives get swept into games of imitative rivalry. Endless comparison with the personal lives of others, often without even realising it’s happening. This is toxic, high school culture. Their lives are then monetised by the platforms and shaped by the businesses who use it. Everything blends and merges, even the tiniest intimate details of your personal life attract targeted ads and shape what you actually see here, through the algorithms. Peoples’ bodies are transformed through the same process, as they play the imitation games, sometimes as far as having themselves surgically transformed. More simply, why don’t we see that a platform that networks us with the rest of the world shouldn’t be about ‘me’? Why can’t we do anything except talk about ourselves? Understand that and you understand what these platforms are doing to us individually, and to society as a whole.