alt Hacker NewsI can tell, usually within a few minutes of meeting them, who’s really into social media.
There’s a little bit of frenetic emotional dysregulation, and then they say the weirdest stuff to me.
I don’t think you could have made a similar argument about heavy trash tv watchers. They may have had less to talk about, you may have found them less interesting, but it didn’t literally alter their personalities.
We have a big problem.
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I feel called out as one of them. I definitely overextend in terms of internet references if I'm anxious to try to catch something the other person is interested in. Among many "online" people, memes are basically a form of in-group signaling at this point to indicate you have a similar shape of humor, quirks, shared fandoms, and values (albeit often surface level). I'm reminded of the quote about fandoms by Roger Ebert [0]. I would say it's a similar tendency to use online references as a way to skirt social awkwardness and establish some commonality.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1192222-a-lot-of-fans-are-b...
My 30 year old sister in law throws disregulated tantrums somewhat similar to a 3 year old. She failed out of college before completing the first semester, went to a bougie AA retreat in Hawaii for many months, made her entire identity AA, until online outrage became mainstream. She might literally have never read a single book cover to cover in her life, and yet has the strongest polarizing opinion you could imagine on every complex topic. She’s basically a sentient Reddit thread.
It’s sad, but also unbearable to be in her presence. The way she screams at her parents is so embarrassing. I feel bad for her parents, but they also coddled her to death and continue to to this day.
I would also add that having this kind of detection superpower probably requires the observer to be a social media addict too (low-key).
Do you have examples of what weird stuff they would say? Im having a hard time imagining what you mean exactly.
The easiest way to tell in Europe is that a woman who has never visited USA speaks in phrases or uses slang words that an African-American woman from Atlanta would use. African-American men and women probably have the largest global cultural effect based on the relative size of the community to the population of the world.
> I can tell, usually within a few minutes of meeting them, who’s really into social media.
Same for me, except it's people who don't read books.
The most pathetic thing I have experienced in my life was, in a Youtube comment section of a dumb meme video obviously aimed at young people, reading an animated conversation about the moral failings of Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
I think about that one a lot.
For my the tell tale sign is being obsessed with conspiracies, Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, constantly talking about Jews, freeing Palestine and being antivax. I can almost guarantee someone is influenced by the twitter algorithm from that alone.
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Before social media I remember people who had entire conversations just quoting tv shows, movies, and commercials. Which shows they quoted was their personality.
I think it is much worse with social media, the content is a lot more niche and the algorithms a lot more addictive.
It's not so much the weird stuff they say, I think that is fairly normal, especially the younger you go. It's the inability to do anything in person without talking constant phone breaks that I find most worrying.