In this episode, we discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of social media. What are the benefits of online interactions, and how do we keep those benefits, while minimizing the costs?
The Good
G.K. Chesterton observed that older technology tends to perform many functions, whereas the new technology that replaces it tends to take only one of those functions and perform it extremely well, while ignoring all the other goods produced by the older tech. An example he gave was the modern light bulb providing better light than a fire, but with very little of the warmth. In an analogous way, social media more efficiently facilitates certain limited goods, even as it misses many of the other goods that are characteristic of offline social interactions. Nevertheless, these limited goods that social media does provide are still a real benefit that could be lost if one avoided social media altogether.
For example, if you’re an INTJ, you probably realized long ago that your personality type is rare (around 2% of the population) and that most people’s brains don’t work like yours. At all. This can make in-person social interactions frustrating — until you learn not to expect others to share your interests, and you develop a knack for doing the whole “How to Win Friends and Influence People” thing of mostly just talking to others about the kinds of things that they find interesting (usually this means small talk about sportsball, the weather, traffic, etc.). But even if you learn the art of navigating social interactions with normies, you still crave discussions about things that you find interesting, so you have to find your fellow INTJs, autists, schizoids, etc. Since we’re only about 2% of the population, this can get difficult as you get older and Life fills up your calendar with social obligations geared towards normies. So what provides a decent makeshift alternative? Social media, of course! And this is a very real good that I certainly appreciate in my own life, even as I struggle sometimes to find the balance between being socially engaged online and offline.
The Bad
The balance between online and offline can be hard to find, and this is exacerbated by the fact that very smart and shrewd people, chasing the so-called “almighty dollar” (in God we trust, but which God?), have made it their lives’ work to engineer social media to be as addictive as possible. They are very well-funded (their paymasters seem to be closely connected to, and tightly aligned with, the central bankster wizards). They have the best technology at their disposal. And they have used decades of black magic research into propaganda and behavioral science to turn our screens into mind-altering and highly addictive drugs. Thus, it is extraordinarily difficult to restrict one’s online engagement to only that which is legitimately beneficial.
As the comedian Louis C.K. once observed, when talking about people who watch concerts and sportsball games through the screens of their phones, “Hey, real Life is happening in HD right in front of you!”
And the Ugly
And then there’s the really ugly. For example, if you never went online, you wouldn’t ever accidentally poison your eyes and traumatize your psyche with grotesque images like this one:
But at least we can use the alchemical processes of Comedy to transmute that traumatic ugliness into something funny and enjoyable. And speaking of Lizzo, did you have any idea just how fat she is?
Turns out, Lizzo so fat, her belly button be bigger than a black man hubcaps on his hoopty! (Her belly button don’t be spinnin like dem hubcabs do, though!)
But seriously, folks … Hope you enjoy this episode. If you’re listening to this on a podcast app or streaming platform, then be sure to visit the Substack Page for this episode, so you can see the embedded media (including the memes about how fat Lizzo be), and let me know what you think in the comment section, and — if you really want to be a pal — kindly subscribe to my Substack, so I can keep bringing you my interesting insights and absurd humor. ¡Adiós, mis bichos raros! (That’s Spanish for, Goodbye or God be with ye, my fellow weirdos!) Note: if you’re a normie, you’re probably in the wrong place, but that’s okay; stick around, and see what you’ve been missing out on …
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