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Mr. S's avatar

Social media in general, and Twitter in particular, have been an absolutely unmitigated disaster. I would like to believe that they don't cause problems and only reveal then, but to my mind the internet has become something like a neural short circuit, creating a global brain that is more and more rapidly spiralling into an episode more psychotic than industrial civilization has managed to muster so far, which is saying something. I suppose it's more fair to say that it's not all building to some great psychotic apocalypse as it just causes something like seizures on a more and more frequent basis. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the computer and it's consequences have been a disaster for the human race. I don't post on any social media, unless a niche gaming forum counts, which it very well may. Twitter is, I think, the worst of the worst in the way it rewards the worst possible faith in "engagement." On the other hand, it has revealed to me over time that journalists are by and large idiots and now I don't pay attention to the news at all, either, which has also only been a good change in my life.

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Paul Kingsnorth's avatar

I think that social media both creates and normalises mental illness.

It's years since I've been anywhere near Twitter, but when I get flashes, it seems either psychopathically nasty or literally insane. This tweet is a good example.

'Milking a bull' made me laugh but also made me think something I have thought before. The 'trans' craze is clearly created and promoted by social media. That's a serious responsibility. Would 36,000 American teenage girls be on waiting lists for double mastectomies without social media? We know the answer but we don't think enough about it.

Related: if you spend your life inside on a screen, you literally do not see the difference between a bull and a cow - or between a man and a woman. Because bodies don't matter in the transgender future, which is also the transhuman future. If we are all doing nothing but pressing buttons, what is the difference between us on any level? Whereas living on the land, as I do, shows up very quickly the differences between the sexes, both male and female.

Conclusion: blow up the internet and get everyone spending that two hours a day digging and miling instead, and sanity will be restored in six months!

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