Teenagers turning to AI companions are redefining love as easy, unconditional and always there.
Young people have led makeovers of the concept of love before. But relationships with AI chatbots leave out the compromises and effort of real relationships.
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Young people are reporting epidemic levels of loneliness, and some are turning to technology to fill the void.
Bruh, technology is causing the void. People are increasingly using technology to replace human interaction, rather than to cultivate it.
Social media was a mistake.
And yes, I'm aware of the irony as I use social media to say so. I do not apologize.
I'm not so sure. Facebook was a great tool to create local communities at first. Then it became greedy and changed the algorithm for ads and being attention driven. If you remove facebook (which I don't use since months), it's harder to find what's new around you, and get out to cool events. Especially on the countryside.
That's precisely why it was a mistake. People did those things before Facebook, but now? So many people have no clue how to exist without it, and all the while, it's weaponized against people's ignorance by bad actors who are greedy for power and money.
Hell, we've had to create decentralized tools just to get some of our agency back. And yet, even knowing that their data is fodder for those same bad actors, people still flock to those previous systems like Facebook, TikTok, Xitter, and Instagram.
Social media isn't a mistake because social media is inherently bad. It's a mistake, because humans in general are too stupid to protect themselves.
No, people didn't do such things before, I disagree. People got out, of course, but it had greatly increased market view for events, because random people around could get the information. Before that, it was just displays on the walls, local newspapers, etc, but the potential viewers are way less.
Turns out unfettered greed turns everything it touches to shit.
Also, humans in general are dumb. But moreso your thing.
It was all about "fun" in the days of MySpace and Digg and early-Reddit. That damn cat wanted a damn cheeseburger and we all laughed about it.
Then it became all about politics. And people would go to any lengths to ensure that "their" politics "won" on social media. We went from people having fleets of alt accounts, to fleets of bots, to just having AI spread and upvote propaganda.
So, it's all just gross now. I want my goddamn Geocities & Yahoo! Towers back.
If it weren’t for social media, humanity would find another technology to lie and manipulate people for money and power.
Money and Power are what corrupts, not technology
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Very astute observation. Bravo.
I honestly think social media and internet subculture would be fine if it weren't soured by moneyed interests
If work wasn't so alienating and all-encompassing and we weren't so stressed and insecure in our material conditions, then we wouldnt run to social media as an escape. If wasn't also so rife with consumerist culture and advertisements it wouldnt be so corrosive. Maybe then we could use it to create communities that mirror and bridge into irl spaces and create meaningful relationships.
Instead, the entire network has been constructed around a capitalist organization and it only serves to make us more miserable.
