What Makes Social Media Ugly
Why you should stop worrying about it and what you can do to ensure it does not stay ugly
Lately, many people that I have interacted with seem to be worried about the negative consequences of social media. Many are quick to jump to the conclusion that social media is going to usher us into a dystopian future. Well, that is not likely to happen because we can still do something about it.
Social media is, unarguably, very powerful. As Naval said on the Joe Rogan Podcast (I am paraphrasing a bit here):
The people writing the algorithms for social media and content curation platforms like Twitter, FB, Google etc are the most powerful people on the planet because they are deciding what content is put on our screens thereby shaping our thoughts, opinions and interests.
Social media is shaping our collective minds. It is telling us what we should pay attention to, what we should get angry about, what we should not tolerate and so on. Now, this in itself is not dangerous. However, combine it with the people who are consuming all this content without applying discretion, that is when things take an ugly turn. More often than not, people tend to get carried away by what they see on social media.
Discretion — the right or ability to make a judgment or decision
