The author writes, “You end up in a world where changing your mind becomes impossible because you've built your entire identity around being right”. Yet social-media personalities regularly do a 180° turn on some issue (e.g. pro-Ukraine to anti-Ukraine or vice versa) and still keep their following and ability to monetize it.

Social media is full of parasocial relationships; followers are in love with an influencer’s personality, not their views or factual content. So, the influencer can completely change his mind about stuff, as long as he still has the engaging presentation that people have come to like. Followers are also often in love with the brand relationships that the influencers flog, because people love being told what stuff they should buy.

▲ alexachilles90 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's more about being confident and extreme on their stance no matter what it is at that particular moment. People are attracted to personalities that are confident and says they are right all the time. Heck, personalities like that gets all the influence in the workplace too. Imagine John Doe in your office who has a solution for every problem and knows the code base like the back of their hand. You might find that they are not so right all the time (maybe 2 out of 3 times it's pure conjecture) but gosh you will go back to him for solutions the next time you run into a problem. What I am saying is that we are attracted to the extreme, the flamboyant, the controversial. Maybe it's time we prioritize critical thinking for the future generation no?

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cal_dent 14 hours ago | parent [-]

I see it as the continued corporatisation of everything. I suspect that you'd be hard press to find anyone who has ever been anywhere above middle-management in a corporate organisation who doesnt see, and chuckles at, the similarities in the worst places they've worked and this:

"Where admitting uncertainty is social suicide. Where every conversation is a performance for your tribe rather than an actual exchange of ideas. You lose the ability to solve problems that don't fit neatly into your ideological framework, which turns out to be most important problems"

Politics is the obvious one to see this effect in action but it's bled into so many facet of society now because society is one giant grey areas but our mediums don't like greys. The medium continues to be the message.

	▲	lmm 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's not corporatisation, it's basic human tribalism. If anything one of the the best things about corporations is that they can sometimes escape that kind of culture.

▲ JohnMakin 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I have been a small content creator for 10 years now. I've been hampered a lot by actively discouraging these types of parasocial relationships - every now and then I'll get a gaggle of followers that spend entirely too much time on my crappy content or my personality/posts and I get extremely weirded out to the point I want to stop doing it entirely. Everyone tells me I'm doing it wrong, but I swear, 10 years ago it wasn't as much of a thing to create a cult around yourself on social media or streaming platforms. Now it's the primary monetization path.

I've even gone so far to say to more than one person, "look, I like and appreciate you really like my content or my personality, but, you don't know me at all, I don't know you, and honestly, we're not friends, no matter how much you want that to be the case. That isn't to say I dislike you, but you need to be more realistic about the content you consume, and if this hurts your feelings a lot, I'm sorry, but this content probably isn't for you."

Then there's the type of content creator that gets a following by being a huge jerk to their fans - I don't like that either. I just tell them to treat it like a TV show. It's not real, the character in the show doesn't know you or like you. Unfortunately for today's youth and media landscape this is an utterly foreign concept.

	▲	sizzle 16 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Can we like and subscribe to you? Post the link

▲ astroflection 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Yet social-media personalities regularly do a 180° turn on some issue ... and still keep their following and ability to monetize it.

And they asserted that they were totally right the entire time. That's how. And the sheep kept on following them.

	▲	BLKNSLVR 8 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		There are / were a couple of right-wing shillers that were literally paid to promote Russian talking points and they just fit it right into their schtick without blinking. Nothing on the internet is real. If it wants money or opinion or attention, consider it hostile and try to find the strings (although it's generally not worth the time to try and find the strings, just move on and do something productive instead). https://www.npr.org/2024/09/05/nx-s1-5100829/russia-election...
	▲	20 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

▲ volkk 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

the words we use matter a lot. the "pro" and "anti" anything is a pretty large reason why all discourse has become so stupid sounding and talking with people about any issue is enraging. nuance is dead. the cultural zeitgeist is being controlled by algorithmic feeds that create neuroticism (i am definitely affected), general anxiety, and anger.

▲ robot-wrangler 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

My take on this is that persons are great, everyone should know a few. Groups of people on the other hand are, and always have been, genuinely pretty awful in almost every way. IMHO this is down to some really basic primate stuff that's just inevitable. Social media is a big problem because it makes it easier to create groups, and algorithms are a big problem because they essentially take all of the dynamics that would inevitably lead to conflict anyway, and accelerate them.

Groups, algorithms, and conflict itself are all things that lead to wicked problems. Each one tends to spiral, where the only solution is more of the same, and if you escape one funnel then you fall into an adjacent one. Problem: Some group is against me. Solution: Create a group to bolster my strength. Problem: People are fighting. Solution: Join the fight so the fight will stop sooner. Problem: My code is too complicated to understand. Solution: More code to add logging and telemetry. Problem: Attempting to add telemetry has broken the code. Solution: Time to start a fight

	▲	hamasho an hour ago \| parent [-]
		`"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it"` Quote from Men in Black

▲ EB-Barrington an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

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▲ pengaru 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

People are also more isolated than ever, positioning them poorly for having robust real relationships. This makes them vulnerable to mistaking "influencers" as their friends.

	▲	sandinmyjoints 20 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, "You cannot be reasonable in isolation" from the article really struck me.

▲ draw_down a day ago | parent | prev [-]

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