> “Who are you defending yourself against?” To which he answered, to my astonishment: “I don’t know. The world.”

Indeed. Moving our every interaction in daily life plus our innermost thoughts to the internet has instilled a low-key fear in all of us that we'll be raked over the coals and villified as the world's worst villains. The digital tar and feathers are lurking always, a menacing psychological force. And it can even happen without our knowledge; some stranger can post a two second context-less clip or a snippet of a conversation and make us look our worst.

It's shocking how we can have so much outrage over unknown people but we're flush out of rage for the system that makes us so angry all the time.

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rapind 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> It's shocking how we can have so much outrage over unknown people but we're flush out of rage for the system that makes us so angry all the time.

I suspect the answer is to find out who benefits from our misdirected anger, and whether they are also involved in creating and fostering this misdirected anger.

It's old news now, but when I first heard about social media (Facebook specifically) and gaming companies hiring psychologists years ago, I knew it was pretty much over. Couple this with surveillance for the doom spiral.

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jrm4 3 hours ago | parent [-]

This is pure paranoia; none of this requires a centralized bad guy.

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wizzwizz4 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Whoever said anything about centralised?

	▲	bilbo0s an hour ago \| parent [-]
		This is what most don’t understand. The reality is, we’re all villains. And we’re all angels. And the only thing that determines how we’re perceived, is the disposition of those perceiving us. This person is a villain, because you don’t like this kind of person. That person is an angel, because you have an affinity with that person. There is no one benefiting, other than we ourselves. But don’t underestimate the power of the dopamine rush we all get by having our biases validated. We have already met the enemy.. He is us.

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nuancebydefault 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Who moved every interaction in daily life to the internet? Most conversations we have are private, even if they are digital. Most of my ms teams interactions are with a single person. I trust them to not make sceenshots to share those. I don't see much difference with oral conversations, where I also trust they do not gossip about them.

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didibus 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not just that, but death treath, stalking, parasocial obsession, blackmail, scams, catfish, foreign propaganda, and so on, putting yourself out there on the internet brings so many risks nowadays.

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MangoToupe 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> It's shocking how we can have so much outrage over unknown people but we're flush out of rage for the system that makes us so angry all the time.

Shocking? Hell this is half of the value social media provides capital: distracting the population with a hall of mirrors while offering precisely zero paths to a better future.

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johnnyanmac 4 hours ago | parent [-]

well, not zero. But yes, you need to find the small hidden paths to take back what we once had.

There's a reason I deleted my reddit and Facebook and never had a twitter. You're not going to have genuine conversations and experiences there if your goal is "socializing" these days. Or at least, the genuine ones are outflooded by engagement bait.

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MangoToupe 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> you need to find the small hidden paths to take back what we once had.

This will certainly not be offered by capital, though.

	▲	johnnyanmac 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Of course not, that's why it's small and hidden. As an example, you wouldn't even find a place like HN unless you are a particular kind of person or looking a a particular type of news. And I wouldn't even say HN is "hidden" per se. But it has kept its site counter to many other social media trends over the years. Those choices will build a different culture from Instagram or Tiktok.