It is precisely the fever dream experience of a parasitic host as the fiend sucks the life from it.
At this point I’m pretty convinced that social media is a net negative for humanity with little redeeming quality.
There was a time when it did connect people, like you could meet people or find old friends, but that was long ago deprioritized or even stripped away. Now it’s just a pure chum feed that serves up either brain rot trash or political fear and rage bait.
TV was always full of crap but it also gave rise to great shows, to art and lasting culture. It was a medium of mixed value. Social media doesn’t even have that going for it unless some day people celebrate the great Pepe memes. Everything it creates is disposable low effort trash. Nothing worth keeping. You could delete it all and everyone would forget a week later.
True. It also bonded people together. I have fond memories of watching certain shows and sport matches with my family.
I guess I use some slacks and discords and a few lists but that’s about it.
It does all that by it self? Of course not. This thing is not autonomous. Every app that _fill your head_ was your choice to install, signup and OPEN every time. It's like saying drugs are parasites. Of course they aren't. Your choices made you addicted to the thing. What happened to agency? Everyone is now a slave of social media apps?
I never feel a compulsion to check google maps for instance.
This parasite is easily exterminated.
“Thus, a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but what is worse, as many masters as he has vices.” ― Augustine of Hippo
(Not saying anybody around here is wicked just remembering a striking quote)
I would not be at all surprised if the same phenomenon can happen with internet addiction, if maybe in a more benign form as far as bodily consequences go.
So no, drugs are not "autonomous" but to act like it's an easy matter to simply refuse to do them once you've started is an attitude that's shockingly ignorant of much of the modern understanding of addiction.
Drugs have additional chemical and physiological impacts that make them a very different beast, but obviously addiction can still be brutal even if it’s “just” an experience — look no further than gambling. For which most countries have strict laws and regulations, particularly when it comes to children.
But let’s also not infantilise adults: People need to take responsibility for their own behavioural patterns.
I don't understand why it's ever so trendy to do this performative i-have-minimal-agency-in-my-existence bit when it comes to smartphones; swap that last word with "TV" and the same people professing it would smirk - presumably because that's an old timey, rather than a très trendy, thing to be part of.
After sitting in the patrol car for a quite while, some officer opens the door to speak with them. Immediately: "Can I get my phone??"
Sometimes they'll still have a phone after being cuffed and detained. They will nearly dislocate joints to thumb their phones continuously while cuffed. They will not stop until someone takes it.
I don't know...