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The original was posted on /r/collapse by /u/World-Ending-Tart on 2024-07-06 11:14:00+00:00.
(This is related to collapse as the decline of fact based belief systems is going to play a massive role in climate change denial, in the rise of fascism and in the spread of diseases like Covid or what else might pop up next. This decline of trust in science and rise of overall hatred and distrust of everything will not cause the collapse but it will leave many people absolutely helpless when it happens. This is also my opinion.)
Does anyone else feel like social media has radically changed since Covid ? Personnally I only really use instagram and reddit (and instagram way more than reddit as I think I've developped an addiction to it). I've noticed that the platform has become unbelievably hateful, unbelievable is an important word in this case. Any post or reel which implicitly promotes some kind of hate or mockery is going to be boosted extremely well by the algorythm, thousands and thousands of comments all dogpiling on the subject (for example hating on LGBTQ+). Meanwhile posts with even very little progressive content will also be dogpiled but with horrible negativity. To give an example I saw a reel about a girl toddler getting a short haircut instead of long hair and the entire comment section was just filled with anti-LGBT discourse and people advising repressive and punitive parenting practices, all with thousands and thousands of likes.
Another thing I've noticed is a huge rise what I call career social media charlatans. These people earn a comfortable living by fearmongering about different foods, pushing pseudo science based diets, fearmongering about benign additives (particularly in cosmetics). Any post telling you to eat more vegetables and cut down red meat will be dogpiled by carnivore diet pushers. And these people get massive numbers of likes which makes me question how many people actually follow that insane "diet".
My question is : are we seeing some kind of deliberate effort to make the population grow more hateful and bitter and ignorant through social media (bots mass liking hate comments for example) ?
Another hypothesis is that people are just that hateful and ignorant in general and social media just liberates that speech but I really can't accept that because practically everyone I've ever met in my life is far from being like that. Maybe I'm just biased because I'm not a very social person to begin with and I try to surround myself intentionnally with people I consider goodhearted and kind.