I spent a great deal of time researching things on the Internet, and social media is almost worthless to me.
This isn’t just because its difficult to find content that isn’t already been shared. It is also difficult to find content that it true and pro-social.
I would say that 90% of the social media content I see are just lies and misunderstandings. I can’t tell you how many videos I reject because they are objectively false.
For example one YouTube short said that people who have bad credit scores are irresponsible. That is clearly BS. Most people who have bad credit scores are because of medical debt, high utilization, limited credit history or mistakes or errors on the credit report.
I spent a great deal of time working on my credit report in the past because of all the mistakes and errors on it. I used a third-party website that allowed me to easily challenge the mistakes, and when they were removed my score improved 100+ points.
The reality is that social media caters to people who are outrageous and say stupid things. If it is demonstratively untrue, the only thing that matters to some people is the social media engagement.
I think if our founders had seen that people are willing to trade truth for profits so easily, they would have reframed the government.
I said before that it was increasingly more difficult to find pro-social and helpful social media content. I continue to struggle everyday with this. I will have to reduce the number of posts or write more original posts in the future to deal with this.
Social media used to be fun and share comics and things that you didn’t know. It was an intellectual adventure and now it has become a cesspool.