Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion

Posted by pseudolus 9/13/2025

Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion(www.noemamag.com)

346 points | 221 commentspage 3

cantor_S_drug 9/13/2025|

> A few creators do append labels disclaiming that their videos depict “no real events,” but many creators don’t bother, and many consumers don’t seem to care.

https://youtu.be/kLyuNo3vEuQ?t=346

AI videos as propaganda. In this clip, the guy can be seen passing through a missile transport railing.

300K views.

randycupertino 9/13/2025|

I enjoy watching movie trailers on youtube and I've noticed in the last month all these ai-created fake movie trailers for upcoming movies where the actual trailer isn't out yet. It's infuriating when I watch it, realize something is off and then at the end it's like "Fan-made!"

If this ai-slop keeps up I'm going to just probably stop watching youtube altogether, it sucks getting tricked by fake content.

hollerith 9/13/2025|||

I recently spent over an hour listening to a channel whose description starts with "This channel shares real stories of life, love, and heartbreak in Thailand. I focus on honest experiences from foreigners living here."

Then I realized that these stories are entirely AI-generated! I know that because of the lack of personal idiosyncracies in narrative style, lifestyle and background (the stories purport to be autobiographical, where idiosyncracies show up more than in other kinds of writing) and the high rate at which the stories appear on the channel (namely, one 30-minute story every day for the last 70 days). Someone collecting actual true stories would not be able to collect stories at that rate -- at least not when just starting out (i.e., before becoming known and trusted by many expats) and the oldest video / story on the channel is only 2 months old.

https://www.youtube.com/@InsideThailandStories

qingcharles 9/13/2025|||

YouTube started demonetizing these channels a few months back. Last year they had practically taken over the platform.

coolThingsFirst 9/13/2025||

There's still a lot of room for progress in social networks.

I'm planning an app where people are forced to talk to each other and learn more about each other, if they do not they are banned from the platform.

Going on Tinder to gather likes and never talk to anyone should be forbidden.This is the issue with social sites, they make it as generic as possible.

sidnutulapati 9/13/2025||

Funnily enough, I just [wrote a blog post](https://sidnutul.substack.com/p/the-thought-industry) echoing this sentiment around how the algorithms have fractured our shared perceptual reality:

ValveFan6969 9/13/2025||

These "internet is dead" articles are coming across as more robotic than actual robot content these days.

ArcHound 9/14/2025||

I don't agree that Substack is a place for small niche communities. It seems to me that they are trying hard to turn into a social network - notes, DMs and other features are pushed while more writing related features like code syntax highlighting or tables are ignored.

alex1138 9/13/2025||

Does social media mean Facebook? And how Zuckerberg may have just stolen it from other people and he thinks the idea of a good product is one where the feed is wildly non chronological and showing-actual-posts-from-friends-optional? Because that's not connection

toasted-subs 9/13/2025||

Social media brought nothing but a bunch of jerks who bully and enslave people. Gonna die alone because of what those people have done. I hope when the people look back at this they try every single one of those people as murderers.

atleastoptimal 9/13/2025||

The same problems people cite wrt social media are the same issues that have been cited for decades regarding living in a dense urban area vs a less populated one, but nevertheless people still overwhelmingly live in urban areas.

jajko 9/13/2025||

Yeah but its mostly because of jobs and corresponding salaries. For every person I know that simply loves living in the city, has no connection to the nature and the best weekend is spent partying or in similar city vein, there are 10 who would love to live in more rural place, but then there is work or services commute.

Triple that for families with small kids.

Also it doesn't have to be proper wilderness, thats only for few - ie our village has 2k people, kindergarten and school for kids up to 14 years, shops, 3 restaurants, football stadium, doctor and dentist and so on. Small city 5 mins drive, bigger 10, metropolis 20 mins drive. And just next to big wild forest and natural reserve from one side that continues up the hills 1km higher than where we are, and 15km stretch of vineyards from another. Almost ideal compromise for us, just me sucking up the 1h office commute 2x a week (for now).

egeozcan 9/13/2025|||

Nitpick: Around 60% of the world population live in urban areas, and if a lot of people decide to live in a particular rural area, then it quickly faces urbanization.

rufus_foreman 9/13/2025|||

>> people still overwhelmingly live in urban areas

If you restrict the classification to urban vs. rural, then yes, people overwhelmingly live in urban areas, something like 80% to 20% according to the census.

If you add in suburban, it changes. There's no authoritative definition of the term, but there was a Pew Research Center poll that asked people to describe the community they live in and the response was 25% urban, 43% suburban, and 30% rural. (And I guess 2% something else?)

CommenterPerson 9/13/2025||

I went to NYC the other day. There was lots of diverse interesting stuff. Not full of people who looked just like me.

jibal 9/13/2025||

Just because something is bad, that doesn't that these are its last days.

jibal 9/14/2025||

Oops ... "Just because something is bad, that doesn't mean that these are its last days.

bentt 9/13/2025|

Mastodon shows that when a network is relieved of pressure to monetize it evolves to serve its users. Otherwise it evolves to serve the investors in the platform. It’s just that simple.

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