We had the internet in 2007 my guy, and apple sold macbooks and imacs. I know. I was there. It was awesome. web ads and user interfaces didn’t take manipulative interactive psychology and science seriously back then—that wasn’t until android got popular. And we didn’t have Cambridge Analytica. We didn’t have personalized ads or the user base. It wasn’t until android really that put smartphones in everyone’s hands. I remember the dev conferences about getting the next billion users by making everything accessible and localized. It made great i18n tech but was specifically for google’s advertising purposes. Facebook capatalized with Facebook and buying instagram (ios exclusive originally. Facebook put it on that next billion Android) and whatsapp (part of that ‘next billion’ world in asia already)
Better than 2034
Interesting inference, the meme implies that if society was thriving then it wouldn’t be a nightmare machine.
Is that honestly true? If most software on people’s devices was FOSS and the world was like 20-30 years ago, would it have the same magic of the past?
I’m curious how much or it is form factor and the addiction that goes along with it.
Personally I think it would be very different. Sometimes I get lost in an obsession over a random topic, I go to wikis instead or doomscrolling. I would imagine that smartphones in a good world would mostly be that.
Oh and games that aren’t trying to be gacha
Cool
Pro tip: the nightmare rectangle is actually under your control. You can:
- get off social media
- read factual sources of news rather than doomerism. Or not follow news at all if you want.
- You can use your phone to follow your hobbies and passions. Maybe even learn something of your interest.
- You can use your phone to contact loved ones.
People can not eat shitty food and get fat.
but they’d rather take GPL-1 drugs.
That’s what drives me nuts about these sorts of memes, they’re just learned helplessness. You control what you’re viewing. No-one is forcing you to read or watch anything. Some platforms try to mould and filter what you see on them, so simply stop using them, or limit your use if you must dip in. Others have biases that you should be aware of and take in to account.
Curate your own intake, and know when to stop. Put the phone down, and do something else. Uninstall the apps and delete the bookmarks if you must, but take control and stop blaming things you have control over.
Ah yes, bury your head in the sand and all the ills of the world will disappear.
No unfortunately even if I don’t watch the news, the news is still happening all around me.
How many people do you know in life who actually control themselves, vs those who just endlessly complain about how they can’t help themselves?
For me the ratio is probably 1:20
Where I can, I tend to distance myself from those who can’t control themselves, and my family are all pretty disciplined, so the total is around about “everyone I care about or spend time with”.
You sound extremely lucky/privledged.
Most people don’t have people around them like that. The vast majority of people out there are low level addicts for algorithms. Nobody in my family can control themselves and I grew up with two parents who were crackheads for cable news TV feeding them endless streams of nonsense. My folks were basically overgrown toddlers most of my life and everything made them throw a tantrum. And my entire town I grew up in was full of people like that.
I think the error you are making is you assume other folks have the circumstances around them that they can exercise control and discipline over their lives… a lot of folks don’t. Esp if they never had examples in live to teach them those things, or had higher education or income levels. Poverty and low income legit has different wiring in the brain and people in that lifestyle typically don’t develop their executive control. The fact I did, made me more or less a freak-show anomaly among my family and friends growing up.
I am lucky with my friends and family, and I’m always grateful for that. As I said before, when I say something is simple, that doesn’t mean I’m suggesting it’s easy. The trouble is, no one but the addict themselves can break addiction. Of course algorithmic media, social or otherwise, should be much more stringently controlled, but if it disappeared overnight people who just move to the next source of quick dopamine hits.
It’s not that simple, sadly. It’s curated and designed to drag you in, social media is slightlymore obvious about it, but everything has an app with bells and whistles to drag you in (look at our adds, buy our stuff, pay a subscription) ,. Plus addiction is real. If everyone drinks in every spare moment, how do you tell if you’re an alcoholic, but replace alcohol with phone.
Sure, when I say these things are simple, I don’t necessarily mean they’re easy. None-the-less, it is down to each individual to control their behaviour. Having supportive people around you undoubtedly helps, but no algorithm can actually control your behaviour unless you permit it to.
Alcoholics also normalize their behaviour and shame everyone whose who isn’t an alcoholic as being ‘no fun’ or ‘lame’ etc.
I mean, yeah, you gotta hit some huge life lows for it to be classed as an addiction. That word isn’t thrown around lightly. That’s probably a lesser phase, it gets way worse.
I saw this thing once that tallied up all the time of your life you spend doing mundane things, how many years you spend sleeping, doing dishes etc etc.
It really got me thinking about what tiny things were a dripping tap, leaking my life away. It’s not about not doing mundane things, it’s about being in the moment and enjoying life as much as possible, so I set about shortening things or making things more fun that weren’t, or rethinking how much time something takes and if it’s worth that added up contribution of my life. Am I going to look back and regret spending time in that way.
It’s not just the big things, some things creep in in small incremental ways and steal your time and attention. I suppose that’s the beginning stages of phone addiction?
You can also CONSUME
or enjoy an ad experience
My turn to post next time please
They killed off physical qwerty keyboards on phones because a touchscreen is cheaper, and i still miss them
It was shit back then, and the dawn of enshittification.
I mean planned obsolescence, maybe… But data mining wasn’t as profitable at the time and Facebook had just overtaken MySpace, so I would argue 2007 wasn’t yet a race to the bottom in many aspects.
Bro I was trying to get files from a friend’s ipod and one album was in several different randomly assigned folders with other randomly assigned songs.
The ads don’t say any fucking info about the hardware, just dancing silhouettes and how fashionable it is.
Now people just want to literally ask their computer “where’s my passwords”. This was the jumping off point.
I hate Apple these days but the old school iPods and original iPod touch were so good at the time.
I’d still love a modified iPod classic with bluetooth, USB-C, and an SD card slot.
Well. Do I have a project for you! https://www.crowdsupply.com/certain-things/sprout-pi-mainboard
i love nano shuffle back in the day. the only one i can afford at that time and i abused the shit out of that thing until i bought nano touch years later…
i miss dedicated music box, sure you can still do it now. but its just… different…
It really is different. I have all this music available, and that’s awesome.
But I really miss buying an album, listening to it eager to see if is as good as I hoped.
Add burning and loading up the music player and you have a whole evening.
I will still listen to an album every now and then, but it’s not the same as having to have fished it out of a radio or mtv or something.
Now, music is just sort of on and I sort of like all that I hear 😂
