I dont do any of it, just a time waster, the only twitter I see is on here and gave up Facebook years ago
Know for a fact that Duggie passed his Cycling Proficiency... which puts him in the top 10% in terms of relevant qualifications on this forum...
I have to use social media for my business coz it’s where I can promote my brand and interact with my customers, but man I ****ing hate it. I detest having to ‘make content’ and trying to make it look all slick and professional, and I’m not very good at it, but it’s a bit of a necessary evil for a small business to get yourself out there. A lot of small businesses now employ somebody solely to be their social media managers and content creators. It’s something I might look at in the new year. It would cost a fair wedge but if it drives up sales it could pay for itself.
The amount of people who get sucked down (mainly right wing) rabbit holes on social media is astonishing. Ordinary fairly liberal minded folk who have ditched mainstream media coz the BBC is 'woke' and have instead gorged themselves on a diet of racist, prejudiced, paranoid, conspiracy theory laden crap and taken that as being the truth instead. The irony of deciding that the BBC is lying to you, but some right wing nut job posting fascist memes from his bedroom in Scunthorpe is telling you the truth is lost on them. I think a lot of this has accelerated since Covid, where we saw our Govt basically making it up as they went along, dishing out £bns to their mates and generally making a pigs ear of the whole thing. And suddenly there have been huge swathes of people rejecting anything that scientists, people in Govt or mainstream media say and replacing it with 'news' from twitter or ditching google and seeking out views that support their own on alternative platforms. Then you get into a spiral of confirmation bias where you're not even seeing any views that challenge your own. And It's this sort of crap that has allowed somebody like Trump to get elected, and gives people like Andrew Tate, Katie Hopkins, Tommy Robinson a platform to spread their divisive hate.
Twitter monetising was the big catalyst IMO. There’s an incentive for people to post increasingly extreme takes as it generates better numbers. Can make a good living from your bedroom just tweeting pics of Syria five years ago with the caption “All eyes on Palestine”.
Indeed, although you could probably just post pics of Palestine as it's more of a wasteland than Syria 5 years ago, but I agree with the sentiment. And people for the most part just don't bother to check the facts, because it takes time and twitter is based off 20 second videos with largely zero context.
It's funny how the algorithms work though. I'm somebody who wants to read as much as I can about a subject, even if I think it's a load of crap, just to understand why people believe the things they do and what evidence they are putting forward to support it. So my facebook and instagram feed is full of stuff about Chemtrails, Flat Earth, Rogue Planets, Project Blue Beam, Bill Gates is trying to depopulate the world, Freemasons, Ice walls in Antarctica etc etc lol.
What you have to remember about humanity, is that for every Albert Einstein, there are at least 200 million absolute ****ing idiots. Once you accept this, you will have less trouble understanding why so many people are willing to believe literally any old **** they read on the internet
