Hook
More breakout videos from this creator.
Over the past 72 hours, there are two videos that have spread like wildfire across every group chat I'm in, every feed I follow, every algorithm I pay attention to. That pitch perfectly encapsulate just how insufferable the current landscape on social media. If somehow you haven't seen them already, it's this one. People should exercise more. And this one, so happy. And what about the people who And what they both do masterfully is diagnose our current online problems as a complete void of nuance. Everything you say can and will be used out of context, binaries and hot takes are endlessly renewable resources. Comment cops are chumping at the bit to police the discourse. And everything is discourse because we can agree on nothing. It feels like we've reached peak dissonance online and obviously algorithms are making it worse. My theory is that personalised algorithms that every platform is pushing are doing serious damage and driving people even deeper into their cosy little echo chambers under the guise of allowing you to tune your feed. Now let's circle back to nuance! To get nuance, you need high levels of something called integrative complexity, which is a kind of capacity used in problem solving or decision making scenarios that was formalised by the psychologist Peter Schudfeld. Stick with me here. This is relevant to the social media piece. So integrative complexity has two parts. Differentiation, which refers to the perception of different dimensions when considering an issue. And then integration, which refers to connecting or relating those dimensions to one another instead of just flattening them. In online spaces right now, we are not showing signs of integrative. There is very little shared understanding between people. Nuance is lost. And I think it's because we are all isolated on little islands of our algorithmic shooting arrows into the abyss and hoping they will hit someone.