Enemies of My Mental State
This is a time where we're all under attack, and I've been doing some house cleaning and inventory.
Facebook is the enemy of my mental state. They've made no secret of the fact that they manipulate your newsfeed as part of sociological experiments, to see how manipulating the order and content of your feed can change your emotions, based on what you post afterwards. They are quite literally using your friends against you sometimes, seeing if they can make you feel worse.
Twitter is the enemy of my mental state. I've been on twitter for a long time, and I remember the old days where it was mostly silly jokes. Now, no matter how carefully I've curated my list of follows, it's mostly an outrage machine, an anger aggregator. There is need of that, we need to make sure the powers that be are aware that we are unhappy with them, but I don't need to take it in on a daily basis.
Fortunately there are friends as well. But websites can't be friends, they can only offer you a way to connect to those friends. It takes effort and specific action to make those connections and to keep them alive. We can't count on corporations to do it for us.
The internet is a tool, and it is up to us to decide how to use it or be used by others through it.
I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload. You can join in yourself by visiting 100 Days To Offload.
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