If social media was the intellectual crack, AI could be intellectual fentanyl.
If social media was the intellectual crack, AI could be intellectual fentanyl. Such a powerful substance, if it's put towards engagement maxing will be one of the wo...
Topic: social media
46 chunks · 28 episodes
Topic summary
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A short read on the topic's time range, peak episode, and strongest associations. Use it as the quick orientation before drilling into examples.
- social media appears in 46 chunks across 28 episodes, from 2024-10-14 to 2026-03-30.
- Its densest episode is Bits and Bobs 8/25/25 (2025-08-25), with 5 observations on this topic.
- Semantically it travels with engagement maxing, social network, and sycosocial relationship, while by chunk count it sits between vibe coding and tech industry; its yearly rank moved from #127 in 2024 to #28 in 2026.
Over time
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Raw mentions over time. Use this to see absolute attention, not relative rank among all topics.
Observations
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The primary evidence view for this topic. Sort it chronologically when you want concrete examples behind the larger pattern.
We're missing authentic social software.
...go. They probably have zero full-time people working on it anywhere. Meanwhile, social media quantified human relationships into a grotesque, performative fever dream because that's all computers could handle. Quantitative, not qualitative. S...
This week I learned about "ideological sorting."
...t force of gravity that over time pulls things towards it. Yet another way that social media is like an intellectual crack cocaine epidemic.
Performativity ruins the value of aggregate signals.
...are an authentic signal, even if they are (somewhat) public. Contrast that with social media likes, which are free to give, are mostly public, and have no direct consequences for the giver. You can still get some emergent signals, but they ar...
Value arises from scarcity.
...oing to miss the point.[cn] It took a decade or more of the web to discover the social media business model.
Social media shows the downside of echo chambers.
Social media shows the downside of echo chambers. Now with LLMs you can have echo chambers for a single user.[ep][eq] Uh oh!
If you have tons of power you should have tons of responsibility.
...tant than the tech itself. But the tech industry doesn't think about emergence. Social media, crypto, etc… the goals were good, but the emergent effects were treated like a "whoopsie!" We must do better with AI given its order of magnitude mo...
AI has the potential to have as much positive impact for humanity as the printing press, electricity, or the internet.
...nternet. Whether it will be like electricity (universal infrastructure) or like social media (engagement-maxing aggregators) depends on who owns your context. Your context is your memories, your data, your digital life. If you own it, AI beco...
Glen Weyl et al published a new proposal called Prosocial Media.
Glen Weyl et al published a new proposal called Prosocial Media. I haven't gotten a chance to read the proposal in depth yet but I love the name!
Real names in social media context collapse all the various versions of you into a single maximally safe version of yourself.
Real names in social media context collapse all the various versions of you into a single maximally safe version of yourself. You can only have an alter ego online if you have ...
In the past I've enumerated three humanity-denying movements in the past around AI:
... AI's. 3) cynical engagement maximizers - the people who are happy to apply the social media engagement maximizing playbook to AI and make a quick buck. Of the three humanity-denying movements, no one says they want to do the cynical engageme...
The thing that made social media problematic was social combined with mobile phones.
The thing that made social media problematic was social combined with mobile phones. Individually either would not have been that bad. We have our phones without arms' reach nearly e...
Social media engagement maxing is a light form of paperclip maxing.
Social media engagement maxing is a light form of paperclip maxing. The AI in this case is just capitalism. Both are swarm intelligences. Powerful but impossible ...
Social media was terrifying and also it was data you chose to share with others.
Social media was terrifying and also it was data you chose to share with others. Imagine if it's intimate details you'd only tell your therapist or your diary?
Emergent less guarded conversations in smaller groups are how we sensemake about complex environments.
...ake about complex environments. It used to be family, friends and public But on social media it's recorded forever and in lots of complex situations. We didn't evolve to be perceived at that scale.
Jonny Ive made an interesting point about AI and social media recently.
Jonny Ive made an interesting point about AI and social media recently. He observed that we didn't realize how bad social media would be for society until well after its effects were felt. But with AI we're more...
Society is stuck in a mukbang loop.
...rm for broadcasting your eating. The Audience Capture essay told the story of a social media influencer whose videos of him eating got popular. His audience wanted him to eat more and more, so he did, putting on hundreds of pounds. He almost ...
"Social media for vibe coding" is a thing lots of companies will do.
"Social media for vibe coding" is a thing lots of companies will do. A social network for vibe coding has a low ceiling. Apps are isolated islands which means most...
If you strip away work from people's day to day, what do they do with their time?
...fix that fundamental misalignment that is broken it can all be fixed. The web / social media is an adaptive emergent beast that does not have your best interests at heart. Be careful how much time you spend in its embrace!
Social complexity can expand without limit: an insatiable social vortex.
...gent will take it. A few contexts where this insatiable social vortex shows up: Social media engagement fights Culture wars Hyper-finacialized contexts like crypto Kayfabe in organizations