Tech CEOs are a cancer on society and the planet. Ruining everything just to make fake numbers go higher.

I don’t know the motives of others, but I’ve been spending increasingly less time on the internet and more time listening to podcasts & reading.

Lemmy attracts only certain types of people who like reading articles and replying long paragraphs arguing with each other or small details. In a time when literacy is falling, means there’s only a smaller and smaller pie left. Maybe we need a book club or pen pal system or a noobie hub to make it a friendlier environment. There’s a cloud of hostility in the air friends, don’t let it take you. Ape strong together.

Lemmy is great in the techy/gaming, memes, and news/politics fields, but doesn’t have strong secondary communities. I no longer have a reddit account but still lurk to keep up with news focused in Ukraine, Japan, Korea, music, history, minecraft, etc.

Also, social media uses the same tactics as casinos to keep people hooked. I remember a podcast in which they compared the new algorithms to slot machines where sometimes you “win” by getting content you’re looking for, sometimes you lose by getting fed random crap you didn’t search, and mostly you break even & get fed the same repetitive crap (this makes the times you “win” seam more rewarding.) Social media is an addiction and cancerous to modern society.

I can see a generational shift where one of the next few gens just breaks off and goes back to analog tech, libraries, in-person communities, hand written content, etc. Some will go hardcore offline, most will only use the internet as the need arises (GPS, work/legal documents, weather app level things.)

But for the vast majority… the internet is devolving into Idiocracy. The next centuries will be the AI stupid/dark ages with wars started over disinformation.

Or maybe climate change shrekts us in the next 50 years.