>>13761975That is possible anon, but I am not really talking about the nature of the content itself, but in the compulsive behavior these platforms engineer in the people who use them. Whether a facebook addict is consuming trump memes all day, or communist memes, either way they have themselves "jacked in" and constantly stimulating themselves with the app.
The platforms have systems of incentives, either deliberately designed or emergent, that modify the nature of the content itself, and the content modifies the viewer. You are what you eat after all. For instance, youtube incentivizes video creators to create 10-15 minute videos. Whether this was a deliberate decision by youtube management or an unintentional but not unwelcome property that emerged from the youtube system is immaterial. The effect of this is the creation of vast seas of 10-15 minute content.
The format of this content modifies the people who consume it; they come to expect these short videos and lose their patience with longer videos. People who compulsively consume several hours of short-form video content a day have less inclination and time to ingest longer less stimulating content, like books. Subjects that take longer than 15 minutes to cover properly become broadly inaccessible to the general public.
Other platforms come along, like vine and tiktok, with even shorter videos. This content modifies the mindset and expectations of those who consume it, which in turn modifies how content on earlier platforms like youtube is created. Youtube video creators start making even #short-er videos, less than two minutes long. The attention spans of users are clipped short again.
All the while, everybody is glued to their screens, consuming more content the worse it gets.
