Does social media encourage unnatural levels of conformity?

Post Reply New Topic

I notice that when I socialise with people irl, it's ok to not fit into one particular box or group and a lot of my friends are the same. When I talk like that on twitter or reddit, I get no feedback or negative feedback.

Is this a general trend of people being put into packages which are easy to follow online? Like people want others to be more predictable and everyone is aiming at a particular 'brand'?

I don't think it's healthy either for individuals or society and I think it might be part of why we have 'bubbles'. NTs are more tribal than we are but that doesn't mean that strict tribalism is healthy. I'd rather connect to someone based on their values or their hobbies than on their demographics anyway.

Real life carries more credence than online life.

It’s easier to be flexible when one can actually SEE the person.

I often find that my reasoning can be so different that on other sites it can be very difficult to open up as if I do I can get hounded for having such views and I either leave or just stop posting.
It concerns me as busy sites sometimes go quiet when I join them and start posting. Yet I can't fathom out what I have said that could be seen as upsetting. I re-read things and don't see anything nasty or anything I have written directed against anyone. I don't know but on most sites I seem to find difficulty in conforming to being a "Mr Average person" as I don't do average and couldn't if I wanted to.

I know what you mean, people are passive aggressive in person but I have had my share of them trying to make me fit their mold many times. Because I didn't meet their requirements that came with unwritten rules, they have often excluded me from things.

On Facebook, your "Friends" on their can there who attack you for some of the things you post because they think that your posts are "Hurting them." Other times, they attack you because you don't believe certain things like they do so they do what they can to think they know it all while you know nothing. I have learned that when people talk to me like that, at all, I just block them and say anything anymore. Usually, people like that are just looking for a fight because they want attention.

Youtube is also a form of social media and I happen to vlog. One time I did a vlog where I said, "With autism" and another person on the spectrum decided to correct me, "It's autistic, this offends me." My thoughts were, well excuse me. I am autistic too and I have every right to decide whether I use people first or identity first language.

I have 1 follower on Twitter.

One person on there is prepared to follow me and show solidarity with me. One.

In real life, I'm making friends over the same things which lose me followers on Twitter.

I see it as silly. But at the same time, I feel like a real weirdo that only 1 person wants to follow me.

I have zero followers.

I tried Twitter but quickly closed the account because many people were following me and it scared me off. I thought they were stalkers!

Yeah, it's weird. I didn't like the people in the first place but they were just better than the people in my real life back then.

Whereas now - not even sure I want a Rahead following me. Yes that's Scottish/Irish slang but you're Welsh so you'll understand if I translate it as 'I don't want IRA obsessed people following me just because we support the same football team and are both anti-imperialist leftists'.

The thing is though, idk if I know what my personal ideology is. Maybe I don't belong on the site anymore because I'm not easy to package like that anymore.

I never really was easy to package, it was just I was prepared to rt their stupid IRA stuff because I didn't have a secure sense of myself at the time and I thought that was required of Irish diaspora. Like I said, tribalism. Tribalism is invariably dangerous.

Also, I can't draw so I don't know why anyone would follow me for my art which is what I'm trying to put out there.

Also I just did analytics on it and 3k people are looking at it. Which is kinda creepy. Esp without a follow.

KT67... I take it you live in Ireland? I have a friend who lives there. He flies over about once a year and visits. He goes by plain... Not actually flies himself if you see what I mean...

The only social media I use are Wrong Planet, occasionally a couple of other autism forums, and some forums relating very specifically to certain special interests (one of which I moderate.)

My impression is that the main down-sides of social media (and I do think there can also be up-sides) are...

- People prefer to be agreed with than to be disagreed with, generally speaking. Online it's very easy to hang out only with people who agree with you, and software which suggests "what you might also like" encourages this. The fact that you're just communicating via text messages, and can be relatively anonymous, also lessens the negative consequences of a disagreement which turns into a full-blown argument - you can just "ghost" people instead of resolving the problem. Compromising with people and resolving disputes are skills which take practice, and it's much easier to avoid practising online than it is when socialising is done in a real-world public space.

- Statistics for "likes", "re-tweets" and "followers" encourage people to measure their sociability in dysfunctional ways and to treat socialising as little more than a game. They emphasise "popularity" over empathy, and the relative anonymity makes it easier for many people to mask who they really are for the sake of popularity.

- They encourage people to keep up a continuous stream of short messages rather than to discuss anything in depth. You can't get to know someone properly through "me too"s, "+1"s, follows, re-tweets, and sound-bites. Re-tweets, links to videos, etc. encourage the recycling of other people's opinions rather than questioning and explaining one's own opinions and why one holds them. The pressure to respond promptly encourages people to post before thinking things through. So people's understanding of each other remains relatively superficial, which discourages empathy (there are more people on WP who I'd love to see write more than people who I would prefer wrote less.)

I don't think that any of the above are unique to social media. Relentless exposure to stereotypes in advertising and entertainment media are just as pernicious in my opinion - just as superstition and religious persecution have been in various places and at various times. I don't think that the degree of conformity is "unnatural", in the sense that for most people it's a normal psychological reaction to the amount of pressure which they feel under, and their perception of what the consequences of not conforming might be.

Trogluddite. Your PM's don't show.

No, but they don't either.

I've just been given enough crap about having grandparents from there over the years that the history and politics and culture etc is important to me almost in a specialist interest way. Basically because I was shamed over it, I became proud of it.

Twitter's full of guys from Scotland who want to be in the IRA because their grandparents came from Ireland... And some Americans are in on it too. Like all they talk about is Celtic and the IRA and hating Rangers.

I don't really want them following me when I put it like that.

Just y'know, I'd have thought some generic lefties would have wanted to follow me or something?

And yeah in real life, about a third of the people I interact with were actually born there. Most of my friends have roots there like I do. But most of the people I know from there are southern and the northerners are more likely not less to support peace because it affects their community.

Just so dangerous the way social media encourages people to become like that.

Not an easy situation I guess. I have been to Scotland once. A crazy three days! I like Wales.

The world has gotten worse since Facebook came onto the scene in 2004.

I think a lot has to do with the size and moderation (or lack thereof) of a particular online venue. Large, unmoderated (or very loosely moderated) online venues (such as Twitter) tend to be much nastier, hence more conformist, than smaller, more specialized, moderately moderated forums like Wrong Planet.

I've been participating in online forums off-and-on for over 25 years, and I've noticed the above as a general pattern. This is one of the reasons I avoid big platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

I deleted it.

3k views. 2 followers. 3 days.

Shows how weird I am and makes my social anxiety bad.

But irl - I pretty much fit in with my friends and where I don't, they like the quirkiness of it. I'm so glad I live in this town.

Was different back when I was in a different town.

I'm telling myself it's because I didn't have one clear platform.