Sherry Ning on Substack

We are living through a pandemic of selfing — rampant self-celebration that mistakes applause for connection, likes for love. Social media companies are capitalizing on our native need for affirmation, exploiting our compromised immunity to manipulation at every turn: algorithms prioritizing selfies over sunflowers, algorithms amplifying the word I... See more

“The villain here is not necessarily the internet, or even the idea of social media,” she writes. “It is the invasive logic of  commercial  social media, and its financial incentive to keep us in a profitable state of anxiety, envy, and distraction.” The business model of platforms like this — which rely on advertising and clicks and “en

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but whether parasocial content is desirable or not, it points to a growing crisis on the internet: So much of what we encounter online just doesn’t matter , and even worse, offers no mechanism for us to start caring about it. The average human living today sees more things they don’t care about in one week than a medieval peasant did in their entir... See more

I’d substitute genuine social interaction with a swipe, comment, message, or like. Keeping up with friends was essentially optimized– no longer did you have to text, call, or coordinate a meeting to catch up. You could just glance at their latest post and feel some shallow sense of connection. Social media provides the facade of friendship with lit... See more