Thread by @nope_its_lily

my favorite part of logging into twitter is seeing how the rich and powerful can spaghettify their brains in real time in online echo chambers, like a grand experiment of what happens if you remove any effort from satisfying maslow's hierarchy of needs

it turns out that if you've already won the game of life, there is no higher calling than retweeting propaganda, hate, and arguing with faceless strangers online

it is the apotheosis for the gestalt soul of mankind

more importantly, I think social media is a potent mechanism for self-radicalization, because before it, people with bizarre extremist views would likely not be in a community where those views are acceptable (barring a few places, but certainly not in a major Western metropolitan)

but with social media and algorithmic feeds, we c an exactly curate a community of people with the same views, and as people fall into those communities, there's a reactionary treadmill which develops as you normalize the baseline, so pushing further and further into weirdness incrementally becomes the norm

it's like if you're a baby learning the stove is hot, you get automatic feedback when you first burn yourself that you're an idiot and not to do that again

but now instead you can be, with enough money and online brain, the baby who touches the stove, feels nothing, and makes it your life mission to crawl naked on the surface of the sun, cheered on by a million other babies who want the same