The early days of social media ushered in an era of Web 2.0 fears, the loss of privacy and the threat of cyberstalking among them, plus the depressing realization that everyone you went to high school with is overtly racist.
In the decades since, we’ve found new, more existential flaws in the matrix, as troll farms encourage the distribution of false and damaging information that is algorithmically delivered to our apps in order to confirm our existing biases, or maybe make us really angry. But still we scroll. Addicted to the rush of endorphins brought on by a couple of likes, and to that equally heady sense of righteous indignation, we’ve lost the sense there’s any particular value to objective reality.
Opinions about business magnate Elon Musk vary wildly, but this week’s news that he’s buying Twitter and taking the company private has raised concerns. He promises to open the platform’s algorithms to public scrutiny, which is probably a good thing, but what becomes of an already problematic platform once it comes under the sole control of one of world’s wealthiest individual? A new Eden? Or further descent into hell? I guess we’ll have to keep scrolling to find out.
Popular entertainment has often struggled to keep up with the pace of technological change, but we’ve been living in this world long enough that the movies have made some impressive, entertaining, and darkly funny statements about our online lives. A few of them even come close to capturing the horrors of reality.
