Tag Archives: social media

Still relevant six years later

A Life Consumed

Overstimulated, over stressed,
Anxiety heightened but not addressed.

Faces lit in a constant glow,
From a device, in hands, below.

Palms cup, thumbs type,
Or click, or ‘Like’, or swipe.

Acceptance measured by affirmation,
But never enough for self-appreciation.

Pressure builds to levels previously unknown,
From always being connected, yet always feeling alone.

I’m not sure things have gotten better? I see screens babysitting kids in grocery stores and restaurants. Students struggle to disconnect for the length of a single class. Video games have mastered the arts of keeping attention and feeding brains dopamine at just the right intervals.

No matter how we look at it, screens are time thieves, and we are all having time stolen from us. My concern is that there is a big difference between time and attention stolen from kids and time and attention stolen from adults.

How does AI impact this? I decided to ask AI (Microsoft’s Copilot)… “I wrote this poem six years ago, how has improvements in AI made the challenges and concerns I have in the poem better or worse?” It confirms why I thought it was relevant to share the poem again.

From Copilot:

This is a striking poem because it was written six years ago, yet many of its themes feel even more relevant today. What’s especially interesting is that AI has made some of the problems you identify both better and worse at the same time.

What AI has made worse

“Overstimulated, over stressed”

AI has dramatically increased the volume of content competing for attention. Algorithms can now generate endless feeds of videos, images, articles, and recommendations tailored to individual interests. The result is often more stimulation than ever before, making it harder to disconnect or focus deeply.

“Acceptance measured by affirmation”

Social validation has evolved beyond simple likes and follows. AI systems optimize engagement, often promoting content that generates stronger emotional reactions. This can intensify the feeling that personal worth is tied to metrics, visibility, and online performance.

“Always being connected, yet always feeling alone”

AI companions, chatbots, and synthetic social interactions can provide comfort, but they may also create an illusion of connection that doesn’t fully replace human relationships. In some cases, people spend more time interacting with systems designed to simulate attention rather than building reciprocal relationships.

The constant glow

Your poem focuses on phones, but AI has spread digital engagement into almost every platform. Devices are becoming more effective at capturing attention because they increasingly learn what keeps each person engaged.

What AI has made better

“Anxiety heightened but not addressed”

This may be where AI has helped the most. Six years ago, many people struggling with anxiety had limited access to support outside of friends, family, or professionals. Today, AI can help people:

Learn coping techniques.

Track moods and habits.

Access mental health resources.

Talk through worries at any hour.

It’s not a replacement for professional care, but it can make support more accessible.

Reducing loneliness for some people

While AI can contribute to isolation, it can also help people who feel socially disconnected. Individuals who are shy, isolated by geography, disabled, or struggling emotionally may find AI conversations helpful as a bridge toward greater confidence and connection.

Reducing pressure in work and school

Some of the “always connected” stress comes from overwhelming workloads. AI can automate routine tasks, draft communications, summarize information, and reduce cognitive burden. For some people, that creates more room for rest and meaningful activities.

The line that aged most accurately

“Pressure builds to levels previously unknown, From always being connected, yet always feeling alone.”

When you wrote this, “being connected” mostly meant social media, messaging, and smartphones. Today it also means being connected to recommendation systems, AI assistants, algorithmic feeds, and platforms that increasingly anticipate our needs before we express them.

The paradox has deepened: technology is better than ever at responding to us, yet many people still struggle to feel genuinely seen by one another.

My overall take is that your poem was fundamentally about human attention and human validation, not just smartphones. Because of that, it has aged surprisingly well. AI didn’t change the core concern. It amplified it. The technology became more sophisticated, but the question remains the same:

Can tools designed to capture our attention also help us preserve our humanity?

That question feels even more urgent in 2026 than it did when you wrote the poem.

Wrong with conviction

1 Reply

I was going to share a social media post that basically called science a religion and argued that people who ‘believe in science’ are in a cult and so it doesn’t feel like worship, it feels like sanity. I only just decided that I don’t want to bring attention to this post, because when I went back to the post, my comment was gone.

I found it in my activity stream, but on the post itself, it wasn’t there. My comment didn’t fit the narrative so it was deleted. I don’t want to participate in sharing this drivel when it was shared only to promote a biased and grossly misleading narrative, with no intent to stand on its own merit against a disagreeing comment.

Meanwhile the post has over 150,000 views and 10.4K likes. I’m tired of seeing people spew convincing sounding nonsense with conviction, and spreading bad ideas that gain traction. And this is getting worse, not better.

We have access to almost unlimited information, and yet so many people just ride out their biases and beliefs, standing their ground on topics they only have a tiny understanding of… Sharing half truths, misleading ideas, and exaggerated lies that sound as if facts are factored in, but they are not.

We’ve entered an era where being wrong with conviction will gain traction simple because it fits a narrative that is appealing. We are living in a post truth era and I’m struggling to see how we escape this? And there’s no way to say this next part without sounding condescending but I’m going to say it anyway.

I think we’ve reached a point in our civilization where you have to have a certain level of intelligence or you are doomed to get dumber. Either you pass a threshold of intelligence or you succumb to stupidity shared online that simply traps you in the stupidity zone. I used to have faith in humanity but if I use what’s shared on social media as a litmus test then a very, very large number of people are doomed to stay stupid.

Turn your BS Detector fully on

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I remember when I used to look to the news for objective truth. I believed the role of a reporter was capital ‘T’ Truth, and their job was to remove as much bias as possible. I’m not sure if that ever existed, but we are now at a point where that idea is dead and buried. It seems like every news outlet is intentionally choosing a biased starting point before reporting what they share.

Maybe this isn’t new, but the level to which this seems obvious right now is alarming. One of the problems is the willingness of politicians and even executives to blatantly lie. Because then even the choice to be objective and just share the news becomes a choice to share misinformation. If a newscast willingly shares a quote that is an obvious lie or exaggeration, and does not share commentary on the lie, then ultimately they are promoting the lie.

We know from research that hearing wrong information repeatedly will make us more likely to believe it. So even a ‘non-biased’ reporting of misinformation is a kind of dose of that misinformation seeping into our brains as a potential truth. And so we are being hit with misinformation in two different ways. The first is intentional: overly biased news that fully intends to sway our opinion. The second is an attempt at being non-biased but ultimately sharing lies.

What we are left with is a need to have our bullshit detectors fully on at all times. I’m frequently left wondering if something is true or not? If the repotting is based or not? I often get my news from social media, and I end up having to spend time verifying the source or confirming the information shared. Just yesterday I saw some outlandish quotes that I thought were satire, and when I went to the actual source, I found out they were true. In this case it was the message and not the reporting that was outlandish. In other cases it’s not necessarily a misquote, but a real quote taken out of context. And then there are outright intentional lies being created and shared.

To me, this loss of trust in news media is scary. I am left wondering how many people actually take the time to check sources, rather than just believe the news that fits their narrative and beliefs, and discredit things that don’t fit with their beliefs? We seem to be in a sort of post Truth era where we either question and verify everything we hear, or we just accept that news is just a fiction dancing around the truth.

It leaves me feeling like I’ve got to keep my BS detectors fully on at all times.

Abnormally Normal

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If I wanted to make light of the sense I’m feeling, I’d say that I feel ‘a disturbance in the force’. Or I’d reference that meme of a dog in a house fire, sitting at a table having coffee, as if the world is fine.

But the new normal is not normal. The dichotomy of politics, the hatred between religious extremists, the focus on vengeance and public shaming in social media, police violence against citizens, the inability to share middle-ground opinions without fear of being ‘othered’ by both sides of the political dichotomy… it’s like we’ve slipped into a dystopian movie, and we are left wondering if this is real life?

It is.

We are bearing witness. We are seeing the collapse of modern society. Sovereignty used to matter, it doesn’t matter anymore. Neighbourly love used to matter, it doesn’t anymore. The rule of law used to matter, it doesn’t anymore. Civility, etiquette, respect, and even kindness used to matter, they don’t matter anymore.

And yet in our day-to-day not much is different. We can rant because we don’t like what we see, or we can move forward blissfully and blind to the world beyond our own existence. Our tolerances vary, but the shenanigans that alter what’s normal in society seem to slip greater into the abnormal without us being able to influence it in any way.

Pick a decade after WWII and tell me how it was more abnormal than what we are seeing today. I can’t.

When I say, “We are seeing the collapse of modern society,” I am not being hyperbolic. I’ve only mentioned social/political abnormalities, without mentioning climate change, microplastics, artificial intelligence, or even cost of living and the decline of the middle class. Factor all these things in and the new normal is anything but normal. Except that’s exactly the point… somehow this is what normal is.

AI – Alternate Identities

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I just watched a video clip of Sir Ken Robinson promoting a product to reduce your blood sugar. I’ve already shared ‘An AI Advertisement’ with a fictitious expert, and broke down the flaws with the ad. But now we have an actual (now deceased) celebrity figure doing the promotional plug. It looks and sounds like him, but he never said anything he says in this video advertisement. I know this, but how many people will recognize him and pay a little more attention to this advertising scam because it is delivered by someone famous?

This is just the beginning. We are moving into a ‘post truth era’, where nothing is inherently believable. A decade from now we’ll have multiple alternate identities to choose from… Was the real Al Gore the one warning us about global warming, or was the real one promoting fracking, or alternative medicine, or socialist communism over capitalism? Every video will seem equally real, every source seemingly legitimate. One real, all the others alternative histories indistinguishable from reality.

Will it only be famous people that will fall victim to these alternate identities or are we all going to be replicated? When I’m in my late 80’s will I be watching a video of 50 year old me oblivious to whether this recording actually happened or if it was invented with a perfect imitation of myself?

The implications for scams are immeasurable. Live video of a seemingly real son or daughter extracting banking data from a senior parent. A meticulously created alternative you moving all assets over to someone else. The scams are limited only by imagination, not by technology or capability.

Alternate identities indistinguishable from reality, all playing out as if real. Sir Ken Robinson plugging health suppliments is only just the beginning… We are in for some reality warping performances from AI alternatives to us, and the people we think we trust… This is only just the beginning!

Post Truth Era

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Never mind the ridiculous videos of Mr. Rogers chatting with Tupac Shakur or Bigfoot vlogging, these AI videos seem real enough while fully intending us to know they are AI. What we are seeing now is an indistinguishable bending of real and fake with videos that are completely altering our ability to know what is real and what isn’t.

Voice mimicking was already almost perfect. I saw a video post today from a man whose dad called him to ask what their shared bank account password was. One problem: His dad died last year, he just hadn’t taken his name off of the account yet. He said it sounded so real that had his father been alive, he probably would have shared the password, thinking his dad forgot.

Now AI videos are just as good as AI audio and the combination of the two truly are steering us into a post truth era. People are sharing AI videos completely unaware that they are fake. Even news stations are getting it wrong.

Soon web sites will become bastions of truth. Want to know what someone actually said? Go to ‘their name’ .com or .org and see the actual video shared there. Anything else will be questionable. And wherever else the video is shared must be watched with skepticism. Subtle or overt, very important changes in a message will occur as a result of someone, ultimately anyone taking the original video and making an AI version that gives their message instead of the intended message.

Following specific domains, and maybe a handful of legitimate news channels, are the only suggestions I have. Legislation won’t keep up, and the fakes are just getting better. Essentially, find reliable sites and distrust everything else. Intuition and common sense won’t be enough.

No Authenticity Without Sincerity

A Life Consumed

What AI has made worse

What AI has made better

The line that aged most accurately

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