Solomon on Social Media [Content Made Simple]
Solomon on Social Media [Content Made Simple]
Issue #258: Double-edged tech, content creators, and more.
TOP OF THE WEEK:
A Word From Solomon About Social Media
Quote:
So, what we are feeding our mouths and minds: folly or wisdom? If you want to find websites and social media accounts that tell you what you want to hear every day, presenting everyone in simplistic categories of “good guys” or “bad guys,” you’ll feed on foolishness. The discerning seek knowledge. And most of the time, they don’t find it on Twitter.
Commentary:
Great piece of writing and thought from my friend Trevin on Solomon and social media. Love seeing really smart people like Trevin turn their minds toward social media from time to time. Helpful.
HITTING THE LINKS
Link #1: Black Mirror, Euphoria, and Technology's Double-Edged Sword
Insightful thoughts from Rex Chapman as usual.
The New York Times had a chilling recent piece about Ava Majury, a 14-year-old with 1.2 million followers on TikTok. The article tells the story of how a man named Eric Justin became obsessed with Ava through her TikTok. After Ava began to notice Justin’s comments on her videos, she learned that her “friends” at school were selling the man photos of her as well as her personal information, including her cell phone number and home address.
On the morning of July 10th, Eric Justin showed up at Ava’s Florida house with a shotgun and blew down her front door. As the family cowered in the back of the house, Justin’s shotgun jammed and Ava’s dad, a retired police officer, shot and killed him with a handgun. Investigating officers found that Justin was carrying two cell phones containing thousands of photographs of Ava and hundreds of hours of her videos.
Link #2: I’m a creator. You’re a creator. We’re all creators!
We’re all creators now. What does that mean? Why does it matter?
More than 50 million people worldwide now consider themselves creators, a term that encompasses everything from YouTubers to podcasters to writers to artists to people who sell courses online to people aspiring to be any of those things. You have likely heard pundits lament the percentage of teenagers and children who aspire to be influencers and moralize on why that’s a sign of society’s unavoidable doom. I think the more interesting question, though, is when did seemingly everyone in the world become a content creator, whether they signed up for it or not?
Link #3: Web3 Developers Have Found a Functioning Metaverse. It's 'Minecraft'
Interesting!
Web3 projects have finally found a shortcut to making "the metaverse" a reality: Minecraft, a video game that launched in 2011 and is owned by Microsoft.
So far, attempts at building the blockchain-integrated metaverse, an idea that has existed as dystopian sci-fi since the 90s but which NFT-hawkers and flailing tech CEOs have suddenly decided absolutely must happen right now, have been faltering. Metaverse standard-bearers The Sandbox and Decentraland are widely derided as being bare-bones, largely empty, janky, and yet still overrun with corporate promotions. Thankfully, though, Web3 builders have hit upon an easy way to create functional "metaverse" worlds and content, and it's literally just Minecraft.
THE FUNNY PART
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