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“Social media isn’t real life.” It’s a phrase we hear a lot. But is that really true?
When Congress threatened to block China from controlling TikTok, the company riled up a mob of tweens to threaten Congress. If the Senate gives in, the outcome will be real enough.
TikTok certainly is real life. If you doubt it, look at the rate of teenage girls who have themselves mutilated because of trans trends on the app, even younger girls who killed themselves over material in the app’s algorithm or the spread of verbal or motor ‘tics’ to teens over the platform
Social media isn’t real in the same way as the wind and the rain, or the laws of physics or economics, it’s an alternate reality spread through the internal realities of our minds.
Before social media, there was just media, the concentration of mass media, radio, film and newspapers that wrecked much of the twentieth century and killed millions of people. It is no coincidence that some of the most destructive social and political movements arose in line with the growth of the media. It’s impossible to imagine Nazism or Communism without the media.
What made people think that the Third Reich or the Communist revolution were viable? The Communists and Nazis were savvy propagandists who took full advantage of newspapers, film and all the elements of modern spectacle to concoct an alternate reality for millions of people. The crowds at Hitler rallies or Communist marches were living in their own version of the real world. And it was not until Hitler shot himself in his bunker or the Berlin Wall fell that they woke up to find that everything they believed had been as delusional.as anything on TikTok.
Social media is more unreal than media because, like Hitler rallies, it’s a mutual fantasy. TikTok denizens take that to the next level through triumphs over reality by claiming, for example, that Helen Keller never existed. Like a magical world, social media is a place where people can create their reality and then use intimidation and peer pressure to enforce it on others.
In this state of affairs, millions will believe that men can become women. And vice versa.
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