I met one of the most brilliant people in my life. Smart, passionate about art, culture, politics. Brilliant student, top of her class from elementary through college. Fluent (as in certified) C2 in English and German. Terrific career as a public servant in foreign politics already in her late 20s.

She would never, ever, miss a single episode of a “reality” about dating in tv, a show famous in Italy as “trash tv”. It was unwatchable, worse than Jersey shore.

I asked her why such an intelligent and smart person couldn’t miss an episode of something so terrible and lame and she answered me “I know it’s awful, but for an entire hour I’m able to be lobotomized and not have a single thought, I can completely detach from reality and relax”.

My current SO does the same with Instagram. Whenever she needs to detach from her thoughts she zombifies on Instagram. Might be cats or fashion bloggers but she tunes out completely and she does that intentionally knowing that’s the effect it has on her.

We are humans. We need social connection, we need soap operas, "trash TV" is just human drama basically. Our brains were not made for studying math 24/7 but they were made for social interaction 24/7. Social interaction is like driving on autopilot. It fulfills us. Doing science, solving hard abstract problems, being engaged in political events is tiring. Sometimes we just want to do what our brain is made for as its default, resting activity.

Why is it trash also? I'm sure there's a lot of interesting psychology to unpack there. It's just trash if one thinks we need to dedicate ourselves to "higher purposes" and anything else is "lowly" and "denigrating". As if whatever one chooses to do in their free time, that doesn't hurt anybody, and is just a little human drama in a watchable package that maybe we miss during day to day, as so much of a job life is dry, and that makes us connect to our inner humanity is "trash".

Social media ≠ social connection, for the most part (i.e. the proportion of time spent messaging vs. passively viewing is skewed towards the latter).

That's why it's trash - it's a pseudo-relational avoidance of both the greatest rewards of connection but also - crucially I suspect - of its most painful liabilities (i.e. no one's heart is broken if a pseudo; relationship ends).

And since humans are naturally biased more towards avoiding loss than seeking gain, social media takes over the world and online becomes the default place to hang out.

A world which in aggregate no one wants becomes a reality because of narrow preferences repeated over and over again and at scale.

Another anecdote: an undergraduate at a top university I knew, with publications, leadership positions, and strong research experience at the time, was also into reality television, and specifically avoided dramas/prestige television (e.g. Mad Men, Breaking Bad).

In addition to not requiring thinking, I remember he also mentioned that it's harder to get "hooked" and end up binge-watching episodes.

The perspective is plausible to me. I do feel more drained or emotionally spent absorbing intense television series, or even accomplished for understanding them, when I could've spent that on real work. That said, I do think low-quality media affects the way I think and write in a negative way (by contrast, when I spend a lot of time absorbed with high-quality writing, it actually does positively affect my speech and writing for the next few days).

I don't disagree, but the former set up AMC to green-light Halt and Catch Fire and the latter resulted in Better Call Saul.

I only watch the Netflix fireplace channel.

don't you want to know what I think good shows are?

So I have to think up a dismissive one-liner? Nope, thanks

username checks out ...

It’s also a social thing. My partner and her friends watch the same reality shows, follow the same Instagram celebrities. They talk about the reality shows, what the celebrities have posted (in all honesty they seem to fill the exact same void). In that context I don’t think it’s all that much worse than, say, a group of people gathering to talk about last weekend’s football game.

I find video games fill that same “mindless” void for me. Prior to the pandemic I’d barely played any in a decade but now I’ll fire up Call of Duty every couple of days to play a few rounds. It’s dumb, I learn nothing from it and I achieve nothing. But it’s nice to switch my brain off.

I do the same with RuneScape. Doing virtual fishing for an hour. It's just stimulating enough to not be boring while trivial enough to not be stressful.

RuneScape still exists?!? Talk about an enduring company.

Yeah surprisingly its not only just existing, but the rate of new content and updates is probably the best is ever been. Some fun stuff happening right now for the 20th year anniversary.

That's the drug loop, seriously. The way people engage with social media is basically the same as a pothead with weed.

Disclaimer: I do both, it's alright. I'm more worried about people who have 8 hours of phone screentime on Instagram/TikTok.

And hey, some of us use HN in the same way!

I don’t really watch those shows but I get the appeal. It’s a lot of people drama and it’s fun trying to see what’s going on in the minds of the contestants on the show. Sometimes someone does something and it doesn’t make sense, and it’s fun.

It’s not for me but a lot of “dumb” shows can be appreciated with an open mindset.

But that’s besides my main point which is the fact that low quality entertainment is actively seeked by people actively wanting to forget about life. It’s the intentional zombification that worries me, especially when coupled with 24/7 availability and per-user engagement optimization. Socials, especially passive ones where you consume awfully more than you interact are just those escape hatches from stress, thoughts and boredom.

As a counter-point, I don't see this as worrisome. Your friend who is a public servant sounds professionally and intellectually fulfilled, and far better off and stable than others who've "failed to launch"/have unfulfilled ambitions due to failing to put in the hard work required (not necessarily due to laziness).

I know a couple people (plus myself at one point) who absorbed high-quality entertainment while being professionally unfulfilled. Activities included reading literature, watching artistic films, reading a middle-brow magazines like the New Yorker, and reading lots of New York Times articles. These took a lot of energy and gave a sense of achievement that could've been spent in accumulating career capital/developing career-relevant skills.

This wouldn't imply that entertainment is guaranteed to take away focus and energy from career development (plenty of counter-examples with historical figures), but it is possible for some people. So, I don't see low-quality entertainment as worrisome, so long as people have the main efforts of their life worked on, in tandem. Low-quality entertainment would be a problem, however, if it does distract from time spent on real, helpful work, versus as a stress reliever.

Separately, I would also separate low-quality produced entertainment limited by episodes from social media. They're very different, as social media is better optimized for infinite scrolling and outrage, while shows are more episodic (assuming a weaker, less-optimized pull for binge consumption).

I use Discord for the same purpose. Just mindlessly chatting with strangers can be very relaxing and I find it to be way more addictive than facebook and similar platforms.

There are a few seasons of US Big Brother which are genuinely great, intelligent and deep TV. You have to look past the production a bit and get in their heads. At the end of the day, it’s people trapped inside a TV show. It’s a psychological experiment. It’s a real competition for real money involving deception and alliances. Same with Survivor. These shows are often bad but there are some gem seasons out there.

Are you referring to the season where a doctor said everything he was going to do to everyone, then did it, and won? I'm trying to find that season, I think it's early 2000s but I may be wrong.

that's what weed is for and I'd argue it is even more healthy than instagram

It's television for the current generation. I've noticed my parents and inlaws cannot exist without having the television on. I mean they can, but pick a random day, show up at their house and the TV is on some show that they are remotely interested in but watching because they had nothing else to do. That's instagram/facebook/snapchat/etc.

I have always had stuff to do. This sounds like mental torture.

That this thread includes a couple of comments like this is really interesting.

It shows that HN is a very particular sample of the population.

I consider it like white noise, having something running in the background somehow helps me better focus on what's in-front of me.

In a way it's also a bit of a social substitute; When you live alone, and spend a lot of time alone, it can be nice to just listen to some human voices in the background as if you were not alone.

As a civilization we've had this for over a decade now, surely this was what radio was like before television.

most people do not have the energy, drive, or motivation to constantly be doing things. i guess it's both a blessing and a curse if you do.

My way of using Instagram was that I only follow people I have talked to in real life. No influencers, no news outlets, no brands, no businesses, no "young people making popular dance moves" unless that's made by young people I know and have talked to in real life.

The app has been making this way of using Instagram more and more difficult. It's not surprising because my way likely doesn't generate any revenue.

That's how I (try to) use Instagram as well. It's still working more or less fine for me, but what bothers me is that it has also become an essential messaging app for me. I don't use Facebook or WhatsApp, so Instagram is the only way to stay in contact with some of the people in my life. I guess if I wanted to leave, I could ask them for phone numbers or email addresses. I should probably do that even before I actually leave.

(By the way, my main messaging apps are Signal and Telegram, but I also have LINE, for my contacts related to Japan, and iMessage, mostly for family. So many apps...)

I have an Instagram account where I post about modding retro game consoles. Turns out there's a huge community of very supportive people who do the same thing. It's not all TikTok influencers, there are niches on every platform. It's just like real life, there are good and bad people, places to go, etc. I love Instagram and some of the communities I've discovered within it.

I hate that it's owned by Facebook.

It's basically a porn site. Perhaps there's no nudity, but it's as soul-sucking and a waste of time as erotic pornography. The behavior of the user, the emotional high, and the business model really aren't so different.

In the same sense as reality TV or video games are like porn, yes.

Certanly, though I still argue that apps like Instagram are more closely designed around the model of voyeurism and dopamine-chasing that come to mind with porn.

Same here. My wife spends hours On IG every day. I have asked some people how this is possible and their reply was : 'I thought I would not be addicted but when I installed the app I got hooked'.

I genuinely do not understand why people like so much watching photos. I can spend a few minutes watching photos or drawings of things I enjoy but I tire really quickly. I can't even think of something I like enough to spend one hour watching photos of it.