Yes, Social Media Is Destroying Civilization

Thought provoking as always. I'm gonna drop a couple of thoughts to spice up the duscussion. 1) Videogames are a container for a huge variety of different contents. Some can be as engaging and cathartic as a good piece of narrative. I've come to realise that as soon as I finished my first run of Baldur's Gate 3: I was taken off guard when I rialised I was grieving like I use to do after reading the last lines of a good piece of fiction. 2) Esopo's fables are pretty short too. Nontheless they can inspire you, make you think and become the foundation of your moral compass.

I do think you've hit on something. Although, like you said, content length is not regulatable. We are left with a way to think about your personal relationship with micro-narrative, but little political direction to improve the situation. Such as it is. I will say that the length of tweets was absolutely part of the early social media harms discussion. And it made it hard for me to engage with. Which is the same reason I'm looking at the excitement over BlueSky and Mastodon with confusion. "It's just like the good old days!" What good old days. On that note, there was a short lived app called "Woofer", created in protest to the limiting dialog of Twitter. It required 1400 characters in order to post. Of course, it did not catch on. But, there was technically a social media platform requiring creators to post long content. And, as long as this comment has gotten way too long, I'll end with my own personal experience with TikTok. I was a pretty active user in 2023 and 2024. And in the spring of 2025, I really could feel the effects it was having on me. For me, it hooked into my own feelings of victimization, and I kept getting angry creators trying to blame others for taking something from them. And I really didn't want to lose agency to make change in my own life. And after I stopped using it, I saw how hard it was for me to engage with even just YouTube length content. It took me a couple weeks of "practice" before I could comfortably settle in to a good video essay again.

This is so good! Thank you for explaining it SO well!!

Love this video! WOW.. Also UMK3 on fightcade Andrew. FIGHT ME!

This is timely, as the Atlantic just did a piece called The Film Students Who Can No Longer Sit Through Films. I thought it was interesting, though perhaps unbalanced. Personally I wish I could delete "shorts" from Youtube entirely from my account. I only watch long-form content like this video, and I've done everything I can to keep my 8-year old away from short content entirely. Thankfully he loves stories (in movie/TV format).

Interesting reflection on the length of social media content. I always appreciate Aristotle references. Something I think the Greeks understood that we don't is that "content," like Oedipus Rex, isn't something to merely use to kill time during life, but influences life, most especially politics and religion. Short-form videos do shape our political and religious beliefs, but can never do so effectively. Art is supposed to form humans who can live together fruitfully in the polis.

I used to be on most socials, like so many in our society. My reasons for getting rid of all of them aside, I am deeply grateful for your take on this troubling and ubiquitous issue (even if it isn't a video on Star Trek or LOTR... sigh). Yet another TAOS that will be recommended to all my friends, keep up the incredible work!