Review: Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart
64 comments
·January 30, 2025burningion
baxtr
Not refuting your point, just want to point out that I can think of many other isolating experiences like:
- reading a newspaper/books
- binge watching Netflix
- refreshing HN every 2 minutes
I’m not sure that’s a specific aspect of social media.
jchw
The interesting thing about reading a newspaper or book, though, is that it is the same for everyone. So you can feel a sort of connection to others who are or have also done this. I think this is also a good explanation for why it's so easy for people to bond over things like sports.
Same for Hacker News and older bulletin board style forums: it's largely the same experience for everyone (at least at any given moment). When you load the frontpage, it's roughly the same stories at the top for everyone (sans whatever you've manually hidden, of course.)
Social media isn't completely different, but it sure is weirder, especially with algorithmic feeds. I don't use social media anymore, but sometimes when I would talk with friends it would become apparent that the posts that were surfacing for them were completely different than the ones surfacing for me, which gave us very different ideas of what the general feeling on some issues was. I think this probably amplifies the living shit out of false pluralities.
nine_k
The idea is that your newsfeed eventually becomes uniquely tailored to you.
Of course it contains posts that may be shared widely and thus unifying, or posts from your close friends and relatives and thus also unifying in a way. This is not a given though, and the context of your newsfeed is effectively unique.
This is one of the reasons community feeds exist, which are the same for the members of a community and thus somehow unifying, around a topic of interest.
Syonyk
I'm not sure I'd agree reading a book is isolating. At a minimum, you can (assuming a human author...) "get inside the author's brain." Some books are better at this than others, certainly.
But even without that, look at the popularity of book discussions, book clubs, and things like that. Multiple people, reading the same book, at the same pace, and discussing it. That's the opposite of isolating, and is impossible to achieve with "personalized feeds." There's no common point to discuss.
And, as yet another example, have you ever read a book that someone else has marked up and taken notes in? Passing a book around a few friends, each with a different color pen to make notes, is certainly not isolating.
Nevermark
> I'm not sure I'd agree reading a book is isolating. At a minimum, you can (assuming a human author...) "get inside the author's brain."
I think that's it.
You are not connecting with "people", but you are connecting deeply with the highly concentrated (and presumably original and high quality) thoughts of one person.
Quality beats quantity for most types of relationships. We don't need lots of close friends, although that's great. But we really benefit from even one, two or three very close friends.
Social media increasingly isolating, full of dreck, and often shallow. But the last one, shallow, is not the problem the other two are. It is also healthy to maintain wider looser social circles.
ljm
I think there’s something quite cosy or comforting about simply enjoying the company of a friend with a book as well. Don’t even have to read the same thing, it’s just another way of spending time together and is anything but lonely or isolating.
Maybe it’s just one of those things that becomes more pleasant as you grow older and enjoy a more laid back pace, but I appreciate having those friends you can just chill with without really having to ‘do’ something or needing to fill the space with conversation. You’ve become close enough (not necessarily romantically) that you can just enjoy the presence.
null
burningion
Yeah, agreed. The essay I linked to adds the cost of choice for a medium against a potential reward too.
melvinmelih
> On modern social media platforms, each person gets their own, personalized feed.
I notice this with streaming platforms like Netflix as well, there is no longer a channel that we all watch (not even in the same household), so a lot of water boiler talk about TV shows have disappeared. The only conversations I have about TV shows are now on reddit.
boxedemp
Adding to this thought, I've found the move from scheduled content to on demand does this too. Often viewers are at different spots in the series which diminishes conversation.
gessha
For a long time I've read/watched media that none of my peers do - manga/anime/light novels and what I've works for me is to invite people to talk about what currently excites them no matter what media type it is and go into detail.
lordnacho
It's actually fascinating to think how many things I watched just because other people watched them. Now I hardly watch anything, even though I never thought my motivation for watching things was to talk about them.
add-sub-mul-div
It's a bummer that there's a whole generation that doesn't know how much fun it was for everyone to watch and discuss the same episode of the same show at the same time week to week.
And yeah, now imagine everyone watching their own personalized media. Under the surface it's so empty.
pesus
Are there even any more shared cultural moments/experiences like that anymore? The closest thing I can think of is maybe large sporting events, but even then, they seem much less impactful than before.
wpm
There are still streaming shows that drip feed new episodes (S2E3 of Severance releases tomorrow for example) but it’s still somewhat diluted because there is so much content, it’s likely you don’t run into too many people who watch the same stuff as you. I can’t imagine a single show whose finale would have Times Square staring up at the screen like Seinfeld did.
airstrike
Sports are also totally about betting in the 21st century, at least in the US
skydhash
I’d say movies.
CMay
This is something I've been watching and thinking about for many years as tangential to a primary interest. It's not all bad as there have been many benefits to these changes too. These aren't occurring in isolation, since many other changes with similar effects pile on top of eachother to amplify the issues.
There are the usual culprits that people talk about and others which people don't seem to think about much. Looking forward to reading the book mentioned in the article to see someone else's in depth thoughts.
skydhash
I currently think status feed (WhatsApp, RSS) and discussions group (Messaging Apps, IRC, forums, Email threads) is the best way to connect socially on the web. Any algorithms that includes personalization is inherently selfish.
One great thing that I like to find is interest or curation lists. Like themed books, favorite music albums, software one uses,… Better than any recommendation engine.
saurik
I mean, this does still happen: there are many extremely major TV shows from the likes of Disney and Apple that are being released to streaming on a weekly schedule, and the world does in fact talk about them -- even on social media -- in lock step.
baxtr
Yeah, but actually people do talk about the same topics like Elon, Trump, etc. It’s just not the same view anymore, but the same issues.
goromo
[dead]
TuringNYC
> On modern social media platforms, each person gets their own, personalized feed. > As their feed becomes more personalized, it gets more and more isolated from a common, shared cultural context.
I see this as a feature. I was so bored in high school, kids talking about football games ad nauseam. There was no easy cohort to chat about things I cared more about. Why should we force one shared experience on everyone? After all, that is why i'm on HN and not CNN.
saurik
But like, the front page you and I each see on Hacker News is the same, the comments we see are the same, and everything is in the same order; if we talk to each other about trends in posts on Hacker News, we have some basis of shared reality.
Is this everyone? No. But "forcing one shared experience on everyone" is a straw man that wasn't being argued: the argument is about the other extreme, where every user has their own feed, and worlds splinter so hard that they are inherently irreconcilable with anyone else's.
TuringNYC
I appreciate your viewpoint here, and the sibling comment also. However, how does one practically not get an extreme version where everyone has their own feed. Speaking very personally -- here are my interests:
photography, brooklyn, coffee, health-tech, health-ai, fin-tech, finance, quant, bears, cats, calico cats, ucberkeley stats alums, genai in marketing, generative-ai created music, east coast gangster rap
There is no one community for all these. There are not even individual communities for each of these, some are too specific.
Yes, there are random slack instances (e.g., for ucberkely dept alumni) and random boards (quants and poets for finance) but social media provides a giant funnel for everything and hashtags let me focus on long-tail items of interest. I've carefully curated my account follows and hashtag follows over years.
UniverseHacker
There’s an optimal middle ground and physical real world communities built around a shared interest generally fit this well- you still get a diversity of people, but they all want to be together for a reason.
bmitc
It's the Internet itself.
whilenot-dev
I'd rather say it's the targeted ads part of the internet.
_DeadFred_
It's not connection but the software and motivations of the companies behind it along with the structure of our society that is the problem. I make music for fun. Half of my online interaction is people looking to make a buck. Connecting in a music space wasn't like that 20 years ago. The conversations I had online 20 years ago are now still happening just in private discords. Connecting in public spaces driven by algo's based purely to serve profit motives and people whose motives aren't connection but clout/politics/selling something doesn't define some universal tech/connection rule.
I'm on a locals hiking mail list. We share things like when the kokanee are running. That doesn't get blasted to 20,000 people with zero interest but who will go because they saw it in the equivalent of the local 'what to do this weekend' section of the newspaper. Society has arranged itself so that there is very little to do without spending money. And so those few things of beauty, free, and semi easy to get to get 'devoured' by a very hungry populace.
But on the hiking/biking app I have no fear sharing trails because the 'social media' people on the app are only going to trails they can get to within 2 minutes of the highway. People that are going on a 2 hour mountain hike that requires an hour of fire road driving self select out. Plus if we don't get enough people going the trails get overgrown so I need exposure. I am only sharing because I want something out of it (enough traffic to keep the trail accessible) and I don't share my favorite trails outside of the mail list. Social media companies have made sure their experience is purely transactional at this point, not 'connective', but things like selective highly connecting discords/email lists exist and very much connect people in healthy ways.
the_snooze
It's like we're re-learning something humans have intuitively understood since humans have existed: a cohesive community needs to be human-scaled and has standards it enforces.
Online "communities" often fail at both. They allow any rando to show up (or even encourage them to do so via algorithms), and there are no barriers to entry or consequences for leaving.
argomo
Reminds me of an old Bruce Sterling quote: "politics pulls us together, technology tears us apart". That always struck me as being directly opposite of our intuitions as technologists.
As a species, we need a wider exploration of how to structure online spaces in a way that builds and sustains social capital instead of usurping it. That's difficult to do with out resorting to censorship and ideological totalitarianism. And it's probably not compatible with the ad-funded addiction-driven business model of most modern platforms.
One historical example of note here is Wikipedia. It was a complete failure as a for-profit product, but it skyrocketed in significance when it opened up and adopted the relatively new social interaction model of the wiki.
asdff
By far the biggest issue with the internet is the power it represents. And there is no avoiding that when it is by definition a way into the hearts and minds for every person connected to it on earth. It will always be ripe for advertising, for propaganda, for misinformation, because the incentives are just too damned great to not let it be. It was one thing when it was 25 years ago and internet users represented a small fraction of the worlds population compared to today. A fraction that might have gone unnoticed from a certain degree of mass advertising and propagandizing that always seeks to put itself where it can get in front of the most eyeballs, but that is no longer the case so long as so many people use the internet.
I'm not sure what the solution is beyond niche little forums (tribes) that somehow tip toe the line of having the website be supported at all and also not growing too big to be of much interest for advertising and other forms of propaganda. And even then, how do you discover these little tribes? All the discovery mechanisms for internet content today are centralized or gated away from the upstart individual. Search engines, social media, even advertising in the meatspace takes serious capital. People don't have their own sites with webrings linking to other sites anymore. They have social media profiles and even then most people just lurk after highschool and college vs use it to share actual content or ideas. Search engines favor directing you to mass media and social media results for queries rather than small sites and forums.
I feel like what is left of these niche interest and niche forums are doomed to die out in a few generations, since its so hard to actually come up into this world and find these refuges on the web unless you knew about them from years ago when the internet was smaller and signal to noise ratios were much higher. Kids today aren't even interested in using the web, let alone a desktop OS. At least there are still computer science college programs but who knows how long that will be the case everywhere in the chatGPT/cut everything era we find ourselves in.
throw7
Kind of surprised McLuhan (medium is the message) wasn't referenced in the story. It's helpful to think of these technological innovations as being the message and what that means when you interact with them.
The piece says Carr believes reality can’t compete with "the internet’s steady diet of novelty and shallow, ephemeral rewards".
I disagree. I do think one remedy is reality. I remember turning the corner into St Peter's Basilica and facing the Pietà. Now, I'm not one for being moved by statues, but tears immediately started streaming down my face. I'll never forget this moment. It's seared into my brain.
I'm not saying you have to go to Rome. I'm not saying go travel the world. I'm saying it might be as simple as not pulling out your cell phone (i.e. "the medium") during the concert you're going to tonight.
disqard
Thank you for mentioning McLuhan, and for sharing that personal anecdote.
The process of engaging with the Real World, is a constant choice. With the busy lives we lead, it is much easier to operate in "default mode", as David Foster Wallace put it (in his "what is water?" commencement speech at Kenyon College).
hedayet
Like home-cooked meals, real-life connections are hard to build and nurture. On the other hand, web connections are cheap and fast.
It takes less than a minute to go from opening an Instagram account to "connecting" (following) with someone and see their semi-nude photos
GMoromisato
Do we need to have a single, common cultural experience? Mass media, and the resulting mass culture, are a recent phenomenon, and certainly one that has been heavily criticized.
My sense is that we're in the middle of a phase-transition, and the unhappiness and dislocation that people feel is because the old world (shared cultural context) is dying, but the new world hasn't yet been born.
Our generation will have the hardest time because we have a foot in both worlds.
lantry
What existed before mass-media was a shared experience with unmediated interactions. With mass media, the interactions are mediated but there is still a shared experience. With social media, there is neither unmediated interaction nor shared experience.
So I think you are correct that we are transitioning to a new "phase", but I disagree with the implication that things will be better once the transition is over. They could be worse!
GMoromisato
I'm not sure what you mean by "a shared experience with unmediated interactions."
Without mass media, how did people share an experience? Do you mean sharing with your friends/family/church? If so, isn't that option still available post-transition?
Or is your point that social media destroys personal interactions, so the next generation is left with nothing (kind of like porn destroying healthy sex lives)? If so, then I agree the future might be worse.
But it's also possible that social interactions are changing, and it is only because they are different for us that we think of it as "worse". Moreover, society hasn't yet had a chance to adapt to the new technology, so we don't know exactly what social interactions will be like in the future. It could be that kids tomorrow will learn to adapt to social media just as our generation learned to adapt to TV.
computerthings
How did people adapt to TV, and how was it prior to that adaption?
glial
Here's an essay reflecting on the value of having a shared experience of the world, cultural or otherwise:
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/common-worlds-com...
GMoromisato
I certainly think there is value in shared cultural values. But my point is:
1. We value a shared culture because that's what we're used to. There's no guarantee that future generations will agree.
2. Shared cultural values also have downsides, and depending on your perspective, the downsides might outweigh the benefits.
ryukafalz
Good article. I think I need to add this book to my reading list now.
I'm not sure I fully agree with the conclusion, though, that we can't change the tech and can only change ourselves. I think there's a lot of room to explore variations on tech that are healthier for us and for society. Adding friction as mentioned in the article is one example, but I think there's more we can come up with if we treat our attentional and societal health as a primary goal.
This probably does, to some extent, involve changing ourselves too. Frictionlessness and seamlessness are comfortable, and rejecting those will probably always involve some conscious effort. But we don't have to do it all alone, as individuals! Those of us with the skills to do so can try to build healthier tools so that people have alternatives when they go looking.
bell-cot
A point not made about that #superbloom: When many people feel anxiety and insecurity about the future, then web-scale social media catalyzes a nasty, desperate scramble - to be at least a relevant-sized fish, in a planet-sized pond.
_DeadFred_
There isn't much beauty left in lots of people's day to day lives that isn't gate kept behind a dollar requirement. I can't blame people for wanting beauty in their lives.
bell-cot
I'm a regular volunteer in natural areas, in SE Michigan.
Unless it's right next to a big university campus, and their friends are there, it's amazing and sad how few people show any interest in adding some free, open-to-the-public natural beauty to their lives.
From the article's description (of #superbloom), I'd say that nobody actually wanted beauty in their lives. But everybody wanted to visit a trending-now location ASAP.
steve_adams_86
I do this as well where I live. We have some beautiful spots right in the city.
When I go and help do ecological restoration, very few people are around. Some paths go by these areas, but no one stops. They're going somewhere. I don't blame them; my days are packed too.
My local subreddit is FULL of people wondering where these places are. They hate living in the city because it's ugly or they miss rural life. Some even ask how to help. No new volunteers show up, though. No uptick in people visiting these areas.
We've got this one beautiful ravine that needs so much work done, and we can't really get funding or a go-ahead at all until it's clear we'll have the resources. This means volunteers who have stuck around for a few jobs and expressed an intent to return. We've got around 10 people, but would need more like 20. I'm not sure it's possible. We put up signs, put out social media, get people in the group to reach into their network. No luck.
If people won't visit the beautiful places, what are the chances they'll help restore the parts that need our help? It's rough. Oh well, just have to keep at it. It makes a real difference.
asdff
It really depends on the natural area in question. Not everyone is really motivated to build up the skills required to do things like navigate via map and compass to actually tackle natural terrain safely. People die every year in the Angeles National Forest and its almost always because they didn't prepare for the conditions and didn't let anyone know that they were hiking that weekend and therefore where to aid search and rescue when the missing persons report is filed.
However I think smaller urban/suburban trails have probably never been more popular. You know the sort of 1-3 mile loop in the hills or woods trails with a convenient parking lot. Those are filled with trail runners, dog walkers, people pushing strollers, etc.
_DeadFred_
You sure it's not the equivalent of the local 'what to do this weekend' section of the newspaper?
I know people from the bay area would see my posts get all excited then sad when they learned where I live now and too far away, and none of them were trending or made to look cool by boring old me.
brokebit
The author, Nicholas Carr, is doing a free Zoom event with Christine Rosen from the American Enterprise Institute on Feb 10th. They are giving out free copies of the book to those that attend. - https://www.familyactionnetwork.net/events/superbloom-how-te...
devindotcom
I look forward to reading this.
But anyone who thinks it's new should go back and read the first part of The Anatomy of Melancholy; there, a fictionalized Democritus, accused of insanity, turns the accusation back on the world at large, citing a surprisingly large and still relevant list of issues: information overload, self-serving politicians, charlatans, rubes, general bullshit. The phenomenon of meteoria goes back that far and further. I'm actually curious whether Carr cites Burton!
quercusa
Once again, Douglas Adams was ahead of his time:
Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.
groby_b
I'm just going to say that it's Nicholas "Filter Bubbles Make Us Stupid, We Should Talk To Opposing Viewpoints All Day" Carr.
If you believe social media is tearing us apart, a significant chunk of responsibility lies on his shoulders. (We knew shared cultural context matters, but by Jove, "Filter Bubbles" was a term that could be milked for book deals, so milk he did)
jjulius
Hello, untruths!
>The term filter bubble was coined by internet activist Eli Pariser circa 2010. In Pariser's influential book under the same name, The Filter Bubble (2011), it was predicted that individualized personalization by algorithmic filtering would lead to intellectual isolation and social fragmentation.[1]
Ctrl+F for "carr" on the "filter bubble" wiki reveals two instances of "carrots". Similarly, Ctrl+F for "bubble" on Carr's Wiki returns 0 results. The book Carr is most famous for was based on an article that he wrote two years prior to Pariser coining the term, and was published the same year the term was coined. His following two books also don't seem to be riding on some kind of "filter bubble" coattail (I mean, unless you've found a way to connect his next book, a 2014 release about automation, to filter bubbles!). It was Pariser who published "The Filter Bubble" a year later.
Essentially, what you've done is written this piece off entirely based on a false assumption, and suggested that others do the same.
I think of "social" media as a fundamentally isolating experience.
On modern social media platforms, each person gets their own, personalized feed.
As their feed becomes more personalized, it gets more and more isolated from a common, shared cultural context.
According to Wilbur Schramm's theories of communication, human to human messages must occur over a shared cultural context, and social media shrinks that shared cultural context.
LLMs as a platform could shrink this shared cultural context even more, unless we become more deliberate about fighting back against this "shared experience" shrinking:
https://www.makeartwithpython.com/blog/social-media-is-the-f...