Artless 14 - Lonely communities on sale 26th January 2025

Opinion

Communities of lonely people

The internet is home to communities, but we don't often think about how many of these communities are made of lonely people. And it's not always lonely toxic boys like the Incels either.

In Japan, old ladies are committing crimes so they can go to jail and make friends. In India, old folks are so much at risk of fake information and online scams that old time DD news readers have come together to spread awareness through a YouTube channel. AI influencers are building communities around their fake personalities and then it turns out that they are agents designed by companies to sell stuff. As communities built on TikTok dissolve, other platfirms like Meta and Substack are offering money so they can become new homes for them.

The web, which was supposed to connect us with each other and help build communities, is still advertised as that, but somewhere along the way, the promise has become a fake one. Communities have value, but that value wasn't supposed to be monetary. Now it is. And the price of this hyperconnecetd dystopia is that actual people in the real world have no one to turn to.

Links

Pakistan is looking to control its social media

Now, whenever a sanghi says we need to control social media, you can say to them "Oh, so you want to become like Pakistan? How much money is the ISI paying you?"

Fake therapist sells adult toys

The trust deficit I have been writing about for ages now has finally started taking shape. Here, we have an AI generated therapist selling adult toys. What could be next? A fake cop giving security advice and selling guns? A fake motivational speaker selling hate t-shirts? I mean, Meta is surely not going to get in the way.

Old ladies committing crimes to make friends

This makes you wonder exactly when do we realise a system is not working. Japan's loneliness epidemic has been widely written about, but this particular manifestation of it made me particularly sad.

Buddhist majoritarianism in Sri Lanka

Vajra Chandrasekera is a Sri Lankan SF author whose work often revolves around religio-political storms in Sri Lanka. Listening to this episode will show you unmistakably distinct parallels to majoritarian politics in India. Here it takes a Hindu shape, in US, it takes a Christian shape. In Pakistan and Bangladesh, it takes a Muslim shape.

Facebook and Instagram paying TikTokers money to join them

Meta Platforms is looking to grab TikTok creators as they fall from the now endangered platform in US. Back when TikTok was banned in India, many of those who had made identities for themselves on there fell to YouTube Shorts and Instagram reels. But it dodn't work out for many because the audience base is different.

Substack is also offering money to TikTokers

The opportunity is also being taken advantage of by Substack. I personally feel building on Substack is better for creators because they get to exercise more control there, but many will choose vanity metrics because they are not looking to buid a community and are going for an advertising model.

Old Doordarshan news anchors have a YouTube channel

This came out of nowhere. If you grew up in the 90s, you might remember the familiar few faces of Doordarshan news readers. Names like Salma Sultan, Shammi Narang, Rini Khanna, Sunit Tandon, Parvathi Kumar. They have a YouTube channel apparently meant to educate senior citizens about online misinformation and fake news.

How Notion fails you

As someone who spends a lot of time typing and makng things by typing, I have tried a lot of note-taking and information management apps out there. None of them work for me. The one tool I keep coming back to is an actual paper notebook that I work with using an actual pen. This video is about the psychology and economics of YouTube's productivity culture and how tools that promise to make you more productive often just end up becoming time-consuming chores to learn and execute themselves.