A system that rewards people with attention will always encourage attention seeking behavior, and when incentivized will also inevitably generate professional attention seeking behavior. It’s not a new concept.

I really like the way Academia of Ideas presets the problem. Link at bottom.

> But a strange thing has occurred with the rise of social media: many people are reverting back to a mechanism of identity formation that resembles sincerity, a mechanism of identity formation which Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul D’Ambrosio in You and Your Profile, have termed profilicity. Like sincerity, profilicity is other-directed and reliant on the reactions of an audience. With sincerity one’s family and community are the audience that casts judgement on how sincerely, or properly, one plays the pre-determined roles. With profilicity the audience is a generalized peer group consisting of hundreds, thousands or even millions of social media users and this audience plays a somewhat different role than under sincerity: not only does the audience judge the identity one forms, but it also helps shape the very roles one strives to play. For profilicty entails creating profiles on social media through the selective display of pictures and other bits of information, or in a more passive manner merely observing the profiles of admired personalities, and then using these idealized profiles as roles to play in real life. Or as Jeremy Weissman explains in The Crowdsourced Panopticon:

“. . . a simultaneous exchange occurs between the two entities, our digital [profiles] and our in-real-life self. As we broadcast idealized portraits of our in-real-life self online, we then in turn adjust our in-real-life self so as to meet with popular approval when we are broadcast online again. At a certain point, our in-real-life self and digital [profiles] practically merge.”

Jeremy Weissman, The Crowdsourced Panopticon
Forming an identity through the mechanism of profilicity has serious drawbacks. Firstly, it promotes an unhealthy degree of conformity. For to succeed in the world of social media is to conform as a successful profile is measured by metrics such as likes, shares and follows. But profilicity necessitates not just conforming to the preferences of one’s peer group, but also conforming to the standards set by those who manipulate the algorithms of social media, or as Weissman writes:

“Through the ever-increasing gaze of a pervasive audience online, we may become overly pressured, even coerced toward collective opinion, as social media’s mechanism of likes, dislikes, friends, and followers constantly subjects us to the crowd’s judgment along with that gaze.”

Jeremy Weissman, The Crowdsourced Panopticon
By promoting a hyper-conformity, profilicty limits our potential as the generalized peer group of social media users, and the manipulators of social media algorithms, have no interest in many elements that comprise a healthy sense of self. With profilicity if we step too far out of line, if we are too unique, or if our value system diverges too far from what is deemed acceptable, we will be shunned, shamed and ostracized. Appearances, superficialities, and adhering to the values of popular culture are what matter with profilicity, not cultivating a harmonized mind, a healthy body and a fulfilling life. What is more if we live in a sick society, this sickness will be embodied in the preferences of the generalized peer group and so in seeking validation of this crowd, and embodying their preferences, we lock ourselves into a sick sense of self.

“Once we give up our true self to play a role, we are fated to be rejected because we have already rejected ourselves. Yet we will struggle to make the role more successful, hoping to overcome our fate but finding ourselves more enmeshed in it. We are caught in a vicious cycle that keeps closing in, diminishing our life and being.”

Alexander Lowen, Fear of Life

Continued:

https://academyofideas.com/2021/10/social-media-why-it-sicke...