16 Movies That Prove Social Media Was Terrifying Even Before Elon Musk Bought Twitter
The early days of social media ushered in an era of Web 2.0 fears, the loss of privacy and the threat of cyberbullying among them, and the depressing realization that everyone you went to high school with is outright racist. Decades later, we have discovered new, more existential flaws in the matrix as troll farms encourage the spread of false and malicious information that is algorithmically delivered to our apps to validate our existing biases or maybe really piss us off. . But still we scroll. Addicted to the rush of endorphins caused by a couple of likes, and to the same heady sense of righteous indignation, we have lost the feeling that objective reality has any special value.
Opinions vary widely about business mogul Elon Musk, but the news this week that he is buying Twitter and taking the company private has raised concerns. He promises to open the platform’s algorithms to public scrutiny, which is probably a good thing, but what will happen to an already problematic platform when it comes under the sole control of one of the richest people in the world? New Eden? Or a further fall into hell? I guess we’ll have to keep scrolling to find out.
Popular entertainment has often struggled to keep up with the pace of technological change, but we’ve been in this world long enough for movies to make some impressive, entertaining, and darkly funny statements about our online lives. Some of them even come close to capturing the horrors of reality.