There's a lot of discussion these days about how our Smartphones and Social Media are unhealthy for people. That they become addicted to getting dopamine hits from interactions on Facebook, et al. and that seeing all the artificial versions of people's lives is making us all depressed.

It needs to be reiterated every few years, technology just brings forward things that people used merely not know. Sorry to break it to you, teenagers have always been horrible assholes who say terrible things to each other. It's just now rather than being limited to the locker room and hallways, it's documented for all to see. People have always been terrified that their neighbors had more to them and the envy depressed them. Why do you think envy is right there in the seven deadly sins?

What one of the real problems technology has is that for every small hidden desire you have, there's a monetized model to exploit it. Granted advertising has worked this way time immemorial. We've just never had such a blatant play for every vice we have.

Facebook didn't enable avarice in Americans. Twitter didn't turn everyone into a closet racist, it just enabled closet racists to act out in public without people in their lives finding out what terrible assholes they are. Now we could have a talk about how enabling closet racists emboldened some people to come out as public racists, but I think that's a good thing. Every one of these assholes gets to live in public as a shitheel waste of fucking oxygen. Their bosses, families, and friends all know, and they can face some real consequences for being a monster.

We, at some point, have to realize that the American model of looking at every base desire as a monetary opportunity has enabled people to be as awful and self-involved as they want. Social Media only let us know that there are a lot more people staring into the mirror than into the stars. I'm just shocked anyone finds this shocking.

The inherent superiority of Capitalism over Communism is that we allowed free expression of every sort. However, all that freedom comes at the cost that not everyone wants to use their free expression to read Kafka, drink scotch, and listen to Vivaldi. Most people want to watch shitty television, drink Miller Lite, and listen to the Chainsmokers.

Image Credit: Wendelin Jacober via Flickr