Have you ever read a page and, halfway through, even mid-sentence, drifted off into your own thoughts? Felt as though you had something to say, but when you tried to express yourself, realized you had no words at all? Today I want to look into what is causing and exacerbating these problems. I believe they are a byproduct of an already evil system at play, and the symptoms we deal with are simply a natural outflowing of that root cause. I want to make the case that Short Form Content Platforms (which I’ll abbreviate as SFCP) is a morally evil medium. By SFCP, I do not mean the individual videos themselves, but the platforms they are hosted and consumed on.
If you want to understand the system we are all trapped in, even if you don’t intend on quitting, I’d advise reading to the end, so as to at least understand the structure this system thrives on. With knowledge comes understanding, and with understanding you can take action.
So first, what do we mean by morally evil? Let’s start with evils that are not morally wrong. Take a human plucking a living plant to eat. An evil is occurring, in the sense that the plant is deprived of life by the act. However, we wouldn’t call this a moral evil, because the act serves a greater purpose, keeping humanity alive, which we recognize as a higher good. Teleologically speaking, the action is oriented toward the good, so killing in this sense isn’t necessarily a morally wrong act.
Contrast this with murder, an unjustifiable killing of another person, which we call a moral evil. Why? Because the very nature of the act is oriented toward evil. So there’s a difference between an evil that incidentally occurs in the pursuit of good, and an action that is oriented toward evil by its very nature, tainted not just in the act itself but in the product of that act.
So what is SFCP made for? Is it made for the pursuit of knowledge and a better understanding of ourselves and the world around us, or is it a poison that saps our time, focus, and mental clarity? For the sake of brevity, I will just come out and make the presumptuous and outrageous claim that corporations that prioritize profit over all things do not have your vested interest in mind when making their product.
At first glance, SFCP might seem like any other form of communication, a medium for exchanging ideas, but it isn’t like the others. The platform is inherently addictive by the very nature of what it was designed to do. The information being conveyed isn’t the focus; retention is. It doesn’t matter what content you’re fed, the primary goal is keeping your attention at any and all costs.
This is in contrast to earlier forms of communication, where capturing attention was important but subordinate to a greater objective: communicating a meaningful message to the reader. SFCP flips this hierarchy on its head. Instead of the medium being crafted so the message holds your attention, attention itself becomes paramount, and the message doesn’t matter at all unless it serves that goal, your attention.
Mediums are simply modes of communication, from nonverbal cues to the most extravagant art, all communicating information through their own particular way of being. We’ve evolved our modes of communication over millennia: nonverbal cues, speech, art, writing, and with audio and video, many more ways to communicate. Each new medium brought its own unique forms of expression.
SFCP, in its current state, is the newest medium we’ve seen. The algorithm behind it has no morality other than capturing your attention. This is precisely the reason why I would say it is a break from all of the past mediums: the algorithm. It is uniquely adaptable and provides endless novelty. It will feed you videos regardless of content, even if that content was immoral, factually incorrect, degrading to our society, as long as it keeps your attention. Ask yourself, if this was personified as a person would you cut off this person, perhaps would this person even be in jail or at least deserve to?
I don’t think I need to explain the mechanisms in depth to show why these platforms are harmful just as a byproduct of you engaging on these platforms, not even necessarily short form either. Just to name a few effects: depression1, anxiety2, lowered self-esteem3 are some of the many. The platform is engineered against you. It does not work in your best interest.
Who’s going to win the battle for your time? Is it the hegemony of corporations, backed by a vested interest in keeping you on their platform as long as humanly possible, armed with decades of research on human psychology, thousands of top scientists optimizing every feature, and an algorithm that knows you better than you know yourself? I think the answer is abundantly clear.
Everything I’ve said here could also apply to social media more broadly, but SFCP is worse. The barrage of short videos is actively accelerating and worsening our already fragmented attention spans4. This evil, in particular, deprives us of what it means to be uniquely human: our rational faculties.
Without our attention, we become tumbleweeds drifting through the desert, with no aim and no destination other than where the wind takes us. That wind is the endless novelty popping up on our screens, and even when we put the phone down, we remain stuck in the pattern of chasing quick dopamine. Are we meant to let our fundamental way of living shift, from delayed gratification and appreciation of small things, to fast-paced dopamine chasing and an endless arsenal of tricks designed to hold as much of our attention as possible?
In the next part, I’ll discuss SFCP from a more metaphysical angle, along with some interesting parallels I’ve drawn from my time reflecting on this topic. Thank you very much for making it to the end! Please subscribe if you enjoyed this small essay.