Comment on The United States of Validation Addicts
NeilBru@lemmy.world 6 days ago
The insatiable appetite for validation isn’t a new problem created by AI or social media but rather a symptom of a deeper cultural malaise: a society that has increasingly prioritized feeling good about oneself over being good, that has confused entitlement with justice, and affirmation with accomplishment.
A lot of people and self-styled “paragons of virtue” on <insertSocialMediaHere> need to hear and understand this. Even Lemmings.
My personal take is that a lot of this is caused by an apocalyptic fervor in thinking that late-stage capitalism has fucked everything up so badly that simply vocalizing the validation of one’s own desires is a “revolutionary and radically moral act” in the face of global techno-feudalism.
The irony is that this behavior on an individual level is exactly what techno-feudalism requires to propagate and entrench itself. The attitude of self-congratulatory nihilist futility feeds “care- not-for-the-morrow” consumerism which, in turn, feeds the economy of inflationary artificial scarcity required by the plutocrats to ensure their hegemony.
I don’t have hard data on this, so it’s just my opinion.
baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
An opinion you’re seeking validation of? :)
Yeah, we all have our own narcissistic tendencies, but social media exploits and magnifies it by orders of magnitude. Everybody thinks they’re so damn important, and they don’t matter at all.
NeilBru@lemmy.world 5 days ago
No, I don’t need validation of my opinions, but depending on who it’s from, it’s nice to have when I recieve it. But, touché, nonetheless. 😉
On macro-scale, we/they don’t. I think what hits close to home is that too many people just aren’t fulfilled by only mattering to the people who really do care about them. Mattering to friends and family just ain’t enough to fill the hole inside, and their either unaware of it, they don’t care, or they’re ashamed of themselves and the guilt of their nihilistic consumption feeds their need to be congratulated for it.