Traversing the hellscape of spam, scams and AI shams.
I second-guess everything that lands in my inbox now (even an email about paying off my student loan) and wonder if everything I see on social media is fake.
I’m sick of it and so is everyone else. The Financial Times thinks we’ve passed peak social media use, and the time spent on degrading platforms continues to decline (except in America). So does active participation. Only 7% of our time on Instagram is with content from friends. There are predictions we’re in the “last days of social media”. Open AI’s launching Sora, a “social” app consisting entirely of AI-generated content. Meta’s doing a similar thing with Vibes.
What’s even real any more? Who’s to know! Instagram Discover shows me a clip of John Lennon talking about love that I assume is fake (it’s not), another of ducks explaining burnout. Everything blurs into a fever dream of celebrity interviews, clothes no one makes any more, and ads. I can’t even be bothered saying “Not Interested”. I hate my phone.
These are ads I get served while trying to play solitaire on my phone, and honestly, wtf.
I feel like I’m being tailed. Ads for things browsed months ago follow me from site to site, and I’ve been suggested something called Ambient Escapism in Czech Tearooms on three different apps this week. Am I mere eyeballs to the attention economy? And does it even need me? (Not according to the Dead Internet theory.)
Fake podcast clips are fooling people. So are fake movie trailers. Generative AI gets better every week, and with the right prompt, you can create anything.
There’s inbox paranoia; worried about phishing scams and malware, every link feels suspicious. Over half of spam emails are now made with AI. Last year saw “emboldened cyber threat” activity with a record number of ransomware victims. More New Zealanders are losing money to online scams, with a 14.7% increase reported. It’s enough to make you question everything.
I still trust my banking app, though prefer a bent debit card over ApplePay. Your phone might soon hold your license too; New Zealand’s launching a digital version “by late 2025” via a (non-mandatory) government app. India’s miles ahead; its (optional) digital biometric ID is required to get a job, house and sim card. The UK’s considering something similar.
With digital identities comes security questions, a valid concern in a world swimming with catfish and deepfakes. OnlyFans creators are deploying chatbots, and Mark Zuckerberg sees synthetic friends as a solution to the “loneliness epidemic”.
Unreal.
Everyone’s worried about the kids. The government’s keen on a blanket ban for under-16-year-olds. 60% of them spend over five hours on social media a day, with 97% going online several times, if not “almost constantly”. They’re exposed to sex, violence and marketing. Grown-ups are too, and maybe we can’t be trusted either, as Alex Casey pointed out, noting people over 65 are more likely to fall for misinformation and scams.
Short of a warship knocking out the nation’s internet or the meaningful regulation local experts are petitioning for, controlling unhealthy phone habits is on the individual. Some rebel by switching displays to grayscale, adjusting content settings or setting fire to cellphone towers. Last year I bought and used a dumbphone until it stopped working two months later.
I hate these too.
My Instagram inbox promises bargain luxury goods direct from factories. Other shortcuts to status come via Whatsapp; unfamiliar numbers share recruitment opportunities with flexible hours. (Sounds pretty good considering people returning to the office have to scroll TikTok from the toilets, increasing haemorrhoid risk by up to 50%).
In another message on a different app, a person you do know, or used to, promises to free you from the 9-to-5 grind. People share projects and hustles, hoping to find an audience. Others turn to Facebook Marketplace. The platform offers unregulated, informal income via your phone. (Like homemade lasagna for $20!) More than 216,000 people were getting the Jobseeker Support Benefit in June and 158,000 were unemployed; by August, New Zealand had 17,442 fewer jobs.
This seems definitely legit.
Linkedin should have some opportunities. There, someone I don’t know and don’t follow is promoting AI Copilot for B2B lead generation, while another offers “storytelling strategies for every stage of the funnel” and a webinar.
Youtube’s more appealing. It’s now the most popular video site in Aotearoa. Global video sharing platforms reach 64% of us, according to NZ On Air’s Where Are The Audiences 2024 study, though they’ve decreased with youth. “Social media and user-generated video content on the likes of TikTok and Youtube declined by 5% for those aged 15-39,” wrote Duncan Grieve, noting “stark changes”, with nine of the 14 biggest flatlining or losing audiences.
Like 48% of New Zealanders I have captions on because I’m definitely not distracted by my phone. A huge 83% of Americans second-screen, and Netflix is making shows that can be watched while scrolling. There are already too many options. Paralysed by the paradox of choice, I check witty one-line reviews on Letterboxd and then just watch Parks and Recreation, again.
Back on my phone (oops) all the platforms look the same now. We spend hours on them. Streamers broadcast all day long. Last week a food delivery worker whizzed past me on a scooter, filming it all for his live audience.
I could stare at my own little box of horrors all day and never finish all the bad news, much delivered via algorithmic feed (along with everything else). Politics is on every platform. It’s hard to know what’s scarier, us all being manipulated by misinformation, or that democratising opinion simply reveals our true nature. Are the phones terrible or are we?
On Discord, friends lament the paywalling of NYT Games app; Tiles, Letter Boxed and The Mini crossword are bricked up. Its puzzles were played over 11 billion times last year – including me and its 10 million daily players. With 11.8 million subscribers, it’s a major revenue driver. A hedge-fund graph surfaced by Garbage Day showed that the games app’s more popular than News, Cooking and Athletic combined. Phones are used more for gaming than any other device. Gambling’s popular too. Some apps do both.
Prior to Wordle, my Candy Crush addiction spiralled out of control in 2020. Solitaire feels low risk. The only real danger there is being exposed to hideous ads and Temu items I’ll never ever buy.
But that’s enough rest and recreation, time to do some work! Putting my phone out of arm’s reach, I open my laptop and log into Google Docs (after finding the password I can never remember). But before I can pen another witty story about gripes and grievances, there’s two-factor authentication to contend with. The screen glows with one simple command. “Open the Gmail app on Apple iPhone.”