People Are Sharing Modern Trends That They Can't Stand (45 Answers)

Jimjoe1’s thread was incredibly popular on r/AskReddit, getting over 64.4k upvotes at the time of writing and being the top-awarded post on the site. Other redditors gifted the user more than 340 awards and we can definitely see that number getting higher as the thread continues to get more and more attention online.

Bored Panda spoke about social media, people’s desire to look beautiful and ‘perfect,’ and how this is commodified with historian Dr. Jane Nicholas from St. Jerome’s University at the University of Waterloo.

According to Dr. Nicholas, seeking perfection isn’t a new idea: it’s long been sold as an attainable ideal. Something that’s within our grasp and could be ours if we just tried harder (or… spent more).

“Many cosmetics, for example, promise the ability to achieve a certain look with their use. Social media is driven by different, more individual forces than traditional media, but it is caught up in many of the same patterns, specifically selling goods,” she explained that there’s a (hidden) economic aspect to social media that drives it forward. So what we’re seeing with influencers and their fixation on making a profit shouldn’t surprise anybody.

The history expert noted that even if we’re smart enough to know that an image posted on social media is “highly manipulated,” this doesn’t mean that we can easily identify it with our own two eyes. “It’s difficult now to distinguish real people from the highly curated image presented on social media,” she said.

Dr. Nicholas believes that our inability to distinguish between real and highly curated images on social media “reflects something of our true selves now,” implying that things are here to stay. At least for the time being.

But for those of you lamenting that modern society is a nightmare, wishing to go back to the good old days, ask yourselves this: which days exactly are the so-called good old days? Dr. Nicholas told Bored Panda that we’ve all lived with various images of beauty since at least the 1920s, and “these have become parts of ourselves.”

Our modern focus on social media is merely an extension of a long historic fascination with beauty. Similarly, other trends could be seen as continuations or reactions to previous trends once you dig a little deeper. That’s why having a solid foundation in history is vital if you want to make more accurate guesses about the future.

Are the internet and social media to blame for what’s wrong with society? I like to think that they’re merely tools and aren’t inherently good or evil, but we make them so with how we use them. Or, to put it a tad more poetically, they’re funhouse mirrors that reflect and amplify our inner selves.

Social media can be a way to get in touch with long-lost friends and to give a platform for your art. Or it can be an excuse to post endless vapid selfies and to advertise products for monetary gain.

Similarly, the internet itself is both a vast repository of painstakingly verified knowledge and funny animal videos, as well as a seemingly endless archive of half-truths, rumors, fake news, and gossip. You can’t have the good without the bad. Though it’s always healthy to sit down and think about what you’d change about the world if you could. And then, perhaps, even go out and make those changes into reality.