To think people are getting dumber and more perverted by the day?

I agree with this. Having been very consciously socially mobile through most of my adult life, I've mixed with all sorts including those whose everyday lives are like Trainspotting on repeat. Love 'em all: posh, derelict, prim, depraved, brainy and dumb. (The d-words are not always the same people.)

But here's the thing. I liked being able to choose. I'm pissed off with the d-words being everywhere, taking up bandwidth, infecting the reasonable discourse of civilised society and making people think d-behaviour is normal nowadays.

I use a LOT less social media now, you can't escape the fucking d-words!

... and while we're here, a well-constructed post using a varied vocabulary may well have been written by a human. If you refuse to believe that, read some books of at least Young Adult level and amaze yourself.

That’s the whole point of the story.

This.

That’s nonsense though, isn’t it? What evidence is there that “we’re all equally intelligent in our own way”?

The rejection of facts over feelings is pissing me off massively.

I find this when I’m with my DC as he watches YouTube. There is a lot of brain rot and I’m constantly trying to move him on to something a bit more edifying or genuinely entertaining.

But I’m sad to say that I’m having the opposite problem in my own social media experience - in a fit of intellectual enthusiasm a while back I signed up for a bunch of Substacks on topics I am interested in, by journalists and writers whose work I enjoy, and now I feel completely overwhelmed by how much there is to read, and how quickly the next publication comes out, and how each writer now has 3 different publications plus private podcasts plus live events - and I can’t keep up, and eventually just stop opening the app / the emails and sink into guilt and increasing ignorance.

I wish someone would just assign me one thing a day to read, give it to me in hard copy, and then make me write a short essay to show I’ve properly read and understood.

I didn’t know how good I had it back in secondary school!

Why is it weird to spot and point out a pattern?

Haven’t read the full thread but wholeheartedly agree with the OP @YourJadeLionand @222days

I see people doing those utterly ridiculous, faddy tik tik dances and I just despair.

Even just a few short years ago people would have seen someone doing that and thought “what the hell??”….how quickly it all moved and became so popular and normalised.

And that’s exactly the problem - social media means everything moves so quickly now, and it’s all moving in the wrong direction.

Nope. No “name change fail”. Anyone can click a username and see OP’s posting history, that’s all I did. You’ve been throwing AI accusations around multiple threads and it’s getting weird. Maybe take your own advice and move on.

I’ve now got to the age where I would(if she were still alive) agree with everything Mary Whitehouse complained about.

I don’t have a social media feed full of idiots and people ‘obsessed with sex’, so people might want to consider what they or other people in their house are consuming online that’s skewing their algorithms towards this kind of content.

Absolutely disagree. Have we all forgotten about the Carry On films?

HILARIOUS!!! They used the wrong three word name. The generator must have packed up.

Name change fail?

I don’t even think it’s just every single thing is over sexualised. The dumbing down of society is everywhere. There are adults who actually watch random men eat takeaways from various places and rate them. I can’t imagine how boring and thick you must be to enjoy this ‘content’ and the worst thing is, the men doing the eating/eating of the takeaway establishments are making thousands and thousands on the back of it while we have Drs and Nurses on the bones of their arses.

The internet shows you more of what you look at.
My social media threads are all articles about physics, climate change and nature conservation, literature and travel.

How do you know that? You're not the OP.

Christ, yet ANOTHER post about just how awful and stupid everyone else is. I think MN needs a "Superiority" board.

No bot here, just a normal poster. Anyway, back to the topic.

Yet another three word user name post along the lines of AIBU ......to think humanity is unkind/going to ratshit/only doing good things when people are watching/doing performative grief.

OP will be written by AI. OPoster will put up two or three answers always changing tack, increasingly word soup, denying original intention and will then disappear into the ether.

The answer to the OP is that there is a lot of crap on line.
Get off line and talk to real people who are going about their business in the same way they always have.

Why would you spend time scrolling videos anyway? Total mystery.

You think that ‘human safaris’ are taking place in Europe in 2025 and it isn’t being reported on the mainstream news?

Heavy irony that you posted that on this thread. It’s this uncritical opening your brain and letting information fall in unchecked that is a massive problem.

Mmm, depends where you go. It's fairly light on Mumsnet admittedly but not gross. The algorithm doesn't show me too much shite because I am rigid about what I follow and hover over. And I have a few subscriptions to thoughtful things eg New Statesman.

It's not the journalists, it's the owners. Many journalists have left the industry because they were being required to produce click bait and not given the time for real reporting.

I'm currently reading "Mania" by Lionel Shriver where calling someone stupid and failing to recognise that we are all equally intelligent in our own way is the last great civil rights fight.
It's a satire and takes the idea to the logical extreme but at times it does feel as though we're heading that way.