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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   24022 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026

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Remember, the "it's the phones" thesis isn't that the problem is smartphones per se. It is the tech stack including:

  • Smartphones (so the thing is available everywhere including when you might otherwise be interacting in-person with friends)
  • Algorithmically curated social media (so the thing is both optimised for addictivity, and impossible to opt out of if your friends are on)
  • Streaming video (so the thing is more absorbing at IQ 100 than it would be if the internet was still textual)
  • Targetted advertising as the business model (with the incentives it creates to make things worse and not better)

Exactly, almost all the problems people have with phones, you could also have with a laptop. Online dating, scrolling social media and short form videos endlessly, shunning social contact, all that just needs a computer with an internet connection. I remember when people complained about everybody bringing their laptop to a coffee shop instead of talking to each other!

It’s obviously easier with a computer you can carry in your pocket, and you’re not gonna be scrolling reels in bed with a gaming PC, but you can still stay up until 3am slouched in your chair watching brainrot on a big screen. Dating apps used to be dating sites, the reason they were less addictive/outright evil was because they still hadn’t figured out all the tricks and Match.com hadn’t bought out all its competitors yet.

You wouldn’t be addicted to a smartphone that just let you make calls, send emails, take notes, listen to music and use Google Maps.

A couple of factors to consider:

On a smartphone or small tablet it’s convenient to keep wasting your time on social media while commuting, walking, loitering somewhere, eating out, hanging out, waiting in a queue etc., which is what normies usually do. On a laptop it’s not.

A smartphone is also normally used for calls and texting, of course, so for the average person it’s multifunctional. A laptop is not.

Operating and maintaining a laptop on a basic level requires some minimal level of human agency and a somewhat significant level of disposable income. For a traditional PC this applies even more. In the case of a smartphone it doesn’t.

Smartphones have made sitting in traffic or waiting at the DMV for 2 hours much more tolerable. I wonder sometimes if more progress would have been made on these workaday inconveniences if smart phones hadn't been invented.

Indeed, ‘wise phones’ which only do calls/emails/music/maps and a limited number of apps exist, and the people with them do not scroll.

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