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> what you see in social media is typically so exaggerated and distorted

There you have the answer.

Exaggerated emotions bring clicks and profit. Wonder why so many video thumbnails now show a large face with some vivid emotion on it? Or "XXX reacts to YYY"? Drives revenue.

It's like we're all in a non-stop "Got talent" show where talent performance is less important than judges' reactions.

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Outside of twitter, things are pretty uneventful for the most part. Every small occurrence of unrest is amplified by the always-on media, and then the memory of which is kept alive in perpetuity by the chattering class online , long after most people forgot or stopped caring.

Or worse, noise-silencing _real_ problems (wars, ongoing genocide, and looming environmental catastrophe).

Relevant. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4

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