Hym "It isn't the social media bitch. It's how you talk about, treat, and effect men."
Emma "Oh boo hoo! Is the incel triggered that he's not-"
Hym "DADDY ISSUES! DADDY ISSUUUUUUUSES! YOU WANT THE UNCONDITIONAL LOVE YOU DIDN'T GET FROM YOU FATHER AND YOU WANT TO FROM MEN YOU'RE NOT RELATED TO AND YOU DON'T FUCK! A GENERATION OF WOMEN TAKING OUT THERE DADDY ISSUES ON A GENERATION OF MEN! You want the unconditional love yoi didn't get from you father and you want to enforce if socially, economically, and politically! DADDY ISSUUUUUUUUUUUES!"
Emma "Oh boo hoo! Is the incel triggered that he's not-"
Hym "DADDY ISSUES! DADDY ISSUUUUUUUSES! YOU WANT THE UNCONDITIONAL LOVE YOU DIDN'T GET FROM YOU FATHER AND YOU WANT TO FROM MEN YOU'RE NOT RELATED TO AND YOU DON'T FUCK! A GENERATION OF WOMEN TAKING OUT THERE DADDY ISSUES ON A GENERATION OF MEN! You want the unconditional love yoi didn't get from you father and you want to enforce if socially, economically, and politically! DADDY ISSUUUUUUUUUUUES!"
by Hym Iam February 21, 2024
Get the Social media mug.Psychological injury resulting from direct, cumulative, or vicarious exposure to harmful experiences on social media platforms. This includes targeted harassment campaigns (dogpiling), doxxing, revenge porn, cyberstalking, extreme public shaming, and witnessing graphic violence or hate speech. Unlike general internet stress, it's tied to the specific architectures of social platforms: viral amplification, permanence of content, network effects linking different life spheres (work, family, friends), and algorithmically-fueled harassment. The trauma stems from the feeling of being hunted, exposed, and powerless in a space that feels ubiquitously connected to one's social identity.
Example: A teenage artist posts a mildly political drawing. It gets picked up by a hate group whose members flood her notifications with rape threats, photoshop her face onto obscene images, find her school, and call her principal accusing her of crimes. She deletes her accounts but knows the images are still out there. She develops panic attacks at phone notifications, isolates from friends, and feels perpetually unsafe. This is acute social media trauma—the platform's features turned a single post into a life-altering assault.
by Dumuabzu January 25, 2026
Get the Social Media Trauma mug.The chronic, symptom-based profile resulting from unresolved Social Media Trauma or prolonged exposure to a toxic social media environment. Symptoms mirror Complex PTSD and include: hypervigilance toward notifications, identity fragmentation (curating multiple "safe" personas), somatic symptoms (eye twitching, headaches from screen stress), paranoia about being recorded or discussed, and a disrupted sense of reality from gaslighting or misinformation campaigns. The "syndrome" reflects how the embedded, daily use of these platforms can rewire stress responses, making the digital world a persistent source of psychological threat.
Example: A journalist who survived a coordinated mob attack on Twitter now compulsively checks three different analytics tools before posting anything, drafts tweets in a notes app to scrutinize them for "attack vectors," has lost their authentic voice online, and experiences a full-body freeze response when seeing a certain notification sound. Their offline relationships suffer because they're emotionally exhausted from this constant digital defense posture. Their personality and nervous system have been pathologically shaped by the platform's hostile dynamics. Social Media Trauma Syndrome.
by Dumuabzu January 25, 2026
Get the Social Media Trauma Syndrome mug.A colloquial term for a breakdown in the perception of consensus reality, induced or severely exacerbated by prolonged, immersive engagement with social media ecosystems. It is characterized by the inability to distinguish between algorithmically-amplified narratives and offline reality, adopting the extreme affective states and persecutory frameworks of online tribes as one's own, and experiencing relationships and events primarily through the interpretive lens of viral discourse. This is not clinical psychosis, but a culturally-specific distortion where the curated, performative, and conflict-driven social media environment becomes the primary source of "reality testing," leading to paranoia, identity fragmentation, and emotional reasoning detached from embodied context.
Example: Someone who spends hours daily in political hashtag wars begins to believe that people in their offline workplace are "NPCs" (Non-Player Characters) part of a secret ideological plot, interpreting neutral comments as "dog whistles." They feel constantly monitored, attribute mundane events to vast online conspiracies they follow, and their speech becomes a series of slogans and accusations lifted from tweets. Their social reality has been wholly colonized by the architecture and culture of the platform, inducing a functional psychosis specific to the digital age. Social Media Psychosis.
by Dumu The Void January 27, 2026
Get the Social Media Psychosis mug.A broader cousin to the mass media theory, this encompasses all media technologies and formats as tools for behavioral regulation. It looks beyond just news to include entertainment, social platforms, and even architecture (like a panopticon). The focus is on how the medium itself—its structure, accessibility, and logic—shapes social interaction, attention, and norms, creating environments that facilitate surveillance and promote self-censorship.
Theory of Media Social Control Example: The "Like" button and algorithmic feed on social media. This isn't just about content; the media format itself controls. It quantifies social validation, trains users to seek rewarding (often conformist) engagement, and the algorithm's hidden logic dictates what is visible. The medium structures behavior, creating a system of constant performance and feedback that controls social dynamics more effectively than any top-down censorship.
by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal February 7, 2026
Get the Theory of Media Social Control mug.This is the classic "manufacturing consent" model. It analyzes how large-scale, centralized media outlets (TV networks, major newspapers) act as a control system by selecting, framing, and repeating narratives that shape public perception on a massive scale. Control works through agenda-setting (telling you what to think about), priming (telling you how to think about it), and cultivating a shared, often simplified, reality that serves established political and economic interests.
Theory of Mass Media Social Control Example: During the lead-up to a war, every major news network endlessly repeats government talking points about "imminent threats" and "national security," while giving minimal airtime to anti-war experts or diplomatic alternatives. This mass media control creates a overwhelming consensus narrative that manufactures public consent for military action, marginalizing dissent by making it seem fringe and unpatriotic.
by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal February 7, 2026
Get the Theory of Mass Media Social Control mug.The study of how media shapes human behavior and how humans shape media in return, creating a feedback loop of content, reaction, and more content about the reaction. It examines why certain videos go viral (cats, mostly), how news coverage influences public opinion (a lot, unfortunately), and why comment sections are universally recognized as the worst places on the internet (anonymity plus anger equals chaos). Media social sciences confirm that we are not just consumers of media; we are also products of it, and the product is currently yelling at someone on Twitter.
Example: "A media social sciences study analyzed why people share political articles without reading them. The conclusion: signaling tribal identity is more important than being informed. Sharing an article says 'I'm on your team,' not 'I've evaluated this information.' The researchers then shared their findings without reading the comments, which they knew would be terrible."
by Nammugal February 14, 2026
Get the Media Social Sciences mug.