As most of you already know at this point because I talk about it a lot, I graduated this year. I obtained my Bachelors in Arts. This particular degree is a fusion between an Arts degree, but also a Psychology degree. I majored in Criminology, and minored in Sociology.

While there were a few bumps along the road, I never thought of my accomplishment as less than, say, a STEM degree. It’s easy to discredit humanities from the outside, but those with degrees can attribute to the fact that no matter what discipline you choose, it’s hard. It’s several years of work put towards attaining accredation or certification; psychology’s labelled a ‘soft’ science, but the content was still difficult to get through.

Nobody really knows the ins and outs when it comes to the amount of nights I’ve spent up writing notes, how long I spent on assignments, teaching myself research methods and statistics from scratch as someone who sucks at math. The work, effort and time you put in, regardless of topic, is something you should value.

So, why don’t we?

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This post was inspired by something that Impact had made a while ago. It discusses ‘silly degrees,’ the term I mentioned earlier. Essentially, it’s a trend where people, typically women, post about their degrees and lightheartedly poke fun at its supposed uselessness and lack of future stability.

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Origins

This trend of devaluing hasn’t just magically popped out of nowhere. In 2006, Margaret Hodge, the Minister of State for Universities in the UK, addressed ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees when talking about expanding higher education. In her view, the criteria for a ‘Mickey Mouse’ degree was “one where the content is perhaps not as one would expect and where the degree itself may not have judge relevance in the labour market.”

In short, Hodge alluded to the idea that certain degrees are low ranking and damage your future should you choose to pursue them because they aren’t applicable. Courses that fall under the humanities umbrella—English, Arts, and Design, were (and still are) heavily considered as such by Hodge and others.

While ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees as a concept has become outdated, the idea of it has grown in popularity and morphed into a key referencing point in social discourse concerning university degrees. Dozens of articles talk about whether the system in it of itself is worthless, or what degrees to go for if you want a fulfilling career.

Contemporary conversations on academia and university practically revolve around degrees and their usefulness (or the opposite), for a variety of reasons. The core emphasis is put on prospects of these fields and jobs, which are scrutinised and weighed up in comparison to the evolving economy.

If you were to google ‘useless degrees’ right now, the search is certainly going to come up with a list of humanities degrees, like this:

Are They Actually Useless Though?

Looking at the projected growth of arts and STEM occupations, it’s actually mixed. Health care and social assistance is the industry with the most expected employment growth, followed by professional, scientific and technological services and then education and training.

These three make up 50% of employment growth, so overall, it seems to be relatively even. Granted, this is one source, but it seems to indicate that it’s roughly the same, at least in Australia.

Besides the obvious reasons such as the prevalence of science, business and healthcare as the things that make the world go round in terms of a capitalistic mindset, there are certain problematic issues that plague arts and humanities degrees, which has more to do with the perception of them rather than implementation.

Connection To Femininity

As pointed out by Impact, science and math are typically associated with male domains and masculinity, whereas the arts and humanities with the feminine and femininity.

This perception creates implicit bias. It perpetuates the idea that women lack the qualities to engage with the fields because stereotypical views of women don’t correlate with the ‘image’ of a scientist. So, when women engage with arts and humanities, it’s looked down upon.

Women are portrayed as feminine, emotional, and altruistic, and they are supposed to be more interested in arts, humanities, and social sciences, whereas men are considered masculine, rational, and competitive, and should be more interested in STEM (Diekman et al., 2010).

Excerpt from Chan (2022)

This plays a major factor in how boys and girls are socialised from a young age. This same study references an article that found parents and teachers underestimate girls’ mathematical abilities even when their results are on equal levels with boys.

Neglecting to acknowledge women in STEM decreases the likelihood of them pursuing their own interests in the field. Additionally, harassment is also notable; 56% of women in stem reported experiencing discrimination in the workplace in comparison to those 46% of those in non-STEM fields.

Therefore, humanities and arts, which are predominantly dominated for the above reasons, are seen as lesser in the eyes of society.

Financial Benefits

Another component tied to the perception of a degree’s usefulness is financial benefits. On average in an Australian context, the HECS-HELP debt is $27,640.

HECS-HELP for those who don’t know, is a government loan that you can take out for selected degrees. The government pays for the fees instead of you paying out of pocket.

Once you start earning a set amount called the threshold—which according to my memory, is somewhere between $50,000 to $65,000, you start to pay it back relative to how much you earn (including inflation because the loan is indexed).

For example, if I have a debt of $30,000 and I earn $60,000 a year, I’ll roughly pay $1,200 yearly because the repayment is calculated in accordance to it.

The average salary is around $98,000; you would pay $5,9880. HECS-HELP, on top of tax and other payments, becomes a significant burden very quickly.

Therefore, when you graduate, the income from your occupation is not only supposed to cover your daily costs and supply your savings, but also goes towards paying off the loan.

What kind of entry level job you have determines your finances straight off the bat, and to what extent you can afford your loans without inconveniencing yourself by coughing up more money and not being able to pay for daily life. Rent is already sky high to begin with, let alone school loans.

The worth of degrees is increasingly becoming intertwined with the amount of wealth it’ll potentially give you, rather than how knowledgeable it can make you. It’s no wonder that the conversation on degrees shifts to or always resorts to it’s usefulness.

The lack of a stable economy and job shortages in conjunction with rooted and established social perspectives creates an all-rounded disdain for ‘feminine,’ ‘unintelligent’ and ‘unprofitable’ degrees.

The market has adapated to prefer non-arts and humanities jobs, reflecting societal priorities. This results in a lack of opportunity and good income; pushing away creativity for more lucrative avenues.

Keep in mind that as the data mentions, it usually takes almost a decade to pay off of all student debt. Disregarding genuine interest, of course people are going to steer towards more ‘practicable’ degrees in order to afford literally anything.

Additional Problems

The key facet of this issue is what makes up a ‘practical degree.’ To many, it’s something in STEM or business. To some, it could be something in arts or humanities. The real answer is that very soon, it’s going to be neither.

I feel like at this point I sound like a broken clock when it comes to AI. At this point, I could tie literally anything to AI; you can count on me for that. I’ve spoken about it multiple times, mainly in my We Need To Talk About AI and Communication Is Dead posts.

Now, I don’t think AI will be able to take over all jobs (at the moment), but even STEM and business jobs are being eyed with concern as AI keeps getting developed and more technologically advanced. Forbes reported:

“A 2025 World Economic Forum report flags that 40% of programming tasks could be automated by 2040. Bessent sees growth in AI-adjacent roles like cybersecurity, but standardized STEM work will gradually cede to algorithms.”

The article also states that other tasks in fields of research, medicine and teaching are less susceptible to change, but still of interest.

“Teaching, especially in nuanced fields like philosophy or early education, and high-level management jobs rely on emotional intelligence and adaptability, which AI struggles to replicate. A 2024 OECD report suggests only 10% of teaching tasks are automatable by 2040.”

At this rate, all degrees are going to be seemed worthless. This has nothing to do with whether STEM is better then the arts or if the arts are better than STEM. That’s irrelevant.

AI is a much more cost-effective and profitable worker. It doesn’t need pay, breaks, time off, health insurance—it doesn’t have a family or other commitments. These are the main tenants of our workforce.

This means eventually, it’s likely that this indifference for humanities and arts will become generalised for degrees overall, regardless of of its practicability or application.

There will be nothing left to be practical for or to apply to because anti-intellectualism is rising with the growth of technology as it’s seen as a replacement for just about anything.

Need to search something up? Ask ChatGPT. Have a question? Ask ChatGPT. Can’t be bothered to write that essay? Ask ChatGPT. Need to figure out this math problem? Ask ChatGPT. To what extent are we going to keep referring back to AI?

Hi everyone! I hope you liked this one. I had a lot of fun researching and from now on I want my essay pieces to be similar to this, so any feedback or topics you’re interested in reading on would be greatly appreciated. Thank you all for reading!

Is it annoying? Sure. At this point, it seems like every bookshop seems to have a BookTok or Bookstagram aisle that takes up way too much space than it has to. But it wasn’t that. Maybe its prevalence? I think we can all agree that books have turned into somewhat or a trend, seeing the popularity of Bookstagram and BookTok. Popularity isn’t necessarily an issue though. After all, book influencers and the changing culture around reading did bring me back to it after years of not picking up anything. I was encouraged to start analysing, deconstructing and writing, so I owe a great deal to its popularisation.

It struck me, as I stared at the section, that my issue with it is what BookTok represents largely, or its unintended consequences. What I mean by that is book discourse, or the fact that reading has been ‘dumbed down.’ There’s a great deal of readers who just…don’t like to read?

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A majority of us have seen that TikTok (or a variation of it on Twitter) of an influencer stating she flat out didn’t like massive paragraphs in books. I can understand her point (I really do hate it when there’s an entire page of writing and a slab of text, and I don’t know the context of the post, but maybe that’s what she meant) however… paragraphs in books are pretty normal. Expected, even.

There are countless posts—mainly TikToks, echoing either the same sentiment or a similar complaint, and it really does seem as if reading is a chore for people nowadays. At some point, it’s become more common to be a fan of the reading aesthetic—to embody this cool, reading persona where books are an accessory or a facet of a lifestyle, than to be a genuine fan of reading.

There isn’t something initially wrong with this. This entire ‘movement,’ so to speak, can be very motivating. That’s a very big plus to this whole thing—the level of engagement that we’re seeing is a lot higher. In an age where illiteracy is prominent and literature or education overall is being heavily policed in schools, it’s maybe not so bad that reading’s a cool thing now.

Research conducted in 2023 by the Publishers Association in the UK on 2,000 participants found that BookTok played a massive role in increasing literary presence and participation in the lives of Gen Z. More specifically, the results indicated:

• 59% of 16-25 year olds discovered a passion for reading through BookTok or book influencers.

• That 55% of them used BookTok for recommendations.

• 68% were inspired by BookTok to read a novel they wouldn’t have otherwise.

• That 19% found a community and 16% made new friends through BookTok and related hashtags.

• And 49% visited physical bookshops to buy books they’d seen due to the trend.

A lot more people are exposed to literature and it’s more accessible than before. As a whole, it seems society is reading more now. Whether you like trends or not, some of them can be extremely helpful, or even just plain enjoyable, to participate in. Younger people can sharpen their reading and comprehension skills thanks to trends like this, all the while having fun.

Additionally, in the absence of things like third spaces, literary activities like communities and clubs are much more precious, and seeing them promoted is great. I’ve been meaning to join one lately. There is definitely an overwhelming amount of good to be found in BookTok, and whatever issues do arise seem minor in comparison to the positive impact BookTok’s made.

But I feel it’s necessary to say there’s this aesthetic trap that seems to override genuine reading. This trap is multifaceted. For one, there’s a shift in focus to how much we consume versus what we consume. Outlandish book goals encourage you to read more and more, you want to read the newest, most popular novels; quantity over quality. Are you really reading—and do you want to read that much, or do you want to potray that to other people? A fine line exists and you can just as easily sweep yourself into this social media borne aestheticization.

How many books have you decided to read because of BookTok, only to dislike them? Books that you have no interest in, but you feel you have to read them because it qualifies you as the ‘ultimate reader?’ Do you find that you’re preoccupied with meticulously posing your book to take photos more than you read it? Is there a pressure for you to read popular books? Is your feed full of posts that talk about the vibes and the cores of certain novels?

These are all general points—unintended to offend anyone. But think about your reading habits in more depth. Maybe you’ll discover something about them, and these discoveries can help you use BookTok strategically to educate and immerse yourself in literature rather than the trend itself.

I love trends. I’ve written on two (dopamine menu, October theory) last year. It’s been a way to get creative and gives me something interesting to write about that I can put a personal spin on, so I can’t critique it too much without being a hypocrite myself. I’ve also taken a big interest in fashion as of late, and make Pinterest boards for inspiration. But I’ve becoming increasingly annoyed as of late every time I’m on my phone. There are two posts on here: Maria Santa Poggi’s ‘how class insults are trending under the guise of beauty’ and andrea claire’s ‘the core-ification of everything runs identity formation,’ (which are both amazing pieces that everyone should check out) that got me thinking. I’ve seen a spark of some problematic trends, and also people making mountains out of insignificant discourse.

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The Concept Of Personal Style

I was on Twitter the other day when I saw this post: two girls had gone to the Louvre wearing outfits that, I, personally, saw no issue with. But users were up in arms about how it seems they lifted the style from Pinterest. They adorned grey sweaters, pleated skirts, sheer dark red sheer tights and heels. Seemingly normal outfits that fall on the more trendy side, but other than that, there’s nothing integrally wrong with them.

In an age where everyone wants to experiment, we also seem to harshly judge those that do exactly that. There was a multitude of people who jumped online to complain that personal style has ‘died,’ or that was no ‘individuality’ in response to the outfits. Quite frankly, I could care less about what two girls wear to the Louvre, or whether their clothing styles are directly lifted from social media. If it’s not hurting anyone, or wasteful, then why comment on it? It’s an issue that irritates me more and more when I see it, because if a fraction of this critique was focused on actual harmful trends, we’d progress a lot further than focusing on useless discourse.

Trends

On to the more inappropriate trends that people should focus their criticism on. There are certain fashion trends that have risen all of the years that people have flocked to. When there’s no sense of sense of individualism, and in a bid to create an idealised identity, a person will take someone else’s. Maria’s piece reminds me of a trend that was really popular in Australia a few years ago called ‘Naarm core.’ Naarm, for people who are not aware, is the name of the Indigenous land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation that was colonised and is now Melbourne. The trend was a reference to street fashion style, as this article highlights. White Australians capitalised on the trend, and in turn, it reduced Naarm to a fashion statement and took away from its real meaning.

“Many white Australians jumped on board with Indigenous voices first as a means of support, later turning the narrative onto them [and decentering First Nations people]…Used in such a way, [the trend] reinforces that it’s okay to turn Indigenous culture into aesthetics.”

I’m not Indigenous, so I can’t speak on this particular issue. However, as a teenager, I once saw a friend of a friend of a friend put on something from my culture for a month. This was an isolated event—neither global nor trend like ‘Naarm core’ was, but it was a very similar situation that I’d like to share because it relates to my thoughts on this topic. They did this as a social experiment to be able to ‘understand’ what they—the people in my culture, went through (this sounds incredibly vague but I hope you understand I can’t be too personal on here. But, if you know me well enough, I think you can figure out what it was). I don’t think they realised what it would be like for someone like myself to see that considering that their short experiment was something that I lived every day. In their misjudged empathy they managed to demean my identity in real time by reducing it to a test.

In retrospect, I don’t blame them—they were very young at the time and I can see the place they were coming from by trying to do that. They wanted to understand what it was like by experiencing it. But the idea of my identity being a costume someone wore for a while to ‘understand’ made me sick to my stomach (have you maybe tried just talking to someone?). At a time where I myself was trying to piece together my identity, how is that supposed to make me feel? That my being is wearable? That someone can put it on for a day and call it quits when they’ve had enough or collected some brownie points? Or to turn it into a fashion statement? It felt dehumanising. A lot of trends do this. They pick and take and indulge in all sorts of things with no regard to who it affects, just like ‘Naarm core,’ and ultimately make it into a mockery—whether purposefully or incidentally. Why would I care about Pinterest-coded sweaters and skirts when stuff like this is happening right in front of people’s faces?

Overconsumption

There’s also a massive culture of overconsumption that’s become drastically rampant over the years, and it’s only being increased by social media trends. I scroll through my feed and I’m seeing videos of get ready with me’s or a clothing dump and 99% are in the comments saying they got the shirt or pants in the video from SHEIN or Amazon. There’s a dozen room tours and all of the items are just cheap plastic bought off of these sites. Genuinely stop reading and think about the last five or ten personal things you’ve bought. How many of those purchases are things you’ve seen on the internet or were recommended to you by someone online either directly or indirectly? It’s a marketing practice, and a smart one.

Ziane highlights this in her overconsumption post on her publication, pine tart: people were buying Stanley cups in droves. It didn’t stop at one bottle either—some bought specific ranges of the cups or special editions or tried to make a rainbow collection by buying every colour they produced. The attention was so bad, cups would get sold out hours after being placed on shelves and many resorted to physical altercations just to be able to touch a Stanley. Customers have even got into a fight over some limited edition ‘Wicked’ cups. At what point is buying a reusable item over and over not redundant? There’s no need to be more than one. That’s the whole point of reusable things. What about fast fashion? SHEIN is one of the leading companies of alleged human rights and labour abuses and yet we still buy from them. Cute tops and those nice pants that you’ll only wear once override the moral obligation of not supporting an inhumane conglomerate that gives little to nothing to its employees and makes literal children work.

Outline

I also feel it’s necessary to be clear: I’m not saying any of this to shame anyone. Like I said, I love trends myself. The majority of them are harmless and just fun to do. I also have collectibles of movies, shows and games I love. In a similar way, what’s the difference between buying Stanleys over and over again and getting three different figurine versions of one character but in different outfit? There is some nuance to be had here. Some trends as just…well, normal trends; you spend and waste the same regardless of what it is. And, just like in my Klara And The Sun post, there is no amount middle to lower class individuals can consume that can ever be compared to that of a higher one. We deserve to have or do nice things that bring us joy and to not experience guilt and shame for it.

But I can also admit that I don’t buy in excess as often anymore, and it should be acceptable to point out that we just buy so much, and that social media is a massive factor. None of us should be mass hauling from places like this. But then—hell, underconsumption, like Ziane says, has also been incredibly rampant. How have people managed to turn the act of avoiding trends and buying stuff, into a thing? Some trends also are not worth participating in. People blindly follow them and don’t realise the repercussions they can have mentally, emotionally and socially.

It’s not like there’s many options either, especially when it comes to fashion. Just look at this article. I recognise almost all of these brands, and they’re so popular. This is just the fashion companies. I wouldn’t be surprised if most industries nowadays are involved in some form of abuse. Forced labour and abuse is so insidious that our society wouldn’t function without putting all their weight on the backs of poor individuals from systematically and forcefully underdeveloped countries. Poor people make the world go round.

Obviously, sustainable and ethical avenues exist, but when you have all these labels thrown at you, it’s hard to discern them. It’s even harder not to conform to social trends because by buying it, you ‘fit’ in. You become the trend and you’re just like everyone else, and you’ll go to the extent of even being someone else. But you have the responsibility to make conscious, strategic and educated choices not only about your shopping habits, but about what you engage with. At a certain point, we need to stop pointing fingers and complaining about nonsensical aspects of fashion, blaming these difficulties and a lack of knowledge, and instead take the onus onto ourselves. It’s not enough to say you just don’t know anymore.

If we weren’t in the mood for that and wanted some place to go, then we went to the local bookstore instead. It was situated in a mini shopping centre and it was a massive, beautiful place with a café attached to it. My family, avid coffee drinkers, would sit and wait while I’d check all the ceiling high shelves. The carpeted floor was a dazzling black and purple with multicoloured stars on them and there was a small seating area that always had piles of books on the couches. We were always there for hours—them drinking coffee, and me flicking through book after book. I’d always borrow a massive stack of them to read at home as well; I loved returning them because it meant I could borrow more.

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Both places are gone now. The Blockbuster is replaced by another store. All the signs removed, and the big blue and yellow name that was on the front of the building has since disappeared, and those figures on the walls are probably discarded in some storage room or destroyed completely. Once a household name, vanished overnight. The library is now empty—the clothing shop that replaced it has closed down, too, and all that remains at the moment is an vacant lot in reconstruction hell, almost as if the books were never there to begin with. I doubt many people even remember that they were there at one point, seeing how long it’s been, and sometimes I feel like I’m the only one that does. I can’t help but get lost in thought every time I walk past either, as if I’m trying to piece togther old and forgotten memories that fizzle like an old TV.

Some of my favourite times were putting in cassette tapes and DVDS of my favourite films and cartoons that we would rent, sitting in front of the screen, or watching game intros. Whenever I wanted to hear the game music, I’d have to put the disk in my PlayStation 2 to because we didn’t have YouTube back then. I’d take out the console, plug it in myself, put the game in and listen to it and all the original soundtracks. I’d get my stack of books and read and read and read, then borrow them again and read.

Now, I can search up anything with a press of a finger. I find, weirdly, a sense of nostalgia for the past. Back when searching for the movie for family night was an exciting thing instead of what it is now: a mindless, noise-in-the-background experience while we’re all glued to our phones like it’s a part of our hand. There was so much joy in going to the store and finding that DVD or that game or book, looking through shelves and shelves of physical media, the whole family getting together to watch something. Most of all, I miss when technology used to be exciting instead of draining. I miss when it wasn’t as easily accessible as it is now. Having a phone with a massive screen and no physical buttons was unheard of. Most scenes in film and shows relied on practical effects, but when they used CGI, it was strategic and had us all aweing. I’d marvel at how realistic the graphics and textures were in newer games. Things like that just don’t happen anymore. There is no more joy in technology.

When it comes to books, things are a bit more complicated. There are constant, conflicting reports on whether they’re actually ‘thriving’ or falling through the cracks. According to the ABC, from 2013 to 2023, bookstores in Australia halved from 2,879 to 1,457. However, despite this drop, physical bookstores won’t vanish. I don’t think that would ever happen as there’s still a demand for them (and likely always will be). This article by The Guardian highlights the fact that in 2023, the UK saw 699 million physical books sold—the highest level recorded to date. Gen Z is also reportedly visiting libraries more and more, with UK in-person visits at 71%. The increasing use of digital retailers and books are apparently threatening bookstores, which seems most relevant to independent or smaller shops. Rising costs and cheaper prices elsewhere are tanking them. Yet, physical books and related spaces are having a resurgence because of social media, especially amongst younger generations.

Regardless of whether it’s had a positive of negative affect, the consensus seems to be that the new wave of technology is making some sort of impact on the book industry, mainly by reinforcing them to focus on the aspect of demand. In 2000 when Netflix first launched, they were only a startup dealing with DVD by mail rental services. The co-founders approached Blockbuster for a $50 million deal and got rejected. Ten years later, they went bankrupt, and in 2014, the last working Blockbuster closed. Subscriptions and watching online was an unfathomable joke at the time but we’re here now in 2025, where there’s 100 different movie and TV services available to watch that require no effort to go outside. It’s a harsh thing to say, but businesses like Netflix adapted with the changing industry while everyone else, including TV store chains, floundered and struggled to catch up. They had no longevity.

Book shops have the assurance of never ‘fading out’ like Blockbuster, so to speak, but they’re capable of transforming themselves at every turn. Most book sites have a TikTok trending page and libraries have devoted whole sections to it. Literature and technology have practically fused together at this point. It’s not necessarily a bad thing—I personally don’t mind it. I have a lot more thoughts on BookTok and books that I’ll share in a later, separate post, but if it’s a way to keep physical books alive, I’ll take it. I think, more importantly, literature can foster a community. The memories I have from my old library have little to do with the actual books, and more with the feeling it fostered. I remember the café, the smell of fresh coffee, my parents sitting and watching me with a smile, and the happiness in books more than I remember the actual titles and words I read. I especially remember a great excursion that my school took there where I basically spent a whole day with my friends reading and doing book related activities. That community sense—maybe lesser now, still exists even through social media through emulation. Online book clubs and spaces like Substack here, serve as a substitute and not a preference. We still engage with the real thing when we can. TV rental stores invoked a similar feeling, but we went there specifically for movies, not the vibe. When those DVDs become more mainstream and easily accessible through other means, the stores served no purpose.

Even though technology brought it’s demise, I think it can just as easily bring it back. The Criterion Closet segments are a delight to watch just to see people gushing over movies, holding physical copies in their hands. Aesthetics use physical media as visual props but there’s also a genuine admiration from people that engage in it and collect them, who partake in Y2K and retro style. Letterboxd is so popular nowadays, acting as a giant movie club where you can review and comment on films, providing an avenue of communication. The last remaining Blockbuster, located in Oregon, is now a tourist attraction for visitors. They largely sell merchandise, show off movie memorabilia and all films are acquired through Walmart and Target because all the original DVD vendors are all closed down. Love for physical media is still here and even though it won’t be exactly the same as it was, I’m more than happy to engage in it with the way it is. I’ve still got most of my collections and I’ll be keeping them.

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Empathy And Social Media

This has been said a million times before; people creating think pieces about social media while posting on said social media. But the comments I’ve seen are so mindless and egregious lately, ranging from insults to weird things that I’d never think to ask someone. From a purely psychological perspective, there’s no one consensus on how social media impacts empathy. Some studies suggest that heavy social media use can be correlated with higher empathy, while others say the exact opposite. For example, The Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) and their collaboration with the University of Indiana discovered American users who reported higher usage had lower levels of empathy. This was a trend that didn’t waver significantly in terms of what type of social media, the measurement for empathy, age, gender or education—except in the face of ‘personal distress.’

Personal distress is defined as a “self-focused, aversive, affective reaction to the apprehension of another’s emotion (e.g discomfort or anxiety).” An example of this—such as the one used in this paper, is when a person feels anxious when seeing someone sad or upset. Personal distress is considered as a form of empathy, but it’s not to be confused with empathetic concern, because it’s fundamentally different. Empathetic concern is when you feel a sense of compassion, care or sympathy for another person, whereas personal distress is an individual feeling that tends to reflect distress not because of caring, but because the situation the person is in could happen to oneself. The study’s results imply that with increased social media use, our care for others lowers, but the consideration for ourselves heightens.

What ends up happening is two things. For one, it impacts the way we treat people. We become more desensitised to graphic events like war, violence, accidents, crime. How many news photos and videos have you seen online of tragic incidents that you just scroll past? There’s been so much going on and it’s only January. It seems like a bombardment of bad news everywhere that you can’t help but disconnect from. The second, is we start to think more about ourselves. We overanalyse every aspect of our beings—our appearances, our clothes, what we’re doing with our lives, if we’re doing enough. More susceptible to beauty standards, trends, conformity. Normal things become personally distressing when they otherwise shouldn’t be.

I do want to highlight that the above isn’t a given. The academic collaboration also mentions other research conducted in the UK, Spain and the Netherlands that indicates high social media use relates to more empathy, while a study in India doesn’t show a positive nor negative correlation. If you’re using social media a lot, it won’t necessarily dictate your empathy towards others. The SPSP touches on cultural differences and motivation for the use as factors that play a role as well, and even then, it’s not entirely concrete. But from a personal perspective the high use feeds into desensitisation, limited awareness of others’ feelings and even social understanding.

Lack Of Simple Dialogue

Simple things like small talk skills have been forgotten or neglected entirely. A lot of people don’t like small talk for a variety of reasons, and maybe they really can’t do it—and I understand that. I can be on that side sometimes when I’m not feeling particularly social, and I used to be so introverted and socially anxious that I couldn’t even look at another person in the eyes properly. But I hate to admit that it’s an important conversational tool even in its most basic act. Besides, it can be a little fun sometimes, just chatting for a little, talking to someone you maybe see a few times in the lift or at the store, or even just the one time. Small talk lets you have a brief insight into the other person’s life and personality. And the art of it is completely gone.

Maybe it’s a post COVID lockdown thing, but it seems people are more hesitant, more tired, more averse to chatting to one another. Years cooped up at home with nothing but a screen simulating real life communication can change your perception on how you engage with others. I see it in myself as well. I go out of my way to not bump into people. I wear headphones to limit contact, I pretend to look busy. For the three years I spent at university I only made two friends, and I genuinely tried to talk to people in my seminars—and they did too, but nothing was clicking. They were all fleeting moments of awkward socialisation. It all comes down to the fact that the thought of a person I don’t know speaking to me makes my heart flutter, and not in a positive way. I can imagine it’s a feeling most of you can relate to. It’s even worse to think that I may not even be talking to a person, but a robot instead.

AI Now Commonplace

To circle back to the beginning, this post was initially sparked by a tweet about a screenshotted TikTok I saw the other day. The girl in the video talked about how she used ChatGPT to create a message to send to her crush, but accidentally included the prompt in her text. According to the tweet, a lot of people in the TikTok comments—close to 350, related to her by giving similar examples where they turned to AI to write simple messages to other people, for homework, for daily tasks.

AI has a lot of shape and forms. From smart watches and cameras to the typical version you think about such as a generation or chat bot. Within this context, I’m soley referring to the second type. AI’s no longer a teaching or support tool used for learning and development, but now something more sinister and commonplace. I find it concerning that people are genuinely using AI as a subsitute for themselves when it comes to communicating, and it says a lot of things about how our society operates now.

There’s a level of detachment and laziness exhibited by people that they’ll go to such lengths to use a piece of equipment to communicate with someone instead of doing it themselves. Are you that detached that you can’t send someone a text by yourself, written with your own words, that you have to turn to AI to do it for you? Moreover, why would I want to talk to AI? If I’m texting you, I want to talk to just you, and not a robot. The conversation doesn’t have to be perfectly polished and constructed with the right words and proper grammar or anything at all. There’s a beauty in talking or texting someone and seeing how they communicate and all the intricacies that come with it. I also don’t want to constantly judge whether or not I’m having chatting with a real person.

Use this post as a reminder to up your communication (safely, of course—don’t just go up to random strangers or get into weird situations!). Just send the text yourself. People want to hear from you. Speak to your family or friends or partners more, in person. Meet new people. Get involved with your community, your campus, your clubs. Sharpen your verbal and written skill—write your homework, assignments, notes, lists, yourself. Nurture your communication and not AI’s. Put more effort into understanding and listening to people, care about things, use your digital world to interact with more meaningful things. Don’t lose the thing that ultimately makes us human.

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Just a few months ago, the ‘Romeo and Juliet’ play with Tom Holland and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers was announced, and the play started to make rounds. Amewudah-Rivers had to endure a barrage of sexist and racist comments online from individuals who insulted her appearance, again and again. Her looks were masculinised, a common tactic used to push eurocentric features.

It’s not limited to just traditional acting—it even extends to video games. Aloy is a woman and the main character of Playstation’s Horizon series. In 2022, a tweet commented on the fact that Aloy’s face had hair, which, apparently, women don’t have. The tweet called the small hairs a ‘beard.’

Instead of marvelling at how far technology had advanced that were capable of adding one to one representations of ourselves in games, you… make fun of her for ‘looking like a man.’ Literally every person on the planet, or at least majority, have hair on their faces. It’s not just men.

‘Spider-man 2’ for the Playstation 5 dropped in October last year, and all I could see at the time were tweets and tweets about MJ’s face model, Stephanie Tyler. The hate got so bad that at one point ‘fans’ were stalking her by sending her uncomfortable voicemails at her workplace to voice their upset.

Tyler was in a car crash in between the first and the second game. She went through 17 jaw reconstructive surgeries. Seventeen.

These are only some of the examples I can think of off the top of my head.

Don’t get me wrong: male actors can and do also get harassed about the roles they play because people have blurred the line between their fictional characters and the actual person, especially if the actor’s a POC playing a usually depicted white character or if their character’s particularly nasty. Or, sometimes they get attacked for not looking like the character to a tee. Male actors get attacked by fans.

But I’ve never seen such vitriol for a man’s appearance. I’ve never seen comments about plastic surgery, about their ‘ugliness,’ about their bodies being too thin or too fat. It’s never on the exact same level. Female bodies are objectified by the male audience to be appropriately consumed. They can’t be imperfect, but also they’ll never be ‘perfect.’ Female characters are often reduced to attractiveness and will be mocked if they don’t achieve the standard.

And I think—well, if a person’s face is really that distracting and ‘ugly’ to you, you aren’t a fan of the media in the first place. Fans of ‘The Boys’ aren’t really fans if they’re attacking Moriarty for her looks. Altered or not. Women shouldn’t have to be hot and meet unrealistic standards in your eyes to qualify as good actors or characters.

We can dispute for days on whether or not AI use is controversial or not. It has its uses; these developments have significantly improved accessibility and quality of life for disabled people through assistive technology. A June 2023 article by Forbes outlines several examples of this; Google’s AI tool Parrotron assists with the speech of verbally-impaired individuals.

This is one of many good things AI can do. However, it is also important to acknowledge that AI can affect spaces negatively when used inappropriately, and can rid unique voices within them. One of these things is plagarism.

For those that aren’t aware of what AI and ChatGPT in particular is, it’s a system that incorporates large models of language from pre-existing content. When you use AI, you are essentially seeing it generate a culmination of several people’s work all muddled into one piece that it presents to you as an original workpiece.

Think of it this way: if I ask AI to write me a short story, it’s cultivating a story for me from already existing sentences and words that belong in other people’s writing. This is where the controversy stems from. The large ‘models of language’ are comprised of existing work that’s used to generate an ‘original work.’ Due to AI technology developing quite recently and arguably, rapidly, there are no laws in place to legally prevent AI from ‘learning’ from intellectual property that belongs to another person.

You can, essentially and legally, make a novel that copies existing texts with the power of AI.

This is exactly what’s been happening across Amazon. Empty, soulless imitations of novels are now becoming widespread across the website, with authors distraught over their stories being stolen right from under them, completely with no boundaries. These low-quality AI generated books are usually short summaries of novels, made by non-existent writers, whose pages only show list after list of copied novels. Admittedly, this is an issue for Amazon that predates AI, but AI advancements have made it significantly worse. It’s language model system is designed to quickly make summaries, and it’s taking full advantage of it.

The number of AI books on Amazon’s market increase everyday, despite Amazon’s cap on publishing more than three books per day. However, it doesn’t seem to be stopping the trend, which is spreading into other sites such as Goodreads, where these AI novels are being uploaded and being attributed to real authors despite them not having written it. It unfortunately puts the onus on the writers to correct these mistakes and remove the books, when websites should be regulating AI content themselves.

Moreover, what does this say about our quality and ethics of art today? If you use AI to aid in your work—work produced by copying other works— does it truly make it your own? Would it even be appropriate to use AI for writing pieces, considering it’s a program supported by the ideas and thoughts of thousands of writers?

For now, no laws prevent scammers from uploading AI generated books, and until there is, authors and readers will suffer alike: one, having to see their work get stolen and low sales and the other being ripped off thinking they’re buying the real thing. With AI systems progressively adapting, authors will have their work stolen in the future to look forward to.