A person's success depends largely on the people around them, but few people talk about their digital environment. I'm meaning not only the people we constantly interact with on social media, but also the content we consume.
Few people responsibly choose their social circle, and even fewer responsibly manage their digital environment, even though people spend 6.30 hours a day online.
I divide content into two types: patently false and patently true. The formula for true content consists of several things: A) Content aimed at initiating a person, B) Content does not contain manipulations aimed at eliciting a specific action or reaction in a person, C) Content does not contain gross logical errors or contradictions with facts. False content provides no benefit to a person, and for the most part, its creators did not intend it to.
It's easy for me to identify what kind of content I'm reading, but unfortunately, I don't know what percentage of people can easily identify what kind of content they're consuming.
I'll give you an example of false and true content so you can clearly understand the difference. Here's part of a description of how DMT affects a person from a commercial psychiatric clinic:
DMT causes a persistent psychological dependence, which is very difficult to overcome on your own. A person who has tried the hallucinogen once will crave the feeling of pleasure and mental elevation again. Dependence on the substance manifests itself as an irresistible desire to take the drug and an inability to control dosages. The patient continues to abuse the psychedelic, despite deteriorating mental and physical well-being.
These claims are inconsistent with the pharmacology and clinical data on DMT. This text is not intended to educate about psychedelics, but rather to sell clinic services. The text clearly manipulates risk and people's fears. This is false content, and I can confidently say that it will not provide any benefit to anyone who wants to learn about the effects of psychedelics on the body.
One could say that the text is aimed at selling the right services, drug addiction treatment. However, DMT does not cause physical addiction, nor does it cause psychological addiction. If DMT were replaced with Heroin in this text, it would become true and could help people — for example, the parents of a drug addict — encourage their child to seek treatment for addiction. But even if we replace DMT with Heroin, the text would only be true in the context of drug addiction treatment, not education. It still contains abstract formulations and emotional overtones.
The true text would look like this:
DMT is a powerful psychedelic that temporarily disrupts the usual workings of perception. It dramatically alters the activity of the brain's serotonin systems, causing the stable sense of body, time, and reality to disappear, and the brain begins to generate very intense internal experiences. The effects of smoking last a few minutes, while with other forms, they last longer, but the principle is the same: a short-term, complete restructuring of perception. It does not cause classic addiction.