The cast of 'Silicon Valley' is totally divided on Snapchat

Snapchat or Instagram Stories?

It's the eternal question of the social-media age, and the cast of HBO's Silicon Valley is wrestling with it just like the rest of us.

Just as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to copy Evan Spiegel's Snapchat into oblivion, the cast of HBO's Silicon Valley has some complicated thoughts on the two social messaging platforms.

Thomas Middleditch, who plays Richard Hendricks on the show, told Mashable that while he uses both, his heart isn't truly in the Instagram game.

"To be honest, just because I'm too lazy I don't want to build another set of followers on another app somewhere, I just save my Snapchat videos and put them on Instagram so I'm robbing them of their goods."

Amanda Crew, who plays the level-headed character Monica, has a slightly different take.

"I'm a big consumer of Instagram and so I was on Snapchat for awhile but, again, once they brought in Insta story I was like, 'Well, why the fuck do I need to use Snapchat anymore?'"

And while Crew and Middleditch may disagree on their preferred method of sharing short disappearing videos with their followers, there is some agreement among the cast about the overall effect that social media has on people — namely, that it can be toxic.

"I'm having this weird micro-crisis about social media in general I think this year," explained Middleditch. "Sometime around November it starts to feel like, 'Oh this started out as fun thing but now it's like it's being used against us,' all of our information aggregated and targeted and sectioned off."

Middleditch is of course talking about the oft-mentioned "filter bubble," but he broke that complicated concept down into something a little easier to digest.

"I go on YouTube and it immediately suggests things" based on what he just watched, he noted. "Even if I watched something that I politically or morally disagree with but I had some weird morbid curiosity next time I go up on YouTube it's like 'YOU WANT MORE OF THAT? DO YOU WANT MORE FIRE AND BRIMSTONE FRIEND?' It's starting to feel a bit gross for me, even though I'm in it."

"There's no mom saying like, 'That's too much mashed potatoes maybe you should have some greens too, have a salad along with your meal,'" he continued. "There's no moms saying that, so you're just like getting sick off of your candy.'"

Zach Woods, who plays Jared Dunn, was right there in agreement.

"It's like mashed potatoes are truth and all the other vegetables are bullshit," noted Woods.

Whether Snapchat or Instagram is better at serving up that meal depends on who you ask, but clearly Middleditch thinks there's room for some more proverbial moms in the social-media world.

"Because clearly," he observed, "left to our own devices humans are not responsible people."

Season 4 of Silicon Valley premieres April 23.