Wow, this is a good one. Although I was on board with "weird," I think "anti-social" is even better. It ties together a bunch of behaviors I've started to see so much of in day-to-day life, which at first were inexplicable to me, but I now understand to be downstream of the atomized experience of social media. This example might make me seem prudish, but I'm shocked at how frequently I now see truly vulgar (in language or obscene imagery) bumper stickers. Don't they know other people, including children, can see this thing they put on the back of their car (who am I kidding -- their truck)? But I now understand it not as thoughtless, which was my first instinct, but as aggressively anti-social, a sign of allegiance to a movement that sees the social world as an obstacle to its political goals.
The other phenomenon that fed heavily into this is reality TV. Packaging the disturbed behavior of people who clearly have Cluster B personality disorders as entertainment has consequences, one of which is that impressionable viewers will imitate them.
My own preferred terminology is 'pseudo-social' ... along with pseudo-reality (not virtual reality) ... which has pitched us into pseudo-politics. What I mean by that is that it seems to promise participation in all the enjoyable bits of politics and an escape from all of the difficult bits.
Great essay. I think there is still little to show for conservative efforts to build a cultural movement to rival hegemony of the left. But where they have found much more success is simply tearing things down, even absent a replacement, and leaving Americans more atomized and anti-social. And an atomized, anti-social public is one that is more fearful, more zero-sum, more susceptible to misinformation.
This is the nexus of working from home, getting your news from social media, filtering your social life through apps, streaming your entertainment from your couch, getting your thrills from mobile gambling, and having your meals delivered. In moderation, any of these things are basically fine. Most of us probably do some or all of these things from time to time. But when they congeal into a lifestyle of never-touch-grassism, and when millions of people fall into this lifestyle, is when it becomes a threat to society and then ultimately the Republic.
This also explains the enthusiasm for AI. Right now, cultural production requires artistic creators, who tend to be more pro-social. Replacing art with AI slop allows for the creation of culture that's not "tainted" by the creators.
Brian, do you consider Substack, its writers, and their subscribers as a SM adjunct? I mean, if on-line engagement hours at a time are SM "benchmarks", put me down as addicted! I spend a ridiculous amount of time on an exponentially - growing Substack writer collective, to the exclusion of hard-copy mags and papers.
Sure, better here than fucking Facebook, Twitter, Bluesky...but still.
Substack has relatively tiny internal social media tools. I guess my weekly live chat is kinda like social media. (Or parasocial media?) But generally speaking: the enjoyment of reading ≠ social media addiction! And in any case, I really do not intend to shame people with social media addiction. Just help them reconceive the product.
When thinking about social platforms I think it's useful to qualify them on how much their discovery is mediated by algorithmic feeds, and how much the content is effectively endless. The engineers who designed the first algorithms for social media have spoken about using slot machines and gambling apps as inspiration. They hijack our dopamine systems in really insidious ways, and when the content is effectively endless that's a recipe for trouble.
So, worst social/quasi-social platforms in this rubric would be:
TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X - Threads and Bluesky would also count, but their limited size and certain specifics of their platforms make them slightly less dangerous
Next tier would be something like:
Snap, Reddit, and YouTube - these have some form of algorithmic discovery but the amount of content on them is limited... Snap content disappears, there's only so many posts on Reddit, and YT has always lagged TikTok in terms of ease of creation. YouTube is easily the closest on this tier to the ones above, though.
Platforms like Substack or Discord can have some negative effects, but their general lack of algorithmic feeds or endless content really alters the equation and makes their influence on society much less pernicious.
Well said, Hilary, it's of course the algorithmic hook of conventional SM that mediates users' content, whilst sites such as Substack serve as an online "bookstore", where readers can sample content largely free from push-driven covert data-mediated manipulation.
Thank you for this, Brian. As a (voluntarily) super-online person, it’s a fantastic reminder of how things are moving toward their inevitable conclusion and that I don’t have to continue to volunteer my time and attention to it.
They deep dive into the flaws of social media, to and how it can be mitigated.
One central point is that we must realize who we are up against. Big tech uses the most advanced and proven techniques that are out there to maximize the attention grab and manipulation. Just beating them with willpower is unlikely.
Pie-in-the-sky for sure, but Frances Haagen told us that algorithms are at the heart of social media evil, and that they can and should be regulated. Shouldn’t we at least keep that in mind?
In Maryland many are being bigfooted by big data which may damage or destroy forests, farmland, and wetlands - over head transmission lines and the structures that support them. The life beneath them can be damaged by their installation and use of water resources. In my mind this goes also to your well stated point. The tender connections made by proximity sustain not only human communal life but the actual breathing of the planet.
I second the folks commenting earlier, Brian. I found this a very thoughtful piece. I'll be rereading it again. I had mostly stopped using Twitter after Musk bought it, aside from continuing to read a few folks. After the election I realized I was just done with Elon and his madness. Fortunately lots of other folks were, as well, so I use Bluesky now. I spent my working career in hard-core nerd land. It was clear from the beginning that there were folks who were very intelligent who were also - shall we say - "socially challenged". Although it's been my experience that the very sharpest and rarest folks oftentimes weren't like that. Sadly, it doesn't seem as if many of the tech-bros reach that elite level.
You and the other overcompensating “cool kids” try, over and over, to drum Jesse Singal out of media because…he accurately reported on trans medicine, and your “emotional intelligence” got hijacked by your social crowd.
Eventually, the truth will be fully realized about how shoddy the facts were, and future generations will ask, as they now do with things like Recovered Memory, how we ever believed such things? If I’m present, I will point to people raised to place emotions and “reading the room” above truly critical thinking (not Critical Thinking), who treated pre-Musk Twitter as their God-given domain, and say “that’s why”. And now Bluesky is attempting to rebuild it, with equally deranged discourse.
This isn’t to say that some level of self-awareness and empathy aren’t necessary or useful to live in the world. One of my favorite pieces of writing is from Ellen Willis for the New Yorker, about how the popular kids in her high school worked to be thoughtful to others, etc. I can give credit where it’s due, but that’s not me, for example. Ironically, it looks to me like the pre-social media days were more forgiving of “weirdos”, the ones who keep asking “annoying” questions about assumed mores. My idols were people like Richard Feynman and Carl Sagan, who were willing to ask “rude” questions that pierced cooperative ignorance. How quickly would your cohort have cancelled them today, I wonder? Feynman seems to be dismissed as a womanizer, I’ve seen.
Your rant reads like trying to put the nerds back in the corner, where they should live out their smelly, lonely existence without bothering the rest of you to do the real work of parroting each other in bliss. Over time, I think you’ll get your wish; you are, after all, still the storytellers of the educated classes, and your narrative usually wins out, unless reality *really* smacks you upside the head (see first two paragraphs in this comment). Although…I hear there’s this site that allows for long form publishing that might get a toehold and allow the general public to read unmediated thoughts from other people that they can then use their own judgement, and not Yoel Roth’s, to agree or disagree with. You might want to start publishing there to push back the tide, but it might already be too late: I hear Jonathan Katz has said it’s already overrun with Nazis!
Those specific endeavors may have failed, but the effort to create a more generally conservative environment has succeeded beyond most people's wildest dreams--or nightmares. The hippies back in the '60s told us we'd wind up here if we didn't make some serious changes back then, but not only have we forgotten that they were right, they're still figures of fun on all sides. WE NEED BETTER HIPPIES!
Wow, this is a good one. Although I was on board with "weird," I think "anti-social" is even better. It ties together a bunch of behaviors I've started to see so much of in day-to-day life, which at first were inexplicable to me, but I now understand to be downstream of the atomized experience of social media. This example might make me seem prudish, but I'm shocked at how frequently I now see truly vulgar (in language or obscene imagery) bumper stickers. Don't they know other people, including children, can see this thing they put on the back of their car (who am I kidding -- their truck)? But I now understand it not as thoughtless, which was my first instinct, but as aggressively anti-social, a sign of allegiance to a movement that sees the social world as an obstacle to its political goals.
The other phenomenon that fed heavily into this is reality TV. Packaging the disturbed behavior of people who clearly have Cluster B personality disorders as entertainment has consequences, one of which is that impressionable viewers will imitate them.
My own preferred terminology is 'pseudo-social' ... along with pseudo-reality (not virtual reality) ... which has pitched us into pseudo-politics. What I mean by that is that it seems to promise participation in all the enjoyable bits of politics and an escape from all of the difficult bits.
Great essay. I think there is still little to show for conservative efforts to build a cultural movement to rival hegemony of the left. But where they have found much more success is simply tearing things down, even absent a replacement, and leaving Americans more atomized and anti-social. And an atomized, anti-social public is one that is more fearful, more zero-sum, more susceptible to misinformation.
This is the nexus of working from home, getting your news from social media, filtering your social life through apps, streaming your entertainment from your couch, getting your thrills from mobile gambling, and having your meals delivered. In moderation, any of these things are basically fine. Most of us probably do some or all of these things from time to time. But when they congeal into a lifestyle of never-touch-grassism, and when millions of people fall into this lifestyle, is when it becomes a threat to society and then ultimately the Republic.
You are genuinely on to something here, Brian. I hope this essay gets wider distribution and prompts some thoughtful conversation.
Thanks Gary. Me too! Feel free to share…
This also explains the enthusiasm for AI. Right now, cultural production requires artistic creators, who tend to be more pro-social. Replacing art with AI slop allows for the creation of culture that's not "tainted" by the creators.
Brian, do you consider Substack, its writers, and their subscribers as a SM adjunct? I mean, if on-line engagement hours at a time are SM "benchmarks", put me down as addicted! I spend a ridiculous amount of time on an exponentially - growing Substack writer collective, to the exclusion of hard-copy mags and papers.
Sure, better here than fucking Facebook, Twitter, Bluesky...but still.
Substack has relatively tiny internal social media tools. I guess my weekly live chat is kinda like social media. (Or parasocial media?) But generally speaking: the enjoyment of reading ≠ social media addiction! And in any case, I really do not intend to shame people with social media addiction. Just help them reconceive the product.
When thinking about social platforms I think it's useful to qualify them on how much their discovery is mediated by algorithmic feeds, and how much the content is effectively endless. The engineers who designed the first algorithms for social media have spoken about using slot machines and gambling apps as inspiration. They hijack our dopamine systems in really insidious ways, and when the content is effectively endless that's a recipe for trouble.
So, worst social/quasi-social platforms in this rubric would be:
TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X - Threads and Bluesky would also count, but their limited size and certain specifics of their platforms make them slightly less dangerous
Next tier would be something like:
Snap, Reddit, and YouTube - these have some form of algorithmic discovery but the amount of content on them is limited... Snap content disappears, there's only so many posts on Reddit, and YT has always lagged TikTok in terms of ease of creation. YouTube is easily the closest on this tier to the ones above, though.
Platforms like Substack or Discord can have some negative effects, but their general lack of algorithmic feeds or endless content really alters the equation and makes their influence on society much less pernicious.
Well said, Hilary, it's of course the algorithmic hook of conventional SM that mediates users' content, whilst sites such as Substack serve as an online "bookstore", where readers can sample content largely free from push-driven covert data-mediated manipulation.
Thank you for this, Brian. As a (voluntarily) super-online person, it’s a fantastic reminder of how things are moving toward their inevitable conclusion and that I don’t have to continue to volunteer my time and attention to it.
And I will be forever haunted by the non sequitur I typed. <sigh>
I highly recommend checking out the Your Undivided Attention podcast, by https://www.humanetech.com/
They deep dive into the flaws of social media, to and how it can be mitigated.
One central point is that we must realize who we are up against. Big tech uses the most advanced and proven techniques that are out there to maximize the attention grab and manipulation. Just beating them with willpower is unlikely.
Pie-in-the-sky for sure, but Frances Haagen told us that algorithms are at the heart of social media evil, and that they can and should be regulated. Shouldn’t we at least keep that in mind?
Thank you Brian. A reminder of just how fragile the human mind and experience on this mortal coil really is.
In Maryland many are being bigfooted by big data which may damage or destroy forests, farmland, and wetlands - over head transmission lines and the structures that support them. The life beneath them can be damaged by their installation and use of water resources. In my mind this goes also to your well stated point. The tender connections made by proximity sustain not only human communal life but the actual breathing of the planet.
I second the folks commenting earlier, Brian. I found this a very thoughtful piece. I'll be rereading it again. I had mostly stopped using Twitter after Musk bought it, aside from continuing to read a few folks. After the election I realized I was just done with Elon and his madness. Fortunately lots of other folks were, as well, so I use Bluesky now. I spent my working career in hard-core nerd land. It was clear from the beginning that there were folks who were very intelligent who were also - shall we say - "socially challenged". Although it's been my experience that the very sharpest and rarest folks oftentimes weren't like that. Sadly, it doesn't seem as if many of the tech-bros reach that elite level.
No need to wait until Jan 1 to make the change, either!
You and the other overcompensating “cool kids” try, over and over, to drum Jesse Singal out of media because…he accurately reported on trans medicine, and your “emotional intelligence” got hijacked by your social crowd.
Eventually, the truth will be fully realized about how shoddy the facts were, and future generations will ask, as they now do with things like Recovered Memory, how we ever believed such things? If I’m present, I will point to people raised to place emotions and “reading the room” above truly critical thinking (not Critical Thinking), who treated pre-Musk Twitter as their God-given domain, and say “that’s why”. And now Bluesky is attempting to rebuild it, with equally deranged discourse.
This isn’t to say that some level of self-awareness and empathy aren’t necessary or useful to live in the world. One of my favorite pieces of writing is from Ellen Willis for the New Yorker, about how the popular kids in her high school worked to be thoughtful to others, etc. I can give credit where it’s due, but that’s not me, for example. Ironically, it looks to me like the pre-social media days were more forgiving of “weirdos”, the ones who keep asking “annoying” questions about assumed mores. My idols were people like Richard Feynman and Carl Sagan, who were willing to ask “rude” questions that pierced cooperative ignorance. How quickly would your cohort have cancelled them today, I wonder? Feynman seems to be dismissed as a womanizer, I’ve seen.
Your rant reads like trying to put the nerds back in the corner, where they should live out their smelly, lonely existence without bothering the rest of you to do the real work of parroting each other in bliss. Over time, I think you’ll get your wish; you are, after all, still the storytellers of the educated classes, and your narrative usually wins out, unless reality *really* smacks you upside the head (see first two paragraphs in this comment). Although…I hear there’s this site that allows for long form publishing that might get a toehold and allow the general public to read unmediated thoughts from other people that they can then use their own judgement, and not Yoel Roth’s, to agree or disagree with. You might want to start publishing there to push back the tide, but it might already be too late: I hear Jonathan Katz has said it’s already overrun with Nazis!
Thank you for illustrating Brian's point. Sigh.
Thoughtful post! Reminds me of Zuckerberg using woman's pictures without their consent in the proto-Facebook "Hot or Not."
So far, there haven't been (severe enough) consequences for liars or for people who believe liars.
Media bubbles are likely to persist. Eventually, the savvy will regain social cache and things will improve.
Do I track as an optimist - yes I'm an optimist. I have faith that people will eventually adapt to the tech onslaught.
Those specific endeavors may have failed, but the effort to create a more generally conservative environment has succeeded beyond most people's wildest dreams--or nightmares. The hippies back in the '60s told us we'd wind up here if we didn't make some serious changes back then, but not only have we forgotten that they were right, they're still figures of fun on all sides. WE NEED BETTER HIPPIES!