issue 1: join or die

09 Apr 2018 - Graham

previously: dissatisfaction

I want to escape the toxic realm of social media by creating an alternative venue for us to share rad ideas and culture.

I’d like to invite you to join me in the somewhat arduous project of publishing this weekly newsletter. You could contribute in small ways, like occasionally recommending one of your favorite albums or visual artists or articles or books. Or you could engage with the ideas of each issue by emailing me short thoughts on the current or upcoming topic from time to time (listed at bottom). Of course, you can also join in by reading.

I emailed you because I want your voice included here. If someone forwarded this to you, it means someone I trust thinks your voice should be heard here, too.

So do as Ben Franklin says:

I find myself carried high by the recent wave of anti-social-media sentiment and nostalgia for the open web of my youth. I deleted my facebook, to which I was certainly addicted, and my rarely-used twitter. I haven’t yet decided about instagram, but it also seems likely to go.

As a sometimes-introvert, the lower-costs of interacting on these platforms should be appealing. Instead, in my more introverted moods, facebook and instagram tend to sap my limited social resources and leave me feeling isolated.Tim Wu argued in February that these networks might produce unhappiness precisely because they are convenient:

Though understood and promoted as an instrument of liberation, convenience has a dark side. With its promise of smooth, effortless efficiency, it threatens to erase the sort of struggles and challenges that help give meaning to life. Created to free us, it can become a constraint on what we are willing to do, and thus in a subtle way it can enslave us.

Facebook and it’s ilk reduce my social life to the smooth and glimmering surface of relationships. And the unsatisfying nature of these relationships is exactly what keeps me coming back. Facebook is social heroin. It has kept me hooked on easy fixes that really only deepen a gnawing hunger for social approval.

And, on the political end, convenience begets omnipresence. David Grewal noticed that networks strive to reach a point of critical mass where membership becomes all but inevitable and the standards built into that network become an undemocratic force that governs our lives. Facebook’s algorithms aren’t transparent or democratically accountable. In fact, legally they must always choose to maximize shareholder value, i.e., advertising revenue, rather than the experience of users. Similarly, it is now clear that facebook cares about keeping our highly-sellable personal data private only to the degree that a lack of privacy might make us leave, and it is relatively sure that we won’t leave. As David points out, in our increasingly connected world, we find ourselves in the odd position of being both free and forced. Free to use the network to our seeming benefit and also forced to accept it’s terms.

This week’s album recommendation for those of us still filled with social media induced ennui

Related thoughts/links

• Ai Weiwei, How Censorship Works: ”The most elegant way to adjust to censorship is to engage in self-censorship. It is the perfect method for allying with power and setting the stage for the mutual exchange of benefit. The act of kowtowing to power in order to receive small pleasures may seem minor; but without it, the brutal assault of the censorship system would not be possible.” This seems to equally describe the functionally sovereign power of large networks.
• Lina Khan’s incredible article (and related, shorter op-ed) describes how the neutering of anti-monopoly law has made the accumulation of outrageous private power by Amazon and others possible.
• Stephen Johnson dedicated his most recent newsletter to this subject (via kottke.org)
• It’s good to remember there’s a long history of concern about the effects of mass media from pragmatist philosophers and Buddhists alike:
  • The telegraph, telephone, and radio put us “at the mercy of events acting upon us in unexpected, abrupt, and violent ways.” John Dewey, Freedom and Culture (1939).
  • “We submit ourselves to constant bombardment by sounds and images that come from minds other than our own, that fill our heads with information and trivia, other people’s adventures and excitement and desires. Watching television leaves even less room in the day for experiencing stillness. It soaks up time, space, and silence, a soporific, lulling us into mindless passivity.” Jon Kabat-Zinn,Wherever You Go There You Are (1994).
• For the more science-minded, here’s HBR on the recent research on the negative effects of facebook; and for the more emotional-minded, here’s Daniel Mallory Ortberg (via [Laura Olin]):WHY ARE YOU LONELY: A TEXT GAME.
• Seth Godin: ”Time to get off the social media marketing merry-go-round that goes faster and faster but never actually goes anywhere.”
• Anil Dash calls for a return to the open web (also via kottke.org)
• Yochai Benkler’s Wealth of Networks (2006) PDF is a great reminder of the still-not-extinguished promise of the now-nearly-dead-open-web.

Future topics

April 16: What is bike polo? Why would anyone do it?

April 23: Should we read the news? My answer: no.

April 30: Why is DC so basic and how is basic-ness related to gentrification?

love,

Graham

p.s. Don’t worry, I’m still working on Potluck.

next post: bike polo is ok