I.
During the pandemic, right when I was dialing back my legal practice and engaging with a writing practice, I re-engaged with Social Media. I hadn’t really done much with it during the 2010s but for a while I really took a deep dive into a few platforms, especially Twitter.
I won’t lie, those were glorious times (roughly, 2018-2021) for both me and the platform. For example, 2018 and 2019 were the only two years Twitter ever turned a profit. More importantly, Twitter had, for lack of a better term, become the ‘cool kids table’ of the internet. It was, simultaneously, the best bet for all of the following:
√ Real-time, investigative journalism—for example, it was where many of us, myself included, watched some of the January 6th coup attempt, live, on the ground (News? Check!).
√ Some of the snarkiest and most clever comedians held sway ever—Bo Burnham’s Twitter feed was one of the funniest things I’d ever seen—though, it should be noted, he is not a fan of Twitter, itself (Entertainment? Check!)
√ The latest info from the latest feeds from all the legacy media sources, as well as educational institutions, could be found there, too (Expert Information Gatekeepers? Check!).
√ Despite the small character counts, it was a great place to see writing and writers, ply their trade in real time. (Example of creativity on the regular? Check!)
Of course, as with any modern social media platform, there were problems—the addictive nature of seeking social validation online *AND* the (again) addictive design of the platforms themselves, the FOMO despite the overwhelmingly negative focus of most content (aka “doomscrolling”), the Trolls bending all the conversations to the most extreme ends of the discussion, etc etc.
Yet, despite all of that, if you were an adult (y’know fully functioning pre-fontal cortex and all that), and you had your wits about you, and you were mindful, and you understood just what the platform was trying to do to you…okay, okay sheesh, that IS a LOT of CAVEATS…anyway, if you had all of that, it was possible for one to have a basically positive (read: “not totally unhealthy”) experience. Or, at least to have a fighting chance at one.
Okay, the bar was set low—but it wasn’t entirely awful, is my point. Metaphor alert: It was the carbonated water in the vending machine that was the Internet.
Which, of course, was why it had to go.
I won’t recount every detail of Elon Musk’s systematic deconstruction of just about everything that was positive about it. Some of the highlights were how Musk fired 80% of his own employees, doxxed his own former head of “Trust and Safety”, and how he seems to be, at a time where fascism is afoot in the US, a neo-nazi enthusiast. What can you do? You can take the boy out of the Apartheid, but…
Now, although I no longer use it, the platform still exists, of course. It is now “X” (or, as in my title, “Xitter”…for which I like to use the Chinese pronunciation of the X, if anyone was missing that). But it is now, by many accounts, a shadowy cesspool of its former self.
And the numbers would seem to reflect that. In the intervening 16 months (as of Feb ’24) since Musk’s takeover, usage has dropped by 25% and revenues have tanked, going down Fifty-two Percent (- 52%)!
Of course, the modern-day billionaire owner class care nothing for profit (Uber has never turned a profit. Nor has Spotify. Truly. Look it up). Think about it: what would they care about making profits? They’re billionaires!
No, they wan’t to control the conversation.
II.
Here’s the thing, though: We absolutely need the conversation to be controlled. Well, curtailed, anyway.
Studies show that humans do not respond well to having too many choices. It’s called Choice Overload, and for people of my generation, we see it all around us. You want media choices? There used to be three TV networks and PBS, a handful of newspapgers (a mix of local and natioinal), and the Radio. Oh, and magazines (some of which us guys would hide under the bed). Meanwhile, music stores had slews of a available albums to purchase for listening. Sounds like a lot, hunh?
Now, of course, there has been a exponential increase of choice for all of the above. First cable TV, now streaming. News outlets? On the internet, as many of them as you like. And so forth. So, the punchline about choice overload is: when humans are given too many choices, they tend to both not choose and to be increasingly unhappy about it.
My wife can attest to this. I have, personally, spent well over 90 minutes—shorter than it takes to watch some movies—scrolling to try and pick which movie to stream.
Jaron Lanier has been a leading technologist in Silicon Valley for over forty years. He demonstrated some virtual reality at a TedTalk all the way back in the 1980s. And I’ll let him explain his stance on Social Media in his own words:
“Facebook, for instance, has published research bragging that they can make people sad and they don’t realize they were made sad by Facebook. Now, by the way, you might wonder: ‘Why would Facebook publish that? Wouldn’t they want to hide that fact? That sounds pretty bad!’
“But you have to remember: you’re not the customer of Facebook…[the advertisers are].”
And, oh, by the way: therein endeth the Media Literacy sermon: We must remember this, over and over again…
…We are not the audience. We are the product.
So, we have a huge (largely ticked off, see the effects of social media mentioned above) population, desparate for information and without anyone to curate it for them in any meaningful way. Hunh. I mean, what can go wrong with that?
Well, into that breach, in jumps the Social Media companies. As you all are well aware, more and more, that’s where we get our “news”. More than half of us use SM for our news sources.
The thing is, “news” isn’t a fungible commodity. It’s a process. Just calling something news doesn’t make it so (sidebar: which is why Fox News, in court, repeatedly, in civil trial after civil trial where they’ve been a defendant, always uses the defense (under oath): “We’re not news, we’re just entertainment.”)
“News” implies verification of facts, adherence to standards of ethics, and at least a nod towards objectivity. There is no earthly reason to expect any of that on Social Media. This is how we’ve entered our modern world of “Media Overload”, or “headline stress disorder”.
In a previous life, I was a ‘technologist’, too. I was, at one time or another a “Research Programmer”, “Systems Analyst”, “Programming Instructor”, “Cisco Networking Academy Instructor”, and a “ WAN/LAN System Administrator”. I used to be an early adopter of every technology, just as a matter of self-identity. I was a ‘tech guy’, so I felt I had to. But, over time, I learned that—while the real world can be (and largely, was) augmented by our technological revolutions (“The Internet”)—there is always a danger of losing the thread.
We are naturally inquisitive beings: But we are using technology to happily search for info in a way that isn’t really that effective in getting us the information and is actually making us more unhappy.
III.
So, what do we do? What did I do?
The article I just cited (and many more) offer a goodly number of excellent suggestions {with a few helpful additions from moi}.
√ Turn off all notifications.
√ Add [ME: deliberate, not aspirational] tech-free periods to the day.
√ Don’t bring phones to the dinner table [or other intimate social gatherings].
√ Limit social media checks to 15 minutes [or project/question-specific deep-dives].
√ Parents can model good behaviors by not constantly checking their phone. For instance, when they are waiting in line, they can chat with the people around them rather than stay glued to the small screen.
For my part, just was important as all of those tactics was an attitude adjustment.
I got mindful.
I stopped doomscrolling when I combined a i) self-awareness of how much time and angst I was consuming while doomscrolling, along with ii) a healthy pessisim that the information I was going to get on SM was going to be accurate, anyway.
This was easier, because it was during a healthcare emergency (Covid). You all remember: it was the time when the SM algorithms, in their never-ending quest for engagement, promoted sensationalist anti-vax misinformation…all of which led to hundreds of thousand unnecessary deaths in the US alone.
Recently, someone I follow on LinkedIn started posting all of that same garbage in my feed again and it was a bit shocking. Like a time machine, suddenly I was back in the midst of the chaos and Trumpian misinfo (bleach, really?) in the Summer of 2020. I could literally feel my blood-pressure rise.
…My wife and I were *in* one of those emergency rooms that the naywayers say didn’t really happen, with the covid-infected patients in carts lining the damn hallways of the hospital…I mean, I saw that s*$t with my own eyes… (!!!) …
So, you know what I did?
I didn’t reply or argue or subtweet or fret or anything else. I just moved on. The half-dozen people or so who “liked” those ignorant remarks are just going to be that much worse off the next time they need a vaccine, I guess.
And THAT is what my anti-doomscrolling strategy looks like.
After all, sometimes “engagement” is just a fancy word for addiction to drama.
And, now, I only do one of those aforementioned ‘deep dives’ when I am strongly interested in the subject. I don’t surf for recreation, so much, any more.
Sure, I get sidelined by fun stuff. And, sure, sometimes I just surf for funny youtube videos, or whatever—but, hey, have you ever done that with a group of friends and family, together?
It’s a completely different dynamic.
A healthy one.
Enjoy your fizzy water.
Thanks for writing this Mark. Love the Xitter term. I see many similarities to your more deliberate information practice and the "conscious reading" part of AverPoint. https://learn.averpoint.com/home/intro