Out of the dust
My incremental abandonment of social media continues with the deletion of my latest victim, Goodreads. On Goodreads you build lists of books you’re reading, have read, and would like to read—and share this info with friends who do the same. It’s about as innocent as a social media platform can get. But tossing Goodreads in the grave alongside Facebook, Instagram, and the tweeting part of Twitter has brought me a slight wave of relief.
I struggle to provide a sufficient answer as to why I feel better having withdrawn from most social media, though, because I don’t think using it is categorically wrong or morally inferior. So I’m trying to sort through why it mostly feels icky to me.
I recently read a few things that may have inched me closer to something resembling a satisfying answer:
“Quiet Down” by Maddie Crum, The Baffler
We’ll start with this wonderful piece, in which the author reviews two new books about withdrawal from the public sphere, How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency and Silence: A Social History of One of the Least Understood Elements of Our Lives.
Maddie Crum writes:
Today, the perils of being seen are obvious. To be seen and heard online is to brace yourself for reactions, which are immediate and public. It’s become difficult to decouple expression from how it’ll likely be received, to share without an awareness of how it’ll play out. Will my opinions be misunderstood, and if so, what will the consequences be? Or, will my opinions be championed, showered in the likes I’ve been incentivized to crave? Fear of rebuke may prevent a writer from expressing negative or controversial thoughts; likewise, the hope of reward can lead to a glossier, catchier, and therefore more banal tone.
Crum articulates an idea I tried to get at in my December 2018 letter when I said that when we get into the habit of broadcasting our thoughts, we are susceptible to playing a weird politicking game in our heads every time we begin formulating opinions or enjoying experiences. For me, the mild unspoken pressure that my thoughts are drafts for future tweets makes the thinking process needlessly hurried and complicated.
But doesn’t a retreat from the digital public square smack of privilege? Isn’t there a social obligation to stay logged on? Crum notes both authors advocate that ultimately, “It’s easier to listen when you aren’t speaking, and it’s easier to envision your place within a broader landscape when you look outside of yourself.”
Which reminds me of Thomas Merton, the monk who lived most of his adult life secluded in a Kentucky monastery while still an influential ally in the civil rights movement. In Faith and Violence, Merton writes that there is a difference between shielding yourself from the pain felt by the vulnerable and the refusal to constantly consume content:
Certainly events happen and they affect me as they do other people. It is important for me to know about them too: but I refrain from trying to know them in their fresh condition as “news.”
He continues:
when you hear the news without the “need” to hear it, it treats you differently. And you treat it differently too.
Taking a step back from certain aspects of social media means that I don’t get to be part of the “conversation” and thus occasionally feel like I don’t count. This might be the most challenging aspect of not being extremely online. But it’s currently the best way for me to see the world more clearly, to separate the signal from the noise. Merton again:
My own experience has been that renunciation of this self-hypnosis, of this participation in the unquiet universal trance, is no sacrifice to reality at all. To ‘fall behind’ in this sense is to get out of the big cloud of dust that everybody is kicking up, to breathe and to see a little more clearly.
Getting out of the dust: that’s the hope.
“Status as a Service” by Eugene Wei, Remains of the Day
Eugene Wei is a media and technology sage who formerly worked at Amazon and Hulu. His recent blog post is incredibly long, so I’ll try to summarize the relevant points.
Wei assumes two things are true: (1) people are status-seeking, and (2) people seek the most efficient path to maximizing status.
Social networks often find prolonged success when they issue something Wei calls a “status token.” Users will try to gain tokens through “proof of work.” Over time, Wei says, it becomes more difficult to accrue new tokens, creating built-in scarcity of status.
This all sounds very abstract, so think of Status Tokens as retweets or likes. Think of Proof of Work as a clever joke on Twitter or a beautiful photo on Instagram. Now we see that Proof of Work “defines the scoreboard which users compete on. It separates users by their skill at that Proof of Work and creates a relative status ladder.”
Social networks run on global scoreboards. So when I share something on them, I’m not really sharing—I’m competing against everyone else who tells funny jokes on Twitter or publishes insightful posts on Facebook or uploads their patio brunch on Instagram. The algorithmic feed is the arena, where the scoring is constant and the feedback is instant. We quickly learn what tends to get us more Status Tokens, and so we spend our energy on our Proof of Work.
This status game is tiring, and I’ve played it for too long.
Putting it all together, then: I see this prolonged season of social media detachment as a way to (1) protect my thinking and experiences; (2) zoom-out and see more clearly; and (3) not burn out from the competition.
Thankfully, I’ve been able to find elsewhere much of the utility that these social networks provide. I chat daily with my writer’s collective on a private Slack—where there is no competitive mechanism. I also have this newsletter, which allows me to work out my thoughts in a quasi-public-facing way but with less pressure to chase clicks or hunt for readers.
Here are three more great pieces I read since the previous issue:
“The Ills That Flesh Is Heir to” by B.D. McClay, The Hedgehog Review
“Workism Is Making Americans Miserable” by Derek Thompson, The Atlantic
“The Trauma Floor” by Casey Newton, The Verge
THANKS FOR READING HALGORITHM
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Until next time,
Hal