#20 The Vault, Insomnia and How Facebook is a Bad Ally
Hello from The Vault, my windowless basement office in downtown Tacoma between two Tiki bars. Some of you asked about the safe that came with my office. It doesn’t actually function. The dial doesn’t work and the lock is engaged so that the doors don’t shut completely. But that didn’t seem like any fun, so I unscrewed the covering on the inside door and removed the locking mechanism, then hammered the bolts back in. Then the thing successfully shut. I tried to open it again and for a few seconds it wouldn’t open and I thought how stupid I was to shut a broken safe with office supplies, a couple hard drives, some booze, and yes, even some cash inside. But then I found a good yank would open it.
Here are some photos for those of you interested in such things.
I’ve finished my second semester at Goddard College. And the ‘Fall’ Semester starts literally next week and last until November. For the first time the residency portion of this program is going to be entirely online thanks to the pandemic. This was the main reason for my deciding to rent an office so that I’ll have a space from which to attend and work my virtual residency. I spent most of my morning at one of the giant white boards in my office putting together my schedule for the upcoming residency. Now it looks like this.
Okay, on with the newsletter.
What I’m Watching - Chris Nolan Movies #3 - Insomnia
Christopher Nolan’s third theatrical film has a lot going for it. Insomnia stars Al Pacino, Robin Williams, and Hillary Swank. It’s the story of a couple of Los Angeles homicide detectives sent to a remote part of Alaska during a time of year when it never gets dark. They’re there to solve the murder of a teenage girl. It’s technically a remake of a 1997 Norwegian film of the same name. Pacino does a fine job playing the detective and Robin Williams reminds us he has the ability to be very creepy. Hillary Swank is great as the local cop, but she honestly isn’t given much to do. There’s nothing in the movie I didn’t like. It’s just that there’s also nothing in the movie that’s all that memorable.
Nolan does a little bit of playing with perception thanks to Pacino’s character’s inability to sleep. This is one of the few aspects of the movie that makes it feel like a Nolan film. But for the most part this is simply a standard whodunit with a couple of interesting twists. In that way, it’s probably Nolan’s least innovative film. It’s a solid movie where everyone involved has done better work.
Insomnia was the only Christopher Nolan movie I had not seen before. I really wanted to like it more than I did. But I think I prefer the original. Stellan Skarsgård is so much more unsettling as the detective in that one. Pacino is a great actor but he doesn’t do the unsettling thing the way Skarsgård can pull it off.
Next: The Prestige
What I’m Thinking About
Over the last few weeks have you noticed that you’re arguing more on Facebook? This is no accident and it’s not necessarily your fault.
Facebook is facing a potentially existential threat. Major brands and firms are choosing to pull their ads from Facebook because of their laissez-faire attitude towards spreading lies and hate. This has resulted in a $56 billion drop in value of Facebook and a loss of over $7 billion for Mark Zuckerberg.
With brands leaving, Facebook’s only real recourse (because cutting the lies and hate doesn’t necessarily mean brands will come back and frankly Mark doesn’t seem to want to cut them,) is to increase user engagement on Facebook so that they can solidify those sticking with Facebook and say, “Look how many billions of people are constantly using our service and how many eyes will be on your advertisement.”
Facebook knows how to keep people engaged. We spend the most amount of time on social media when we’re arguing with someone. So Facebook’s algorithm is showing us people who agree with us and then showing us someone who doesn’t just so we can attack them. And they’re showing people who disagree with us our most extreme posts so that they can attack us. This increases engagement and it also makes us into bitchy people entrenched in our opinions fighting endlessly with no real solution because we’re too busy telling the other person what a shitty person they are never paying attention to the sort of shitty person we’re becoming.
Or put another way, Facebook is manipulating us into becoming terrible people in order to make money.
It gets worse. Facebook makes us unhappy and polarized. So our opinions don’t simply change thanks to new information, they become more extreme due to information curated to make us more extreme.
Here are a few examples. I am for substantial police reform that includes demilitarization, required body cams, extensive training and retraining, federal prosecutors for all police involved shootings, and an increased use of social workers in situations that have typically been dealt with by cops. But I was called a bad ally, gross, on the wrong side of history and any number of other things for failing to be more extreme and refusing to endorse the ‘defund the police’ slogan.
A friend of mine simply asked that people not be vulgar or belligerent while arguing with a Trump supporting friend. For that they were told they were a bad ally and that they themselves were being abusive.
Another friend of mine suggested that the face masks we’ve all been encouraged to use may give us a false sense of security. This of course was met with people suggesting my friend was against masks when they are not.
The polarization that Facebook tries to induce in us all isn’t arbitrary. Computers like ones and zeroes. They like sorting things in Box One or Box Two. Are you pro-gun or anti-gun? Are you pro-mask or anti-mask? Are you Alt-Right or Ultra-Left? A computer knows what to do with you if you fit in a box. And if you don’t yet fit in a box, it knows how to push you towards one box or another. If you let it.
Long time readers will recall that I’ve been talking about leaving Facebook for years. But, much like the Trump presidency, while it was obvious that it was bad a long time ago, it’s now become so glaring that the only people still supporting it are either ignorant or stupid.
There are reasons that leaving Facebook entirely is probably not a good idea for me right now. Mainly because as long as it’s the most popular social media platform, it remains a good source of information on homicide victims for TacomaStories. Also there are friends I have no other way to communicate with. But I think over time both of those things will fade.
As of right now though, if I see something I disagree with on Facebook, I’m just going to let it go because I know that arguing on Facebook is bad for everyone.
- Jack