Where Do We Go Now?
We’re barely a month removed from the U.S. elections (where Republicans proved themselves too hostile for a hostile takeover) and the change of ownership at Twitter (definitely in hostile takeover mode by Elon Musk and those bankrolling him), and the mood has prompted even more of us in the media than usual to do the usual soul-searching about what we might have gotten wrong and what we might do better next time around. Or is it just me?
I certainly recall this as the m.o. since I studied politics and the press in a class taught by Roger Mudd 30 years ago this semester (I got an A-, fwiw).
But that was before the internet became The Internet, before FOX News and MSNBC, before social media, and before our collective social dilemma.
Watching The Social Dilemma on Netflix presents a rich irony, mouth agape at the revelations from people who worked on creating our social-media Frankensteins — then smirking at how even Netflix could not resist using their own algorithm to attempt to keep us on their platform.
Tristan Harris recognized the addictive structure of social media as a fatal flaw earlier than most, delivering “A Call to Minimize Distraction & Respect Users’ Attention” in February 2013, while he was working at Google. Seven years later, his warnings unheeded or snubbed, Harris told us all about how these apps took advantage of us — comparing the swipe-to-refresh to a Vegas slot machine: “That’s not by accident. That’s a design technique.”
Harris warned: “When you think about technology and it being an existential threat, that’s a big claim, and it’s easy to then think, in your mind, ‘OK, so there I am with the phone, scrolling, clicking, using it. Like, where’s the existential threat? OK there’s the supercomputer on the other side of the screen, pointed at my brain. It got me to watch one more video. Where’s the existential threat?’”
But it’s not existential at all: The technological techniques bring out the worst in us, and the worst in us poses a very real threat.
Justin Rosenstein, meanwhile, still felt in 2013 that he’d done good by creating the Like button for Facebook. Here he was describing his work then (which also included creating Facebook Pages so corporations could join):
But being a Silicon Valley human and not a Silicon Valley character, Rosenstein also came around, and regretted the Like button, telling The Social Dilemma: “When we were making the like button, our entire motivation was, ‘Can we spread positivity and love in the world?’ The idea that, fast-forward to today, and teens would be getting depressed when they don’t have enough likes, or it could be leading to political polarization, was nowhere on our radar.”
60 Minutes caught up with Harris last month, where he made the case that government regulation is not about free speech vs. censorship: “It’s regulating this business model of engagement. It’s not that social media is bad. It’s that social media has been corrupted by the perverse business model of maximizing engagement. That’s what has to change.”
This was true long before Musk began cashing in on his privilege, leveraging it for even more wealth, power, prestige and privilege, all while claiming he’s reinventing or innovating something that we already debated and figured out (tl; dr, that’s in essence the story of his life so far!). But this isn’t about how much of a problem Musk may present, or whether to stay on Twitter. To keep my TSwiftian reference streak going, it’s not about him or any version of them. It’s me. It’s us. We’re the problem, it’s us.
I’d already taken some proactive measures for my mental health before seeing The Social Dilemma, where they offered suggestions and revelations (perhaps most notably, that some of these social-media architects either didn’t use the apps at all and/or refused to allow their children to succumb to them, despite peer pressure).
Perhaps my best measure? Turning off notifications. In the year or two before I owned an iPhone, I could see just how much of a distraction those buzzes and beeps could cause among my friends who employed them. Removing the Facebook and Twitter apps from my phone also produced instant and dramatic relief from that addictive temptation. Of course, now that need gets fed from Instagram Stories, and even more from TikTok. A last-minute check before bed easily can turn into two hours of scrolling.
But before I finally get around to answering the question in my headline, it’s important to reflect upon just how culpable and complicit the old media industries remain in corrupting our daily discussions.
“If it bleeds, it leads”
This morally dubious media motto showed up in print 40 years ago in a broadcasting trade magazine, which not only cited “if it bleeds, it leads” as the policy at a Boston TV station in 1982, but also that the station was merely continuing the precedent established by previous executives in charge of local TV news coverage.
In the 2022 election cycle, particularly in the NYC media market, viewers were inundated with Republican ads attacking Democrats on rising crime, successful despite the facts not matching the feelings fueled. Here’s how The New York Times put it in an election post-mortem piece (gifted so no paywall for you to click), with relevant blurb blurbed below:
Thing is, the Times and the local TV news stations (also aided and abetted by Mayor Eric Adams and his constant talk about crime) played right into the propaganda. Just as they had and have for the Trump era, elevating the talking points and promoting them as news items, without doing the research.
Of course, you’d expect such stuff from a partisan media source, such as FOX News.
But it wasn’t just FOX. As at pointed out: “The New York Times mentioned climate change 4,150 times and crime 8,080 times. CNN mentioned climate 1,140 times and crime 6,450 times. And USA Today mentioned climate change 1,420 times and crime 2,560 times. CNN was particularly egregious, with 466 percent more mentions of crime than climate change. The totals can be found here.” And NPR noted wryly that reporting on crime is often misleading…on purpose?!
This also ain’t one of them thar “Only in New York” things, either. Just look what the police chief in Albuquerque, N.M., decided to announce the day AFTER the election.
Thanks for clearing that up, chief!
Why do TV newscasts still lead with crime? The cynical answer is crime = ratings; the realistically cynical answer, though, is because it’s so much easier to cover.
If you look at linear broadcast network TV ratings, or even across Netflix or podcasting, true crime porn and copaganda continues to have a hold on us as viewers and listeners. It’s no wonder that might bleed over, figuratively speaking, into TV news, too. But following the police scanner is easy. Court proceedings are likewise easy to plan an assignment desk around, and police departments and prosecutors alike are more than eager and willing to show the press how much they’re protecting and serving. The perp walk was made for TV, even if the practice of shaming criminals publicly dates back centuries.
Truth is, from TV to print to online, editors and reporters all too often chase the stories they can turn around the quickest. What’s going to get the biggest bang for the buck, as it were? At my first newspaper job out of college, the small-town CBS affiliate often spent most of their non-weather, non-sports time simply reporting on whatever stories we’d published that morning.
But for those of you still paying close attention to TV news (local or national network editions), even when you’re not having to wonder if the owners are mandating all of their stations to air the same stories or opinion pieces (here’s looking at you, Sinclair!), there’s still quite a bit of questionable on-air decision-making. Especially in NYC and LA, just clock how many minutes the local news spends on actors or programming that just so happens to also air on their network in primetime. Or news segments about future news segments. Or whenever someone dies who worked at the TV station. Whether they worked in front of or behind the camera, the anchors want us to know how beloved they were. Which is nice. And yet. It only reminds me that whenever a TV news crew wants us to see their humanity, it’s also an attempt to turn them into the story.
And then there’s the horse-race election coverage, which the mainstream media tells us every cycle they’ve learned their lesson, only to prove they never learn.
Not to mention all of the bending over backward to both-sides issues that only have one verifiably true side in an attempt to appear “fair and balanced” to readers and viewers. Although I just did mention it. Just now.
But still, social media also was supposed to fix all of this nonsense, so we wouldn’t have to put up with the excesses or the failures of traditional media, right? Right?!?!
So…now what?
Where do we go now, indeed? I do acknowledge the irony in how often I’ve been using Twitter still for this piece.
Ryan Broderick wrote last month that he worries more about the marginalized voices and communities who could shout out to each other and the world and be heard finally thanks to places such as Twitter and Facebook. And the longer Twitter stumbles onward, how long...will this keep going on...? Broderick wrote: “Which creates a situation that America, as a whole, has never been very good at dealing with: self control. If the site continues to fill up with hatred and misinformation, but is still entertaining or, worse, newsworthy, when do we stop using it? It was already a small app with longer tendrils of influence seeping out into every sector of society. And it’s basically ‘the assignment editor of the US media.’ As it becomes a darker space, what will that mean for the way we see the world?”
reminded me last month that the problem of metrics at scale -- whether it's numbers of followers or likes -- doesn't measure the quality of our conversations, either. And regardless of Musk's actual motives for buying Twitter, S/FJ rightly notes: “Twitter’s disgusting nature is not his fault, ultimately. Twitter is the official resentment platform, a dry drunk heaven where people are rewarded for asserting and holding on to their disdains. There is no post more popular than “FUCK THIS” and it is vastly depressing that I cannot blame that on capitalism. But I don’t need to worry because other ways are possible: even better, these ways exist.”
Where to, then, mis amigos?
I’ve already concluded that there’s no point (no good points, anyhow) in trying to replicate my Twitter or Facebook or Instagram experiences on a new platform. Or even Tumblr, as it turns out? (Although I did log back into my Tumblr, just to take one more look around) Those places may have failed me, but ultimately, I also know now what I actually want and need out of the interconnectedness we have at our fingertips. I definitely didn’t know what was best for me back then.
What did I look for initially?
As an entertainment reporter for newspapers in both Boston and NYC, I loved how MySpace first carved out a path for comedians to list their upcoming gigs, so I could go see them more easily. Then came Facebook and Twitter, which also kept me constantly informed. Wittingly or not, comedians became active news sources. Instagram still provides some of that sourcing as comedians promote shows before or after the fact (not surprisingly, my colleague Jason Zinoman hopes to stick with both Twitter and IG until it’s no longer possible).
But what are my needs or desires for social networking outside of news gathering?
Facebook still feeds me news about friends I might not hear about anywhere else; at least not in a timely fashion. Especially sadly but truly when friends, mutual friends and acquaintances die.
My follower counts tell a story, too. After I launched The Comic’s Comic in November 2007, I approved any and every friend request that came my way, blindingly naive in the expectation that the more FB friends I had, the more readers and website clicks would come my way. FB friends barely clicked through, however, and FB didn’t want anyone leaving FB, anyhow. I was too late in creating a separate FB Page for The Comic’s Comic. Eventually, I purged my FB feed of people I’d never met and never anticipated meeting. Leaving a collection of friends, acquaintances, former classmates from elementary school through college, exes and crushes old and new. Quite the hodgepodge. Not a place for learning about everyone’s political views, or even their hot takes on the news, actually. On Twitter, I also found a need to scale back my following, realizing I wanted the big numbers on my profile, but didn’t want the firehose of trivial drivel in my feed there, either. At about 2,000 FB friends and 500 Twitter accounts, it all still seems a bit too much.
I’m in no mood for propaganda, nor bad-faith arguments, nor even those who wish to dunk on them. All that does is clog my feed with nonsense, all while elevating such nonsense and making their horrible voices even louder and more prominent over everyone else that need to be heard.
Don’t even try to serve me up a progressive alternative to the Truth Socials, Rumbles, Gabs or Parlers, either. Give me a chamber without the echoes, please.
Although I wouldn’t mind having separate silos to serve my interests. I wasn’t joking when I hoped to encourage the founders of WitStream and ASpecialThing to fire their electronic engines back up. A place just for comedians to post witty things? A message board for comedians and comedy fans alike? Yes and yes, double please!!
I’m all for news, fun, and funny takes on the news. Would I be OK with one platform for comedy, one for news, and one for whatever other interest I might geek out on? Would you?
For me, so far, the best answers have come from Mastodon and Post.
I’ve had accounts on SpaceHey (a tribute to OG MySpace) and Vero, but barely anyone else I know and want to know has joined me there. CounterSocial I joined, then learned it’s a spin-off of Mastodon, and besides, not enough inertia there yet, either. Do I really want to wait for BlueSky because Jack from Twitter is behind it? I have friends who seemed to love Hive Social, but I never have — mostly because it’s phone-only and I have no desire for more things tying me to my phone, but even more than that, it so focuses your eyes on the metrics. How many likes, comments and quotes? If I see too many ZEROS in response to my posts, what are the odds I’ll self-radicalize in a feeble, desperate attempt for attention? No thank you. There was a huge, early problem with multiple people claiming usernames. And now it’s down, due to security issues. So thank you for that.
Mastodon
Mastodon gives off vibes of a professional cohort — as if LinkedIn actually figured out how to Facebook.
The instances (servers) offer closed networks, which also means you could find yourself siloed off a bit from voices you may hope to discover. Or if the server goes away, so does your data? 1) Hopefully I’m connected to the types of friends and colleagues who will boost updates from people I don’t already know, and I’ll do likewise. 2) If my data goes away, so what? Despite what these giant social media companies believe and depend upon, I’m not their employee. I’m not creating content for a social network messaging group. I’m creating and engaging in conversations. Much like I don’t keep archives of my real-life conversations or phone calls boxed up somewhere, I shouldn’t care about these chats, either. And those conversations that do matter, I should protect and preserve outside of the system. And I shouldn’t be posting secrets that I wouldn’t want the world to know about online, anywhere.
Post
Speaking of Posts, Post remains in beta mode.
It’s as important for me to remember that as it is for me to remind you, because that means the creators of the platform are still working on improvements to it. Which also means they haven’t let in so many potential users! Give it time to figure itself out and open the doors for everyone else to come in, and then see how we feel about it. I’m not sure I’m sold on micropayments. And if I looked under the hood too closely at the ownership structures of any of the companies I incorporate into my daily routines, I might have to change everything about my life! (Stay tuned for that Piffany, why don’tcha?)
Post clearly benefits from true influencers and gatekeepers, or whatever term you might ascribe to someone like Kara Swisher, who was talking up Post from the jump.
But Post already feels more open to me than Mastodon. Post feels more like if Tumblr acted more like OG Twitter.
So for now, there’s room for both of these social networking platforms in my life. I existed in the old places under my brand name, thecomicscomic. In the new places, I’m me: seanlmccarthy.
Just like I was back on AOL IM. Ah, memories. Now I’m remembering the early days of Gmail, when they included IM handles alongside Gmail handles, and whenever a contact was online, you’d see them and could strike up immediate chats. Those were grand times. Why can’t we have those times again?
It’s kinda wild, too, that Slack hasn’t attempted to break out from corporate chat and become a chat-for-all service.
The real social dilemma, if you want to break your brains with mind explosions, is coming to terms with the idea that we could have done social media correctly ourselves all along. If only we limited our networks to our actual friends and people we knew in real life. Instead we’ve allowed strangers and anonymous accounts and corporations to barge into our daily conversations, allowing them to get wildly out of hand. We’ve also willingly shared more than Too Much Information about ourselves and our philosophies with anyone who dared to click our way.
In the end, we control who’s in our network. The moderator is you. It’s me. It’s us.
