blog: add philosophical post about social media (#310)

Signed-off-by: Christine Dodrill <me@christine.website>

Cargo.lock

@@ -1785,7 +1785,6 @@ dependencies = [
  "percent-encoding",
  "pin-project-lite 0.2.3",
  "serde",
- "serde_json",
  "serde_urlencoded",
  "tokio 0.2.24",
  "tokio-tls",
@@ -2805,7 +2804,6 @@ dependencies = [
  "pretty_env_logger",
  "prometheus",
  "rand 0.8.2",
- "reqwest 0.10.10",
  "reqwest 0.11.0",
  "ructe",
  "sdnotify",

blog/social-media-mistake-2021-01-26.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,273 @@
+---
+title: "Was Social Media a Mistake?"
+date: 2021-01-26
+tags:
+ - philosophy
+---
+
+# Was Social Media a Mistake?
+
+<big>Subjective Opinions Ahead</big>
+
+This entire post is a big pile of opinions. Please feel free to skip this one if
+you don't want to hear it. It says so in the footer of each page, but I want to
+emphasize that these opinions are my own and not that of my employers (past,
+current or future). This is my subjective opinion. I cannot be unbiased about
+this topic (though I also doubt that anyone who has experienced it can be), so
+instead of trying to pretend to be unbiased in this article I'm just going to
+let the words out.
+
+I also don't really have any solution to propose in this article. This is a
+problem that is way bigger than a single shitposter like me can really handle on
+their own. I am one person among an unfathomably large crowd. If this makes you
+think, then I have done my job.
+
+Buckle up, I'm doing a philosophy.
+
+>                            It is difficult
+>     to get the news from poems
+>               yet men die miserably every day
+>                                      for lack
+>     of what is found there.
+
+- [Asphodel, That Greeny Flower](https://poets.org/poem/asphodel-greeny-flower-excerpt) (William Carlos Williams)
+
+Traditionally, getting your message in front of thousands or millions of people
+required you to be a public figure working for a media company. The idea of a
+self-service tool for individuals to get a message out to anyone who cared to
+read it was expensive, and usually limited to small areas due to the expense of
+mailing things. [In the late
+1960's](https://www.history.com/news/who-invented-the-internet),
+[ARPANET](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET) was created by the US
+Department of Defense as a project to enable remote access to computers over the
+existing phone network. Some of the first services that were created are
+constants even today: remote login, file transfer and email. After a decade of
+experimentation, the National Science Foundation funded the installation of
+supercomputers at a few universities and provided connectivity between them.
+Ordinary people wanted to hook into these supercomputers and the internet as we
+know it today blossomed forth.
+
+With this new network it was easier than ever to get your message out to the
+world, all you needed to do was install expensive hardware, an expensive type of
+phone line and potentially custom software to serve your message over a protocol
+such as [Gopher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)). Or, you could
+just lease space from someone else who had set all this up. During this time
+everything was a bit experimental. Everything was quirky. Personality and flair
+oozed from the edges of every handcrafted page you set your eyes on. Of course,
+making those pages was an art in its own right.
+
+These bursts of creativity gave people ideas, and as time progressed, companies
+formed around the idea of making it easier to let people get their message out
+to the internet via their servers. Geocites, Livejournal, Blogger, Wordpress,
+Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Orkut and others formed to help people communicate.
+Facebook became larger than most countries. Twitter became the communications
+media of choice for global superpowers. Wordpress became one of the biggest
+attack vectors on the internet. Geocites lived, died and was reborn. The
+survivors were branded "social media". Social media forms the backbone of a lot
+of our modern culture. You probably got the link to this article from some form
+of social media.
+
+> "Glum, Marc, glum" The clap on the shoulder made him start, look up. It was
+> that brute Henry Foster. "What you need is a gramme of soma. All the
+> advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects".
+
+- Brave New World (Aldous Huxley), Location 672-674
+
+And through all of it people got their messages out. Entire social movements
+were formed on the backs of those messages. Without those messages, I probably
+would not exist in the way that I currently do. Those messages have changed me
+and likely have changed _countless_ other people too.
+
+So, now that we have everyone communicating so openly, freely and to mass
+audiences, what are the societal consequences? A country divided. Left and
+right, red and blue, messages of love twisted into messages of hate, divisions
+across cultural and ideological boundaries. Has it all really been worth it? Is
+the ability to communicate so quickly so far really a net benefit for us all?
+
+<center>
+
+![](https://cdn.christine.website/file/christine-static/blog/rmdA6xJ.jpg)
+
+</center>
+
+- [Duck or Rabbit?](https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a18662) - Paul Noth
+
+Has it really been worth destroying families in its wake?
+
+What about those with chronic anxiety disorders or other similar things?
+
+There's a good word for what happens as a result of this:
+[doomscrolling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomscrolling).
+
+To put it lightly, 2020 has not been a year with much in the "good news"
+department. A global pandemic separated people. Conventions were cancelled.
+Travel became all but impossible. We had the ability and foresight to see it
+coming but we still fucked it up. 
+
+> come on brain make the happy chemical you lump of fuck
+
+- [housewive#1](https://twitter.com/heebiejeebis/status/1123236591755874304)
+
+Sex sells movies, but doom sells newspapers. And on social media, negative
+articles perform better. Doom makes people afraid. Fear makes people angry.
+Anger makes people react. Reactions drive engagement. Engagement makes the
+algorithm put that article in front of more people so it can make the anger
+happen all over again.
+
+> Fear is the path to the dark side.<br />
+> Fear leads to anger.<br />
+> Anger leads to hate.<br />
+> Hate leads to suffering.<br />
+> I sense much fear in you.
+
+- Yoda, The Phantom Menace
+
+Is The Algorithm to blame? People talk about The Algorithm like it's some kind
+of benevolent god that gives them the happy chemical sometimes. How does what
+The Algorithm optimizes for have effects on society at large? By putting posts
+that are bound to cause engagement (basically reactions) in front of the largest
+audience possible, how does this affect people? How does this affect their
+worldviews? How does this affect how people percieve what is true and what is
+false?
+
+One of the biggest hits that social media has done to our world is that it's
+made truth become a relative thing instead of an objective thing. Take the
+recent 2020 election for example. There are people who believe that Donald Trump
+objectively won the election, despite all of the other correlating evidence that
+leads others to conclude the exact opposite. This seems confusing at first. To
+become the president you need to win the election. To win the election you need
+more electoral votes. Joe Biden got more electoral votes, therefore Biden won
+the election, therefore Joe Biden is the new president of the US.
+
+But these [alternative facts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSrEEDQgFc8)
+persist. Thanks to idiologies such as QAnon, these views flourish. Thanks to
+social media, they have places to communicate, re-interpret and plan. Where does
+the responsibility of individuals end and the responsibility of platforms begin?
+
+> Each individual must know them self to be free of all forms of external
+> reliance. This is not to imply that one should not trust others or band
+> together in alliances of friendship and community. It is simply a warning that
+> relative truth is constantly shifting in the hands of those who desire to
+> control, and even though their motives may be of good will, it is still a form
+> of control.
+
+- [The Shifting Models of Existence](https://wingmakers.com/writings/philosophy/chambertwo/) (WingMakers)
+
+Are we really all that different? We're all human. We are all limited. What real
+benefit do we reap by this separation? What do we gain by letting us get so
+divided that we can't realistically see the chasm being bridged?
+
+Can this chasm be bridged?
+
+What of the ruined lives in the wake?
+
+Without social media though, my best friends would be unknown to me (if they
+even ended up existing). My fiance would be a stranger to me. This blog likely
+wouldn't exist in its current form. I would have never questioned my gender. I
+would have never done all of the things that have lead me to be the person I am
+today. I would not have the job I have today. I would not have the career I have
+today (early in my career, networking over slack and IRC while delivering pizzas
+is literally how I got my break into the industry). Social media is how I keep
+in touch with my family. To put it simply, social media's proliferation is a
+good part of how I managed to become the self-realized nonbinary person I am.
+Without it existing I would be a vastly different person.
+
+It makes me wonder how others are affected like I have been. How many would come
+out as transgender without knowing the concept exists? How many would feel safe
+to speak out against taboos without spaces to explore what taboos even are?
+
+Is it the _implementation_ of social media that is flawed or is it the _concept_
+that is flawed?
+
+According to [this post by Boston University's College of
+Communication](https://sites.bu.edu/cmcs/2017/11/16/printing-press-digital-age-and-social-movements/)
+human communication has had three major phases of development:
+
+- Oral Tradition
+- Literacy/Books/Print Media
+- Electronic Communication/Social Media
+
+We are just on the cusp of the last phase beginning, from a grander history
+scale that is. The age of literacy and print media lasted for at least
+_thousands_ of years. Social media and the interet has existed for 50 years by
+the most liberal estimates. Maybe this is one of those cases where large changes
+in these models cause outright societal chaos _because_ it exposes the biases
+that we've already had for so long. Are things chaotic because of the change or
+is the change making things chaotic?
+
+<center>
+
+![The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the
+time of
+monsters.](https://cdn.christine.website/file/christine-static/blog/tumblr_e2c8ae84bcc1e8489d9c429f64c26aab_a6117f36_500.jpg)
+
+</center>
+
+Just because we can get Uncle Bob's hot takes on the geopolitical state of
+affairs between the US and Canada, does that mean we _should_? How do we know
+what's more accurate: memes shared in parenting groups or news articles behind
+paywalls? Why is it easier to get junk food than it is to get healthy things? 
+
+This [post on
+/r/starslatecodex](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most_of_what_you_read_on_the_internet_is_written/)
+comes to mind. Its main thesis (that it does an admittedly poor job defending)
+is that most of what you read on the internet is written by a tiny fraction of
+people that don't represent the rest very well. If you've run communities in the
+past I'm sure you are familiar with the power laws at play:
+
+- 90% of people lurk and contribute only spairingly
+- 9% of people actively contribute to discussions or create new one
+- 1% of people seemingly have no other social life outside that community
+
+Those top 10% of contributors are either somewhat sensible people (in rare
+cases) or more than likely not representative of rest that just passively lurk. 
+We can see these patterns arise in other places too. Most people that read books
+consume them without contributing to discussions about them. Even fewer people
+are authors. Fewer are prolific authors. Politics (via voting rates), recipe
+groups, even multi-level marketing scams fall into these power rules.
+
+Is this power rule something that is just natural for humans?
+
+Was social media a mistake or could it actually end up being a net benefit like
+the printing press turned out to be? What societal changes will we need to make
+as a result of everyone being able to contact everyone else with the touch of a
+button?
+
+> This discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls,
+> because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external
+> written characters and not remember of themselves.
+> 
+> The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to
+> reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of
+> truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they
+> will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be
+> tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.
+
+- Socrates, commenting on writing and literacy
+
+The printing press changed so much because it made books available to the
+masses. Before the advent of the printing press, making a book could literally
+take a trained scribe decades. As such they were so expensive that only the
+elite could afford them. The printing press made it easy for the masses to be
+able to have books of their own. Not to mention it also made it easy for authors
+and writers to create books too. Without a lot of these stories, a good chunk of
+our culture would not exist. However at the same time because it was so easy to
+churn out print media (compared to hiring a scribe for years, etc) the printing
+press had real societal consquences. The renaissance was spread on the back of
+the printing press. Christianity spread as a result of the printing press making
+it so easy to print out bibles. Public libraries came into existence, changing
+how books were used as a fundamental resource.
+
+Is social media the new printing press? If so, what impact will it end up having
+on us all?
+
+---
+
+I don't know the answers to a lot of these questions. I don't know if they can
+be answered today. I don't know if it is possible to answer these questions. But
+damn if they don't make me think a lot. There is just so much ground to cover
+when you're talking about something like this that encompasses just about
+_everything_. These are complicated questions. There are a billion moving parts.
+
+However, I think that if our society survives long enough to see it, social
+media will end up becoming central to our lives in ways that we can't even imagine.