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

Signed-off-by: Christine Dodrill <me@christine.website>
2021-01-26 16:34:04 -05:00 · 2021-01-26 16:34:04 -05:00 · 654d8915e7
parent 990cce7267
commit 654d8915e7
2 changed files with 273 additions and 2 deletions
--- a/Cargo.lock
+++ b/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",
--- a/blog/social-media-mistake-2021-01-26.markdown
+++ b/blog/social-media-mistake-2021-01-26.markdown
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 ---
 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.