This week thugs stormed into the US capital building—because of what they believed. If they believed fake news, then was this news from normal, traditional media? No, it was from social media, beginning with tweets from their government’s Chief Executive Officer. As I see it, Social Media Kills.
Today, curating what others have said, I offer one blog paragraph, two blog comments, and a whole blog post.
Sources:
First three, Whatever… whatever.scalzi.com. October 18, 2020
Last one, Seth’s Blog… https://seths.blog. December 26, 2020
From former journalist John Scalzi comes this gem of a paragraph that packs a lot in: I would say, “best to read it slowly.” I mean, if there can be a “slow food” concept then there can be a “slow reading” concept too.
The paragraph is a third point in Scalzi’s Reporting In From Trump Country, where he lives.
3. A whole bunch of the voters are being fed shit from social media and questionable news sources and either they don’t know it or they don’t care. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the epistemic capture in the US of (not only, but in particular) poor and working class whites by conservatives, billionaires and propagandists is one of the great social engineering success stories of the last half century. This includes an informational ecosystem that’s easy to get into and hard to get out of because it simultaneously stimulates fear and anger responses, degrades one’s own ability to reason, and breeds mistrust in outside sources and political points of view. In other words: cult conditioning.
Scalzi’s post included two comments regarding traditional media. The first comment was an eye opener for me, since I don’t live in a US small town or rural area.
Just a note that some of us get our news from FaceBook because some areas of the country no longer have newspapers. I live in a small town about an hour from the nearest big city.
I subscribed to the big city daily paper and my local 3 times a week paper. The big city paper decided it wasn’t economically feasible to keep delivering to the boonies about 2 years ago, and the local paper dropped to once a week after the 2nd month of COVID. The only thing keeping it alive is the legal requirement that legal notices still have to be published in an actual paper.
I keep up with news through the AP, CNN, and Rueters websites, and I finally got a NYT digital subscription, but I’m a motivated news junkie who doesn’t have cable. Most of my neighbors’ only media source is cable tv, the local radio station, and what they see on FB. God help us.
Much lower in the long comment thread someone responded (perhaps Laura again).
@Another Laura
Newspapers have been declining since the advent of the 6pm news. The *rapid* decline came when the Interwebs happened. Instead of getting a whole paper whether you agreed with everything in it or not, now you could choose the news you *wanted* to hear. Also, craigslist knocked the knees out of most newspapers–classified ads were cheap but reliable sources of income for newspapers and then social media delivered the coup de grace.
When was the last time you placed a classified ad in a newspaper that wasn’t court-mandated? Or bought an actual newspaper instead of getting the news for free online? Choices matter.
Full disclosure: I used to be in the business and am no longer in it for the obvious reason.
Newspapers are a business. If you (the collective you) do not support the business, you should not be surprised when the business goes out of business.
As for social media, I do realize some people have emotional “reasons” for valuing social media over ethical media. Still, I wish they would wake up. Not to be “woke” but to have common sense. Here is Seth Godin’s blog post, yet another in a bird chorus of wake up calls… drowned out by a passing locomotive.
“People like us do things like this.”
Social media understands this.
It also knows that people like points, likes and something that feels like popularity.
The social media companies optimized their algorithms for profit. And profit, they figured, would come from engagement. And engagement, they figured, would come from confounding our instincts and rewarding outrage.
Because outrage draws a crowd.
And crowds establish culture.
And a desire to be the leader of a crowd reinforced the cycle.
And so the social networks created a game, a game in which you ‘win’ by being notorious, outrageous or, as they coined the phrase, “authentic.” The whole world is watching, if you’re willing to put on a show.
That’s not how the world actually works. The successful people in your community or your industry (please substitute ‘happy’ for successful in that sentence) don’t act the way the influencers on Twitter, YouTube or Facebook do. That’s all invented, amplified stagecraft, it’s not the actual human condition.
Many of us have an overwhelming need to rubberneck, to slow down when we pass a crash on the highway. This is odd, as most people don’t go out of their way to visit the morgue, just for kicks. And yet…
I hope we’d agree that if people started staging car crashes on the side of the road to get attention, we’d be outraged.
That’s what happening, and the leaders of social networks pretend that they can’t do a thing about it, just as Google pretends that they can’t control the results of their search algorithm.
The shift that the leaders of the social networks need to make is simple. In the long run, it will cost them nothing. And within weeks, it will create a world that’s calmer, happier and more productive.
Amplify possibility. Dial down the spread of disinformation, trolling and division. Make it almost impossible to get famous at the expense of civilization. Embrace the fact that breaking news doesn’t have to be the rhythm of our days. Reward thoughtfulness and consistency and responsibility.
You can do this. Enough already.
DECEMBER 26, 2020
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Sean Crawford I like reading blog comments,
In the flat world of cyberspace,
January 2021
End Note: I hate to sound unAmerican, but let’s face it: I did NOT make this post to be a fast food soundbite, to be conveniently digested. I never do.
I could get a T-shirt that says, Social Media Kills… but how could I explain it? I barely “get it” enough to explain today’s blog to my friends. But I should try. “I can do this.”
