The funny thing is that of course I want you to like this blog. And share it. And read the others on the site, and….and…and…
The modern lingua franca? There’s no other way to spin it; it’s simply true. Plus, I cannot deny the profound power of the stuff. Social media rules the world.
Here’s the root of my disaffection: it’s a whole lot of churn without very much butter.
Social media behaves like a dopamine drip. Every single moment that you’re not touching it, fetishizing it, thinking about it, social media asks you to come back, come back, come back. Reading a book? “I wonder if there are any new Instagram pix from my friends?” Trying to cook? “I should really make an update to my LinkedIn page about my latest project.” Decide to look? You wind up doom-scrolling for an hour, and suddenly you’ve trickled away the time you were going to go running and get a shower.
What did you get for your troubles? You got some pictures of your friends’ cats, a few sharp ripostes from fellow arrivistes that reinforce your political views, and a bunch of witty blurbs about pop culture that won’t have much influence on your day. What’s the weather where your Aunt Mabel lives? She posted the sunny morning out her kitchen window: take a look. Where are ten places you’re not likely to take a vacation, but where everyone seems to be having a better time than you’re having right now? Social media will show them to you, stat.
I understand the value of this, or at least the attraction. We’re all social creatures, and we like to stay in touch with others, including our enemies. (Especially our enemies.) Vicarious experience helps us feel a part of something larger than ourselves. We’re easily amused, and amusement in dark times is better than endless despair.
But seriously? Isn’t there anything better to do with a day?
I see you shaking your head: you very likely got to blog post through a social media link! I must be a hypocrite, right?
A little, I suppose. My trouble here concerns the deepening layer of triviality imposed upon an already trivialized world. People have never been especially good critical thinkers over long periods of time. Some people are very good at critical analysis when aimed at discrete topics, but as a means of shaping long-duration aesthetics and values, many people have a tendency to revert to emotions and suspicions rather than fact and logic. That tendency can promote short attention spans, and even worse, a lack of probity and discipline in relationships, in decision-making, and in ethical formulations.
For people who try to live their lives in creative spaces, the trivialization imposed by a steady diet of social media has the effect of dissolving yet one more support in the foundations that enable sustained focus. That’s effectively like allowing thieves inside our mental castles in broad daylight: who can tell the thieves from the masses of other roving thoughts crowding the main hall of our consciousness?
Social media clearly isn’t going anywhere. I play with it. I use it. Sometimes I even have fun with it. I do not deny that it’s here to stay, and only a luddite would assert that should ignore it completely. But social media is like gross materialism: if you can’t stop thinking about things you have and things you want, those things own you more than you own them. The challenge for many, therefore, is how to imagine what a day or a week might look like if you turned those many evaporated minutes of “likes” and “shares” into something else. The imagination part is already familiar to creative souls; it’s what we do even without trying hard. It’s the actual, hard work of bringing an alternative reality into existence where we make the discoveries, and it’s always in discoveries where we find alternatives.