extending the social media diet
Still don't miss Facebook at all, and feeling like I've been more social since giving up Facebook -- I mean social in real life -- than I'd been in years. I'm to the point of having to put off answering social invitations, or just flat turning them down. Too busy.
I remember worrying that by giving up Facebook I'd feel lonely. Nope. Somehow it was suppressing my real-life social life. Or this is a coincidence.
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I'm extending my social media diet by cutting back the number of accounts I follow on Twitter and Tumblr. My arbitrary cap is 99 accounts on each service. I remember back when I had a similar cap on Facebook. Does this mean I'm on a path toward dumping Twitter and Tumblr also? I don't know. Most of the accounts I follow on these two services are people I have never and will never meet. A lot of the accounts on Twitter are not even individuals, but organizations.
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There was a time in my life when LiveJournal was an important means of making real-life friends. It is still the most intimate social media account I've got. The long-form entries combined with the idea that this is a journal, rather than a place to share fake news and pictures of dinner.
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I think if I dumped Twitter and Tumblr I'd end up reading more books and magazines, even if their digital forms. One guy I follow on Twitter made a joke about this, in a way, by saying that 30 years ago all it took to be a leftist was reading Chomsky. Hey, I read Chomsky!
I was also a more social leftist back then. Just as Facebook seemed to reduce my real-life socializing, perhaps social media reduces my real-life political activism.
On the other hand, there are other forces in my life that reduced my real-life political activism. Having a full-time job with commute, two boyfriends, three pets, a house and yard. Working for the federal government imposes legal restrictions on my political activism. For example, I can't run for office (even as a protest candidate) or raise money for somebody else's campaign.
But I was thinking the other day, what if I couldn't just Tweet an article or essay that interested me? Does the act of Tweeting make me feel like I've done my duty, made the difference, by passing something along to my followers?
Although social media may feel like you are interacting with other humans, you are really just sitting at your computer or staring at your phone.
And what you see on your computer/phone screen is not what anybody else sees. Your social media feed is unique, based on the accounts you follow and the algorithms used by your social media company. Unlike a public space, where everybody can experience the same thing, social media creates billions of private spaces, tailored just for your consumption.
When people say, "We need to escape our media bubbles," I'm not sure they realize that each person's bubble is different now. We have fewer and fewer genuinely shared experiences.
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There was a time when a few people on the fringes argued against watching television. They argued that when you watch television you are just sitting in front of a screen, allowing the sound and images to replace activity, allowing mass media to program your brain. Now watching television is in decline for technological reasons, instead people watch the Internet.
At first the Internet seemed like something different, something self directed and interactive. Liberating in some ways. Instead of sitting and watching whatever was on the TV, you could crawl across the World Wide Web.
But social media is more like television. It is a feed. It isn't self-directed. More interactive, yes, and you definitely have more options for tailoring your feed to suit your interests. But it is still essentially passive, and the more your social media service uses algorithms to present information to you, the more passive an experience you encounter.
Mass media and social media are both forms of dream worlds, except the dreams come from outside of your brain instead of inside.
I remember worrying that by giving up Facebook I'd feel lonely. Nope. Somehow it was suppressing my real-life social life. Or this is a coincidence.
-----
I'm extending my social media diet by cutting back the number of accounts I follow on Twitter and Tumblr. My arbitrary cap is 99 accounts on each service. I remember back when I had a similar cap on Facebook. Does this mean I'm on a path toward dumping Twitter and Tumblr also? I don't know. Most of the accounts I follow on these two services are people I have never and will never meet. A lot of the accounts on Twitter are not even individuals, but organizations.
-----
There was a time in my life when LiveJournal was an important means of making real-life friends. It is still the most intimate social media account I've got. The long-form entries combined with the idea that this is a journal, rather than a place to share fake news and pictures of dinner.
-----
I think if I dumped Twitter and Tumblr I'd end up reading more books and magazines, even if their digital forms. One guy I follow on Twitter made a joke about this, in a way, by saying that 30 years ago all it took to be a leftist was reading Chomsky. Hey, I read Chomsky!
I was also a more social leftist back then. Just as Facebook seemed to reduce my real-life socializing, perhaps social media reduces my real-life political activism.
On the other hand, there are other forces in my life that reduced my real-life political activism. Having a full-time job with commute, two boyfriends, three pets, a house and yard. Working for the federal government imposes legal restrictions on my political activism. For example, I can't run for office (even as a protest candidate) or raise money for somebody else's campaign.
But I was thinking the other day, what if I couldn't just Tweet an article or essay that interested me? Does the act of Tweeting make me feel like I've done my duty, made the difference, by passing something along to my followers?
Although social media may feel like you are interacting with other humans, you are really just sitting at your computer or staring at your phone.
And what you see on your computer/phone screen is not what anybody else sees. Your social media feed is unique, based on the accounts you follow and the algorithms used by your social media company. Unlike a public space, where everybody can experience the same thing, social media creates billions of private spaces, tailored just for your consumption.
When people say, "We need to escape our media bubbles," I'm not sure they realize that each person's bubble is different now. We have fewer and fewer genuinely shared experiences.
-----
There was a time when a few people on the fringes argued against watching television. They argued that when you watch television you are just sitting in front of a screen, allowing the sound and images to replace activity, allowing mass media to program your brain. Now watching television is in decline for technological reasons, instead people watch the Internet.
At first the Internet seemed like something different, something self directed and interactive. Liberating in some ways. Instead of sitting and watching whatever was on the TV, you could crawl across the World Wide Web.
But social media is more like television. It is a feed. It isn't self-directed. More interactive, yes, and you definitely have more options for tailoring your feed to suit your interests. But it is still essentially passive, and the more your social media service uses algorithms to present information to you, the more passive an experience you encounter.
Mass media and social media are both forms of dream worlds, except the dreams come from outside of your brain instead of inside.