I'm a short misanthropic man with a liberal arts degree and an exaggerated sense of his true intelligence–a fairly average specimen by American standards. But I believe there's extra value in self-awareness, and in the recognition that your first thought probably isn't your best.
But social media incentivizes self-promotion, not self-inspection. Expressing yourself on social media always serves commercial ends, converting would-be mavericks into radical marketing agents. Few people, especially in my circles, would describe their behavior on these platforms as marketing. Unfortunately, there's no avoiding this dynamic. You are on a gameshow, where the best arrangements of words and images are rewarded with attention that has the potential to be converted into dollars. You may not consciously be seeking out money when you post something, but your brain certainly understands this system. It's been conditioned to understand this system since the ancient days of Tila Tequila getting a primetime television show because she had the most followers on Myspace.
Speech, ideas, and the people behind them all become warped by this marketplace over time. The only ones immune to this corruption are those who've opted out. Unfortunately, if you want to engage in business at any level (even in art or creative endeavors), you don't have the luxury of opting out. You need every advantage you can get. You have to hustle, promote, sell, sell, sell.
People gradually observe and process effective online strategies. Which posts get the most attention, and how can you capitalize on something that's trending?
And so when disaster strikes, when people are killed, when there's a violent upheaval, users waste no time in producing content designed to provoke a response or get either positive or negative attention from others–because the numbers don't lie. It's a strategy that works.
This past week, two students were shot here in Evergreen and a political activist was assassinated in Utah. It takes time to put reasonable thoughts together on any given subject, especially ones with sociopolitical import (to question your initial reaction, to analyze others' perspectives and weigh them against your own, to determine whether you're right or wrong about something). But within seconds of these incidents, people were publishing content, artwork, and more on platforms where they had established followings and personal brands to promote. The most effective content, in line with proven online strategies, was reductive and/or inflammatory. In other words, stupid won, and it won by design.
Because if you decide it would be better to take time to think about things before publishing content about them, you're losing out on an opportunity to reap the social and commercial benefits of likes, website clicks, and attention from engaged users (whether those are friends or strangers). And if you decide to spend time meditating toward a more layered, reasoned take, you risk being late to the races or getting the dreaded "TLDR."
Combine this mandate with people's built-in desire to express themselves, to be heard by others, and to have their own views reinforced, and you get a perfect storm. I'm far from the first to acknowledge how these commercial platforms encourage our darkest impulses–maximizing division and strife over the ideal of our shared humanity. However, even though our reckoning with Big Tech has started to percolate over the last few years, it's hard for people not to lose their minds (sometimes understandably) when a crisis unfolds.
To be clear, I don't think it's possible at all to express ideas or even genuine reactions on social media without them being twisted by these forces. I don't think it's possible to engage in good-faith debate on any subject on social media because of how your behavior will be unconsciously molded by its game. The only unmuddied use of these platforms is to market commercial content, and even that behavior should be performed carefully (if at all). These tools are a net negative for humanity, and that's not speculation at this point. The results are in. The science is solid. If I believed otherwise, I wouldn't be publishing a print magazine in 2025.
Even so, it's tempting, of course, because, in the wake of a public catastrophe, you have a natural instinct to connect with other human beings and share your reactions, and social media presents itself as an incredibly fast, efficient way to do that (not to mention safe, as you aren't risking getting punched in the face, etc.).
But for every post that shares some reductive, processed message about this side or that side of a given debate, there will be onlookers who take these messages at face value–who don't understand that the discourse has been twisted by a marketplace on steroids, who really think that what they're seeing is a genuine expression of culture or even humanity at large. And if we present these people with something that seems worth destroying rather than preserving, we shouldn't be surprised when they act accordingly.
Yours,
Paul M. French
Editor
Picture by RichardsDrawings