When it's at its best, social media has pointed me towards new authors, new learning experiences.and greater understanding. But it has become increasingly difficult to wade through the dross to find those glimmers of brilliance.
Of course! I agree -- I certainly discover ideas and people from social media, and I know people discover me that way through sharing and so on; my concern is that the bad bits are completely overwhelming the good bits and creating a firehose of boring sludge at best and divisive insane hatred at worst.
I have found, consistently, that books rarely disappoint. I am almost finished with all of yours. And if they do, I stop reading them. They don't notify me. They have not destroyed the social fabric of our nation, and they are close to free and full of interesting ideas. I have mostly given up on the all the rest, except a few people on Substack like you. Thank you. We need to quit. We will be better off.
HA! Facebook made me feel like I already **was** eating my own brain. I left that years ago.
Twitter is a cesspool and I nearly always feel the need to shower after reading my algo-driven feed. There are a few groups where I actually know at least some of the members.
I've limited Bluesky to my interests and check it occasionally and post quite infrequently.
How true – another laser sharp scrutiny. I have been a member of a closed Facebook Group, my school alumni, for about 15 years. It’s the only reason I have ever used Facebook and from the get go, with the exception of the alumni site, I have always thought it a firehose of rubbish (there was another noun in my head but this is a polite Substack). I have spent my entire career in IT, latterly in cybersecurity. Retired now. I was 45 years old when Facebook et al started. Had I been a teenager at time would I have dodged this bullet to my brain? Would boredom have saved me? I hope so, but glad I’ve never had to find out.
Sea squirts, space junk and the Kessler Syndrome, the silence of Owls, a genetic mutation and alcohol’s part in our evolution, Tim Friede a hero and living laboratory of snakebite antibodies, The Gävle Goat, Irving Finkel and cruciform writing, the intelligence of Octopuses and countless more brain food. Turbocharged curiosity. I suspect Brian didn’t pick these up from social media. Special !
Thanks, Tony! The first paragraph is interesting because I do think that Facebook has increasingly (in recent years) become a tool of older generations to reconnect with long lost friends, which can be magical. Some of that has been wonderful for people; for others, not so much.
There are many attributes of fine writing visible in a Brian Klaas essay. The first—it starts every one of his essays—is storytelling. There is no better way to grab a reader’s (or a listener’s) attention then tell (a tell it well) a good story that encapsulates the essence of the essay to follow. This post on the banality of social media is no exception and is exceptional: begin with the story of the sea squirt, which is fascinating in an of its self, and use it as an analogy or window into the human condition. Social media frequenters, as do sea squirts, eat their own brains. Well done, Brian, as usual. Well done.
Thanks, J! It's funny when readers like yourself point out these stylistic aspects because a lot of this is done implicitly (I just start writing after I've figured out some of the things I want to talk about and it often opens with a story that caught my attention).
Yes indeed. At some point, the nihilism and troll culture of 4chan and related seemed to spread and infect everything else online. That graph from the article starts at 2014 and that seems about right to me. I don’t think it was entirely organic. Toxic influence operations, goons aligning with them, and the platforms playing into the engagement it all created, got us to this dysfunction imho. Elon’s takeover of Twitter was really a huge part of this breakdown. Twitter actually did a decent job reigning in foreign influence in the 2020 campaigns and that just couldn’t be allowed to stand. “Twitter files” ensued. Now, what once was a functional platform for sharing ideas has become a Nazi infested cesspool pushing far right BS.
Thanks again for a thought-provoking read. Exactly the kind of thoughtfulness needed to break free from this crap.
Twitter is the perfect example of a larger problem: billionaires have too much influence in modern life. Until that’s addressed, along with the even larger problem of income inequality, things won’t improve.
Yes, 2022 was a turning point for all the reasons you suggest -- on the other hand, it was a useful wake up call for me that I was wasting too much of my life on Twitter and it was the catalyst that caused me to stop using it (and most social media).
Well said! But I worry that while social media may be boring for higher cortical functioning, its algorithms are specifically designed NOT to be boring for our limbic system . Instead it constantly assess what “pushes our buttons” and makes us passive receptacles for a steady unmitigated stream of material that activates our emotions and brings out the worst in us: outrage, vanity, envy, etc. The constant rapid fire of “dopamine hits” can over time make us less receptive to, or even capable of, older, more edifying ways of engaging our minds: quiet contemplation of nature, conversation with a friend, sitting down with a novel. Unfortunately, for those addicted to social media, these “long form” activities can now seem boring.
Yes, that Washington Post piece I linked to is particularly good on this -- I didn't go into it because those effects are well-documented by others, but it's simultaneously boring *and* addictive, which is a profoundly bizarre combination.
On Facebook I do have a fairly small circle of friends. Everyone I interact with is intelligent and the comments are thoughtful and often enlightening. I am close to housebound, so I know very few of them in a face to face way. But somehow I've managed to garner a good group and I look forward to it. I stopped making anything "public" after I started getting friend requests in massive amounts from (I kid you not) Deeply Christian Generals (and other high ranking military), all widowed and looking for "long walks on the beach, etc., with FB profiles dating back all of a week. Needless to say, "decline."
I've also somehow managed to train the algorithm to a) on Reels show me only videos of dachshunds and the occasional Trae Crowder and b) pretty much everywhere, ads about books.
Bluesky is useful for news; again, curated "following" keeps the riff raff out. I just ignore trolls. I never bothered with Twitter.
Substack is a matter of deciding what to pay for so you can respond. Though it eats a lot of my Social Security, it also discourages having to deal with trolls.
Basically how social media works depends on YOU. There are still communities out there worth joining. But you have to WORK at it. Therein seems to be the source of the problem you mention: a disinclination of so many to work to get what you want, intellectually. I fear that AI writing emails for you is going to make it worse. I attribute the origins of this to television, not Zuck. But then, we didn't get our first TV till I was in 4th grade and then it was a family gathering ritual around the big honking piece of mahogany furniture; us kids' job was to drag the easy chairs in front of it for my parents.
We all watched Victory at Sea, and my parents described the war to us, born just at the end of it. Over the years, I was a devotee of Masterpiece Theater (Alastair Cookie!) and a few shows like Lost or Fringe. But it was always a destination, not background noise. Turn it on to watch, then turn it off.
I gave up the TV part of my cable subscription when, as the end of the "low priced" contract approached, I looked for the remote and found it still in its original packaging. ROKU does it for what I need, which is minimal. One place I always watch TV is in the dentist chair. It works way better than laughing gas.
Thanks for - as usual - a very thoughtful comment Susan. The point I was trying to make is not that social media is inherently bad (it's not) but that the median user is now engaging in all the worst bits with none of the good bits. It sounds to me like you've curated a social media usage strategy that is more akin to what I experienced at the beginning, because even if you're not seeing people in person, there are real, meaningful connections and brain-expanding exchanges. What joins your observations and my own is the concern with passivity -- like the sea squirts -- as what you're describing is quite clearly active curation of a digital life, not just letting what drifts by consume your days (and your brain).
Thank you and yes, even now one’s use can be curated. The trouble clearly is that way too many people don’t want to bother and the really interesting question is “why.” There are presumably evolutionary reasons for sea squirts. I shudder to think what kind of “fitness” will emerge from brainless humans.
But do consider that yesterday’s turnout was possible mostly because of social media, no matter how many Instagram moments the protestors may otherwise be addicted to.
I stopped FB IG 5 years ago after figuring out these so called social media platforms are really plantations and we are digital sharecroppers and slaves working for free for the algo billionaires.
When does the wave for unionization begin? We should have a minimum wage for our attention. And extend this to any interaction or shift like going to grocery store and then using self checkout.
At the point you are waiting in line for the ATM self checkout, your tracker should be monetizing your time.
My new policy on Substack as mostly a consumer. I am sticking with those writers that add to my fund of knowledge in topics that I enjoy, writers I relate to, reading and writing interactive sites. They are allowing me to have a growth experience in spite of my limitations. I am paying for the best and reading them first. I'm recoveredfrom my "kid in the candy store" phase. Thanks as always Brian for your insights.
I'm intrigued by the dissertation you wrote, Bullets Over Ballots: How electoral exclusion increases the risk of coups d'état and civil wars. This topic seems to be especially relevant today, here in the US. How might those conclusions apply here, now?
You've done a deep dive on my CV! The specifics are probably not super relevant to the US. For my PhD, I basically tested whether coups and civil wars become more likely when opposition politicians are illegitimately banned from contesting elections (in a process called "electoral exclusion"). Spoiler alert: yes, they do.
What is relevant for the US, though, is the underlying principle: democracy, done well, acts like a pressure valve for society. It allows pressure to be safely released, so that the system doesn't explode with built-up pressure that has nowhere to escape. If you kill off democracy, or make it feel meaningless because the system feels rigged, that increases the risk of future political violence.
Well, yes, you said you went to an elite school so I wanted to know which school and looked you up on Wikipedia. I'm sort of familiar with Carleton but more familiar with St.Ofaf (I'm a former Lutheran originally from Minneapols). Anyway, I was intrigued with your dissertation theme. I think a longer post on what you say in the above comment is timely. Gerrymandering is the system being used to rig the electoral process now and I'm sure you can find an intriguing way to discuss it, as you always do.
Yes, it IS boring. Even worse, for the limited time I was on Fakebook, people I apparently went to high school with found me. Since I worked in government at the time, one my high school "friends" fed me a steady diet of conspiracy theory videos from something called Infowars (unknown to me at the time) and asked me to refute them. Mercy. Early signs of our impending idiocracy.
There are many attributes of fine writing visible in a Brian Klaas essay. The first—it starts every one of his essays—is storytelling. There is no better way to grab a reader’s (or a listener’s) attention then tell (a tell it well) a good story that encapsulates the essence of the essay to follow. This post on the banality of social media is no exception and is exceptional: begin with the story of the sea squirt, which is fascinating in an of its self, and use it as an analogy or window into the human condition. Social media frequenters, as do sea squirts, eat their own brains. Well done, Brian, as usual. Well done.
As Leonard Cohen wrote, we’re all just a “brief elaboration of a tube” - appealing to the frustrated embryologist in me. Great essay, Prof.
Thanks, John! What a great line.
When it's at its best, social media has pointed me towards new authors, new learning experiences.and greater understanding. But it has become increasingly difficult to wade through the dross to find those glimmers of brilliance.
Of course! I agree -- I certainly discover ideas and people from social media, and I know people discover me that way through sharing and so on; my concern is that the bad bits are completely overwhelming the good bits and creating a firehose of boring sludge at best and divisive insane hatred at worst.
I have found, consistently, that books rarely disappoint. I am almost finished with all of yours. And if they do, I stop reading them. They don't notify me. They have not destroyed the social fabric of our nation, and they are close to free and full of interesting ideas. I have mostly given up on the all the rest, except a few people on Substack like you. Thank you. We need to quit. We will be better off.
It may not surprise you to note that I, too, am pro-book!
🤣 😍😍😍 Thanks for writing them! Everything does not happen for a reason (thankfully!)
HA! Facebook made me feel like I already **was** eating my own brain. I left that years ago.
Twitter is a cesspool and I nearly always feel the need to shower after reading my algo-driven feed. There are a few groups where I actually know at least some of the members.
I've limited Bluesky to my interests and check it occasionally and post quite infrequently.
Yep. Boring. Mostly.
I dislike videos, I find them just annoying, so the video-based socmed platforms are just wholly loathsome.
Also, TikTok is a national security risk. Users beware.
How true – another laser sharp scrutiny. I have been a member of a closed Facebook Group, my school alumni, for about 15 years. It’s the only reason I have ever used Facebook and from the get go, with the exception of the alumni site, I have always thought it a firehose of rubbish (there was another noun in my head but this is a polite Substack). I have spent my entire career in IT, latterly in cybersecurity. Retired now. I was 45 years old when Facebook et al started. Had I been a teenager at time would I have dodged this bullet to my brain? Would boredom have saved me? I hope so, but glad I’ve never had to find out.
Sea squirts, space junk and the Kessler Syndrome, the silence of Owls, a genetic mutation and alcohol’s part in our evolution, Tim Friede a hero and living laboratory of snakebite antibodies, The Gävle Goat, Irving Finkel and cruciform writing, the intelligence of Octopuses and countless more brain food. Turbocharged curiosity. I suspect Brian didn’t pick these up from social media. Special !
Thanks, Tony! The first paragraph is interesting because I do think that Facebook has increasingly (in recent years) become a tool of older generations to reconnect with long lost friends, which can be magical. Some of that has been wonderful for people; for others, not so much.
There are many attributes of fine writing visible in a Brian Klaas essay. The first—it starts every one of his essays—is storytelling. There is no better way to grab a reader’s (or a listener’s) attention then tell (a tell it well) a good story that encapsulates the essence of the essay to follow. This post on the banality of social media is no exception and is exceptional: begin with the story of the sea squirt, which is fascinating in an of its self, and use it as an analogy or window into the human condition. Social media frequenters, as do sea squirts, eat their own brains. Well done, Brian, as usual. Well done.
Thanks, J! It's funny when readers like yourself point out these stylistic aspects because a lot of this is done implicitly (I just start writing after I've figured out some of the things I want to talk about and it often opens with a story that caught my attention).
“ We have totally lost the plot.”
Yes indeed. At some point, the nihilism and troll culture of 4chan and related seemed to spread and infect everything else online. That graph from the article starts at 2014 and that seems about right to me. I don’t think it was entirely organic. Toxic influence operations, goons aligning with them, and the platforms playing into the engagement it all created, got us to this dysfunction imho. Elon’s takeover of Twitter was really a huge part of this breakdown. Twitter actually did a decent job reigning in foreign influence in the 2020 campaigns and that just couldn’t be allowed to stand. “Twitter files” ensued. Now, what once was a functional platform for sharing ideas has become a Nazi infested cesspool pushing far right BS.
Thanks again for a thought-provoking read. Exactly the kind of thoughtfulness needed to break free from this crap.
Twitter is the perfect example of a larger problem: billionaires have too much influence in modern life. Until that’s addressed, along with the even larger problem of income inequality, things won’t improve.
This is very true.
Yes, 2022 was a turning point for all the reasons you suggest -- on the other hand, it was a useful wake up call for me that I was wasting too much of my life on Twitter and it was the catalyst that caused me to stop using it (and most social media).
My friends are probably tired of hearing me say that social media are Hanson’s Great Filter. I’m not sure we’re going to clear it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter
I hadn't come across this before - thanks for sharing!
I remember a time when the "front porch" was where many social interactions took place and cool aid had real sugar.
Well said! But I worry that while social media may be boring for higher cortical functioning, its algorithms are specifically designed NOT to be boring for our limbic system . Instead it constantly assess what “pushes our buttons” and makes us passive receptacles for a steady unmitigated stream of material that activates our emotions and brings out the worst in us: outrage, vanity, envy, etc. The constant rapid fire of “dopamine hits” can over time make us less receptive to, or even capable of, older, more edifying ways of engaging our minds: quiet contemplation of nature, conversation with a friend, sitting down with a novel. Unfortunately, for those addicted to social media, these “long form” activities can now seem boring.
Yes, that Washington Post piece I linked to is particularly good on this -- I didn't go into it because those effects are well-documented by others, but it's simultaneously boring *and* addictive, which is a profoundly bizarre combination.
I do Facebook and Bluesky. And Substack.
On Facebook I do have a fairly small circle of friends. Everyone I interact with is intelligent and the comments are thoughtful and often enlightening. I am close to housebound, so I know very few of them in a face to face way. But somehow I've managed to garner a good group and I look forward to it. I stopped making anything "public" after I started getting friend requests in massive amounts from (I kid you not) Deeply Christian Generals (and other high ranking military), all widowed and looking for "long walks on the beach, etc., with FB profiles dating back all of a week. Needless to say, "decline."
I've also somehow managed to train the algorithm to a) on Reels show me only videos of dachshunds and the occasional Trae Crowder and b) pretty much everywhere, ads about books.
Bluesky is useful for news; again, curated "following" keeps the riff raff out. I just ignore trolls. I never bothered with Twitter.
Substack is a matter of deciding what to pay for so you can respond. Though it eats a lot of my Social Security, it also discourages having to deal with trolls.
Basically how social media works depends on YOU. There are still communities out there worth joining. But you have to WORK at it. Therein seems to be the source of the problem you mention: a disinclination of so many to work to get what you want, intellectually. I fear that AI writing emails for you is going to make it worse. I attribute the origins of this to television, not Zuck. But then, we didn't get our first TV till I was in 4th grade and then it was a family gathering ritual around the big honking piece of mahogany furniture; us kids' job was to drag the easy chairs in front of it for my parents.
We all watched Victory at Sea, and my parents described the war to us, born just at the end of it. Over the years, I was a devotee of Masterpiece Theater (Alastair Cookie!) and a few shows like Lost or Fringe. But it was always a destination, not background noise. Turn it on to watch, then turn it off.
I gave up the TV part of my cable subscription when, as the end of the "low priced" contract approached, I looked for the remote and found it still in its original packaging. ROKU does it for what I need, which is minimal. One place I always watch TV is in the dentist chair. It works way better than laughing gas.
Thanks for - as usual - a very thoughtful comment Susan. The point I was trying to make is not that social media is inherently bad (it's not) but that the median user is now engaging in all the worst bits with none of the good bits. It sounds to me like you've curated a social media usage strategy that is more akin to what I experienced at the beginning, because even if you're not seeing people in person, there are real, meaningful connections and brain-expanding exchanges. What joins your observations and my own is the concern with passivity -- like the sea squirts -- as what you're describing is quite clearly active curation of a digital life, not just letting what drifts by consume your days (and your brain).
Thank you and yes, even now one’s use can be curated. The trouble clearly is that way too many people don’t want to bother and the really interesting question is “why.” There are presumably evolutionary reasons for sea squirts. I shudder to think what kind of “fitness” will emerge from brainless humans.
But do consider that yesterday’s turnout was possible mostly because of social media, no matter how many Instagram moments the protestors may otherwise be addicted to.
I stopped FB IG 5 years ago after figuring out these so called social media platforms are really plantations and we are digital sharecroppers and slaves working for free for the algo billionaires.
When does the wave for unionization begin? We should have a minimum wage for our attention. And extend this to any interaction or shift like going to grocery store and then using self checkout.
At the point you are waiting in line for the ATM self checkout, your tracker should be monetizing your time.
A lot of people have gotten ludicrously rich by making society worse and more dysfunctional, that's for sure.
My new policy on Substack as mostly a consumer. I am sticking with those writers that add to my fund of knowledge in topics that I enjoy, writers I relate to, reading and writing interactive sites. They are allowing me to have a growth experience in spite of my limitations. I am paying for the best and reading them first. I'm recoveredfrom my "kid in the candy store" phase. Thanks as always Brian for your insights.
I'm intrigued by the dissertation you wrote, Bullets Over Ballots: How electoral exclusion increases the risk of coups d'état and civil wars. This topic seems to be especially relevant today, here in the US. How might those conclusions apply here, now?
You've done a deep dive on my CV! The specifics are probably not super relevant to the US. For my PhD, I basically tested whether coups and civil wars become more likely when opposition politicians are illegitimately banned from contesting elections (in a process called "electoral exclusion"). Spoiler alert: yes, they do.
What is relevant for the US, though, is the underlying principle: democracy, done well, acts like a pressure valve for society. It allows pressure to be safely released, so that the system doesn't explode with built-up pressure that has nowhere to escape. If you kill off democracy, or make it feel meaningless because the system feels rigged, that increases the risk of future political violence.
Well, yes, you said you went to an elite school so I wanted to know which school and looked you up on Wikipedia. I'm sort of familiar with Carleton but more familiar with St.Ofaf (I'm a former Lutheran originally from Minneapols). Anyway, I was intrigued with your dissertation theme. I think a longer post on what you say in the above comment is timely. Gerrymandering is the system being used to rig the electoral process now and I'm sure you can find an intriguing way to discuss it, as you always do.
Ah right; Bullets over Ballots was my DPhil thesis that I did at Oxford, but yes, the Facebook saga was at Carleton! I previously wrote about gerrymandering here: https://www.forkingpaths.co/p/gerrymander-to-save-american-democracy and here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2017/02/10/gerrymandering-is-the-biggest-obstacle-to-genuine-democracy-in-the-united-states-so-why-is-no-one-protesting/
Thanks. I'll read it and Despot's Accomplice.
Yes, it IS boring. Even worse, for the limited time I was on Fakebook, people I apparently went to high school with found me. Since I worked in government at the time, one my high school "friends" fed me a steady diet of conspiracy theory videos from something called Infowars (unknown to me at the time) and asked me to refute them. Mercy. Early signs of our impending idiocracy.
There are many attributes of fine writing visible in a Brian Klaas essay. The first—it starts every one of his essays—is storytelling. There is no better way to grab a reader’s (or a listener’s) attention then tell (a tell it well) a good story that encapsulates the essence of the essay to follow. This post on the banality of social media is no exception and is exceptional: begin with the story of the sea squirt, which is fascinating in an of its self, and use it as an analogy or window into the human condition. Social media frequenters, as do sea squirts, eat their own brains. Well done, Brian, as usual. Well done.