Whose fault was social media? This review by Tarpley Hitt of Taylor Lorenz’s Extremely Online helped me focus my thinking about what I was trying to articulate the other day about “the end of social media” and how the teleology of commercial platforms was always some form of influencer culture. I think that the emergent purpose of platforms was to reshape the “social” to be more commercial and ultimately to equate those things (if they weren’t already) so that sociality seems to naturally appear as nothing but reciprocal sales pitches. But this claim can seem like ret-conning the origin story of social media to fit the eventual outcome, particularly if one really wanted to believe that internet technology intrinsically empowered users or that “connection” was good in and of itself.
thank you for writing this! I have just two thoughts I'd like to share -- first, when I read you saying "Why not carry that forward even further and absent yourself from the entirely of your life?" I immediately wanted to share one of my shorts with you: https://amyletter.substack.com/p/gretchagain
It's part of my "Electronic Girls" series of quick-hit AI pieces, all from the point of view of the AIs.
The other thing was just to share an observation -- I teach at a university and one of the courses I used to teach was "Creative Writing for New Media." The title sounds downright quaint these days, but when I invented the course in 2011, there was a lot of great things going on online in the general realm of "creating new things using these new media tools but generally in an off-label non-commercial way." One of my most keen-sighted students in one of those classes observed that the internet as we know it is the manifestation of government funded research and commercial hegemony; by making art online for free by "mis-using" these commercial tools, we are implicitly making a political, counter-cultural, and counter-capitalist statement.
The last time I taught the course was 2019 and by then it already seemed passe. The last iteration of the course felt, to me, like a bi-weekly apology for the collapse of whatever counter-cultural and counter-capitalist movement might have once been. All the avenues for creation were gone. All that were left were avenues for "participation." Yes, I could still have my students code projects in Processing or design a non-linear CYOA / text game using nothing but HTML, but we all knew, by then, that no one would see it if it weren't on YouTube or Facebook or Insta or Twitter, and that playing by the rules of those social marketplaces left very little room for real creativity.
The course is defunct -- I replaced it with a seminar in Writing in a Networked World -- a course that by design focuses more on those political, social, military, and commercial networks and the ways in which we find ourselves enmeshed. If you're interested, here is more about that: https://amyletter.substack.com/p/writing-in-a-networked-world
Amy, the observation from your keen eyed student that you shared closely resembles how I used to feel about the web —from late 90s to around 2007 ish. And your assessment of how things felt after that captures my feelings well too. This bit hit me hard: “ we all knew, by then, that no one would see it if it weren't on YouTube or Facebook or Insta or Twitter, and that playing by the rules of those social marketplaces left very little room for real creativity.”
On the datafication of everything and in particular the Avatar startup described, after the events of this weekend, I can’t help wondering how it would feel if the company that had collected every experience of your entire life was suddenly under entirely new management.
On the question of who to blame for social media, I feel your final summation was spot on; that it was the toxicity of the wider system that ostensibly lead to toxic outcomes. I had always blamed Zuckerberg, and google before him for personalised search, but also us first generation internet users that just couldn’t bring ourselves to part with our hard earned money for intangible media, leaving advertising as the only game in town. That along with the rising celeb culture during that time and the social networks tempting us into acting out fantasies of celebrity.
thank you for writing this! I have just two thoughts I'd like to share -- first, when I read you saying "Why not carry that forward even further and absent yourself from the entirely of your life?" I immediately wanted to share one of my shorts with you: https://amyletter.substack.com/p/gretchagain
It's part of my "Electronic Girls" series of quick-hit AI pieces, all from the point of view of the AIs.
The other thing was just to share an observation -- I teach at a university and one of the courses I used to teach was "Creative Writing for New Media." The title sounds downright quaint these days, but when I invented the course in 2011, there was a lot of great things going on online in the general realm of "creating new things using these new media tools but generally in an off-label non-commercial way." One of my most keen-sighted students in one of those classes observed that the internet as we know it is the manifestation of government funded research and commercial hegemony; by making art online for free by "mis-using" these commercial tools, we are implicitly making a political, counter-cultural, and counter-capitalist statement.
The last time I taught the course was 2019 and by then it already seemed passe. The last iteration of the course felt, to me, like a bi-weekly apology for the collapse of whatever counter-cultural and counter-capitalist movement might have once been. All the avenues for creation were gone. All that were left were avenues for "participation." Yes, I could still have my students code projects in Processing or design a non-linear CYOA / text game using nothing but HTML, but we all knew, by then, that no one would see it if it weren't on YouTube or Facebook or Insta or Twitter, and that playing by the rules of those social marketplaces left very little room for real creativity.
The course is defunct -- I replaced it with a seminar in Writing in a Networked World -- a course that by design focuses more on those political, social, military, and commercial networks and the ways in which we find ourselves enmeshed. If you're interested, here is more about that: https://amyletter.substack.com/p/writing-in-a-networked-world
Amy, the observation from your keen eyed student that you shared closely resembles how I used to feel about the web —from late 90s to around 2007 ish. And your assessment of how things felt after that captures my feelings well too. This bit hit me hard: “ we all knew, by then, that no one would see it if it weren't on YouTube or Facebook or Insta or Twitter, and that playing by the rules of those social marketplaces left very little room for real creativity.”
Feel so sad about this.
On the datafication of everything and in particular the Avatar startup described, after the events of this weekend, I can’t help wondering how it would feel if the company that had collected every experience of your entire life was suddenly under entirely new management.
On the question of who to blame for social media, I feel your final summation was spot on; that it was the toxicity of the wider system that ostensibly lead to toxic outcomes. I had always blamed Zuckerberg, and google before him for personalised search, but also us first generation internet users that just couldn’t bring ourselves to part with our hard earned money for intangible media, leaving advertising as the only game in town. That along with the rising celeb culture during that time and the social networks tempting us into acting out fantasies of celebrity.
The avatar thing also reminded me of these awful new personal drones marketed as hovering selfie sticks. Flying solipsticks, good grief.