A quick line on suspending Instagram and Twitter accounts
When it comes to the big issues, social media is a totally batshit lens to view them through. For a start, it isn’t interested at all in what is sustainable and healthy for a society, or on measuring progress at any level, built as it is on venture capital. Its business model is specifically to amplify the loudest and most controversial voices to get and retain your attention by provoking outrage and fear. I read in Private Eye for example that the Emily Maitliss’ comments on the government meltdown the other week drew 50 complaints, which is about standard for Question Time. After clips were shared on socials it then drew 60,000, which were roughly split for and against. So no difference in the end, just much, much shoutier, and a shedload of horrible writing for the BBC letters department to sift through.
The big issues are still coronavirus, the environment, and the economy. Everything else hangs off these. How much of your time has social media asked for in the last three weeks? How much would it be content with? How much have you actually learned? What was the last piece of high-quality data you saw on Instagram? When was the last time you had fun on Twitter?
Imagine, in order to learn the arguments but without coming down on either side, you wanted to question the wisdom of pulling Gone With The Wind from HBO because of it’s depiction of slaves, even though it also features the first black actress to win an Oscar and so is important in another sense to ‘black history’. Hattie McDaniel, who won the Oscar, was treated terribly by the Academy and I’m not going to come down either side of that or any other issue here; I’m picking that example because it made the leap to the evening news yesterday. But think about asking the question - do you suppose that you might get somewhere in that conversation?
I’m taking a step back and saying that social media is antithetical to human conversation. It is an algorithmically-perfect cynical media format whose promotion of controversy is so deeply flawed that it’s almost as if they designed it to be hijacked. I see people being bullied on it all the time, they post pictures of themselves actually crying which encourages people to stick the boot in more. Social media is a circular firing squad with no room for evidence or nuance or reconciliation and it’s making you crazy.
I’ve been off for two or three days and I feel like I’ve mentally flossed. Reality; art, literature, sleeping, eating food – try it today! Although I have plenty more to discuss I won’t give these platforms any more space in my head today. I’m going to go and look out the window, instead.