this piece doesn't get at the meanness and status wars, but it is really a great piece on how the "pro-sumption" model of social media, in particular, encourages a relentlessly expressive ethics. https://post45.org/2021/04/content-era-ethics/
Really good piece - fits with what Will Davies's argued in his recent NLR essay about how social media takes our search for recognition and turns it into a struggle for "reputation" through the competitive & commodified nature of our online personas
We were introduced to the concept of the surplus value of labor in high school in a one-day discussion of Karl Marx. It ruined me from ever feeling happy about work, and still continues to do so 40 years later.
Reading your article, I had a personal epiphany - the reason Marx (and his followers) are so passionate about their hatred of market capitalism is because they view it as a zero sum system.
But competition on social media is not market capitalism. It's status competition. Every eyeball you get, you've stolen from some other channel. Every rung on the status ladder you climb forces someone else down. It's a terrible system. It forces the participants to every manner of self-alienation just to keep from falling further down the ladder.
So, yeah, the thing is--there is a lot of ~discourse~, a lot of gamesmanship, etc. But just as, or maybe more, alienating than what is done is what isn't. I think you talk about this in terms of solidarity, but it might be more basic than that. The lion's share of one's interactions there are with people that you aren't friends with and who generally are not trying to socialize with an eye on making that happen. So you spend all this time and mental effort in this psuedosocial space...for what? Your career might be mixed in with it, but what about everyone else? Maybe some sense that you're not alone in your beliefs and want to discuss them, maybe because attempting to be publicly witty, maybe because more personal spaces are riskier or more upsetting for your being more vulnerable. I include in this other virtual spaces, too--Facebook is often like this, and the personalization of it is why I spend much less time there now. But if that place is upsetting, Twitter, in my experience anyway, is often just...emptiness. And it weighs on you.
Agreed. I thought by following German language accounts, I could justify my time on twitter by saying that I was at least was improving my German. But, as it turns out, those posts have the same flat and repetitive quality so I can't even say that.
Good argument, but if I weren't on Twitter I wouldn't have met you. Can you suggest where else I can meet such interesting people?
this piece doesn't get at the meanness and status wars, but it is really a great piece on how the "pro-sumption" model of social media, in particular, encourages a relentlessly expressive ethics. https://post45.org/2021/04/content-era-ethics/
Really good piece - fits with what Will Davies's argued in his recent NLR essay about how social media takes our search for recognition and turns it into a struggle for "reputation" through the competitive & commodified nature of our online personas
We were introduced to the concept of the surplus value of labor in high school in a one-day discussion of Karl Marx. It ruined me from ever feeling happy about work, and still continues to do so 40 years later.
Reading your article, I had a personal epiphany - the reason Marx (and his followers) are so passionate about their hatred of market capitalism is because they view it as a zero sum system.
But competition on social media is not market capitalism. It's status competition. Every eyeball you get, you've stolen from some other channel. Every rung on the status ladder you climb forces someone else down. It's a terrible system. It forces the participants to every manner of self-alienation just to keep from falling further down the ladder.
So, yeah, the thing is--there is a lot of ~discourse~, a lot of gamesmanship, etc. But just as, or maybe more, alienating than what is done is what isn't. I think you talk about this in terms of solidarity, but it might be more basic than that. The lion's share of one's interactions there are with people that you aren't friends with and who generally are not trying to socialize with an eye on making that happen. So you spend all this time and mental effort in this psuedosocial space...for what? Your career might be mixed in with it, but what about everyone else? Maybe some sense that you're not alone in your beliefs and want to discuss them, maybe because attempting to be publicly witty, maybe because more personal spaces are riskier or more upsetting for your being more vulnerable. I include in this other virtual spaces, too--Facebook is often like this, and the personalization of it is why I spend much less time there now. But if that place is upsetting, Twitter, in my experience anyway, is often just...emptiness. And it weighs on you.
Rortian Ironism tho
Agreed. I thought by following German language accounts, I could justify my time on twitter by saying that I was at least was improving my German. But, as it turns out, those posts have the same flat and repetitive quality so I can't even say that.