When do I know it's time to stop scrolling? If Instagram, TikTok, Twitter disappear tomorrow, what will I have lost? What will I have done to prepare?
(in conversation with a friend, 8 October 2024)
“Since the Internet has conquered human interaction, let me deepen my subscription to introversion.”
― Makuochukwu Okigbo
@deathtostock on instagram, 15 October 2024: "Never in history has there been more cultural output than we see today. Yet we're in a creativity recession— or so it seems. That is because the tools that have democratised how culture gets distributed are influencing culture more than ever before. In fashion, brands are optimising their designs for virality. Music is thinking about algorithm-friendly soundbites. More and more prequels and sequels are being made to activate existing fandoms online. But why is this happening? Well before, cultural gatekeepers would select what would make it to magazines, cinemas, radios, today that process of cultural selection has been automated by code. Code created to optimise consumption speed. I saw a panel on this which touched on the importance of friction as a force for cultural innovation. Friction in the form of dialogue, experimentation, relationship building."
"While I am an ardent advocate of the power of imagination, we still need to ground our imagination with a deeper understanding of the limits and potentials of the world we live in. Superficial high-tech aesthetics cannot supersede the realities of rare-earth metal extraction." [...] "Being tech-critical simply means recognising that the technologies which cannot meet the criteria of conviviality should not continue to dominate our world our world in the ways in which they do now."
Andrewism, Why Tech Won't Save Us on youtube, 3 October 2024
Far from being extreme, the radical is the practical response to a world on fire. Radical approaches align with the urgency of systemic challenges and the mass desire for change, making them both effective and essential for achieving transformative solutions to the problems we face. In the face of systemic crises like the climate emergency and violence normalised as status quo, radical actions and solutions are not only morally necessary but also politically effective. Mild critiques and actions don't build investment or a mass movement. Those approaches fail to address the scale of these problems. Bold, transformative visions resonate with people who are disillusioned with the status quo. Presenting such visions and pathways for action can mobilise mass movements and create real change.
“Detractors from radical movements and organizations often say that their more militant counterparts behave in a way that is inherently antithetical to mass movement, and thus contrary to...
"Instead of these videos and the algorithm deciding the kinds of videos I watch, I am going to start limiting myself to videos that I intentionally seek out, because I want to control what I am watching."
Morgue Design on YouTube, YouTube has a Pyramid Scheme Problem, 26 August 2024
"And of course, clicking one video on a topic will immediately result in a neverending list of similar recommended videos. So I have a steady supply of videos to watch. It is so easy to waste so much time watching these kinds of videos. It feels productive somehow. I could have them playing in the background while I'm working, relaxing, doing whatever, and passively osmosis this knowledge into my brain. The more videos I watch, the closer I am to a successful YouTube channel, right? In this instance, the product is advice. And if I were to watch one video for a tutorial about a skill I'm trying to learn, that would be the appropriate number of videos to watch. If I keep watching videos after that, continue clicking on and interacting with the series of videos fed to me by the sidebar of recommended videos, I've bought more product, more advice, than I could ever use."
Morgue Design on YouTube, YouTube has a Pyramid Scheme Problem, 26 August 2024
"Algorithms seem to respond solely to your actions. Experentially it feels like you are the sole spectator of this digital theater or digital classroom. Like all products under capitalism, you are alienated from the production process of a video essay, and so you simply consume this finished product. [...] People don't realise that scaffolding is going on, because the very nature of algorithms and social media makes it feel like content is made for you. You special individual! In trying to democratise leftist academia to more people, I ended up getting misunderstood as some secret right winger, and that makes it scary to keep trying. It feels a lot safer to just continue teaching things to people who are likely to get on board, but that doesn't feel like I am making academia more accessible."
Source: olisunvia re: the importance of scaffolding, on YouTube, _what can you ACTUALLY learn from video essays??", 27 August 2024
Drew Gooden: "There's so many things I want to do in my life before I'm gone, so many people I want to spend time with, so many places I want to go, but I can't stop scrolling. I don't WANT to, but it's as if it has been scientifically engineered to be the easiest thing to do. There's this weird feeling whenever I go on TikTok, or IG Reels, or Threads (just kidding), where I'm simultaneously aware of what it's doing to my brain, but I do nothing to try to intervene. I just sit there and let it destroy me, because I HAVE to see that next video. What if it's so funny but I exit out of the app before I ever get a chance to watch it? [...] They've made it so the distance between you and a chance at dopamine is just one small swipe away. I'd almost say it's malicious, but I know that's not true. Because a billion dollar company would never do that. Billionaires CARE about your wellbeing. That's how they made so much money in the first place. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, they would NEVER...
Daniel J. Boorstin writes in 1962:
We used to believe there were only so many “events” in the world. If there were not many intriguing or startling occurrences, it was no fault of the reporter. He could not be expected to report what did not exist. Within the last hundred years, however, and especially in the twentieth century, all this has changed. We expect the papers to be full of news. If there is no news visible to the naked eye, or to the average citizen, we still expect it to be there for the enterprising newsman. The successful reporter is one who can find a story, even if there is no earthquake or assassination or civil war. If he cannot find a story, then he must make one—by the questions he asks of public figures, by the surprising human interest he unfolds from some commonplace event, or by “the news behind the news.” If all this fails, then he must give us a “think piece”—an embroidering of well-known facts, or a speculation about startling things to come.
...
Cheyenne Lim:
This isn't to say that fashion or pop culture news or even like celebrity news isn't important or entertaining, but its quantity and pervasiveness that pushes other real consequential events to the back burner is alarming and at least should be questioned, especially on platforms like social media that thrive on a news's ambiguity and people weighing in on it, whether they have something important to say or not. And there's such an incentive to keep the discourse going because of likes and clicks and advertising, money and money to be made by just prolonging things and sometimes people just say stuff without much substance just to say it, to try to get attention in this attention economy.
... We should be able to comment and talk about the day's events, whether they be about pop culture or hard-hitting news, but on Twitter, a platform that champions ignorance and doesn't leave room for nuance and thrives off constant engagement isn't conducive to good...
Cheyenne Lim: "I'm just uneasy about how quickly AI and algorithms have taken over our lives in such a short amount of time. Like let's just regulate search results and social networks with the algorithm, it'll know what to do. Like Apple is releasing an iPhone with AI, something that was built to steal our data, scan our photos and art, and we're just okay with it? We're just okay with Apples scanning our faces and fingerprints and collecting our pictures and accessing our cameras just for the sake of looking cool by having the latest product? [...] And now even Instagram and Google have installed AI search engines, art we save to Adobe is being fed into an AI machine, kids are using ChatGPT to do homework, and even one of my videos has been used to train AI— yay. Like, have any of you seen The Matrix? [...] And what's worse, each of these social media apps keep us in these loops of buying, distracting us with nonsense, like conspiracy theories and again, fake AI generated images...