Lisa Bubert
I have a mission to return to being human. Rather than doing good deeds, immersing myself in nature, or communing with the universe, the most human thing I felt I could do was step away from social media.
Deleting my account seemed like an easy and concrete action, but it wasn’t for me. I’m a freelance writer who relies on Twitter for things like pitch calls and the all-important Discourse of the Day. Even though the main purpose of Instagram seems to be to make me feel terrible, Stories still helps me get noticed for my writing. Facebook has served as her Rolodex of family and friends, a community bulletin board, but increasingly, it’s the only way to know who’s still alive and who’s dead.
This is known as “social lock-in,” where social networks monopolize our experiences and make it impossible to live our lives outside of the confines of the platform. This is also a characteristic of surveillance capitalism, a term coined by Shoshana Zuboff to indicate that capitalism no longer simply controls purchasing power, but manipulates human behavior on a large scale. Every search query, every liked post, and even the time you spend looking at a particular image on your screen is tracked, quantified, and mined to make sure you, you, Learn more about our decisions and why. That information could be used against you to sell you more products, make you more likely to receive offers, or learn about you before you know it yourself. there is. Thanks to social media, capitalism has not only cornered the market for household goods. Powerful unknown players can now corner democratic markets for the right price.
Surveillance capitalism sounds scary, but for me the real fear lies in the slow erosion of privacy and the sense of sanctuary that comes with it.
I’m a librarian, a profession known for its privacy. Librarians have always believed that it is your inalienable right to learn what you want without fear of being seen. We were among the first to call out seemingly small violations of digital privacy, such as personal search queries.
We want to believe that our own personal searches such as “best exercises to improve back posture” are insignificant and insignificant . After all, we have nothing to hide. But just like surveillance capitalist companies like Google, we have to look at the big picture. Our personal decisions about privacy have always been public matters, not private ones. The more we allow technology and social media companies to chip away at our personal privacy, the more they can commercialize our privacy on a massive scale. Everything is up for sale, even our innermost sense of self.
According to computer scientist, futurist, and frequent technology critic Jaron Lanier, deleting your social media accounts is “the most finely targeted way to resist the madness of our time.” It is the only way to regain humanity in an increasingly dehumanized world. .
Here are some inspirations for going from super online to super offline.
No one understands the importance of privacy as a public service better than Shoshana Zuboff. Zuboff is the only person who has been able to repeatedly measure trends in the techno-economy and assess what they are, before we even know what we have signed up for. Every time we agree to a slew of new digital services that have personalization (and thus data mining) at their core, we consent to what Zuboff calls “surveillance capitalism.” Every time I sit down to read Shoshana Zuboff’s work, I can expect it to be engrossing, wonderful, and frankly disturbing. And this piece (essentially a cliff notes version of her shocking book) era of surveillance capitalism,) Take no prisoners.
That’s the lesson privacy is public — It is a collective interest that is logically and morally inseparable from the values of human autonomy and self-determination, on which privacy depends and without which democratic societies cannot be imagined.
…In a race for scope, surveillance capitalists want your home and what you say and do within its walls. They want your car, your medical conditions, and the shows you stream. Not just your location, but every street and building in your path, and the actions of every person in your city. They want your voice, what you eat, what you buy. Children’s playtime and school education. Brain waves and blood flow. Nothing is exempt.
I love a good profile. In particular, it concerns a strange, enigmatic and unconventional figure like Jaron Lanier, the so-called “father of virtual reality” and, according to this work, “the owner of the world’s largest flute.” Lanier wrote my favorite book. 10 Arguments for Deleting Social Media Accounts NowThis thin book contains just 10 chapters, or 10 discussions, and reads like a Buddhist manual written by Lanier, a pan flute-playing, dreadlocked Berkeley hippie.
Reading Barron’s profile reminds me of my own inner child. A futurist at heart, Lanier is one of the most curious people I’ve ever met, and his mind seems unaffected by outside influences. That’s why I love this profile because it shows him to be a strange and cunning human being.
(Lanier) appeared to be living in front of us, close to the horizon. Well, the rest of us were here too.
But I told him that was all just part of the reason I sought out Lanier. I said what I really wanted to do was talk about the future and how to live in it. This year feels like a crossroads. There’s no need to explain what this means. We stand on the brink of destruction, revolution, or both. We’re tired of looking at social media, but I can also say that social media is driving probably the most important and necessary social movements of my entire life. I now want to destroy my computer where I work, “have a drink” and occasionally stare at a blurry simulation of my parents. I want to kneel down and pray like God. Someone please tell Jaron Lanier where he’s going and if he’ll be okay once he gets there.
Lanier just nodded. Okay, then.
There are a lot of idiots on Twitter. What I love about this article is that it not only looks at the pernicious effects of internet pile-ons driven by tweet after tweet, but also because, in particular, Cross This is because we are considering the influence of what we call the “third order”: the influence of discourse.
You know the discourse. Usually subtweets about new discussions of the day. Please provide an explanation if possible. I have a Twitter account. Something happened. You comment on it and let us know which side of the discursive divide you are on. It’s not a pile-on. It’s just a statement about the situation. However, the subtweets typically do not directly engage the target of the discourse and may even support the target, thus only allowing the harassment to continue and spread. No matter what you say, commentary brings longevity, and longevity prolongs harmful episodes. Twitter’s design allows users to distance themselves from the real-life harm that is inevitably caused simply by being active on the platform.
attack directed at individual “I hate Neon Yang” is a metacommunicative abbreviation. “I Hate Neon Yang” is not about Yang, but about the set of ideas that Yang expresses discursively. You can’t @ ideas on Twitter. For individuals only. This is why even the numerous attempts at “constructive” calls and criticisms directed at both the original story and the subsequent months of Neon Yang in the Helicopter story are just additions. pain and anger. The weight and volume of so many people at once on an individual is a powerfully destructive force, even if many of those people are “good people.”
In order to write well, or to create any kind of art that cuts through the constant noise of human experience, you must first participate in that experience. There should be diversity in the aesthetics around you. But the year of the pandemic has left us increasingly isolated and searching for aesthetics in a world that has gone online. You scroll through Instagram even though all the photos look more and more alike. The algorithm focuses on the aesthetics it thinks I like, serves me photo after photo of the same thing to keep my eyes glued to it, and monetizes my time for the benefit of others. Masu. At this point, you don’t even know the difference between what you like and what is being given to you.
Of all the things I can’t stand about extreme online life, the theft of diverse and amazing aesthetics turns me on the most. (Except that our lives become just data points for someone else’s commercialization.) No matter where we go, everything looks the same. This is why the increasing “frictionlessness” of various aesthetics, such as open-concept kitchens, industrial design, and Edison light bulbs on every table, are prevalent, and how AirBnb’s curation of a single aesthetic, in particular, That’s why I love this article about how we did it. It is possible to move from city to city or even abroad without noticing any difference.
You could call this strange landform created by technology “AirSpace.” It’s a coffee shop, a bar, a startup office, a co-living/work space, and it all has the same characteristics no matter where you go. Symbols of comfort and quality abound, at least to a certain connoisseur’s mindset. minimalist furniture. Craft beer and avocado toast. Reclaimed wood. industrial lighting. Cortados. High speed internet. The homogeneity of these spaces means that movement between them is frictionless, a value valued in Silicon Valley and exploited by cultural influencers like Schwarzman. ing. Changing your location is as easy as reloading the website. You may not even realize that you are not the starting point.
To me, social media feels more and more like a cult. It doesn’t matter what platform you use. People exhibit the same linear thinking required for cult indoctrination, regardless of the subject matter. It doesn’t matter what I think about a topic. For me, and for all of us, that talk has already been decided. Now, virality, not fact, equates to truth. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to ask questions out loud. As Nguyen states in this essay, for cult thinking to flourish he needs two things. It’s a combination of epistemological bubbles and echo chambers. Social media has plenty of that. Yes, we are in a cult. Time to call the dads.
No other voices are heard within the epistemological bubble. In an echo chamber, other voices are actively dampened. The way to break out of an echo chamber is not to wave “facts” in members’ faces. The goal is to attack the echo chamber at its core and repair broken trust.
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Lisa Barbert is a writer and librarian based in Nashville, Tennessee. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Texas Highways, Washington Square Review, and more.
Editor: carolyn wells