In an article I recently I stumbled upon, ironically through twitter, from a Newsletter by technology writer Charlie Warzel at The Atlantic on the stultifying nature of social media. Warzel interviewed technology theorist LM Sarcasas who believes social media contributes to our collective feeling of being stuck in an endless loop of devastating news:
“There’s a well-ordered way of relating to time—how much attention you give to the past, present, and future,” he said. “I don’t mean to suggest that one way is the good way or the bad way, but it seems as if most of us are disproportionately focused on what has already happened. Not just the events themselves, but the layers of commentary atop of them.”
Not to summarize the entire article, but it describes in a concise way the extent to which social media keeps us chained to the past, caught in a never-ending loop of hopelessness. He compares the social media experience to staring at a star that appears to be alive and bright when in reality it's dying (because of light years). A mass shooting or an international crisis proceeds on twitter like a liturgical set of events: initial shock, outrage, despair, and eventual vertigo/amnesia at the end of the cycle. Repeat the next day.
Furthermore, there’s the dance of everyone commenting on everyone else and not the actual event. Having so many reactions and viewpoints assaulting our brains abstracts everything, possibly akin to living in a hive mind, reminding us hell is other people. It all leads to a stasis and all the negative byproducts: inaction, despair, depression, hopelessness. Morbidity is endemic on twitter.
As a thought experiment, I imagined if something like twitter had existed during The Second World War. All the dark days in the early years of the conflict: the fall of Poland and France, Dunkirk, or Pearl Harbor The famous photograph of Hitler in Paris or of a bombed-out London, would've led to a collective despair that defeating Fascism was impossible. After the destruction of the fleet at Pearl Harbor or the fall of the Philippines, I see think pieces from The Atlantic and twitter threads of doom and gloom of how crossing the English Channel to liberate Europe was impossible.
The main point is that social media traps us in the past like ants in amber, always in reaction mode. To quote Warzel:
Constantly absorbing and commenting on things that have just happened sounds to me like a recipe for feeling powerless. Online, I frequently feel both stuck in the past but presented with a grim projection of the future. There is very little focus on the present, which is a place where we derive agency. We can act now.
The article presents no options for finding our way out of this conundrum. We've seen how influencers monetize their influence after a tragedy or even a celebrity scandal, they are like the folks who built an amusement park near a dying man trapped in a hole in Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole. A new crop of politicians is more concerned with their tweets stirring disgust than actual policymaking. The influencer impulse is everywhere - digital carnival barkers.
Simply walking away won't work. Could there be counter type of influencing of a more positive variety? Could Utopian ideas catch hold? Messianic figures are dangerous by trade and there are way too many pretenders who imagine themselves as such on twitter. These questions lead to deeper historical questions of what or who serves as a catalyst for futuristic thinking. But technology is still simply a tool, and we can learn how to live with it. It's a crucial question, and while looking to science fiction or visionary biographies are important and have their place, it will come down to more people making decisions towards something better. It will take creativity, historical knowledge, and transcendence.
A link to the article: https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/galaxy-brain/629ec16551acba002091af11/internet-social-media-reactionary-doom-loop/
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