When I drink a cup of coffee, I don’t care about it. I expect a reasonable temperature, an inoffensive taste, and a familiar aroma. That’s it. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to look at it. I don’t want to take a picture of it. I don’t want to doctor a picture of it to make it look like it’s from 1975. I don’t want to look at a doctored picture of it. I want to drink it, and that’s all. If I’m not very interested in my cup of coffee, how interested could I possibly in that of a friend, an acquaintance, an enemy, or a stranger? Well, that answer is kind of complicated.
I’ve had a strange year with social media to the extent that my struggle therewith has been a thing that defines 2011 for me. I reckon the tension had been building for several years, but reading Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together helped me to clarify that tension. I blogged about it here, and reviewed it for an online journal specific to my profession. I made less noise about something else I read, a blog post by Freddie deBoer called “the resentment machine.” (I recommend reading it!) “the resentment machine” cast a new light on all my online activity, from my compulsion for viewing (and critiquing) other people’s metaphorical faux-vintage photos of cups of coffee to the very premise I’d set up for this blog. I stopped blogging, and found myself in the throes of a twitter crisis, which I negotiated my way through with a month’s worth of post-ironic meta-tweets that intrigued some and alienated others.
In the midst of this twitter crisis, I hoped never to get harsh or unkind, even though I felt something that felt like anger, or, I guess, angst. I didn’t want to come across as haughty, even though I felt haughty. I did think, and I still do, that I was too good to be tweeting and reading tweets, but I never wanted that to be misconstrued as thinking I was better than you, or anyone else who was also tweeting. I think we’re all better than this, or, at the very least: here is something to strive for.
A couple weeks ago, I stopped tweeting, and, just as importantly, I stopped reading tweets. I’ve probably missed out on a few good jokes and a few interesting articles, but those vacancies are filled with a greater sense of peace. My experience with twitter has never been marked by peace, even when it’s been the most fun and the most helpful.
I think there’s a fatalistic naiveté about social media that says that this is the way things are, must be, and will be, that this is progress, that this is a revolution. Funny thing about revolutions is that they aren’t subject to plans. I believe that the future doesn’t exist yet, and even if it did, it would remain unknown even to the savviest of web gurus until it stopped being “future.” All this stuff has been creeping in on us, and maybe we haven’t drawn enough lines. That doesn’t mean we’re powerless to claim them now. Because social media seems like it’s here to stay, and because it’s always growing and moving into our lives, we must continue to tend to our boundaries.
Twitter, as a company, comes across as pretty decent, especially compared to companies like Facebook and Google. It’s twitter-as-product that concerns me. I know that its functionality brings out the worst in me, and I think that it brings out the worst in most people I’ve followed or observed. I think that it’s one of the most efficient expressions of “the resentment machine.” Not to say that twitter is unambiguously bad. It’s not. The question is whether that which is good about twitter is worth that which is bad about it. I don’t think it is.
Ok.
I knew something was coming. I was hoping I could overlook it. But now I think I’m at the beginning of the process you have committed to.
So first, questions. Did you ever feel like social media allowed for relationship growth? If I read you right, you would probably say yes, but that the relationship and self-decay it fostered overwhelmed the growth. My own experience is that twitter allows for relationships I had considered dead to be at least maintained. And maybe relationship is not a good word. It could be argued that I was simply maintaining contacts, not relationships.
I’m sure your post-ironic treatise-as-tweets pricked my mind, but in the last week, my goal was to say nothing harsh, mean, cynical, irony-drenched etc. I think I went 4–6 days with nothing to say on Twitter. Or more accurately, plenty I thought about saying, but nothing that met those guidelines. What a bunch of crap I desire to say.
And yet, I (we) have friends who do not respond that way. At least not usually. For them, Twitter is, maybe Facebook lite. Status updates. Relevant info. Good thoughts. Email content, and I mean that in a good way. Is it enough to tweet guilelessly? That has been my goal for a week or more.
And finally, not a question, but a confession/clarification. I quit facebook a while ago because it (or I) was clearly harmful to any growth of any kind. But I have held on to Twitter, maybe because it appeals to me as a “sorting mechanism”. According to the “Resentment Machine” perspective, that action/belief is probably one of the most self-damaging acts I could imagine. Uh-oh.
Not sure if my questions are clear. Really, I just want to hear more. Your points and the “Resentment Machine” piece are pretty jolting. Very good though. I’m hoping some others jump into the discussion here.
Hey, Walt. You ask good questions. I’ll do my best!
I want to clarify that when I talk about twitter bringing out the worst in me, I’m not talking exclusively, or even mostly, about the things that I’d tweet. I think it’s possible to tweet entirely positive things and still be dealing with the same internal processes as the nastiest of tweeters. The biggest problem for me was subjecting myself to a steady stream of opinions, observations, and random tidbits that I neither needed nor wanted, and somehow becoming almost addicted to that, such that I would knowingly click on an Instagram link to look at the cup of coffee (or its equivalent) of a person I didn’t know, or maybe didn’t like. I can’t recall ever coming away from that with greater empathy for the person.
This (the post and this comment) may come across as judgmental (though I hope it also comes across as confessional), but that’s nothing next to the judgmental attitude that twitter fosters in me. If I’m being judgmental now, at least I can say that I’m not being so with pettiness. Something about twitter seems to foster pettiness. Even good tweets are still “tweets,” you know?
I think the human connection aspect of social media has been highly overrated over the past 5–10 years, and the negative effect its had on privacy and intimacy hasn’t been talked about enough. I’d suggest that the best social media can offer, as far as relationships are concerned, is an opportunity to reconnect for the purpose of moving off of that format, whether that be to email, phone, or getting together in the flesh.
What I started feeling like, vis-a-vis twitter, was that I was living with 80 or so ghosts who went with me everywhere. When something happened in the world, I’d have a distant friendly acquaintance’s (or a stranger’s, or a fictional/historical character’s) take on it before I’d talk about it with a loved one or any of the people I work with or live near. Even the tweets from people I’d call good friends were going out to the entire world, so what was unique about that for us?
This is a new and weird thing. How do we let relationships end, now? Is it healthy to keep up with so many people’s thoughts and opinions and daily whereabouts? I think it’s probably not.
Have you ever realized that you’ve been unfollowed/defriended? It can feel like an affront, even if it’s someone we don’t really know. Without social media, we might not have worried if we never saw the same person again in our lives, but because of it, we allow ourselves to be affected by the perceived rejection. That’s strange, and it’s an insecurity that propels the industry.
I’m still thinking and feeling my way through this, so if you have any other thoughts, I’d love to hear them!
This whole thing has really gotten to me.
First off, I don’t see or feel any sense of judgment in any of this. It’s becoming revelatory, in fact. I appreciate it.
I’m glad you clarified about the addiction to the stream over/against the snark issue. I think that makes so much sense, and now that I see it, I feel it. I guess I knew it was there, but didn’t see any fault with it. If I care what a friend has to say, I should talk to my friend, right? Not wait for an edited self-absorbed sentence to quench a desire for conversation.
Have you felt this reaching to other corners? I associate spare (or even not spare) minutes with picking up my phone, reading tweets, playing games, staring blankly at apps, much like the lady at the funeral from the book you referenced. From a broader perspective, how do blogs and email fit into this? Is it more an issue of one-on-one communication, or of technology as a faulty mode? Is it good for us to have this conversation here, or is it one we can only rightly have face-to-face? I am always tempted to find an extreme to move to next…give up my iPhone for good…give up blogging…blog every day…, but I feel like that is what you’ve talked about being the wrong answer. Have you found a thought or rule-of-thumb or mantra that centers you when you face the technology question?
And can you expound on the relationship-ending idea? That’s another idea that is jolting, but upon reflection seems so natural and obvious. When is it good to allow a relationship to end? I feel like I’ve neglected almost every relationship I’ve ever had, but it would make sense that there are many I should not be concerned with maintaining.
I hope you don’t mind me saying you have totally messed with my mind-grapes.
I’ve been living without a smartphone for the last three months. I feel better and freer. But I am experiencing growing impatience with those who cannot leave their phones alone for more than a minute. #deathbytech
wh, I’m a big believer in the power of presence, but I’m also a believer in written communication. Which is to say, I don’t think this conversation requires a face-to-face meeting. Sometimes being able to slow down and think before I respond is helpful to me.
There’s some risk involved in any technology, but I find twitter especially problematic because it has a weird twist on both presence (like I said, I felt like I had 80 ghosts with me) and written communication (character limits, hashtag punchlines, etc.). And also because twitter does one thing…I can negotiate my way around Google and Facebook, but Twitter at least seems like an all or nothing proposition.
But, yes, I’ve felt it creep into any corner it can reach. I wish I had a great mantra to share or something. My personal struggle is to stay in my space in the moment when I get an alert on my phone or computer.
About ending relationships, I think it’s a new problem, because it would’ve happened naturally at any time in the past just by our getting on with our lives. You know? There are people I barely (or never) talked to when we lived in the same place, but suddenly I was keeping abreast of the minutiae of their daily lives! That’s weird, isn’t it? We all have friends of varying closeness. Some of them may be “friends along the journey,” or whatever, people with whom we share life for a little while, and then part ways. Social media sends the message that we shouldn’t do that. It tells us, in fact, “here’s someone one of your friends knows…follow them, too!” That’s crazy.
I think you’d appreciate Alone Together!
JB, I do enjoy my iPhone, but I think I’d be happy with a Jitterbug.