Due to this, I've stopped sharing everything on social media, except for the stupidest, lowest common-denominator stuff, and even that I will first consider sharing with individuals instead of social media. I've made a spreadsheet of all my friends I want to keep in touch with along with my commonalities with those friends (music, art, literature, psychology, etc.) I send them things individually when I come across them instead of posting on Facebook.
Is this a typo, or extremely poetic and I'm just failing to parse it?
Prison is the right analogy for social media. The real danger of social media is not the endless surveillance and advertising. Social media is a prison. It's simultaneously lawless -- there are no real rules, no clear expectations, no documented roles or requirements or expectations -- and also deeply authoritarian. Everyone is subject to harsh unstated rules and watched constantly by the guards. It's a culture without any rituals, a game that can be won or lost but has no rules or regulations or referees. Indeed nothing is even real, everyone and everything is "playing" at something -- but it's never clear what. And the result, make no mistake, is chaos. Fake news, "context collapses," human impostors (bots and politicians), social media mobs -- all of these a just terms for a kind of deep-seated anarchy that rules over social media. Social media is a society surrendering to the logic of the prison and deciding to imprison everybody. And corporations sit back and just observe and record everything and print money.
But what's also interesting is that if they could the corporations would put an end to the anarchy. Facebook, I think it's very clear, does not like the chaos. They would love to put an end to all the fake news and scams and general crazines. But they can't. And this is important: in prison the guards are not really "in control." Their best hope is to guide the violence, give it direction, but they can't end it completely and in fact they did the system would turn on them. Zuckerberg is as much a victim of Facebook as everybody else.
The essay is interesting but I think focusing on the economic aspect and even dopamine addiction is missing the point. The question again is why the prisoners do what they do. And the answer I suspect is fear and violence. There is a kind of fear that drives people back to Facebook. People check their phones over and over, every fucking minute, not because they want to see what's new but because they are fundamentally concerned for their own safety and wellbeing. The concern is that somebody will have unfriended them or not invited them or simply said something about them. Or something may have happened completely unrelated to them and they know they must be seen to react in the right manner. This is what drives Facebook, the source of its enormous power. It is not a bunch of bored, dopamine addicts being tricked into doing "microwork." The truth is even worse than it appears. It's a bunch of deeply frightened prisoners doing their best to survive in an anarchic system of structural violence.
And here's the real genius of the system: it doesn't really matter whether you are on Facebook or not. The violence is structural. Quitting Facebook -- leaving the game -- can still be interpreted as an act of aggression by the prisoners left behind. They may be induced to respond and, worse, now you won't even see them coming because you've given up your ability to monitor them. No, it's always a good idea to keep an eye on your fellow inmates. Sleep with one eye open and always be aware of who's behind you.
I see teenagers checking their little phones every minute on Instagram or Facebook and I think it's sad, but they will learn from it. Currently human kind is learning what it feels like to require random likes from strangers in order to feel happy. At the same time a lot of people feel nervous in real life because they get less and less practice doing real human interactions.
Facebook makes people act like monkeys to get bananas. Its funny and sad how real humanity is disappearing from our lifes.
How many times I’ve obsessed over taking the perfect selfie: ZERO
How many times I’ve posted a status update and worried about how many “likes” I got: ZERO
How many times I’ve felt anxiety over who to friend or unfriend: ZERO
It is great to actually have time to live my life rather than to always be promoting and marketing it!
I am pretty sure it does. It can sell targeted ads based on what you like. My previous company was implementing an "advocates program" where people could get rewards for sharing stuff on facebok (about the company).
This is the money quote.
The article raises a lot of points and is a provocating read. One of the points it brings up has also been on my mind lately: all the content I contribute on the platform just goes there to die. It's not searcheable, it's not easily indexed, it fades quickly within the matter of hours and it doesn't foster in-depth discussion. The silverlining is that this is finally pushing me to get my own site/blog up. Yes I will still link to it from FB and they can analyze the sh*t out of it if they want; but at least I get to keep and curate my own content.