I've been spending far less time on social media platforms over the years and it's been great for me. During my free time, I've been reading more books, listening to more albums and collecting vinyl records, hanging out with friends and family more often, learning coding and UI/UX Design, and even discovered the joys of pickleball. The only social media platform that I openly admit that I spend (too much) time on is Youtube. Notice that Youtube has yet to rebrand itself.
The use of "X" in a name (and other things) is to denote "unknown," e.g., Malcolm Little changed his name to Malcolm X to reference the loss of his true ancestral name due to slavery. Maybe Elon Musk is trying to tell us that he's lost the vision for this business and doesn't know what the hell he's doing.
They can switch names all they want. They’re toxic as Hell. Good riddance. These social platforms solely lead to polarization, division, reality-distortion and false outrage. It makes everyone think they’re an expert. It encourages low-rent tribalism. It harms our social cohesion. I’m off. You should all get off too. The world is actually a pretty beautiful place. You just gotta get off social media and news.
As any number of “offensive” words are replaced with PC words, I have long thought: it is *the thing,* and not the word, that is stained with ignominy. The signified, not the signifier. As long as the thing being referenced is held in contempt by society, or has negative connotations, in due time the new PC word will too become a slur. I’m thinking, for example, of the rebrand of “prostitute” with “sex worker”--in a decade or two, “sex worker” will become a slur and a new word will replace it. Or, for example, words to refer to the cognitively-challenged: in my day (the 80s), we used the term “learning disabled” or “LD.” Very quickly, “LD” became an insult. You do not see it anymore. You can change names all day, but as long as the signified carries a stain, so too, in time, will any new name assigned.
Thanks, btw, for your thoughtful critiques of culture. I love your substack.
Like the Misbehaved Muse wrote, X is not MDMA it's Ecstasy, a pill bought on the street which could contain anything, but often contains just a lot of methamphetamine or similar. It often contains not much or even any MDMA. But MDMA, like Psilocybin, is very far advanced in the process of being legalised for therapeutic use. Where quality recent research is showing it is massively more effective, for PTSD for example, than any known previous treatments. And much of those effects you mentioned have been debunked as hysteria and poor scientific research. You wrote before about there being no counterculture, but there are pockets. And MDMA and Psilocybin are in fact, literally two concrete examples of the counterculture about to overtake the mainstream. As for Musk's X, I read it as X'ed as in crossed out, whacked, knocked off, in old school gangster movie speak. Twitter now has X's for eyes; it ded.
It seems like these brands you mentioned (discord being the one with the most cutting name) are more focused on proving their self-awareness of the chaos and cynicism with their users because it's easier to live in the complaint-generating mode of irony. It seems easier to commiserate with the users nonchalantly by acknowledging how messy everything is than to be hopeful and try to diagnose issues more fundamentally.
Reminds me of a David Foster Wallace quote:
"Sarcasm, parody, absurdism and irony are great ways to strip off stuff’s mask and show the unpleasant reality behind it. The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed, "then" what do we do? [...] Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what’s wrong, because they’ll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists."
Hopefully, we will look back on these last two decades of social media development and it's unfettered rise into our lives just as oddly as one looks at how humans put so much lead into the environment from the 1920s onward: with and odd look, quickly rewritten laws, and an admittance that it was all a huge mistake. Tech companies will never do this on their own, though. They will be dragged kicking and screaming.
Love the article! Re MDMA when concern first started regarding this drug one of the main pieces of evidence against its use was a study where quite horrifically the substance being used was in fact meth, not MDMA - yet this was publicized as being a study on MDMA and was central to raising public alarm. In the US, MDMA is being legalized for use by the VA to treat PTSD. Just a note that there’s been a lot of misinformation about this drug.
I worked for a company that changed its name. They asked employees for suggestions. I submitted "Aphasia" because I am a wise guy. Based on the one they chose I think my idea was accurate. They selected a word and put an "!" at the end, but said "!" had to be pronounced like an "i". An upside down "!". Yep, they could not recognize our own letters and punctuation anymore. I left not long after that.
Here's what GPT4 suggests for your challenge to come up with an opening to a story using: "Threads, X, Ghost, Twitch, Discord" (not bad!):
The threads of her life had grown tenuous, thinner than she'd ever thought possible, each one a lifeline to a world she felt increasingly alienated from. She sat before her computer, screen glowing in the dim light of her room, an icon flashing: "X" - it represented a challenge, a path unexplored, and now was her time to seize it.
Across the screen, the letters of the handle 'Ghost' blinked back at her, the anonymity a comfort in the alien landscape of digital community. There was a thrill in the unknown, in the idea that behind each avatar was a person, their world as rich and complex as her own.
She flipped between Twitch streams and Discord servers, her mind buzzing with the chatter of hundreds of voices, all threading together into a tapestry of human experience. It was a strange, asynchronous connection, a web of threads that brought comfort, offering her a lifeline in a time of solitude. The buzz of conversation, the shared moments, the gentle, teasing banter: this was her new reality, her way of staving off the creeping loneliness.
About three months ago I deleted all my social media accounts. I was anticipating the fall out as I’m a gigging musician in a small town. My initial fear was how was I going to promote my business, sell my unwanted gear or keep up with social news, community events and the like? But quite honestly I felt so liberated it was incredible. I was no longer a Gulliver tied down by these pesky apps sucking the life blood out of my soul. You’re right Ted, rebranding won’t solve the problem to these anti-social platforms. Some have a practical use but the majority promote dangerous narcissistic tendencies whilst also giving us an unhealthy perspective on genuine human relations. A leopard can’t change its spots, nor can a soured WEB2 recipe.
Rebranding. Great commentary Ted. Really correct I feel. I too have been involved in a few "rebrandings" and it's just stupid. Who are they trying to fool? Only themselves.
I worked for a very successful company that really was the leader in their type of product. One day the owners decided to rebrand and I asked why dump all of the good will, marketing and blood and sweat that the company had invested under the original name?
I couldn't get an answer to "why"... or what issue they were trying to fix... but the company was done 3 years later... amazingly rebranding did nothing to save it... other than cost a ton of money. BTW: up until the last day their customers stilled called the product by it's original name... as the new name was a made up word no one could understand. At the time, I felt the leaders were just bored with the old name and some how thought a new name would give more energy to something.... it certainly does to the business card and stationery printing places... another black hole corner of the great marketing mystery.
Great insight on the renaming phenomenon. It's something I've noticed with terms for people who are different in some way - the terms keep becoming slurs, then a new term is needed.
When radio and television were first transmitted through our common air, both their potential and dangers attracted notice. A framework, however faulty, was built to regulate severest abuses. No such framework ever emerged for social media. Instead, the irresponsible and unregulated destroyed the business model for edited news responsibly reported. And that’s just one of the effects.
I've been spending far less time on social media platforms over the years and it's been great for me. During my free time, I've been reading more books, listening to more albums and collecting vinyl records, hanging out with friends and family more often, learning coding and UI/UX Design, and even discovered the joys of pickleball. The only social media platform that I openly admit that I spend (too much) time on is Youtube. Notice that Youtube has yet to rebrand itself.
The use of "X" in a name (and other things) is to denote "unknown," e.g., Malcolm Little changed his name to Malcolm X to reference the loss of his true ancestral name due to slavery. Maybe Elon Musk is trying to tell us that he's lost the vision for this business and doesn't know what the hell he's doing.
They can switch names all they want. They’re toxic as Hell. Good riddance. These social platforms solely lead to polarization, division, reality-distortion and false outrage. It makes everyone think they’re an expert. It encourages low-rent tribalism. It harms our social cohesion. I’m off. You should all get off too. The world is actually a pretty beautiful place. You just gotta get off social media and news.
Michael Mohr
‘Sincere American Writing’
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
As any number of “offensive” words are replaced with PC words, I have long thought: it is *the thing,* and not the word, that is stained with ignominy. The signified, not the signifier. As long as the thing being referenced is held in contempt by society, or has negative connotations, in due time the new PC word will too become a slur. I’m thinking, for example, of the rebrand of “prostitute” with “sex worker”--in a decade or two, “sex worker” will become a slur and a new word will replace it. Or, for example, words to refer to the cognitively-challenged: in my day (the 80s), we used the term “learning disabled” or “LD.” Very quickly, “LD” became an insult. You do not see it anymore. You can change names all day, but as long as the signified carries a stain, so too, in time, will any new name assigned.
Thanks, btw, for your thoughtful critiques of culture. I love your substack.
Like the Misbehaved Muse wrote, X is not MDMA it's Ecstasy, a pill bought on the street which could contain anything, but often contains just a lot of methamphetamine or similar. It often contains not much or even any MDMA. But MDMA, like Psilocybin, is very far advanced in the process of being legalised for therapeutic use. Where quality recent research is showing it is massively more effective, for PTSD for example, than any known previous treatments. And much of those effects you mentioned have been debunked as hysteria and poor scientific research. You wrote before about there being no counterculture, but there are pockets. And MDMA and Psilocybin are in fact, literally two concrete examples of the counterculture about to overtake the mainstream. As for Musk's X, I read it as X'ed as in crossed out, whacked, knocked off, in old school gangster movie speak. Twitter now has X's for eyes; it ded.
Hey Brand X is the name of a great fusion band!
It seems like these brands you mentioned (discord being the one with the most cutting name) are more focused on proving their self-awareness of the chaos and cynicism with their users because it's easier to live in the complaint-generating mode of irony. It seems easier to commiserate with the users nonchalantly by acknowledging how messy everything is than to be hopeful and try to diagnose issues more fundamentally.
Reminds me of a David Foster Wallace quote:
"Sarcasm, parody, absurdism and irony are great ways to strip off stuff’s mask and show the unpleasant reality behind it. The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed, "then" what do we do? [...] Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what’s wrong, because they’ll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists."
Hopefully, we will look back on these last two decades of social media development and it's unfettered rise into our lives just as oddly as one looks at how humans put so much lead into the environment from the 1920s onward: with and odd look, quickly rewritten laws, and an admittance that it was all a huge mistake. Tech companies will never do this on their own, though. They will be dragged kicking and screaming.
Love the article! Re MDMA when concern first started regarding this drug one of the main pieces of evidence against its use was a study where quite horrifically the substance being used was in fact meth, not MDMA - yet this was publicized as being a study on MDMA and was central to raising public alarm. In the US, MDMA is being legalized for use by the VA to treat PTSD. Just a note that there’s been a lot of misinformation about this drug.
The international rebranding of 'Propaganda'' as 'Public Relations' in the 1920s, springs to mind.
I worked for a company that changed its name. They asked employees for suggestions. I submitted "Aphasia" because I am a wise guy. Based on the one they chose I think my idea was accurate. They selected a word and put an "!" at the end, but said "!" had to be pronounced like an "i". An upside down "!". Yep, they could not recognize our own letters and punctuation anymore. I left not long after that.
Here's what GPT4 suggests for your challenge to come up with an opening to a story using: "Threads, X, Ghost, Twitch, Discord" (not bad!):
The threads of her life had grown tenuous, thinner than she'd ever thought possible, each one a lifeline to a world she felt increasingly alienated from. She sat before her computer, screen glowing in the dim light of her room, an icon flashing: "X" - it represented a challenge, a path unexplored, and now was her time to seize it.
Across the screen, the letters of the handle 'Ghost' blinked back at her, the anonymity a comfort in the alien landscape of digital community. There was a thrill in the unknown, in the idea that behind each avatar was a person, their world as rich and complex as her own.
She flipped between Twitch streams and Discord servers, her mind buzzing with the chatter of hundreds of voices, all threading together into a tapestry of human experience. It was a strange, asynchronous connection, a web of threads that brought comfort, offering her a lifeline in a time of solitude. The buzz of conversation, the shared moments, the gentle, teasing banter: this was her new reality, her way of staving off the creeping loneliness.
About three months ago I deleted all my social media accounts. I was anticipating the fall out as I’m a gigging musician in a small town. My initial fear was how was I going to promote my business, sell my unwanted gear or keep up with social news, community events and the like? But quite honestly I felt so liberated it was incredible. I was no longer a Gulliver tied down by these pesky apps sucking the life blood out of my soul. You’re right Ted, rebranding won’t solve the problem to these anti-social platforms. Some have a practical use but the majority promote dangerous narcissistic tendencies whilst also giving us an unhealthy perspective on genuine human relations. A leopard can’t change its spots, nor can a soured WEB2 recipe.
Rebranding. Great commentary Ted. Really correct I feel. I too have been involved in a few "rebrandings" and it's just stupid. Who are they trying to fool? Only themselves.
I worked for a very successful company that really was the leader in their type of product. One day the owners decided to rebrand and I asked why dump all of the good will, marketing and blood and sweat that the company had invested under the original name?
I couldn't get an answer to "why"... or what issue they were trying to fix... but the company was done 3 years later... amazingly rebranding did nothing to save it... other than cost a ton of money. BTW: up until the last day their customers stilled called the product by it's original name... as the new name was a made up word no one could understand. At the time, I felt the leaders were just bored with the old name and some how thought a new name would give more energy to something.... it certainly does to the business card and stationery printing places... another black hole corner of the great marketing mystery.
Great insight on the renaming phenomenon. It's something I've noticed with terms for people who are different in some way - the terms keep becoming slurs, then a new term is needed.
When radio and television were first transmitted through our common air, both their potential and dangers attracted notice. A framework, however faulty, was built to regulate severest abuses. No such framework ever emerged for social media. Instead, the irresponsible and unregulated destroyed the business model for edited news responsibly reported. And that’s just one of the effects.