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.
I have been off social media for a few months, and my quality of life improved immensely during this time. I also got back the attention-span to read books during my little hiatus. Did however spend quite a bit more time on Youtube than I expected, but somehow it feels less "dirty".
Reactivated facebook about a week ago to check on concert dates for the local bands I know. Already feeling the quality of life diminishing.
As a "social" media platform you mean? Too early to say.
For now it's a lot like "The Internet of old", meaning it's more user-focused and geared towards the exchange of ideas between people within a peer group.
But it may eventually change into an advertiser-focused platform as time goes by, thus becoming what we now have learned to recognize as a "social" media. I am hoping it will not though.
This distinction is what I am most focused on in my own writing.
Ditto. I still stare at my phone too much, but I spend a lot more time focused on what's in front of me and thinking about what I *enjoy* vs being forced to constantly confront stuff that is designed to make me have a negative emotional reaction. Yubtub doesn't need to rebrand because it still does exactly what it says on the tin (basically): let you post videos on the internet, for better or worse.
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.
It's like "cretin". The French guy who came up with that term for people with mental deficiencies was trying to remind people that they were Christians with human souls like everyone else.
Shakespeare had all this malarkey figured out when he wrote "Romeo and Juliet" centuries ago: "A rose by any other name..." That goes for BS or excrement or any other word that has been re-defined, but I'm hopeful that it's reached its apogee currently.
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.
(Im very excited about the growing legalization of these substances to treat mental ills in clinical settings - just a side note on your post re counter culture - there are a lot of innovative things happening IRW)
Trust Surrender Receive: How MDMA Can Release Us From Trauma and PTSD is quite a good book. It's a writeup of people's experiences. There are good conscientious people out there doing this already. Sometimes waiting can be riskier than doing your research carefully and taking a leap of faith. Bear in mind, that even when legalised soon, a lot will depend on the facilitator and how much real world experience they have.
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.
Have you noticed that no one ever refers to people as "housed"? The fact that the term without the "un" is not used automatically makes it far more stigmatising than homeless.
Yes, that is my point. We also have a perfectly good word for those without housing, "homeless". Unhoused sounds like the solution is to "warehouse" people. Homeless implies that not only do people need shelter, they need a home, a space that is welcoming and safe.
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.
Early radio had its share of right wing rabble rousers like Father Coughlin. FDR made a deal with the Pope. The US would recognize a papal nuncio as ambassador if he shut up Coughlin. It worked.
Sure, but wartime censorship was not the framework I meant. Standards of decency and professional standards for reporting facts were more what I had in mind. Such standards are hard to craft and difficult to administer, but they aim to promote responsible use of powerful media.
Coughlin was before the war, but getting him off the air was part of the commercial transformation of radio. Before licensing, anyone could set up a transmitter. In fact, that's how it started, with some amateurs broadcasting music to patients in hospitals. Even after radio spectrum was licensed and regulated, radio was still pretty wide open. As radio became more commercially important, it developed a different style, especially once the big networks dominated programming. A certain style of radio, like that of Coughlin, was suppressed, though not always by such dramatic means. I gather that's when the FCC started adding value to the community to the criteria for holding a license.
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.
I have been off social media for a few months, and my quality of life improved immensely during this time. I also got back the attention-span to read books during my little hiatus. Did however spend quite a bit more time on Youtube than I expected, but somehow it feels less "dirty".
Reactivated facebook about a week ago to check on concert dates for the local bands I know. Already feeling the quality of life diminishing.
Yep, that is the main reason I got back onto Faceborg. The musical and other events. And you are right about the diminished quality of life.
Does Substack count?
As a "social" media platform you mean? Too early to say.
For now it's a lot like "The Internet of old", meaning it's more user-focused and geared towards the exchange of ideas between people within a peer group.
But it may eventually change into an advertiser-focused platform as time goes by, thus becoming what we now have learned to recognize as a "social" media. I am hoping it will not though.
This distinction is what I am most focused on in my own writing.
I guess we will all know if Substack is social media if I get kicked off it like I have Facebook and Twitter...
Ditto. I still stare at my phone too much, but I spend a lot more time focused on what's in front of me and thinking about what I *enjoy* vs being forced to constantly confront stuff that is designed to make me have a negative emotional reaction. Yubtub doesn't need to rebrand because it still does exactly what it says on the tin (basically): let you post videos on the internet, for better or worse.
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.
hm
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.
It's like "cretin". The French guy who came up with that term for people with mental deficiencies was trying to remind people that they were Christians with human souls like everyone else.
Oh yeah..."crippled" morphs into "handicapped", which then becomes "physically challenged" or--my favorite--"differently-abled".
Shakespeare had all this malarkey figured out when he wrote "Romeo and Juliet" centuries ago: "A rose by any other name..." That goes for BS or excrement or any other word that has been re-defined, but I'm hopeful that it's reached its apogee currently.
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.
(Im very excited about the growing legalization of these substances to treat mental ills in clinical settings - just a side note on your post re counter culture - there are a lot of innovative things happening IRW)
As someone who has a son with one of these illnesses, I, too, am excited.
100%. My heart goes out to you. I have a son who I hope will follow this path too.
Trust Surrender Receive: How MDMA Can Release Us From Trauma and PTSD is quite a good book. It's a writeup of people's experiences. There are good conscientious people out there doing this already. Sometimes waiting can be riskier than doing your research carefully and taking a leap of faith. Bear in mind, that even when legalised soon, a lot will depend on the facilitator and how much real world experience they have.
Hey Brand X is the name of a great fusion band!
And X was a damn good California post-punk band.
now i have to think of the xx
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.
Well said, Max.
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.
This sort of stupidity causes me actual physical pain.
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.
That’s a lot of words to say: “She sat and faced an empty void.”
Chat GPT prefers its salad made with words.
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.
Do you mean as in “unhoused” instead of “homeless”?
That kind of thing yeah. Or any mental or physical variation with a stigma attached.
Have you noticed that no one ever refers to people as "housed"? The fact that the term without the "un" is not used automatically makes it far more stigmatising than homeless.
Perhaps nobody says “housed” because we already have words like homeowner, resident, renter, lodger, tenant, etc., which are more specific.
Yes, that is my point. We also have a perfectly good word for those without housing, "homeless". Unhoused sounds like the solution is to "warehouse" people. Homeless implies that not only do people need shelter, they need a home, a space that is welcoming and safe.
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.
Early radio had its share of right wing rabble rousers like Father Coughlin. FDR made a deal with the Pope. The US would recognize a papal nuncio as ambassador if he shut up Coughlin. It worked.
Sure, but wartime censorship was not the framework I meant. Standards of decency and professional standards for reporting facts were more what I had in mind. Such standards are hard to craft and difficult to administer, but they aim to promote responsible use of powerful media.
Coughlin was before the war, but getting him off the air was part of the commercial transformation of radio. Before licensing, anyone could set up a transmitter. In fact, that's how it started, with some amateurs broadcasting music to patients in hospitals. Even after radio spectrum was licensed and regulated, radio was still pretty wide open. As radio became more commercially important, it developed a different style, especially once the big networks dominated programming. A certain style of radio, like that of Coughlin, was suppressed, though not always by such dramatic means. I gather that's when the FCC started adding value to the community to the criteria for holding a license.
Thanks for the additional detail.
I also learned his name was pronounced Cawg-lin. That's what Fortune magazine claimed in an article on him back in the 1930s.