My theory is that social media, the internet, and these manufactured communities trick our brains into feeling like we belong to actual communities -- when in reality, we do not. I work remotely and I'm no stranger to being "alone" -- and as an experiment, I did a "social media" detox for about 6 months -- I deleted all social media off my phone (FB, IG, dating apps), I blocked all "social" forums on my computer (HN, reddit, etc.) and even though throughout my entire adult life I've considered myself an introvert (which I probably am), I randomly started to interact with people around me. This was actually pretty surprising.
I've never been a "good morning, Joe!" bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed kind of person, but that's exactly what I became. I started getting better at conversations, more interested in people around me, and just generally in more of a "social vibe." I've always been terrible at remembering names, and instead of brushing it off (after all, who cares about remembering random old guy #7 from coffee shop #4?), I started keeping notes of names and appearance in my phone, so I don't forget who's who. It's actually kind of mind-blowing that my personality underwent such a palpable change.
I've since sworn off dating apps and attempting to limit my social media as much as possible. HN and reddit are probably going to get blocked again soon, too.
> My theory is that social media, the internet, and these manufactured communities trick our brains into feeling like we belong to actual communities -- when in reality, we do not.
I was having a discussion with my daughter about this just last night, where I made a similar point.
I was pointing out how celebrities (particularly, but not solely, movie stars) are always playing a role, even in interviews, etc. When they make a public appearance that isn't overtly as a character, the role they're playing is their "movie star" persona. Unless you are an actual friend of theirs, you don't really know what their true authentic selves are.
Social media, it seems to me, has caused everyone to do the same thing. In social media, people tend to be playing a role -- that role being what they view as the best version of themselves. But it's not their true authentic selves any more than with the celebrities.
I think this has caused a serious degradation in the social fabric. Before social media, the most common interactions you had were with friends and family, and you were mostly interacting with their authentic selves. After all, nobody really knows you until they've seen you at your worst.
Interactions in social media are not like that. You're interactive with people playing parts, and that interaction is no longer genuine human contact. It just has the window-dressing of that.
Loneliness and isolation is the logical result of that. It's a bit like replacing most of your food with "dietary fiber" that is made to look and taste like food. It will fill you up and taste good, but in the end you'll still starve to death.
> ... the role they're playing is their "movie star" persona ...
That's the same everybody is doing in their lives.
If you go to buy some groceries you are not yourself. You are playing your "polite shopper persona". When you area talking to your boss ... your subordinates ... your kids ... your spause ... your extended family ... your colleagues ... your students ...
You get the picture. Most people are a mixture of roles they play in front of others.
The people that are themselves and don't play any roles for anybody are perceived to be assholes.
The distinction is that those are each different personas. They allow you to express a different part of yourself in different contexts.
The problem now is that when everything is public, there is no opportunity to be anything that is unpalatable to the general population, or anything that might prospectively be at some point in the future. You can't go be with your weird friends and joke about weird stuff because now it's visible to your boss and your mother and your future boss and your future mother in law.
In many ways this can be solved with pseudonyms, but that's the polar opposite of real name policies and the like, and you still need people to be able to feel comfortable enough that their pseudonym won't be linked back to them in a way that could impact their social status or job prospects, or you'll still get the same self-censorship that turns everything into a bland fake public performance.
This is a good point. The collapse of local social hierarchies makes status competitions much more alienating and intense. It must be weird to have no shot at meeting - let alone dating or befriending - the most popular girl in school. The increase in status legibility - the ability to compare yourself against others and reduced ability to take solace in self-deception and local status - might also have negative effects.
Maybe that's how it was for "normal" people. For weirdos, life before social media was loneliness and isolation.
Today, no matter how esoteric your passion is, you can find 1000 other people with the same interest on the internet and talk to them 24/7. This is the golden age of the oddball with the unusual interest.
That's not to say your points are wrong or that things are perfect. But let's not pretend there aren't both pros and cons!
As someone who grew up with modems and BBSes in the 80s, I can say that the ability to connect with other weirdos has existed long before modern 'social media'. If you were a nerd, you had HAM radio even before BBSes.
I used to believe that. And I see just too much negatives about it. You're half connected for tiny thing that may be important for you at one point but may not be, at the same time you're cut off from people sharing your place.
I guess cities today are so fluid people don't make connections, but to me that is a long term bomb ticking.
Oh and I was incapable of social bonding before, so I was pro-internet at first. In a way it's a mediocre medicine for the wrong diagnostic.
It goes further than that though. Everyone shows different aspects of themselves and puts up false fronts and so on, and they do it differently in each of their relationships.
I sort of wonder if the idea that we have an authentic self is just as poisonous as the increase in superficial interactions.
“To be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody but yourself – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight – and never stop fighting.”
–EE Cummings
With an assist from Brené Brown and _The Gifts of Imperfection_
I have a counterpoint. Perhaps ~unique, but still, and maybe not that unique here.
Without the Internet, I'd be far more limited in communicating with others who share my interests. Or even have much of a clue what I'm going on about, or why.
In academia, and later in the NGO community, I had coworkers and colleagues. But once I went freelance, and especially since I came to love isolated rural places, there was literally nobody local to talk shop with.
I mean, I love my wife and our family and friends, but none of them are at all technical. The nearest hackerspace is some hundreds of km away. And anyway, OPSEC limits what I could talk about, in any case.
With Mirimir etc, I am "playing a role". But it's a game, and it's fun.
> Unless you are an actual friend of theirs, you don't really know what their true authentic selves are.
People put on a front for their friends, too. And spouses. Even themselves (who people really are often emerges only when they under extreme stress). Being drunk also strips off the facade to some extent, like being a "mean drunk".
I have different faces for the internet, work, friends, lovers, family, etc. We all do.
This is true, and I don't mean to discount that. There's a couple of important differences, though.
The face that people put forth in social media is much more artificial than the faces we put forth to people we have real relationships with. So, in a sense, it's a difference in degree.
When you have a real relationship with someone, you put on a face in a sense, but it's a fairly shallow sense. What your friends, lovers, family, etc., see is, generally speaking, authentic. It's just not the whole story -- I may have a different style and emphasize different parts of myself with my friends as opposed to my lovers, but those are still authentic, true aspects of myself. I'm not pretending to be a person I'm not. Also, over time, anyone you're close to gets to know your true self -- even the parts you wish they didn't (or maybe that you didn't even know existed). If that's not true, then the relationship isn't really that close.
I will exclude internet and work relationships from this, as those are of a different, and much more artificial, type.
> It's a bit like replacing most of your food with "dietary fiber" that is made to look and taste like food. It will fill you up and taste good, but in the end you'll still starve to death.
So you're saying social media is kind of like Soylent ;) -- I agree!
> Interactions in social media are not like that. You're interactive with people playing parts, and that interaction is no longer genuine human contact. It just has the window-dressing of that.
> Loneliness and isolation is the logical result of that. It's a bit like replacing most of your food with "dietary fiber" that is made to look and taste like food. It will fill you up and taste good, but in the end you'll still starve to death.
What's interesting is that this basically makes social media a honeypot to those with histrionic or sociopathic tendencies. I wonder if, in the long run, we'll tend to look at the typical "influencer's" Instragam or YouTube account the way we today look at an e-mail from some very wealthy prince in Nigeria who somehow needs our help transferring his billions out of the country.
>My theory is that social media, the internet, and these manufactured communities trick our brains into feeling like we belong to actual communities -- when in reality, we do not.
Same with celebrities - some people have trouble disconnecting the fact they're intimately familiar with celebrities (or at least the carefully crafted details they share) and confuse that with actually knowing said celebrities. I think that's what triggers the bizarre behavior of stopping these people and asking for a picture, saying hello, etc.
I sort of have the opposite reaction: I'm viscerally uninterested in the lives of celebrities because we're not friends. My wife has finally learned not to tell me Gwen Stefani is pregnant or whatever after I ask "Really? When's the shower? What should we bring?!?"
Being uninterested in celebrities has saved me a lot of time. I've sat at a dinner table where my friends chatted about some celebrity getting married or something and at then end of it, there was really no value except that they all connected around some loosely connected gossip about a celebrity.
It's some times the juicy stuff that gets people interested at first and then they go down to the point of knowing so much more than is necessary.
Another one I find kind of off-putting is how so many of my friends are very well versed in "famous" serial killers and their histories. Why don't people spend as much time learning about things that brought good to the world and not misery/suffering?
This is a false economy though - part of being able to participate in society is having a range of acceptable small-talk topics to engage with people on, and celebrity culture is a very easy one to stay sufficiently versed (literally just scroll a newspaper frontpage once a week or something) which provides a very safe in if someone wants to talk about that.
It's the same reason you should (though it is harder) have some passing knowledge of local sports teams, because its a big shared cultural touchstone.
It's the reason I'm really happy I started experimenting with vegetarian food, because it gave me something interesting to talk with and a possible point of shared interest as well.
>This is a false economy though - part of being able to participate in society is having a range of acceptable small-talk topics...
Which is fine, I just choose to opt out of that particular topic. Have you heard the joke about the vegetarian marathon runner? He never knows which one to brag about first. Seriously I agree being prepared to discuss a variety of topics is a good idea but it's something within the confines of politeness I can be honest about.
If someone asks "Oh did you hear Shania Twain got a new puppy?" I can honestly say no I don't keep up with her and leave it at that. I'm happy to talk dogs, just not Shania. We can always find something else to talk about.
You could extend this criticism to all small talk. It’s the same with the dinner table (or card game or water cooler) conversations about the latest Sportsball game and which team sportsed really good last night and which athlete’s stats are getting better and so on. Or how great the latest Game Of Thrones was or how awesome the Avengers movie was. Zero value besides the shared interest/connection.
Yes of course we all need a bit of cultural literacy. Honestly humans want to celebrate the lucky among us and being a famous actor or actress is a huge accomplishment. Those people put in a great deal of time and effort to their craft and they managed to succeed where thousands others just like them didn't.
But the same can be said of SV rock stars, Fortune 500 CxOs, etc. Even if I recognized Donald Knuth or Sundar Pichai on the street I wouldn't approach and say "I love your work, may I have a photo?". I draw the line at assuming I have a personal relationship with anyone just because I happen to know of them or about them. And frankly since we're not friends I'm not invested in learning anything personal about those people.
That's where I think society is broken: making the lives of famous people a miserable hell because they can't have a shred of privacy, and mining every detail of their lives to sell banner ads / click bait click-throughs, TV shows, etc is just a bit too far for me.
A couple times I've caught myself saying "I know a person who..." when what I meant to say was "I follow a person on Instagram who..." It was really eye opening.
I've found myself doing the same thing. But you can work next to someone in a cubicle for years and know less about them than you would from subscribing to someone's blog (assuming it's honest). I value in-person interaction, but I've also gotten to feel like I know people with whom I've only interacted with online, via email and MUDing back in the day.
How well you really know someone is hard to quantify.
Are you a social media on your phone guy? I mostly have been a social media on my PC person and I think when I'm out I do take note of the people around me but I wouldn't start a random conversation with someone. Mostly because everyone else is on their phone.
I think that as a single 20- or 30-something, being a social-media-on-your-phone-person is kind of the default. It's a bit awkward at first, but I think most people are pleasantly surprised when you start a conversation with them randomly. I usually start with a compliment ("I like your hat/dress/shoes") or I ask them what they ordered ("that looks/smells great, what is it?").
It's so strange that we've collectively lost this skill in what seems to be less than one generation.
>It's so strange that we've collectively lost this skill in what seems to be less than one generation.
Yeah, super weird. Similarly, people talk on the phone less these days and are losing that skill, too. I’ve been increasingly hearing people say this in recent years.
I believe our brains value physical proximity more than anything else. A bit hyperbolic, and you can sometimes have a super strong connection with someone far away through letter etc, but someone you can sit next too and feel ok/happy/safe will quickly imprint your brain as someone important for you.
social media, the internet, and these manufactured communities trick our brains into feeling like we belong to actual communities -- when in reality, we do not.
Good point. Experience of computing before the time of the the 'net is the main reason I've been little-attracted to the 'promises' of phones, or distance -anything-. I learned from the BBS's and Usenet that long-distance-socializing may feel engaging, but is not a life-long nutritional substitute.
Audio and even video may seem like a vast improvement over a crappy 300-baud text-only modem. But it's entirely possible that few people would like Mona Lisa after they saw her in action in a video.
The trouble with illusions is: disillusion. Is the article right about "a rising American hope for a limitless self"? It doesn't come in a box.
It's funny to read now because it predated social media for the most part. When I say social networks in the paper it's a theoretical concept which we might call a "social graph" now.
I didn't mention it in the paper but that class also introduced me to the concept of Dunbar's number (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number) I guess I'd TLDR it this way now: Internet connections are weaker than in person ones but they probably still take up a slot in your social graph. That graph is probably capped somewhere around 150. So it's not super surprising that when you freed up some space by disconnecting from the internet communities, you felt compelled to fill it back in with people in physical proximity with you. It's a cool personal experiment and it would be interesting if it could be replicated more scientifically.
I think there has been some scientific inquiry into this idea of a "limit" to certain "mental faculties" -- in a graduate seminar I was attending a few years ago, I remember reading about how "attention" is capped to 2-3 points of interest in our visual field. The experiment was done with movies if I remember correctly.
Thank you! Yeah, I think Dunbar's number has been proven experimentally. Of course I'm probably guilty of applying it too liberally outside of the limited contexts in which the science has proven it (the pitfall of pop psychology/sociology.)
But I agree it's super useful and interesting to think about quantifying and enumerating the limits of human capability where possible. Maybe that's somewhere else we differ from the attitudes of the 18th century romantics from TFA.
Also along these lines I find its easier to connect with people when you become a "regular". I have made friends at the gym with people who would normally be outside my social circle. I have a neighborhood bar/restaurant I go to at least once a week and make sure to remember people's names who work there and tip well. They remember you and will become friends if you want that. Also, if your dating and bring someone to a restaurant where they all know you and treat you well, it shows good social status!
This sounds like an interesting experience. I had my Facebook deactivated for 6 months, and started to sorta-kinda notice the same thing. I really should do it again over the summer and see what happens when I have much more time and freedom.
A quick question to maybe further prove your point, how many people, that you only knew through social media, contacted you during your detox to find out if you were ok and what had happened?
I've never been a "good morning, Joe!" bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed kind of person, but that's exactly what I became. I started getting better at conversations, more interested in people around me, and just generally in more of a "social vibe." I've always been terrible at remembering names, and instead of brushing it off (after all, who cares about remembering random old guy #7 from coffee shop #4?), I started keeping notes of names and appearance in my phone, so I don't forget who's who. It's actually kind of mind-blowing that my personality underwent such a palpable change.
I've since sworn off dating apps and attempting to limit my social media as much as possible. HN and reddit are probably going to get blocked again soon, too.