Mediacheck

Against Social Media

Twittering is just frittering as we amuse ourselves to death.

By Shannon Rupp, 22 Jun 2009, TheTyee.ca

Man with Blackberrys

Poke me, baby!

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The news-breaking e-mails come fast and furious some days. So-and-so has written on my wall. Someone else has poked me. And my acquaintances are off together having sushi.

I'm in Facebook hell.

Ask me if I care about the trivial pursuits of these people or, indeed, any of the army of companies, products and politicians all desperate to socialize with me.

I do care in one way: I suspect we can blame Facebooking for the radical decline in voter turnout for May's provincial election. While everyone talks of the "disengagement" voters feel, no one explains why voters are disengaged. Voters themselves can't explain it, other than to say they "don't like" politicians.

Well really, did anyone ever "like" politicians? Certainly not if you read the citizens of any given era.

It used to be a rule of thumb that disgust with politicians increased voter turnout -- a "throw the bastards out" sentiment. Clearly contempt for the would-be-elected isn't the real problem, although a lack of meaningful information about politicians and the nature of government in general might well be it crux of the crisis. (Before that people despised the monarchy and other despots, which led to revolution not hanging about playing pinochle.)

My theory for explaining the decline is that voters were all busy checking their Facebook pages. Meanwhile reporters, who should have been doing real research and hard interviews, were merely reviewing the candidates' Facebook pages.

Ersatz info

I'd say Facebook is this week's symbol of social breakdown. Ironically, it reduces access to the wider world, while creating the illusion of expanding it.

Flooded with trivia and distracted with ersatz information, it has become almost impossible for us to get the facts or see the implications of... well, anything. Things were bad enough when infotainment media like Access Hollywood forced us all to contemplate whether Kate (of John and... fame) should be wearing a bikini -- and offered us a voting option. But as passive viewers we could ignore this nonsense.

Due to its interactive nature, Facebook is right in my face, wasting my time with a flood of announcements. (Most recently they include ones begging me to check in.)

When it comes to information, I'm inclined to favour content that meets the definition of news I used to hear from a grizzled old editor with a drinking problem: "News is what they don't want you to know. Everything else is publicity."

A twit is now a good thing?

Self-promotion covers most of the crap I encounter under the rubric of social media. Like PR, it serves the needs of the teller not the told. Messages run the gamut from vanity press to political agendas, to advertising. As such, these people suck up my time while offering little or nothing in return.

Even worse, the more of this drivel I receive the less I actually know. (And for the definition of knowledge see the term "epistemology.")

Personal relationships grow increasingly superficial as we spend more and more time handing out karma to entities about whom we know little more than a name.

Speaking of karma, I'd like to think there's payback coming for those who notify me of their "poke wars," which I gather is the virtual equivalent of punching the kid you like in the arm. You're a grown-up: It's bad enough you do it, must you announce it?

As an aside, don't get me started on Twitter. They chose a name that means the happy babbling of birds. One associated with the terms like "twit" and "bird-brained." Do we live in a world so steeped in propaganda that words have lost all meaning?

"Are you twitting?" I asked a greying professional acquaintance, who pompously informed me the verb is "tweet."

"Are you sure?" I asked. He looked confused. But then, he often does. (That's why he's in management.)

A dying fad already?

Last winter, Twitter founders told Britain's Marketing mag that they planned to charge commercial users to deliver marketing messages, although it's still not clear if or when they'll implement the changes. And, frankly, if they're selling, let's say Dunkin' Donuts, access to my valuable attention, I want a piece of that action.

They won't pay me you say? So I'm trading my immediate attention in exchange for access to all the insights to be gleaned from twits of 140 characters or less? Along with those disconcerting e-mails I receive announcing that I'm being "followed."

And why am I volunteering my address for this again?

On the plus side, my suspicion that Twitter is this era's pet rock is confirmed by a Harvard Business study that shows that the churn rate on users is so high that more than half tweet only once and leave. About 10 per cent of the users are responsible for 90 per cent of the tweets.

I was almost grateful for the arrival of Plurk, if only for the name. But then, as I was signing up (it's my job) I got a message indicating there was some sort of error in the info: "Whoopsie, there seems to be sadness here. Please try fixing the error(s)..."

Baby steps

They speak to us as if we're in kindergarten because, in a way, we are. Social media are just the next stage in the trend towards the infantilizing of the society that began with television. My antisocial views on social media made me recall the late Neil Postman's brilliant book about the pacifying (and anti-democratic) effect of television, Amusing Ourselves to Death, which is coming up for its 25th anniversary. (And is still the single best book on the cultural impact of television.)

Postman, then a professor at New York University, drew on two of speculative fiction's most famous books for his analogy. He acknowledges that George Orwell's Nineteen Eight-Four, a dark vision of a Soviet Union-style state in which people are oppressed and ground into submission by a political elite, outlined a plausible future from the perspective of 1948. But he thought Aldous Huxley's less popular work from 1932, Brave New World, described the future that had come to pass in America. A society dominated by sex, technology and cheery consumerism that was all the more successful because individuals enjoyed it and believed it was their choice to participate. When, in fact, they are seduced and brainwashed into oppressing themselves (not unlike cult members).

"As [Huxley] saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacity to think," Postman wrote in the foreword to his book.

According to Postman, that addiction to trivia has us "amusing ourselves to death" and giving up our power as citizens. Imagine what he'd have to say about the distracting demands of Facebook and Twitter? Incidentally, Postman died the same year Facebook was born, 2003. Coincidence? I think not. (Say, there's a twit-able factoid.)

I'll give TV this: at least it's passive. Generally speaking, one can ignore the boob-tube with impunity. Unlike Facebook, it doesn't get in your face and demand you participate in mass time-wasting. (And worse, get your acquaintances to nag you.)

Twitters and clucks

So to recap on the impact of social media: We now have the attention span of gnats; we spend our days distracted by silly games and trivial messages; and fewer and fewer of us take responsibility for educating ourselves as citizens and voting? That sounds like a nation of children to me.

But hey, at least social media create the illusion we're players in the greater world. They allow us to do things like go on the virtual equivalent of protests by signing up for the causes our friends support. Oh, what's the latest one I received? Ah yes: chickens in the city.

Hang on! Living cheek by beak with filthy fowl? Have these people never heard of bird flu? Living with barnyard animals is a well-documented health hazard.

On second thought, maybe it's better if Facebookers and the other social butterflies don't vote.

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[Tyee]

Shannon Rupp is a Tyee contributing editor.

19 Comments:

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  • cocean

    2 years ago

    Some Iranians would disagree

    I was on Twitter when the first tweets from Iran started coming in, back on the 13th (Iran is half a day ahead of us). Had it not been for Twitter a lot of the information getting out would not have escaped the rapid Iranian media clampdown.

    True, the vast majority of Iranians don't use Twitter and know nothing about it - just as only 24% of Canadian are aware of it and fewer use it. However, the Iranians who do use Twitter include students and they are among the groups most involved in the protests and targeted by the basijis, police and military.

    While there has been as much disinformation and information, so what? That's life. And isn't that what journalists deal with all the time?

    Over on Andrew Sullivan's blog, a reader summed it up the "Twitter Revolution" re the Iran situation this way: "Anne Frank's diary. Live. Multiplied by millions."

    If you weren't on Twitter at the time this all began, you can't possibly know how compelling those first few days were.

  • cocean

    2 years ago

    Link added

    Sorry. Here's Andrew Sullivan's blog.

  • Janie Jones

    2 years ago

    Iran Twitter Fraud

    http://uprootedpalestinians.blogspot.com/2009/06/proof-israeli-effort-to-destabilize.html

  • Glen Murtz

    2 years ago

    Thank You.

    cocean wrote...
    "If you weren't on Twitter at the time this all began, you can't possibly know how compelling those first few days were."

    So what?

    Car crashes and "reality" TV are compelling too. So was the "tasering" video."Thrilling" and "Nifty" aren't synonymous with "comprehensive".

    Complex issues are not disseminated or unraveled 140 characters at a time.

    Seriously.
    Stop confusing brevity with knowledge. Fortune cookies have as much substance - maybe you could start taking cues from them.

    I want to thank this author for reminding people of the work of Neal Postman and especially his consideration that Huxley had intuited a more probable future. I miss his insightful curiosity - like asking, "Who is technology for?"

    And finally - it might be helpful or informative for those enamored of the tedious immediacy of these technologies to read about the huge numbers of country bumpkins who attended the Lincoln/Douglas debates.

    In these, one candidate spoke for an hour, the other for 90 minutes, then the initial speaker was permitted a 30 minute rebuttal.

    Tweet *that* kids.

  • Ramona777

    2 years ago

    Twits With Gadgets

    What sums it up for me is last night's news when a person, either dead or seriously injured, was being frantically moved. At least a half dozen cell phone toting adults were recording the action in addition to TV crews. They weren't helping --- they were in the way. Granted, they probably wanted to be sure this scene was captured, but increasingly, people are losing their humanity and becoming walking techno-geeks who instead of using their brains, push buttons. It all remind me of Night of the Living Dead when I see people with buds stuck in their noggins or frantically tapping out meaningless messages on their gadgets.

  • fishtron

    2 years ago

    Misplaced Ire

    Although short attention spans might have had something to do with it, I think the greater culprits of the low voter turn-out were "I don't like any of the candidates" and "none of the issues on the table are things I really care about." Blaming facebook and twitter is short-sighted and is akin to a call to ban all guns in law enforcement because "sometimes they kill innocent people."

    I have had some of the best political arguments about STV and the election on Twitter and facebook. The 10% of people who are putting it to good use will continue to do so, and this should be considered a good proportion. What proportion of citizens make use of the public transit at what frequency? If the rest don't use it, the conclusion to be drawn isn't that the buses should stop running, but that it should be expanded to reach the users better. The same should be said for social media.

    Yes, social media is about the mundane and the trivial to some of the people all the time, and perhaps to all of the people some of the time -- but it is not always trivial nor mundane. To echo cocean, definitely not to the twittering Iranians when the big media is prevented from doing their jobs effectively. Just because you haven't found a use for it doesn't mean it's awful. (Just because I don't eat at ABC Country, and I don't know anyone who does, doesn't mean that no one does.) In fact, I argue that social media fills a niche which big media could never do -- speed and authenticity -- while social media could never truly do what big media is good at -- depth and excellent prose.

    Both have advantages and disadvantages -- and I'll leave it up to you to decide what those are -- but neither are likely disappear in the long run. Perhaps not in the current forms of Twitter and the Globe and Mail, but most likely something like them. They are the two ends of the same spectrum.

  • Trent

    2 years ago

    Glen, this comments section

    Glen, this comments section is "social media". Posting to the comments section is social media participation. So it can't suck too much, right?

    Facebook is only as good as your friends are. If you've got vapid friends they'll post vapid updates. I use it primarily for photos and to see the photos of friends and family. The tagging functionality is the most useful aspect of the photo app. Otherwise, Facebook has some good political info and debate, and interesting pages like TED.

    Twitter...I find no use. Perhaps it could be extended as a collaboration tool, but I suspect Google Wave will deliver this.

  • Yammer

    2 years ago

    You kids get off my lawn!

    Darn kids! They's always a-tweeting an' a-facebookin'. Whar back when I were a pup, we's havin' real meaningful communications. I mean, like if you had them deelie boppers, folk knew you were a deelie bopper! Didn't need none o that dadgum myspace t' tell it neither!

  • treacob

    2 years ago

    summary please

    Could someone please summarize this lengthy article in 140 characters or less? :)

  • ShortSummer

    2 years ago

    Missing the big picture?

    So, how valuable is the space and time spent discussing 'twittering', or the time spent videoing with one's phone?

    While we spend our time being outraged (or dramatically embracing the 'technology'), our world burns. Cutting taxes has lead to the need to cut services. Drive our roads - see them crumble. Name the infrastructure - we may build new, but we can't afford to maintain what we have. A nice bridge near Golden, bookmarked by crumbling highways to the East - and to the West.

    Talk of twitter while you look for a hospital, or a nurse, or a special education teacher, or a library, .... our society is in trouble and we are being kept off the real issues by stuff like this... twittering will be quite different when your power goes out, or when power is only available 4 hours a day, or you can't afford it... but Big Brother will read it!

  • ME2

    2 years ago

    David Beers

    David, maybe it's already been addressed on a thread I missed, but that still doesn't stop me from being supremely annoyed to have to sign in twice in six hours, let alone every day.

    Since i'm on dial-up, it's a royal pain-in-the-ass to read a column and wanting to comment, having to sign in and then go thru the tiresome process of bringing up the article again and waiting for the scroll-down to the comment box.

    WTF's going on?

  • shabbaranks

    2 years ago

    Social Change

    I can acknowledge the power that something like Twitter can have (is anyone else bothered by the fact that we can no longer use generic terms to describe communication media? It used to be "TV" "phone" "radio" - now it's iphone, Twitter, Facebook and now, "Google Wave" - we're all doing the marketing for The Man now), but we have to be wary of overemphaising its power.

    Remember, Iran ousted a Shah without email, cell phones or computers. The Berlin Wall came down with spontaneous organisation and action and "slow" means of information dissemination.

    "The revolution will not be televised" should be broadly interpreted.

    I have often thought of Postman's "torrent" and how it applies even more so with today's technology. I'll probably dust off my copy for another read.

    Being a contrarian, I am very pleased to see this backlash and counter-reaction to the hype that has preceded with the arrival of all this media. It's nice to see that people are thinking.

    And I'd like to remind the author that the best way to not let Facebook overwhelm you is to not be on it. It's taken as a given, but there is no requirement to participate.

  • Geoff

    2 years ago

    Administrator

    ME2

    In your browser's privacy settings, check the Cookie settings. If your system deletes cookies every time the browser closes, then you'll have to log in over and over again, as you describe. If you continue to have problems, send me an e-mail at

    .

    Geoff.

  • Everything

    2 years ago

    Badly written

    Was this supposed to be a humour piece? If the most amusing thing the author can come up with is a reference to pet rocks and that we have the "attention span of gnats" then I have to give this one a fail.

    If it's supposed to be serious then I pity this guy. He just can't stop himself logging on to Facebook, even though he hates it and thinks it's making him disrespect democracy (LOL). Most people of his vintage usually complain that there's never much going on on their FB pages. Maybe he can share some of his secrets?

  • Everything

    2 years ago

    PS

    Oh, and Neil Postman was a technophobe and a snob. An unoriginal one at that. He took McLuhan's elegant theories and used them to pass judgement on a medium that he considered beneath him.

  • Glen Murtz

    2 years ago

    Baloney (sandwiches)

    Trent said...
    "Glen, this comments section is "social media". Posting to the comments section is social media participation. So it can't suck too much, right?"

    .. which is both an incomplete and incorrect summation of my comments and a poorly considered rhetorical question.

    Here's a true story - my spouse was talking to someone the other day about events in Iran. She mentioned that the previous revolution had toppled the Shah. This amazed the avowed Twitterer she'd been speaking with, who then exclaimed in all seriousness, "You mean a revolution can actually topple a government?"

    A perfect example of what marketing (and dumb, hyperventilating techno-fetishists) has done. It's taken a word (revolution) that literally meant something decisive and used it so capriciously that it now means a slight change in ingredients for hamburgers, an employer who permits employees to have tatoos and 140 character descriptions of a toilet break during a board meeting.

    As shabbaranks points out, there were far more significant events spread in a good, old-fashioned "talking to a neighbour" way then have yet been "Tweeted" or Facebooked.

    When a government is overthrown via Twitter, or Facebook, or , then I might acknowledge it as a powerful tool.
    But as it stands, the heavy breathing "Best. Thing. Ever." types are simply sucking up the same hype that spits out useless journalism like the "Craigslist Killer" or "Facebook Bullying".

    Lazy, corporate shills.

    End of story.

  • ME2

    2 years ago

    Pap for the masses

    A sometime friend wanted to list me on his page, and Facebook e-mailed me for verification that I agreed.

    Well thanks for that Facebook, but no thanks for asking me to "sign in", since I was required to "sign up" first in order to respond to the request.

    "cheap trick, Facebook", I thought as I instead directly mailed my friend to say "no thanks".

  • Trent

    2 years ago

    Baby & Bathwater

    Quotes below are proceeded by ">>".

    - - - - - - - -

    Tiananmen Square was organized via fax machines (which couldn't be easily censored or monitored).

    Obama's successful campaign was due in part to the social media organization on his website.

    The government in Iran is currently blocking access to Facebook and texting for good reason: they are potentially powerful tools for organization.

    >> And finally - it might be helpful or informative for those enamored of the tedious immediacy of these technologies to read about the huge numbers of country bumpkins who attended the Lincoln/Douglas debates.

    How were citizens informed of the debates? The lowly handbill. Was the handbill the debate itself? No, it was just the notification of the event. Twitter, Facebook updates and texting can't be expected to be the content of the debates. They're just the notification. The //content// is in Facebook groups or links to other forums, such as Tyee articles.

    Handbills were expensive to produce and distribute. The Tyee only exists because of the low cost of production/distribution that the internet provides.

    But wait! Handbills spread terrible social sickness as well. The word "copy" comes from the word "copis". Copis were pornographic pamplets printed around the time of the French Revolution. They were hugely popular. But just because smut was being spread using a new technology was no reason to condemn it. Condemn the content, not the technology.

    >> is anyone else bothered by the fact that we can no longer use generic terms to describe communication media? It used to be "TV" "phone" "radio" - now it's iphone, Twitter, Facebook and now, "Google Wave" - we're all doing the marketing for The Man now

    Generic terms: Internet, email, torrent, download, upload, texting, instant messaging, blog, web forum....

    Facebook is just a location on the Internet, just like the CBC is a location on the TV. It has competitors (as do Twitter and Google), but it's currently the most popular. Popularity is functionality in social media. Sure, you could tell our friends that you're watching hockey on channel 3 instead of "CBC". You could also tell your friends to find your photos at http://69.63.176.40/ instead of "Facebook". It's just easier to say and remember "Facebook". :)

  • Trent

    2 years ago

    Baby & Bathwater II

    >> I'll give TV this: at least it's passive.

    Which is what makes it such a terrible thing! If there's one reason that the user-generated content in social media circles is so dumbed down it's because of decades of stupid television programming.

    >> And I'd like to remind the author that the best way to not let Facebook overwhelm you is to not be on it. It's taken as a given, but there is no requirement to participate.

    Or, instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, you can use the parts of Facebook that are useful and ignore the rest. Turn off updates from time-wasting friends. Or delete those friends.

    I have family members in far off places that are missing out on the opportunity to see photos of my 10 month old son because they refuse to sign up for Facebook. That's their prerogative. But they can't expect me to email them photos on an individual basis when they're already posted online. Of course, this isn't the stuff of revolutions, but condemning the tool because some of the content is crappy is just doing oneself a disservice.

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