Christmas preparations caught up with me this week, so my thoughts seem a little more random than usual, and none of it is theater-related. Most of it was about me trying to figure out my relation to the internet. As a result, I have removed my social media apps from my phone and have seriously reduced my news consumption. Not surprisingly, my mental health is much better.
I also discovered that it will be two months after signing up for Micro.blog that I can create a newsletter. Which has led me to pretty much decide to stick with my Substack for that purpose. This allows me to provide context and commentary on my daily Micro.blog posts. Which means that you, dear reader, will likely not have to do anything to continue to receive this compendium.
On Friday the 13th, I posted the following, addressed mainly to my Micro.blog buddy, Tom, but also to myself:
So here’s a question I’d be interested in hearing you talk about: if we just stopped with social media, would that be enough to maintain our mental health? If we wrote on micro.blog but didn’t broadcast it, is it different? Why don’t we just write a private journal instead of being online? Why does the possibility of being read help? Is it wrong to read ebooks instead of traditional books because it is a screen? What about news – what would happen if we just stopped paying attention?
Tom accepted my query and answered with the most cogent analysis I could have received:
I thought about them over the past 24+ hours, and here’s a summary answer I’ve come up with. I have never viewed social media as a place where people strive to influence each other or the culture at large. Rather, I have always seen social media primarily as a means of extending conversation among fellow humans.
When I blog or write on social media, I am either contributing to a conversation already happening, or I am attempting to spark conversation. I like this definition of conversation I found in Wikipedia:
Conversation is the kind of speech that happens informally, symmetrically, and for the purposes of establishing and maintaining social ties.
When social media acts to try and influence me, I don’t find that particularly helpful to my mental well-being, as it forces me to counter and defend against it. But when social media acts to try and extend conversations with others, I find that engaging and beneficial to my mental health, as it extends and maintains my social ties. This is why I have enjoyed my time on Micro.blog so much, because I feel its mission is to spark and extend conversation. Can conversation influence others? Yes, but because the nature of the speech is informal and designed to maintain social ties (as opposed to breaking them), the influence conversation can have is not of a forced nature, but grows organically from the desire to maintain social ties.
I should be careful not to denigrate the notion of influencing altogether. There are degrees to influencing. Writing a good book or post based on fact and data to influence public policy is fine. Writing a book based on disinformation, conspiracy theories, or hysteria to influence policy is dangerous at worst. I think keeping things at a conversation level helps to mitigate coercive influencing.
To answer drwalt’s question specifically:
if we just stopped with social media, would that be enough to maintain our mental health? I would say no, since we'd still need to maintain good social ties to retain our mental health. Social media, done well and with such a purpose in mind, I think contributes to that.
If we wrote on micro.blog but didn’t broadcast it, is it different? Yes, in the sense that if no one reads it you're not contributing to the conversation.
Why don’t we just write a private journal instead of being online? I see no reason one can't do both, as they serve different purposes. If online writing is meant to spark good conversation, then a journal is meant to express inner thoughts and feelings that have yet to be formed into good conversation topics, even though some of those topics may never find themselves into conversation.
Why does the possibility of being read help? It satisfies the need to be recognized as a positive contributor to the process. If you're wanting more than that, you may be more interested in influencing people rather than conversing with them.
Is it wrong to read ebooks instead of traditional books because it is a screen? No
What about news – what would happen if we just stopped paying attention? I think, for a starter, we'd converse more about things that matter in daily life, and not about things over which we have little to no control.
I left all social media when I realized it had morphed from its original intent to extend conversations and social ties to a technology co-opted by corporations and organizations intent on influencing and coercing me into certain beliefs and behaviors. My regret upon leaving was the loss of contact with family, friends, and colleagues. While I did keep my Wordpress blog up, I closed it to all comments, and used it primarily for informational purposes. Micro.blog has been a blessing because it’s letting me join actual conversations, slowly but surely. At a time when people are so mobile, families are separated by jobs, and colleagues are scattered across the globe, social media, when done right, serves to keep the conversations going. That, I believe, is a positive need for good mental health.
I think he sums up quite well how the internet has changed over the years. I’ve always been an early adopter when it comes to tech, so I’ve seen it develop just as Tom describes. So I’m changing my internet ways in the hopes of replacing those empty intellectual calories with something more nourishing.
A quote from novelist Saul Bellow on the news:
“Our media make crisis chatter out of news and fill our minds with anxious phantoms of the real thing—a summit in Helsinki, a treaty in Egypt, a constitutional crisis in India, a vote in the UN, the financial collapse of New York. We can’t avoid being politicized (to use a word as murky as the condition it describes) because it is necessary after all to know what is going on. Worse yet, what is going on will not let us alone. Neither the facts nor the deformations, the insidious platitudes of the media (tormenting because the underlying realities are so huge and so terrible), can be screened out.”
Sound familiar? Written in 1976.
To which I’d add this, which he wrote 14 years later:
“Can we find nothing good to say about TV? Well, yes, it brings scattered solitaries into a sort of communion. TV allows your isolated American to think that he participates in the life of the entire country. It does not actually place him in a community, but his heart is warmed with the suggestion (on the whole false) that there is a community somewhere in the vicinity and that his atomized consciousness will be drawn back toward the whole.”
There are few better things than a good rant, especially if it is about the internet. Well done!
That’s it for this week! I didn’t write anything lengthy myself, and the coming week may not be conducive to writing much, either, but we’ll see.
Happy holidays to you!