However, this isn't going to be the standard rant about it being a waste of time. Don't get me wrong, it IS a waste of time - but most humans will always waste time with pointless diversions and Facebook is just the latest. Before people pissed away hours updating their Facebook status and flipping through 500 selfies, they spent hours watching reality TV shows following knuckleheads around a pawn shop or doing some other absolutely mundane activity, and before that they wasted hours with pointless sitcoms, and before that... well I guess before that there was painting stick figure animals on the walls of the cave. The point is that Facebook didn't create the pointless time suck, so I'm not going to charge it with that.
The problem with Facebook is much deeper and much worse than merely allowing people to waste time instead of climbing mountains or learning how to play the lute.
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To start with, let's note that the internet is rightly criticized for herding people into political echo chambers. Instead of the old days of newspapers and network news, where flipping on Dan Rather or picking up the local paper meant confronting a more or less objective external reality, nowadays people can read hundreds of blogs, listen to countless podcasts, and read thousands of comments without ever encountering a different opinion or a challenging fact. In today's internet, people almost never encounter a challenge to their political opinions, they only receive more and more validation.
What does this have to do with Facebook?
Well, just like much of the rest of the internet gives people a political echo chamber, Facebook gives people a personal life echo chamber.
If someone doesn't think something that has been posted is actually that great, they just ignore it and move on. In the exceedingly rare event of a negative comment, it can just be deleted and the offending party unfriended, leaving 500 more friends to unanimously "like" or silently ignore everything else.
So no matter what someone posts to Facebook - perhaps the 5000th selfie of the day, perhaps the 200th picture of their kid, perhaps a status update about brushing their teeth, whatever it is - is never reacted to in a negative way. Everything that everyone does is great. Just great. All the time great.
Facebook is erasing the social distinction between mundane activities and actual achievements. It is giving people a greatly inflated sense of their self-worth. You went to a bar and took a selfie with your friends? Like! You played softball today? Like! You microwaved a hot pocket and it is oh so gooey? Like! Your dental checkup went well? Like! You won a Nobel Prize? Like! You completed Army Ranger training? Like!
The profound and the mundane all blend into an undifferentiated haze of constant assured positive reinforcement.
I am convinced that, as a consequence, people are becoming less and less interesting. Less intellectual, less athletic, less achieving, less caring, less healthy, and less of pretty much anything positive. Granted, these are all trends that predate Facebook, but Facebook is greatly accelerating them.
When someone can post that they are brushing their teeth or just successfully defrosted a hot pocket and receive numerous likes and affirming comments from friends and family, it gives them a greatly inflated sense of self-worth that was simply not available in the pre-Facebook days. In those olden days seven years ago, someone in the course of brushing their teeth would not receive positive reinforcement and might just have to give a moment's thought to what they could do that day to better themselves - perhaps hit the gym, or read a book, or call their grandmother.
Life used to have some negative reinforcement, and while it could certainly be abusive, it also crucially anchored peoples' personal lives in some external reality. On Facebook there is no critical external reality - just a personal life echo chamber. There is no dislike button, no ignore button, and no "boring!" button.
Today someone can post a selife or ten to Facebook and nobody is going to register dislike. There will be no authentic human reactions to it. Nobody is going to tell the poster with their words or their body language that they are losing the tight gym body they had a while back. Nobody is going to tell them with their words or body language that the significant other smirking in the background of the photo is a total douchebag. They will not have the experience of being ignored and learning that what they are doing is uninteresting, since ignoring people doesn't register on Facebook. It will only be like like like like like.
Today someone can post a status update that they have dropped out of engineering and switched their major to queer basket weaving theory, and nobody will communicate with words or body language that they think it was a bad idea. Someone can post a naked picture of their three year old for all their friends and all of posterity to see and nobody will communicate with words or body language that it might be a bad idea. Someone can spin their version of a personal conflict and nobody will communicate with words or body language that they might just be wrong.
Facebook enables constant positive social reinforcement leading to erasure of the distinction between the mundane and sublime. It may just be the worst thing to happen to culture in the 21st century.
I go back and forth on this. The majority of my Facebook posts are complete nonsense, but at least I recognize that. Most are photos I take on my cell phone while walking (something more Americans definitely need to do!) around my inner-city Philadelphia neighborhood (actual walkable neighborhoods - something we need more of in America!).
ReplyDeleteJust today, for example, it so happens that I've discussed Philadelphia with a Facebook friend far, far, far to the left of me, and also posted a simple photo of the Fishtown block on which the bar I watched this afternoon's Flyers game is located, which was 'liked' by a native Philadelphian who now lives in Israel and works for a certain media monitoring organization which some would consider to be of the right.
The "everybody gets a trophy for YAY GO YOU!!!!" aspect of our current culture does tend to meet my disapproval, however. This is certainly reinforced by some of the Facebook aspects you note.
There's also the clear tendency of its management to, at the very least, look the other way, from rampant antisemitism and other hate speech allowed there.
However, I'm not sure I'd go as far as to say that Facebook is the worst thing to happen to culture in the 21st century. The political echo chambers you note, and which I agree are tearing America apart, surely existed long before Facebook, and though Facebook may exacerbate same in some ways, it's surely not the only thing carrying this phenomenon forward.
Even in the remaining 'Old Media' outlets, I can't recall ever reading one non-mainstream-left opinion in the alternative newspapers of any city in which I've ever lived or visited. I'm sure there are similar right-wing versions of this, too, but (and this just might demonstrate one of your points!) I'm not aware of any, as I don't actively seek out such opinions.
Though I also don't avoid them, and I suppose I have a leg up on some in experiencing disagreement, being as I am a liberal from a mostly conservative family, though from monolithically liberal areas and ethnicities, myself.
I wish more of us could just calm down and talk to each other in a respectful manner. I'm the first to admit that I often fail to live up to this ideal myself, but at least when I do I tend to recognize it rather quickly and work to remediate it. Until my next inevitable failing, at least. But I'm always trying!
Interesting post, as always, fizziks. Thanks.
Hey Jay,
DeleteThanks for commenting. On the topic of alternative newspapers with a diversity of opinion, back in the late 90s in NYC there was the New York Observer. I don't know if they still have a print edition, but they appear to have a website. Back in the day they had everything from hard left to libertarian right to asshole right to gay right to everything in between.
I now remember an incident in Jersey City, NJ, circa 2000, where I had a copy of Lyndon LaRouche's 'newspaper' physically forced upon me in return for an immediate demand of a 'donation,' to which offer I declined, but did decide to briefly keep the newspaper (for entertainment purposes, and to a long string of muttered profanities).
DeleteI suppose that counts as a right-wing 'alternative' paper, but yeah. Not much diversity of opinion there, either.
Glad to hear that about the New York Observer. I've never seen one, though I've heard of it. I hope that is still true, although the 90s were a long time ago.
You know fiz... I get what you are saying and I don't necessarily disagree. That said... I like FB because it let's me keep in touch with a lot of people that I realize I should not have lost touch with in the first place.
ReplyDeleteI like it for purely entertainment purposes... but that is as far as it goes.
Concur. Most of my 'friends' there are people I haven't seen in almost two decades now (a not unimpressive feat, considering that's like half my lifetime), and aside from that I don't take it too seriously. But those reconnections are a valuable thing in and of themselves.
DeleteThe main thing that pisses ME off about Facebook right now is when certain bars and restaurants insist on having it as their only web presence, and you have to click on those stupid little, shittily-lit pictures just to get an idea of their menu before you head over there.
But yeah, firstworldproblems, I know. Sorry...
Facebook does allow contact with previously long lost acquaintances, and that is its positive utility. But the negative affects are going to far outweigh the positives.
DeleteWell said!
ReplyDelete