“I’m Quitting Social Media”

“I’m quit­ting social media.”

The oth­er day, I stumbled upon the art­icle “Going Postal — A psy­cho­ana­lyt­ic read­ing of social media and the death drive.”

In the art­icle, the writer Max Read tells us about his rela­tion­ship with social media in light of read­ing “The Twittering Machine” by Richard Seymour. 

And yes, Read tells us that he’s quit­ting social media.

Here we go:

Why Read Is Quitting Social Media

Read’s art­icle is well-writ­ten, both poignant and enter­tain­ing. And he does a tre­mend­ous job of con­vey­ing his think­ing on the sub­ject. The trope “I’ve had enough, and here’s why I’m quit­ting social media” has been an inter­net staple for years, but Read’s take is a classy blend of wit and cool.

Despite dis­agree­ing with Read’s con­clu­sion, I enjoyed the style of the art­icle wholeheartedly:

“I quit Twitter and Instagram in May, in the same man­ner I leave parties: abruptly, silently, and much later than would have been healthy. This was sev­er­al weeks into New York City’s lock­down, and for those of us not employed by insti­tu­tions deemed essen­tial — hos­pit­als, pris­ons, meat­pack­ing plants—social­ity was now entirely medi­ated by a hand­ful of tech giants, with no meat­space escape route, and the plat­forms felt par­tic­u­larly, grimly pathet­ic.

Instagram, cut off from a steady sup­ply of vaca­tions and parties and oth­er cov­etable exper­i­ences, had grown unset­tlingly bor­ing, its inhab­it­ants increas­ingly unkempt and wild-eyed, each one like the sole sur­viv­ing astro­naut from a doomed space-col­on­iz­a­tion mis­sion, broad­cast­ing deranged missives about yoga and cook­ing pro­jects into an uncar­ing void. Twitter, on the oth­er hand, felt more like a doomed space-col­on­iz­a­tion mis­sion where every­one had sur­vived but we had to decide who to eat.”

Although I agree with Read’s obser­va­tions on a case-by-case basis, a few miss­ing per­spect­ives should be taken into account before we dis­miss social media — and carry on with our lives blissfully.

My ques­tion: Aren’t the neg­at­ives just as both­er­some for all media consumption?

The Reversal of Read’s Argument

For the sake of such an argu­ment, ima­gine repla­cing social media with tele­vi­sion in Read’s text:

“I quit watch­ing tele­vi­sion in May, in the same man­ner I leave parties: abruptly, silently, and much later than would have been healthy. This was sev­er­al weeks into New York City’s lock­down, and for those of us not employed by insti­tu­tions deemed essen­tial — hos­pit­als, pris­ons, meat­pack­ing plants—real­ity was now entirely medi­ated by a hand­ful of broad­cast com­pan­ies, with no meat­space escape route, and the shows felt par­tic­u­larly, grimly pathet­ic.

Day-time tele­vi­sion, cut off from a steady sup­ply of real­ity celebrit­ies and cued stu­dio audi­ences and oth­er cov­etable exper­i­ences, had grown unset­tlingly bor­ing, its inhab­it­ants increas­ingly unkempt and wild-eyed, each one like the sole sur­viv­ing astro­naut from a doomed space-col­on­iz­a­tion mis­sion, broad­cast­ing deranged missives about yoga and cook­ing pro­jects into an uncar­ing void. Late-night tele­vi­sion, on the oth­er hand, felt more like a doomed space-col­on­iz­a­tion mis­sion where every­one had sur­vived but we had to decide who to eat.”

This type of media cri­tique stems from a long and proud tra­di­tion going back a long time, at least to Neil Postman and Pierre Bourdieu. Such an obser­va­tion doesn’t take any­thing away from the cri­tique expli­citly, but it does point to the fact that we might as well be blam­ing media logic overall. 

After all, the medi­um is the message.

Don’t get me wrong; there are plenty of reas­ons for cut­ting back on tele­vi­sion. My gosh, the amount of crap on tele­vi­sion is often staggering.

However, con­text does mat­ter; if you think binge-watch­ing day­time tele­vi­sion instead of going to work and get­ting a healthy amount of exer­cise makes you worse, then you’re prob­ably right. 

But if your diet con­sists of BBC doc­u­ment­ar­ies in mod­er­a­tion, you should be fine.

There’s No Information Overload

It’s not too complicated. 

If you’re unhappy with what you’re read­ing and see­ing on Instagram and Twitter, you’re simply mis­us­ing them. The same goes for YouTube, Twitch, Quora, Pinterest, and TikTok.

Even Google’s search engine has a social com­pon­ent; stop search­ing for (and click­ing on) crap, and the social media algorithm will bet­ter under­stand that you’re a ser­i­ous per­son who wants ser­i­ous search results.

Tweaking your social media expos­ure isn’t all that dif­fer­ent from switch­ing chan­nels on your tele­vi­sion set — or even turn­ing it off occasionally. 

Quitting social media (or tele­vi­sion) cold tur­key isn’t neces­sar­ily the obvi­ous solu­tion to your problems.

Yes, I fully agree that the eco­sys­tem with inter­con­nec­ted devices, big data, and dopam­ine-trig­ger­ing noti­fic­a­tions is more addict­ive and access­ible than tele­vi­sion ever. Just like tele­vi­sion was so much harder to res­ist than radio. 

I’m not act­ively try­ing to be an asshole here. There’s a case to be made that many people are ill-equipped to man­age their social media feeds. Many of us don’t have the sens­ib­il­it­ies to man­age these “new” tech­no­lo­gies — at least not yet. 

In 1998, while play­ing around with my Nokia 1611 dur­ing class, my his­tory teach­er gently reminded me that the most sig­ni­fic­ant dis­ad­vant­age of being a slave was that they were always accessible. 

Maybe this is a cru­cial point. 

You’re Not Supposed To React To Everything

It might be that some gen­er­a­tions have yet to under­stand that you’re not sup­posed to reply to all emails, com­ments, phone calls, text mes­sages, and DMs. The mind­set,” The phone is ringing; someone should pick it up; it might be neces­sary,” will pull any­one into digit­al enslavement.

If you try to con­tact someone who isn’t paid to answer and you can­not pass through their fil­ters, it’s not on the recip­i­ent for “not pick­ing up”. It’s on you — the sender. If not, your inbox and your feeds will become every­one else’s agenda for your time — if you let it.

In our wired world, when any­one can so quickly con­tact any­one any­where and at scale, it’s just dif­fer­ent now. I even have a per­son­al phone policy to that effect.

If you’re a Fortnite stream­er using the Twitch social plat­form, there are built-in func­tions to allow the audi­ence to pay for a chance of get­ting the stream­er to notice your mes­sages. And oth­er social plat­forms (even Facebook) fol­low suit by imple­ment­ing new ways for influ­en­cers to get paid.

We’ve gone from “Thanks for call­ing” to “Thanks for replying.”

It would be like pla­cing a col­lect call, but your pay­ment would befall the per­son pick­ing up, not the phone company.

Pretty weird, right?

Who’s the Bigger Fool?

This reversal might seem absurd to some, but the under­ly­ing logic is evid­ent to most inter­net-savvy demographics.

Don’t get me wrong; this isn’t an older-people-just-don’t‑get-it rant. That would be unfair. Those who grew up without social media have no play­book and, more import­antly, no older gen­er­a­tions to learn from.

Max Read goes on to write:

“These people, with their just-ask­ing ques­tions and vap­id open let­ters, are dullards and bores, pet­ti­fog­gers and casu­ists, cow­ards and dis­sem­blers, time-wasters of the worst sort.”

If this is true, and it might well be, what do we call all those people allow­ing these time-wasters into their social feeds? I don’t have any big words, but fools come to mind.

In sum­mary: We need to man­age the algorithms, not let them push us over the sidelines.