Whether Or Not To Tweet
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Whether Or Not To Tweet

Byrichard

Sometimes we have to ask whether or not to tweet. We have to ask this question because social media is seen by many, in common culture, as an addiction. Everything that is perceived negatively by society suffers, whether justifiably or not. The same is true of cyclists.


In Switzerland there is an ad campaign that says that cyclists are responsible for half of accidents involving them. The truth is that sixty eight percent of accidents involving cyclists are caused by cars. That’s two thirds of accidents. This means that without cars, cyclists would have one third of the current number of accidents. The discourse needs to change, to favour cyclists, not to vilify them.


The same is true of social media. Since the 90s people have said the world wide web is bad, social networks are bad, you don’t know who you’re talking to and more. In the end advertisers and investors seem to be the greatest danger that web users face. Social networks are made, or broken, by the people who take control, and take a conversational social network, into a revenue stream flooded with adverts. YouTube and Instagram are prime examples of this. Facebook is another.


The problem with social media websites is that they see advertisers as the clients, rather than users. Instagram was a nice social network, until Facebook bought it. It was usable until ads were added after every fourth post. I then left. The community went from friends sharing with friends to strangers sharing with strangers for memes. The personal aspect was destroyed.


People like to ask questions like “Are drugs worse, or FaceBook, and although it may seem like innocent fun it isn’t. There is a cultural expectation that social media is bad, so people do not invest themselves as they would, if not for the negative perception.


We are in the middle of a pandemic that we know is airborne. We know that masks, hepa filters, air flow and open windows are open. Despite this we do not stigmatise people for not doing everything they know will minimise risk, to socialise. If you’re an extrovert during a pandemic, risking infection every weekend, no one questions it.


If you’re an introvert on social networks the question “am I an addict” is repeated over and over.


I could go on, but at the end of the day Social media, and social networks, should be about like minded people connecting to have conversations online, before meeting in person and doing sports, working on projects or more. The race to followers and likes, completely nullifies the appeal of personal conversations that lead to long-lasting friendships. It is a shame. I have been discussing this for decades now.

On the Detrimental impact of Chain Letters on Social Networks
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On the Detrimental impact of Chain Letters on Social Networks

Byrichard

In the 90s, people found it fun to share chain letters. At the time, this was something new to many of us, so we found them fun. We received and then passed them on, but over the volume of chain letters become a torrent of spam. The letter is fun the first time you see it. If twenty people forwarded it to 20 more, then we’re speaking about four hundred e-mails. We’re speaking about thousands of letters that have no productive effect on society.


After a while people grew bored with chain letters, so they blocked them, or they told off the people sending those messages. In 2007 or so, when Facebook was still young and moral people started to share chain letters through this network, and at first they’re fun, and we fill them in, and we share that info with friends, and we look forward to them doing the same.


There are two issues with chain letters. The first of these is privacy. By filling in and sharing chain letters, we are providing a lot of personal information that we may not want others to know about us. Polls and other tools were used to gather information to influence elections in a variety of countries.


The second reason for which chain letters are unpleasant is that they produce noise. Social networks easily become very noisy, and it takes constant care and attention to ensure that they do not become too noisy. If you tolerate chain letters once, be assured that you will get twenty more within a few weeks. If you put a stop to them immediately, then you avoid noise.


My reason for using social media is to establish direct connections with individuals, not to fill in silly chain letters. I want to have an exchange of questions of answers. Without questions and answers, I could be reading a book, or a blog. If I devote time to being “as live” I want to interact as if we were conversing.


“If it’s not hurting anyone, then don’t comment on someone else’s conversation.” In the grand scheme of things I used a retweet, which means that I was speaking to my own community, not that person’s. Second, chain letters do harm someone. Me. Social media is not my toilet break from family life. Twitter is my family life, especially during a pandemic.


My message is simple. Don’t spam twitter or other social networks with chain letters. It may look harmless, but it isn’t.

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Bullying Disguised as Satire

Byrichard

We’re in the middle of a pandemic. Some of us go without conversing with people in the real world for days or even weeks at a time. Is now the time to be offensive about people’s social media habits? For plenty of TikTok users, their only window into the social world is their phone.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apvLvTQWQwg&fbclid=IwAR0DJKCl6QsV3EnurNj9j4yEvBNu_pQcpsK025DTRdktUk41gVdquig0jts


Plenty of people are lonely, and in need of human connections. Social media is a great means by which to have moments of intimacy, to flirt or even just to have a convivial moment with someone else.


If we’re going to behave like bullies then it would make sense to comment on the people who do not wear a mask, and those who do not respect the two meter distance. How about all those people going to bars, restaurants and pubs where there is no respect for the two meter rule?


During a pandemic the behaviour that is harmful to society is that which spreads COVID-19, not instagramming or TikToking, or other. If people are dealing with the solitude of a pandemic by socialising online welcome, and thank them.


Their behaviour will cut the pandemic short, at least in some cases. Solitude is a positive, during a pandemic.


Never forget that just because you’re married, with children, or living in an apartment with others, that this is a reality for everyone. Remember that we’re six months into this pandemic and that some of us have yet to give a hug or even shake the hand of a stranger.


Pandemics are solitary affairs, so give “influencers” the benefit of the doubt.

The Social Media Reflex
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The Social Media Reflex

Byrichard

This morning I uninstalled Facebook and Twitter because most of the tweets I saw were people complaining about things or posts that would fit perfectly as blog posts on a website. We have moved towards the Social Media reflex, rather than towards an open sharing habit.



Before social media, we would have conversations on web forums and within comments on websites. As social media centralised all of those conversations so the engagement between people declined. With that decline of conversations so we shift towards two things. The first of these is complaining, rather than engaging. When you complain there is no expectation of a response so the personal investment is low. Add to this that algorithms are designed to promote posts that have a lot of engagement and you have a perfect storm of pessimism.


That pessimism has no positive outcome and it is for this reason that I removed the two apps from my phone. Twitter and Facebook will probably make their way back on to my phone within days or weeks but I’d like to resist and see what change occurs.


I have kept Instagram and Whatsapp. Both of these apps, although part of FB help us keep connected with people we still see in the physical world. I also love to walk around and take pictures to share to Instagram before reusing the same images for blog posts once I have time to write a proper blog post.


We need to take back the time we invested on Social media, and reuse it for productive pursuits as we did before Twitter and Facebook post-2007. Twitter and Facebook were productive when they were just websites, rather than profitable.


Blogging, as a challenge


I like to see blogging as a daily challenge. The challenge is to find inspiration to write at least three hundred words on a topic every day when possible, and after every adventure when not possible. We improve our writing and creative skills. We go from a blank page to remembering what we did, as well as developing our ideas from 140 characters to three hundred or more words. The result is something that others can read. When it’s about hiking, Via Ferrata, climbing, travel or other topics it may even inspire them to follow and try the same thing.


Another part of this challenge is to write half a paragraph or two and run out of inspiration, think for a few minutes, walk around, put some batteries to charge and then coming back with more. Whereas a tweet or facebook post is a single thought shared within seconds a blog post is a cohesive collection of thoughts that join together to form a blog post. Every blog post is an intellectual journey.


Sustained positivity


Aside from finding inspiration for blog posts another challenge is to try to keep them either positive or neutral. If you write a negative blog post you are not anonymous and it is sustained for a few paragraphs. If you write a positive blog post and sustain that for a few paragraphs. The reader and the writer have gained something.


Something Worth sharing


Blogging is about creating something that is worth sharing. It isn’t about filling time like Facebook or Twitter. It is about thought, inspiration and experiences. It’s about having something positive to share. Whereas some people want to write a thread I do more than that. I leave the stream of constant interruptions and I focus on just one thing, until it’s done, or I run out of inspiration. I wish that the same people who write twitter threads would write blog posts instead.


To write a blog post is to invest your time in an activity that may get no response, or if it does get a response it maybe years later. This doesn’t matter. We read entire books without leaving a response for the writer, except the money we spent to buy the book. Social media has tricked people into believing that without a response, whether a like, a favourite, a comment, or a share they are being ignored. “I’m not writing a blog post because no one will read it, that’s why I write a thread of tweets”.


The time that you spend writing a blog post is the time that you have invested in a finished product. There has been less “mindless scrolling”, fewer interruptions and best of all you have something tangible to show. “Yes, I did spend an hour writing this blog post, but I did something productive with my time”.


Compare that to this article in the Guardian. ;-). I haven’t uninstalled the apps because I’m worried about the time I spend on social media. I uninstalled the apps because the Return on Investment (ROI), as a user, is almost zero.

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Google Plus is Shutting Down in August

Byrichard

By shutting Google plus in August 2019 Google have shut down one of my favourite social networks. From the start I have said that it reminded me of Jaiku, an excellent, european alternative to Jaiku that never reached critical mass and so was sold to Google, which then shut it down and eventually released Google+


Google+ is an excellent social network because it allows photographers and conversationalists to converse without the hype, without the cult of personality and without sensationalism. In other words it allows people to have conversations that increase their understanding and awareness of current affairs. 


With the demise of Google+ we will lose this sea of tranquility and be reduced to go to miasmic networks such as Twitter and Facebook where the cult of personality, sensationalism and doctored newsfeeds prevent us from seeing what the people we want to keep in touch with are posting. 


People argue that we could shift to Mewe, that we could shift to pluspora or other social networks but there are two issues. The first of these is that every jump from one platform to another takes weeks or months to feel familiar. The second issue is that when you’ve been jumping from web community to web community for decades like I have you get fatigued. I don’t want to spend weeks or months sorting through noise to get a crisp signal. I want to log in, skim for a few minutes, contribute, and then continue with my day. Joining a new social network would require a big investment of time and in three or four years that network may be sunset anyway. 


That’s where WordPress comes in. WordPress is social media. People with a lot to say write blog posts that are hundreds of words long, with images, videos included, maps and sometimes graphs. Blogging is about connecting people confident with how they spend their time online. 


Facebook and Twitter are social networks used by normal people who think they are wasting their time and lives by socialising in a virtual environment. Blogging communities are a place where people are committed to their desire to communicate in long form. 


I am using the explore tab on WordPress’s app and commenting on posts. I am reverting to blogging. I like forcing myself to write long form posts, of developing my writing skills and my creative abilities. 

Mental Health and Social media
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Mental Health and Social media

Byrichard

There is a lot of discussion about Mental Health and social media because most people are not social media natives. They are either Luddites who do not appreciate playing with technology. They see themselves as users rather than participants and then there are extroverts and other people who see Social Media as a threat to their way of life. We live in societies built for extroverts rather than textroverts. As a textroverts social media is a place for me to have full conversations without having to compete with extroverts who often hijack conversations through charisma and the superficiality of what they have to say. The Royal Society for public health wrote a paper on the topic

It’s amusing that Instagram is theoretically the worst social app because if people use it like me then they would share their hikes, their climbs and their adventures. These would lead to FoMO and a feeling of solitude if people were motivated to do the same activities as me but unable to. Anxiety, body image, depression and bullying are all consequences of how marketers have encouraged people to use instagram. When brands and social media “personalities” post certain images and when brands promote certain behaviours then they encourage people to idealise the wrong things. They encourage superficiality rather than genuine interactions.

It should be highlighted that a lot of people use Instagram for selfies and this leads people to compare themselves to others. If they photograph food, sports, mountains, seasides and more the negative aspects highlighted above would vanish.

It’s amusing that Youtube is the highest and most positively ranked social medium because it is the one that my generation see as having the most negative comments. We often joke that youtube is fine until you read the comments. It’s good that people like Twitter and Facebook because twitter is great for getting to know people and Facebook is a useful way of staying in touch with friends when we travel and move around for work and university.

The Royal Society for Public Health came out with a few recommendations:

1. The introduction of a pop-up heavy usage warning on social media

If social media is an integral part of social life, rather than an addition to it then this recommendation does not apply. If twitter, Instagram, Facebook and other social networks are integrated seamlessly into our daily lives then “heavy usage” would not occur and thus warnings would be redundant. Social media is part of a lifestyle. It is only when marketers trick people into following rather than conversing that it becomes toxic and require time limits.

2. Social media platforms to highlight when photos of people have been
digitally manipulated

If it wasn’t for the selfie and disinformation this recommendation would not be needed. The skills to tell which images are digitally manipulated can easily be taught. This generation grow up playing with the software used to alter these images in the first place.

3. NHS England to apply the Information Standard Principles to health
information published via social media

Media literacy is a skill that should be taught along with reading. As soon as people are able to read they should be taught to discern between reliable and unreliable information. This is a skill that should be taught from the moment someone learns to read to the moment they graduate from university. Media literacy is a very important skill in the information age.

4. Safe social media use to be taught during PSHE education in school

Grown ups are just as likely to suffer from bullying and other behaviour so it does not apply just to children. In the early days of the world wide web we all used avatars and nicknames rather than our real identity. This helped us play online without much danger. We see that safe spaces have been created for people below a certain age to interact online. Now that the world wide web has come of age it is important to work on creating more geographically relevant social environments like this.

5. Social media platforms to identify users who could be suffering from
mental health problems by their posts and other data, and discreetly
signpost to support

The nature of social media can be an introspective one and as such encourages people to be open about how they feel. Aside from signposting people who are at risk social media and social networks could create discreet groups on Facebook and other social networks where people can assemble of their own free will. By discreet groups I mean groups where membership and names are withheld both from within and from outside the group.

6. Youth-workers and other professionals who engage with young people to
have a digital (including social) media component in their training

This point amuses me because when I speak to social media experts and social media professionals I see that they see social media as something to do during office hours as part of their job. They do not see it as an addition to their lifestyle and as such are not natives of the medium. If people have a digital (including Social) media component in their training then they should live and breath it.

Too many people provide the wrong impression of social media and how it can be used. Too many people stigmatise it and this helps to emphasise the negative impressions that mainstream people have of social media. Social media is a lifestyle and only those who see it as a lifestyle should teach social media.

7. More research to be carried out into the effects of social media on
young people’s mental health.

A few decades ago we all lived in villages and everyone we knew lived within walking distance. As time progressed and as trains, cars and jet aviation became part of our daily lives so the village we grew up in became a state, a country, a continent, a planet. If you’re going to study social media on young people’s health then you should not ignore that social media is connecting people living in different villages in the countryside and different streets in towns. As such it means that social media could help people who are geographically distant stay together mentally. What should be studied is the negative impact of marketing on people’s natural use of social networks. Marketing and public relations should enhance, not distract from communicating with people.

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Brainless television and the Tabloid Media

Byrichard

I saw the headline to this article and feel that we should discuss brainless television and the tabloid media. The article was written by a fifty year old who blames the number of distractions for voter apathy.

The answer, I fear, is they’re too busy being mesmerised by an ever-increasing plethora of high-tech distractions directed specifically at them. The changing nature of the youth-obsessed entertainment industry is in danger of inadvertently creating a race apart, an entire generation that instinctively prefers the cyber world to the real world.

Rather than blame the youth of today and technology for the situation that Brexit England is currently in I would look at where people got their anti-European rhetoric from. They got it from decades of anti-European articles in the tabloids. They got it from decades of Anti-European Tory rhetoric and they got it from radio and the sides of buses. Even the Guardian and the BBC are guilty of consistent anti-European rhetoric. Just look at the amount of airtime given to MLP rather than Macron. In a recent feature Katya Adler gave minutes to the far right and seconds to pro-europeans. The same is happening during the French election.

In times gone by, the 18-24s tended to feel alienated by mainstream entertainment that wasn’t for them. The counter culture flourished because there wasn’t enough for young people to do. The atmosphere was ripe for passionate anti-establishment politics. Now, with global corporations focussing all their efforts on capturing the lucrative youth demographic, there’s way too much for young people to do. The poor things barely have time to think.

I was both a teenager and a twenty something year old in the Internet age and I can say with certainty that the counter culture has not suffered as a consequence of new technology. I would point to youtubers, snapchatters and others as examples of this. I would point at Anonymous and other groups as well. I would point to the various critical mass events and more. Footage I took of a Silent Disco flash mob was used in an ARTE documentary about the walk man. Counter culture is alive and well. It’s just a matter of using the right medium.

It’s easy to blame the youth for apathy and it’s easy to say “A more likely scenario is that the vast majority of these allegedly pro-EU teens would not have made it to the polling booth” but maybe if the older generations had not been indoctrinated by years of Anti-European rhetoric they would not have voted the way they voted. The reason that young voters are pro-European is simple. They haven’t spent decades reading anti-European propaganda so they understand the benefits of Europe. Online culture contributes to this.

 

 

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The Paradox of “kicking smartphone addictions”.

Byrichard

It’s amusing that people think of “kicking smartphone addictions”. We now have a decade of experience in the current social media landscape. We have a decade of using smartphones rather than feature phones. In effect we have had a decade to adapt our lives to the age of the ubiquitous smartphone. We can ignore the Blackberry and Nokia ages where phones were for phone calls, playing snake and business rather than pleasure.

People who see smartphones or social media as addictive usually have one thing in common. They have a “partner”. They spend their free time with a specific individual. “It’s about finding balance. I became conscious of what matters to me, in my life. My smartphone is still a part of it, but it’s no longer the boss.” I have never been addicted to the device as such. My passions lie with what I can do with the device. I was passionate about Twitter when it was a social network. I was passionate about facebook when it was a way of keeping up with friends.

If Twitter and facebook become ego-networks for marketers and public relations professionals then the “addictive” aspect of smartphones vanishes. As social media goes from a conversation to a broadcast and a monologue it delivers another opportunity. It gives us the chance to go back to reading books. As we no longer “socialise” with smartphones the “addiction” is gone. We loose nothing by spending time “offline”.

You don’t need to give up the smartphone or any apps. If you’re like me you can pick up an e-book reader and replace Facebook and twitter with reading. If you’re going to passively read an e-book reader is an interesting alternative.

 

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The Frankfurt School of thought and blaming social media.

Byrichard

When we were at university studying the media we learned about the Frankfurt School of Thought. We studied Adorno and others. We learned about the public sphere and more. I see a lot of articles today discussing whether we live in a post-fact and post truth age. Social media are given the blame but this is over-simplistic. In the Frankfurt school Knew Trump was coming Facebook is blamed for the proliferation of fake news when it is an aggregator rather than the source of disinformation.

For years the American news industry has shifted increasingly towards entertainment and audience rather than fact and context. As a result of that shift mainstream media in the Anglo-Saxon world has been dumbed down. Through putting commercial interests ahead of hard news mainstream media have lost some of their authority. By authority I mean trustworthiness and fact based reporting.

Rather than look at social media as the culprit I would look towards Fox News, Sky News, the tabloid press and right wing propaganda. Assange, Snowden and others wanted to undermine the democratic party and in so doing undermined Democracy as a whole. As a result of that undermining they encouraged people to shift their media consumption habits from hard news sources towards opinion news sources where facts were optional.

Lies have long legs: they are ahead of their time. The conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power, a process that truth itself cannot escape if it is not to be annihilated by power, not only suppresses truth as in earlier despotic orders, but has attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false, which the hirelings of logic were in any case diligently working to abolish. So Hitler, of whom no one can say whether he died or escaped, survives.

…

If Adorno were to look upon the cultural landscape of the twenty-first century, he might take grim satisfaction in seeing his fondest fears realized_

We see this as a key discussion point today with Trump, Brexit and the defeat of the Si vote in Italy. Lies are spread and reinforced so that empty promises win campaigns, rather than logic and reason.

_The failure of Facebook to halt the proliferation of fake news during the campaign season should have surprised no one; the local hirelings of logic are too enamored of their algorithms—and of the revenue they generate—to intervene_

Social media did not fail. The Fourth Estate failed. We have two choices. We can read the over-simplified sensationalist crap or we can delve deeper to the content that is based on fact but may put us to sleep. Not everyone is reading news for entertainment. Some of us switch between media sources to avoid being narced (pardon the diving term). We see certain sources are anti-European on a daily basis so we switch source, we switch language. Social media is not the problem. Blind belief and trust is the problem.

I hold a strong belief that the study of history and the necessity for people to study current affairs are essential. I also believe that educational systems need to encourage people to think critically and to understand the media landscape. They need to understand how propaganda works and how disinformation can go into a positive feedback loop whereby lies become truth. “positive feedback loop” in this context is a term taken from environmental science. It describes how a small negative change, over time can gain in amplitude and feed into itself.

_Fake news is an extension of the same phenomenon, and, as in the Napster era, no one is taking responsibility. Traffic trumps ethics_

For years people have worried about privacy but from what we see today privacy is not the problem. Disinformation is the problem. Mainstream media and their audiences need to be more critical. They need to read numerous sources and use ethics and morality to see which sources they trust and which ones they disregard.

It is too easy for

 

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Black Mirror – A television series

Byrichard

Black Mirror – a television series

Black Mirror is a television series that was broadcast by Channel 4 a few years ago and made available to Netflix audiences recently. The series explores a variety of topics and issues to do with technology from death to crime and existentialism. It also explores themes like family and friendship.

We spend a lot of time thinking about technology and how it has changed our lives. Sometimes it’s fun to watch 80s series to see the world as it was before computers and the internet and sometimes it is fun to watch dystopian essays or short stories exploring facets of modern life.

In modern society we see that social media is affecting the discourse that is taking place between politicians and normal people. We see how social media and the lowering of the barriers of entry to the fourth estate have created a golden age for propaganda and disinformation. We see in The Waldo Moment that a CGI bear can mock the political system. It could be directly related to what we have seen happen recently.

Be Right Back deals with online identity and how a person can be emulated once they have died. The question is an interesting one. The more active we are on social media the more our character and personality can be understood and reflected back. This is limited. We are not entirely ourselves online. There are some things that we hide from the online world.

In Fifteen Million Merits we see a dystopian vision of the world where everyone lives in a small dark room. They get out of this room to go and peddle for a few hours to get Merits. Once they have 15 million merits they can “apply” for a different kind of job via a talent show.

Nosedive explores popularity and social networks. Everyone is constantly being rated based on what they share, how they interact with others and more. In such a dystopia people can progress or lose privileges based on reputation. In such a reality people are vulnerable.

A vertovian theme is explored in “The Entire history of You”. An implant called the Grain records your entire life and you have the ability to fast forward and rewind moments of your life. In so doing you can analyse what went well, what went badly and more. You can also see more than you were intended to see through other peoples’ recorded experiences. In this episode we see the Kino-Eye, the all seeing eye. Your life is no longer private.

I like some of the themes that are explored in this series and I recommend people to watch at least some of the episodes. I feel that they are relevant to our discussion about social media and online lives.