On the Internet, nobody knows you're just making stuff up.
On the Internet, nobody knows you're just making stuff up.
If we knew the true identities of people who post on Reddit and Twitter, I think we'd be amazed at how confident and persuasive children can be.
Again, I'm guilty of what I criticize. I was never as smart or as clever as my Facebook notifications made me believe. It was all a mirage.
“Never proclaim yourself a philosopher, nor make much talk among the ignorant about your principles, but show them by actions. Thus, at an entertainment, do not discourse how people ought to eat, but eat as you ought… For sheep do not hastily throw up the grass to show the shepherds how much they have eaten, but, inwardly digesting their food, they produce it outwardly in wool and milk.”
—The Enchiridion of Epictetus
The irony of this post is not lost on me. This micro-blog exists to communicate my ideas.
At the same time, I've adopted this approach in other contexts, on other topics that are very important to me. Boasting and moral posturing can be satisfying, but they don't achieve much. In some cases, they can even be counter-productive, turning reasonable people away from ideas and causes that we care about. There is a fine line between grandstanding and judging others, and as I've written previously, I don't know anyone who has genuinely changed their mind as a result of being scolded and judged.
It's unfortunate that social media encourages grandstanding when it can be so harmful. Why are we so angry, resentful, and divided? Perhaps we should follow the kudos.
Michael Pollan might put the foundational medical advice of the future like this:
Use the web. Not too much. Mostly learn from experts.
The foundational medical advice of the future may sound something like this: eat well, stay physically active, don't smoke, and avoid social media.
I don't want this micro-blog to come off as holier-than-thou. I am guilty or have been guilty of many of the things I criticize, especially when it comes to social media. I also know that I have blind spots. I just hope that my blind spots are different than the blind spots of others. I want to share my perspective and learn from the perspectives of others.
Social media is a confirmation bias machine. Facebook, for instance, is a great place to hear what we already believe. It's a terrible place to learn from the other and confront the weaknesses of our own arguments.
Is it any surprise, then, that political extremism, conspiracy theories, and pseudoscience are flourishing?
I support Signal's decision to drop support for SMS and MMS. Software maintenance can be incredibly challenging and time-consuming. This decision will likely free up time for more important work.
John Carmack is rumored to have said, “Focus is a matter of deciding what things you're not going to do.” I'm not sure if the attribution is correct, but it doesn't matter. It's a good point.
Contrary to the opinions shared on Hacker News, the world is not going to end. (Hacker News readers often forget that they are not the target market.) If anything, it might be easier to convince others to use Signal now. “Use this app to have private conversations with other people who use the app. It doesn't change how anything else on your phone works.” In a world that remembers rouge software crashing computers, that fact is more important than it might seem.
Besides, abbreviations rarely correlate with usability. Signal needs to reach normal people. Let's keep it simple.
BeReal is interesting. A newly-popular social network, it allows users to photograph and share one moment per day during a randomly-determined, two-minute window. The thinking is that this will discourage curation. Users will see their friends as they really are, not as they pretend to be.
I'm not convinced. BeReal might limit fakery, but I think pretension will evolve rather than perish in this new environment.
Regardless, BeReal doesn't address the vast majority of problems with social media. I predict that users will still suffer from confirmation bias, addiction, misinformation, targeted advertising, privacy degradation, and the myriad other harms caused by social media.