25 December

Scrolling through Christmas messages is a fascinating cultural exercise. Like this photo below, wouldn’t know these people from a bar of soap, but their personal lives are here, shared far and wide. The problem for me isn’t just oversharing or privacy though. It’s that much of our social lives is now transacted on social media platforms. These platforms are owned by businesses, usually US businesses. They take your social life posted on here, and they monetise it. Our social lives are being privatised. That matters because they will then do everything possible to increase the revenue from the sharing of your social life. And most of the ways they do that will damage that social life itself, off these platforms. You can look at all the Chrstmas photos for example and get a feeling it’s just a community living its lives and sharing with others. Cosy and cuddly. But the more dangerous thing, and how the platforms make most of their money, is that they turn this social sharing into a competition. Like those terrible skite-letters people sometimes send at Christmas, bragging about everything their family did in the past year. That’s what social media turns *everything* into. Endless comparison, because comparision drives posting and likes, which in turn drives revenue. ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ is the business model, driven now into every part of our social lives, by these platforms. People curate their posts to project an image, in competition with others’ images. Are you comfortable with our social lives being driven onto these platforms, captured there, for the revenues of the platform owners? While simultaneously feeding back into our lives off these platforms, turning how we live into new fodder for the endless games of comparison? It’s insidious, these platforms are addictive becaue they tap into some of our most dangerous psychologies and behaviours.