My Tweets are often social and cultural lenses for viewing modern life that peel away the economic and…

My Tweets are often social and cultural lenses for viewing modern life that peel away the economic and political framings we tend to use instead. Christmas is a perfect time for this sort of thing, scrolling through social media. Some observations. /1

I feel real disquiet scrolling through social media at Christmas time, watching people transacting major parts of their social lives through these platforms. Christmas in the West of course is one of the most important social times of year. What causes the disquiet? /2

To me it’s the way we’ve accepted now the shifting of so many of our social transactions onto platforms created by billionaires for profit. This isn’t a tired old argument about capitalism or the evils of money. It’s a social and cultural observation. /3

That we’ve privatised our social and cultural spaces and experiences. That this tiny handful of businesses have appropriated much of our social and cultural life. Many spend a lot of their days and nights, on these platforms. They shape how we interact with friends and family. /4

They shape communities, because communities are social and cultural life. And it’s insidious because when you scroll through all of the curated images of grinning, happy people doing family and friend things, you can’t help but feel like this *is* living in a community. /5

Ignoring that the moment you start to transact your social life on a social media platform, it becomes fuel for the deepest DNA of these technologies. Imitation and rivalry. Whether people are even conscious of it, their social life is suddenly being compared with all others. /6

The ‘peer pressure’ of high school life is suddenly the main mechanism of all adult life as well. And again the fuel for that activity is the social lives of the users. Who remembers years ago getting the humblebrag Christmas letters from some friends? /7

A long list of achievements of themselves and their family members during the year, which you’d read with an eye-roll and yawn, and often not finish because the skiting was so tedious? This IS the world of social media. People don’t just post to share happy times. /8

They’ll tell you that’s what they’re doing, but comparison is the essence of all social media, if you use it for long enough. It’s insidious, and the images and stories become more curated over time, to try to outdo others. Look at our celebrations, aren’t we fabulous? /9

So there are multiple layers of disturbing social change happening here, for mine. At the most general level, as above, we’ve allowed our social lives to be transacted on platforms owned by a tiny handful of businesses. Who then monetise these lives for profit. /10

But it goes deeper, because we then individually become hooked like opioid addicts to the endless imitative rivalry this ‘sharing’ generates. This is the main mechanism that generates the social shift I Tweet about. The transformation of all life into high school culture. /11

These platforms are the mechanism that drives that adolescent culture of constant comparison and status hierarchies into every nook and cranny of all social life, at all ages. It was already the root of adult life too. But significantly moderated by existing institutions. /12

Institutions that embedded multi-generational insights, from past tragedies and disasters, into the operating system of the adult world. But of course, social media attacks these institutions with more viciousness than anything else. /13

Trump used Twitter to take over leadership of the free world. The proliferating crop of imitative populists now emulating him are following the same script. Populism is just high school life, and populism is our culture now. We know popularity is the currency of school. /14

And yes, there are productive things you can do with this hyper-networking of lives too, I’m still here because of some of the benefits of having instant access to so many interesting people. But we’re playing with fire, the negatives are much more dangerous. /15

To narrowly route our social transactions through these platforms is the thing destroying our societies faster than anything else. Adult life was never designed to function as a giant high school. Nothing of importance is increasingly getting done. /16

Every urgent social need is weaponised for the team sports debates on these platforms, fodder for the adolescent culture wars of competing groups. Gaza for example, I just can’t, on these platforms. You’re either Team Israel or Team Gaza. It’s childish. Literally. /17

And with Covid, you’re Team Infinite Covid, or Team Zero Covid. How about just being ‘let’s do basic public health work, like we do for all other infectious disease’. *tumbleweeds* Doesn’t ignite the team rivalry in the same way. Our social lives have been stolen from us. /18

By the same interests who are breaking the older institutional foundations of those lives, in order to monetise the wreckage. You can call them the libertarians, the anti-State politics people. But they’re really just extending high school culture to all culture. /19

And they intend to be the top of those adolescent hierarchies, their freedom schtick is nonsense. They’re only interested in their own freedom to do whatever they like, not yours. To be blunt, most of these platforms come out of the US. /20

A culture endlessly at war with itself, with its own institutions, since its inception. A cultural emigration fleeing what it saw as instituional persecution in Europe, and determined to set up a new world free of all hierarchy. Except all social life creates hierarchies. /21

Social media platforms are just one of the latest ways that culture has tried to reinstall structure and hierarchy to the fantasy of everybody being free to think and do whatever they like. To rebuild society from the ‘bottom up’. Except there is no top or bottom. /22

Hierarchies are in every social group, of every scale. From the tiniest committee to entire nations. What this produces is chaos, in every society the platforms are exported into. It ‘mobilises’ every type of stupidity, and gives it purchase in our wider social lives. /23

Stupidities and evils that previously were controlled for, by our institutions. Now continuously undermined by these platforms, 24 hours a day. I’m sure you can feel that decay and collapse, everywhere you look. /end