The mythology (the ‘bait’ in its bait-and-switch) of social media, is that it’s like the world’s…

The mythology (the ‘bait’ in its bait-and-switch) of social media, is that it’s like the world’s conversation. Everybody talking to everybody else. Except it isn’t. The same hierarchical structure shapes those conversations as exist off social media. /1 https://t.co/T0CB5HGKN5 https://t.co/tNHpkwM9pH

All that social media does is replace existing social status hierarchies off the platforms, with new ones on the platforms. Often the hierarchies off the platforms simply use the platforms to reproduce their dominance. But over time that fails. /2

Because social media’s engine room is naked populism. Anything off social media that doesn’t run on pure populism, will eventually fall to ‘influencers’ on social media, who do. Politicians have discovered that far too late. Look at Trump. He’s trumped the lot of them. /3

He will also fall though, eventually, as all populists do. What people loosely call ‘fascists’ (really just populists) always reach the wrong end of the crowd’s anger. That’s because popularity has zero loyalty, to anybody or anything. It’s fashions, fads. /4

Nothing and nobody can ever remain perpetually popular. Look at those on social media who have large followings. How does conversation go, with them? /5

It doesn’t. You might get the occasional crumb from their table, but practically there’s not a single way they can engage with even a fraction of their followers. They’re using social media as a publishing platform. Not as conversation. Which is the traditional media model. /6

Reproduced here, together with hierarchical structures. Social media is a con, its main function is to replace existing hierarchies with new ones, under cover of fantasies about world conversations. It’s a strip miner, of status. Removing status from existing stats holders. /7

Exactly what ‘the economy’ is as well. A mechanism to achieve status, by pretending to eschew it. An ‘objective’ mechanism of allowing ‘the people’ to create their own order, in ‘markets’. Except they don’t. The fictitious markets just magnify status hierarchies. /8

I’m not sure it’s seen just how equivalent ‘the economy’ is, to social media. Both use the same beliefs. Both sell themselves as liberators, of the people. Except the people don’t exist, and nobody is liberated. It’s an attack on hierarchy, by other hierarchies. /end

(Incidentally I know some may rush to defend social media, because they swallowed its bait and it made them a new home in the world. They’re like social media’s own in-built immune system, rushing to attack threats.)