I call toxic sociality the underlying problem behind all of our other problems. And the vanguard of toxic…
I call toxic sociality the underlying problem behind all of our other problems.
And the vanguard of toxic sociality is social media. You can see in this student post that there’s dawning realisation. /1
https://t.co/aWP2zXeGHl https://t.co/rnD0r3FexQ
The way we’re approaching our problems, is itself the problem. Sociality has hijacked these problems, inflating them in the imitative rivalry of our toxic social games.
Inside these toxic social bubbles we’re both impotent to act, and prey to continuous inflation of emotion. /2
It seems strange to describe sociality as toxic. We think of sociality as an unalloyed positive, it carries associations of togetherness and warmth.
But sociality is always competitive. A game of social status, through imitation. The battle for belonging, in groups/teams. /3
It’s very hard to see when you’re in the thick of it. Going out to a meal or for a drink with friends just seems a happy time. And there is happiness to be had in those experiences, no doubt.
But it hides a brutal process. We know social comparison is always going on. /4
Who doesn’t bitch at least a little about friends as soon as you get home from a social event? The things that annoyed you, the comments on things people are doing in their lives.
We are always comparing ourselves, to others. Assessing and curating our status. /5
The student in the first Tweet of this thread knows it. Social media takes this process and entrenches it inside our lives 24 hours of every day.
It’s why it’s so toxic. And why we’re not solving any of our major problems, because sociality never solves problems. /6
Proust called it the most empty of all human activities. That didn’t make it unimportant, just devoid of content and purchase on material reality, outside our social relations.
We won’t solve any of our problems, with sociality. It will make them MUCH worse. /7
We shouldn’t need to steer obvious solutions to our problems through the maze of toxic social battles. To try to make those solutions popular, the only currency of sociality.
They never make it through that maze. They can’t. /8
How do we save the world right now? We turn social media off. I think it’s as brutal and simple as that. Just do it as a thought experiment, imagine what would unfold in the weeks and months that followed that decision. /9
Yes those who have become dependent on these networks for social connection may suffer. But monetising and weaponising their social relations on revenue-devouring platforms was never a solution to that disconnection. /10
Others say these platforms are vital for getting information that they can’t access elsewhere. But that’s a problem these platforms also created, people needing the information.
Turning the platforms off will give the previous homes of that information room to breathe. /11
No longer will sources of expertise be in constant competition with social ‘influencers’ to circulate information to a public. That same public will be forced to go back to those traditional sources of expertise, for information. /12
The easiness of access to information here, unfiltered, is what makes social media so dangerous. No checks and balances.
Societies do not function with hyper-levels of social connection. Sociality is violence, competing desires. /13
How many of your friends are ‘with you’, fighting Covid? I bet hardly any. Even members of your family. Sociality solves no problems.
Social media has taken sociality to toxic levels of connection. It’s pulverising our societies, explosive and proliferating violence. /14
We need to turn it off. To go cold turkey on our addiction. To allow the relative sanity that preceded it to re-emerge.
/end