The phone is the gateway between social media and reality. The tool that uploads everyday life into social…
The phone is the gateway between social media and reality. The tool that uploads everyday life into social media, and then allows social media into those lives to transform them.
This isn’t a one-way or even two-way process. It’s a continuous looping cycle. /1 https://t.co/vqle840plb
It’s not actually the devices that are the key here, despite the popular narratives. It’s the social media apps on them.
We use the devices to feed our social media addictions. Addictions in turn that access our deepest social behaviours. /2
We increasingly inhabit a bubble-cycle. As we feed our lives onto the platforms, it’s that return ‘feed’ from the platforms back into our everyday lives that is less noticed.
Our lives are now a ‘feed’ as well. We’re transformed by the platforms. /3
As we plug our thoughts and desires and social relationships into the social media maelstrom, our lives are swept into the imitative rivalry that is the currency there.
Those virtual selves are shaped while there, and then feed back into our everyday lives, shaping those. /4
People even end up having surgery, to transform their identities and appearances, to better fit with the imitative rivalry on social media.
It’s a continuous circulating looping, mediated by the phone/device. /5
At the centre of those loopings are the algorithms. Tweaked to maximise return to platform owners and shareholders.
It’s the algorithms that are now the structuring principle of our societies themselves. What do we know about them? /6
Almost nothing. Except that they deliberately stir up imitative rivalry between groups, because that drives attention and clicks, which in turn generates revenue.
Which in turn transforms our lives off the platforms, seeding discord and violence. /7
I had to block a person this morning, somebody infected by the team sports of the platform, who jumped into a discussion about something completely unrelated to their cause célèbre.
Within 2-3 Tweets, they were abusively claiming violations on topics with zero relevance. /8
When their own team has exhausted every permutation of righteous anger amongst themselves, they hijack other discussions to keep the fire burning.
They NEED the battles. That’s the algorithms at work, transforming ordinary folk into cold-eyed crusading zealots. /9
@doctorow’s concept of enshittification beautifully describes the capturing part of these cycling loops. Where users, advertisers and publishers are captured by the platforms, before having their wallets emptied.
I think it doesn’t describe the return feed as well. /10
We’re not all just having our lives strip-mined by these platforms, for revenue. They’re transforming our social relations. Reshaping how we think and feel and act.
Transforming everyday lives into ‘debates’, into causes we have to become warriors for. Into violence. /11
I think we’ve lost sight of the way these platforms are now the way we transact life itself. Everything from our most personal and intimate life, through to our working and political lives.
We’re living inside bubbles where ordinary life is transformed into team sports. /12
Because we didn’t understand that everything we do is social, even the most abstract or technical thing, or political or economic, we let these platforms capture *everything*.
Our entire societies. The algorithms replaced the lot.
/end