We’re all frustrated with social media these days, and sometimes the only recourse seems to be to point at anyone even tangentially involved and yell “Stop!”
That friend who posts a little too much: STOP!
That coworker who is oversharing: STOP!
The relative who can’t seem to look at a comment box and walk away: STOP!
As someone who posts routinely I get my fair share of real life people questioning my participation: it’s not directly telling me I shouldn’t, but it is a subtle dig and a semi-revocation of permission.
Once, long ago, we all joined these networks and connected to each other in this giant circle of digital trust. I’ll connect to you, we said, but you need to be respectful of that.
Then the algorithms filled those feeds with advertising and slop and rage bait and memes, and we shrugged and said, well, I can’t yell at Zuckerberg or Musk or any of those assholes, so—
—so we started revoking permission from our friends. And we almost do it unconsciously: we scroll past the stuff from people we know just like it was part of the rest of the mess, not recalling that the photos and words and stories and messages from the people we connected to were the whole damn reason we downloaded the app to begin with. We ignore them, just the same.
The result is a great big gap where there was once celebration. There is a quiet rule that social media sucks, but a rule the neglects to differentiate between content from people we know and like, and content that is overwhelmingly corporate, influencer, or algorithmically generated.
We lump it all together and shout STOP! But we keep loading the apps—to find only our friends heeded the request. All that is left is the slop. All that is left is the ads. All that is left is the manufactured reality that doesn’t care if you want it or not, and shrugs when you push back.
We scolded the wrong creators.
Terms FROm this POSt
- algorithm
- The modern internet in all its forms is far too large for people to fully manage anymore without the help of automated systems. Any time an unseen calculation weighing our public profiles against what an app, website, or service chooses to show us, one of these automated systems is at work behind the scenes recommending product, ideas, politics, and friends. The invisible hand of fate has turned into a digital calculation so big we can’t understand it, and so complex it is often hauntingly accurate. If you are not afraid of the algorithm and what it has done to our society, you are probably not paying enough attention.
- corporate
- Having worked in many desk jobs, I tend to think of the corporate mindset and anything related to it as a kind of collective brain of capitalism and the search for profit. It is a core piece of the culture, but personally I’ve found it to be the antithesis of creative spirit, and often use the word as a pejorative in this sense.
- influencer
- I think people assume because I post online so much that I’m trying to become an influencer, by which I mean the type of person who creates waves of content with the intentionality of making a living from being a kind of quasi advertising personality. I’m not that. I create because I enjoy it, crave it, live for it… and if people happen to read it, cool.
- slop
- Maybe I’m just leaning into it, but it seems like this has become the de facto term to describe anything generated by an algorithm coupled with the soulless pursuit of creating for-profit content. Artificial intelligence is a complex technology with many positive uses, but making inhuman replacements for human expression is not one of those.
- social media
- You almost certainly found this post because it was posted on someone’s feed. The platforms are terrible, but as it stands they are about the only way to find an audience in this crazy version of the internet. I avoid the socials when I can, but to ignore their existence is to toil forever in obscurity.
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