I was mildly shocked recently to read a statistic that 75% of Americans used Facebook, and I paused for a moment to think that I’ve never used Facebook, Twitter, or in fact any modern social media system. I thought it would be interesting to reflect a little on why this is true, and after the recent events in our administration, how simply shutting off ‘social media’ immediately brings peace. It shuts off a cesspool of melancholy.
To qualify, I do read DailyKos and occasionally write on DailyKos, which is heavily moderated, and other forums such as Medium, but they are also fairly heavily moderated, and having read the moderated feedback from their readers, I feel it’s worth the effort to participate, definitely not a cesspool, but has its tinges of melancholy.
When I first was aware of Facebook, Twitter, and even back to MySpace, my instant reaction was “what a nightmare” to these sites. I had no interest or even curiosity in participating. This reaction is still odd to many of my friends. I was thinking about my reaction, and wanted to write a little about why Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and similar ‘social media’ are, and always will be to me social deathtraps.
40 years ago I used a “media” system called “Usenet” (let’s call it a bulletin board, generically). Functionally, it’s pretty much identical to variations on Twitter, Facebook, DailyKos, Instagram, YouTube, (but not instant messaging) except of course it (at the time) wasn’t saturated with advertising. Usenet started (as all media seem to do) with the equivalent of uncharted, semi-anonymous blogs, of threads/responses, groups (moderated and open), it evolved to allow sharing images, music and video. On it, I experienced almost all modern digital social media issues – they are old, far older than people imagine perhaps, and have long been addressed by the usenet ‘pioneers’.
Usenet access was originally limited to ‘elite’ Universities and technology research organizations, and no ‘spam’ — advertising — was allowed, by consensus. As internet evolved, Usenet eventually became accessible to everyone, anonymous, easily, and for free. The minimum requirement of Usenet was the ability to connect directly or indirectly (1200 baud anyone?) to a provider which hosted usenet data, having elementary software to download and upload messages to the server on the Internet Service Provider or ISP (freely available on all pc platforms). Create a name for yourself connected to an email address (be your own email provider for full anonymity), and you can begin reading and posting. More detail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet
Imagine, a blog/bulletin board/news feed that any anonymous person could post on, unlimited, with worldwide distribution, for free. What could go wrong? After a decade of Usenet, I learned exactly what goes wrong, and went wrong over and over.
- All non-moderated digital ‘social’ media always devolves into pure trash.
- All social media always attract reactionary ‘trolls’ who publicly and cruelly divert, antagonize, and upset the maximum number of people possible, without reason or purpose.
- Groups of people can coordinate responses to stop trash, but they will always lose in the long run outside of moderated forums.
- The faster the messages flow, the faster the failure of the system to maintain civility will evolve.
- Digital social media is not a conversation , it is a recording, stored forever, out of your control and managed by organizations you neither can see nor trust.
For these reasons I basically don’t use any major digital ‘social media’. No Facebook, no Instagram, no YouTube, no Twitter, very light DailyKos (when DailyKos first came online, I tried a conversation and got Troll rolled instantly, under a different name; it’s more relaxed now.) I do read responses on some news sites with ‘social’ response areas to blogs (like reason.com) once every month or two because it gives me a ‘temperature reading’ of troll insanity. I use private messaging to chat with friends. I use email as a ‘last resort’, and have an array of addresses to deal with variously spam, authentic business, family, receipts, subscription mails.
So, the first idea.
1. All non-moderated digital ‘social’ media always devolves into pure trash.
Today, all non-moderated groups (a group is similar to a facebook group or a twitter hashtag or a subreddit) on Usenet are unbelievable cesspools of spam and bottom-feeding trolls antagonizing each other. I used Usenet over a 10-year period in the 1980’s, which at the time had nowhere near the reach of today’s internet. At first, it was a set of great groups (think Reddit, or YouTube channels, or Facebook Groups) with fairly sophisticated users, and fascinating freewheeling conversations which began shaping how internet culture would be thought and talked about. A lot of terminology ordinary today was originated in the ‘80s. The “:-)” smile emoticon is an example, or the “FAQ” — Frequently Asked Questions. Likewise “RTFM” and other acronyms. I remember beginning to see the smiley emoticon first it in Usenet, and suddenly it became completely natural.
After the 7th or so year being available, Usenet started to become, (ironically) ‘unusable’. Specialized groups — I used one unmoderated group allusively called ‘soc.motss’ for “Social Members of the Same Sex” which was devoted to conversations on lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, transexual topics — well, that group became difficult. We would have the occasional “All gays must die” kind of posting, which in the early-80’s would cause a problem to the poster, who could always be identified by which academic institution the mail came from. It wasn’t pretty when the complaints went back to their boss, or academic advisor, or other administrative oversight. But, with opening access to Usenet to anyone who had a modem, the negative postings increased in frequency, and attacks against “blogs”, or “threads” or conversations increased dramatically. Spam began. Channels like motss suddenly had so much non-conversation that the first big group of posters on MOTSS began one by one to salute a farewell to contributing. Moderated channels persisted — postings had to be approved by a centrally selected group — but the vast majority of Usenet was moving towards Useless.
By 1993, when I touched toes in the water of usenet again, it was completely unusable — and apparently had begun to have massive circulation of repulsive things like child pornography, ripped music, and virus-laden hijacked software, along with rotating malestroms of spam and vitriol. It was sad — there was so much promise, and I certainly made internet friends and buddies I cared about and met in ‘real life’ but our conversations now were entirely via private email. Some of my oldest friends and acquaintances — now counting almost 40 years — are from Usenet. Going back and reading ‘best-of’ postings, and seeing the promise, and seeing the reality highlights the melancholy, and vividly outlines the cesspool it had become.
Media, like any human information creation, has value in proportion to the energy and time put into it to make it meaningful. When there’s no effort, the value always goes to zero. I think of Effort as ‘paid contributions’ by writers (Washington Post, New York Times, Daily Kos), by team human moderation and curation (wikipedia), and by other methods which ensure the information presented doesn’t absorb enough noise to become meaningless. I like highly moderated, highly curated media — “The Root”, “Vox”, “The Dish”… the content has investment (though as Fran Leibowitz said of magazines, and I misquote “How can you spend much time reading something designed to be thrown away.”) Everyone here would enjoy “The Baffler.” But Facebook, Instagram, Twitter… little or no investment, staggering noise to information ratio, and cesspools rank rank with trolls. Kos has high investment, Medium very high investment, Substack. Valuable. Interesting. Heavily moderated.
When we speak of “fake news” or “Russian Disinformation”, or spam machines, bot armies, layered systems of conspiracy theories, that’s what I consider a cesspool. Maximum noise (think of thousands of junk postings per hour), no information, and actually engaging with this type of ‘social media’, it (to me) actually damages the ability to think rationally and sensibly, because it consumes time better spent enjoying life, learning, and engaging with friends and family, and substitutes the opposite effect. It’s the mental equivalent of going into a really grimy seedy public bathroom somewhere where there’s high foot traffic, and reading and writing messages on the wall as a pastime. Cue skin crawling.
Cesspools also create ineffable sadness and melancholy, particularly “is humanity really this bad” kind of feeling. Rabid anonymous postings, threatening postings describing intimately grotesque fantasies of depravity the Marquis de Sade could only dream of, stealing peoples lives and shredding them publicly for entertainment, far surpassing Roman entertainments with lions and prisoners. I read “Reason.com” occasionally, one of the most ironically named websites that there could be. Declared Libertarian, in fact anarchic, but recently with Covid and discussion of “government misinformation — it’s no worse than the Flu! Only Old People die!” type postings, the responses — “Good riddance of oldies” and “need to cull out miniorities” — seemed to shock even the most jaded, hardened Libertarian. “Are we really this bad? Is this what libertarianism is about?” is the summary response. From me, a wry smirk, and a checklist that “Reason” had reached the cesspool of melancholy stage with no moderation, anonymous access, and hate- and rage-filled trolls having access. More on trolls later.
Another cesspool element is Spam. Somehow, my email spam level has actually declined over many years. Wow! I’m not sure why I don’t receive offers for genital enlargement or Nigerian inheritances anymore. But on unmoderated Usenet groups, spam is huge and growing. Its easy to recognize there. It’s not so easy, yet, to recognize on Facebook and Twitter since spam and disinformation constantly mutates, but it’s there and growing, and consuming people’s life. It’s when you’re reading articles and suddenly what seems like an article is an advertisement. Deceit. When you’re reading someone, and you realize they’re not looking at an idea, they’re talking about something to buy. For you to buy. When you notice that 50% of what flows past your eyeballs is advertising disguised as information — you’re in a Spam cesspool! You thought you had gotten over it by email, only to find it resurfacing in social media. I don’t see spam on Medium, and I do see somewhat interesting articles and commentary. I don’t see spam on Substack and I do find interesting articles and commentary. Moderation, investment of time and energy to keep focus and value. General purpose social groups always, over time, to sustain any information, have to start tapping into the Spam cesspool. Usenet is the poster child.
The true horror of pure, unmodified social media — Usenet, 4chan, 8chan, and so on - is the ability to transmit things like child pornography, viral software, stolen ‘girlfriend’ and ‘boyfriend’ shaming photos, stolen movies and music – stolen lives. Fortunately, some time ago, many ISP’s (Sprint, Verizon) finally came to their senses, or were made to, and simply halted the hosting and/or transmission of the unmoderated so-called ‘alt.*’ newsgroups — alt.sex.* groups for example (rather than adult conversation, now replete with all manner of unmentionables); alt.binaries.* — yep, pirated content in binary form, all you can eat.) The blocking of that which contained much of the highly illegal, and untraceable content was a start. I didn’t hear any Republicans whining about freedom of speech. Unfortunately, that was just trying to plug one hole in a mutating seething mass of data flows.
There is no ‘cure’ for unmoderated instantly distributed content and ‘social media’ systems. As ISP’s shutting off newsgroups, or abandoning Usenet hosting entirely was a starting solution, the real solution looked like simply migrating away from Usenet to AOL. Then AOL fell apart, and we got things like myspace. Then migration was to Facebook. Then to… social media systems which are not entirely polluted by disinformation. Moderated. Valuable content. Paid for controls.
Clearly, with reformatted and unmoderated pure trash circulating on the top-10 platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram and other platforms, the cesspool has now taken roots into what “75% of Americans” now subscribe to. Celebrity on/off departures from social media — “Leslie Jones”, “Miley Cyrus”, “Adele”, “Kanye West”, “Alec Baldwin”, “Donald Trump”, “Steve Bannon” among others — are a repeat of the 1985-87 Usenet show with users stopping/starting/banning, trying to ride the cesspool. A repeat of 40 years ago. A repeat of 30 years ago.
People, please consider the value you get from social media — because it’s really not good for you. Many of us learned this in the ‘80s. It’s time for everyone to learn it in the 2020’s.
The kicker? Apparently some moderated media can also descend into pure trash when bad actors run the show — welcome in the trolls. It’s called TV network news — a “Platform”.
Next Up:
All social media always attract ‘trolls’.