Individuals are not responsible for the ethical conundrums created by a capitalist system they have no control over. Any argument that indicates otherwise exists to disguise the actual responsibility of capitalists and their enablers.
I wasn't trying to pin blame on consumers, my argument is that you could say the same about algorithm performism, as no individual is responsible for the collective phenomenon; and in the same vein, leaving social media has become akin to leaving the discourse itself.
Participating in “the discourse” is bad for one’s mental health and completely optional. Logging off social media is probably the single best thing you can do for yourself. I only engage with long form text based social media, which is better, but still has issues.
Of course one shouldn't take "participating the discourse" to the extreme end of becoming distressed over every horrible headline the algorithms present you; the opposite, total isolation, is defeatist, you're giving up on society to live off with your tight-knit community ignoring what's happening to society at large.
In my opinion there's a small window of social media usage that is just enough to enable you to get a grasp of the current trends (as in the direction society is going towards), whilst not being too much that you get absorbed in.
p.s. (still, everyone is different, and not knowing you I can't give any judgment, and I can see reasons that would make a total cut-off the best route)
p.p.s. (I just thought of an example, with social media I'm able to have a grasp of the red-pill/manosphere pipeline, and with this knowledge I can recognise its flags and *try* helping people I know that are falling for it)
The key to social media usage is to engage with it on your own terms and not get sucked into it. I prefer to engage with “the discourse” at arms length and read other people’s observations and commentary (mostly political blogs) with links to relevant Bluesky/twitter/tiktok posts as needed. I don’t need to know the latest “trends” or what’s going on minute by minute, nor do I need to have an opinion on everything.
Not to be reductionist or anything but them kids are funny. They get so hype, it's just fun for them for the most part I bet. It gets cringe when adults use their lexicon. As they kind of said in the video. Lol
The irony of Dictionary.com choosing 67 as word of the year while simultanously engaging in the exact clip farming behavior it critiques is perfect. Your point about everyone in the CBS interview performing for an invisible online audiance rather than each other really captures the absurdity. The shift from sound bites to clips represents another abstraction layer where the present moment matters less than its potental viral afterlife. Its like we're all constantly optimzing for algorithmic distribution without even realizng it.
I work at a somewhat viral book store, and we get a lot of influencers that take videos inside the store. Sometimes they film the baristas without asking. For this reason, I’m always on edge. I never know if I could end up on TikTok so in this way I, too, am clip-farming: how do I look? how am I dressed? am I saying the right things? being polite enough?
Not being flippant: How is this actually different from wanting as many eyes or ears or any other mode of attention on you, your product, your whatever? Going viral by any other name is the attention attention-seekers have always sought. Is the big different that nowadays it happens instantly and so the process of reacting against it is almost instantaneous too?
and each subsequent demonstration-of-onlineness term gets more ubiquitous: 67 > rizz > skibidi (i actually forget which of the latter two preceded the other). maybe as isolation/forced-onlineness becomes more universal/required? curious to hear thoughts
Idk the only reason I ever start using that vernacular is when me and my friends are saying it ironically to be funny and make fun. But then it becomes part of us... and thats where they get ya.
exactly. i am always saying: no one is ever really joking! jokes matter because, to these linguistic points, they are utterances. they have absolute value in that they are being said and thus have the impact of creating earnest investment in their ethos etc.
You touch on something here that I've been ruminating on quite a bit lately: That "distribution mattered more than product,". What I'm struggling with is finding a period or instance where distribution of information has not been incentivized over production.
This leads me to the question of how much of our culture is driven by the desire of those who hold ownership of the distribution methods to maximize their incentive? Then further, what might it look like under a different system of incentives?
I'm left wondering if the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the US stands as a good example of a system of information distribution that served the public rather than private owners, and how that might translate to more modern distribution platforms.
This I see a lot in comedy now crowd work content gets so many clips that people deliberately ask questions to make the clip, production houses like dropout have created entire shows with short prompts that are the ultimatel clip content- it is very interesting how much really the algorithm controls what we do
That's what all the retardation is about, believe it or not. The establishment demonstrating that they can get the children of the plebes to be performative. Babbling things they don't understand. Things they don't care to understand anyhow. All according to their favorite number of all. 33.
they don’t give a shit about it either. they’re just having a joke about something dumb. i hate to say something so plainly obvious but seeing people stir the self into a millennial tiktok rap about this shit. girl
At this point, the only winning move is to not play the game.
As with consumism, there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, but there are goods one must consume to live well.
Leaving the game is self-defeating.
Individuals are not responsible for the ethical conundrums created by a capitalist system they have no control over. Any argument that indicates otherwise exists to disguise the actual responsibility of capitalists and their enablers.
I wasn't trying to pin blame on consumers, my argument is that you could say the same about algorithm performism, as no individual is responsible for the collective phenomenon; and in the same vein, leaving social media has become akin to leaving the discourse itself.
Participating in “the discourse” is bad for one’s mental health and completely optional. Logging off social media is probably the single best thing you can do for yourself. I only engage with long form text based social media, which is better, but still has issues.
Of course one shouldn't take "participating the discourse" to the extreme end of becoming distressed over every horrible headline the algorithms present you; the opposite, total isolation, is defeatist, you're giving up on society to live off with your tight-knit community ignoring what's happening to society at large.
In my opinion there's a small window of social media usage that is just enough to enable you to get a grasp of the current trends (as in the direction society is going towards), whilst not being too much that you get absorbed in.
p.s. (still, everyone is different, and not knowing you I can't give any judgment, and I can see reasons that would make a total cut-off the best route)
p.p.s. (I just thought of an example, with social media I'm able to have a grasp of the red-pill/manosphere pipeline, and with this knowledge I can recognise its flags and *try* helping people I know that are falling for it)
The key to social media usage is to engage with it on your own terms and not get sucked into it. I prefer to engage with “the discourse” at arms length and read other people’s observations and commentary (mostly political blogs) with links to relevant Bluesky/twitter/tiktok posts as needed. I don’t need to know the latest “trends” or what’s going on minute by minute, nor do I need to have an opinion on everything.
Not to be reductionist or anything but them kids are funny. They get so hype, it's just fun for them for the most part I bet. It gets cringe when adults use their lexicon. As they kind of said in the video. Lol
The irony of Dictionary.com choosing 67 as word of the year while simultanously engaging in the exact clip farming behavior it critiques is perfect. Your point about everyone in the CBS interview performing for an invisible online audiance rather than each other really captures the absurdity. The shift from sound bites to clips represents another abstraction layer where the present moment matters less than its potental viral afterlife. Its like we're all constantly optimzing for algorithmic distribution without even realizng it.
I work at a somewhat viral book store, and we get a lot of influencers that take videos inside the store. Sometimes they film the baristas without asking. For this reason, I’m always on edge. I never know if I could end up on TikTok so in this way I, too, am clip-farming: how do I look? how am I dressed? am I saying the right things? being polite enough?
Great article.
Not being flippant: How is this actually different from wanting as many eyes or ears or any other mode of attention on you, your product, your whatever? Going viral by any other name is the attention attention-seekers have always sought. Is the big different that nowadays it happens instantly and so the process of reacting against it is almost instantaneous too?
and each subsequent demonstration-of-onlineness term gets more ubiquitous: 67 > rizz > skibidi (i actually forget which of the latter two preceded the other). maybe as isolation/forced-onlineness becomes more universal/required? curious to hear thoughts
Idk the only reason I ever start using that vernacular is when me and my friends are saying it ironically to be funny and make fun. But then it becomes part of us... and thats where they get ya.
exactly. i am always saying: no one is ever really joking! jokes matter because, to these linguistic points, they are utterances. they have absolute value in that they are being said and thus have the impact of creating earnest investment in their ethos etc.
Oh and thats always offline
"At the end of the day, we're all clipfarming" gotta be the most realest thing ever said.
You touch on something here that I've been ruminating on quite a bit lately: That "distribution mattered more than product,". What I'm struggling with is finding a period or instance where distribution of information has not been incentivized over production.
This leads me to the question of how much of our culture is driven by the desire of those who hold ownership of the distribution methods to maximize their incentive? Then further, what might it look like under a different system of incentives?
I'm left wondering if the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the US stands as a good example of a system of information distribution that served the public rather than private owners, and how that might translate to more modern distribution platforms.
This I see a lot in comedy now crowd work content gets so many clips that people deliberately ask questions to make the clip, production houses like dropout have created entire shows with short prompts that are the ultimatel clip content- it is very interesting how much really the algorithm controls what we do
one, two, three, four, five, one-more-than-five, one-less-than-eight, eight, nine, ten
damn, I actually just thought it was funny independently of any context. Chat am I cooked
100 - 67 = 33.
That's what all the retardation is about, believe it or not. The establishment demonstrating that they can get the children of the plebes to be performative. Babbling things they don't understand. Things they don't care to understand anyhow. All according to their favorite number of all. 33.
they don’t give a shit about it either. they’re just having a joke about something dumb. i hate to say something so plainly obvious but seeing people stir the self into a millennial tiktok rap about this shit. girl
'6-7' has permeated through my Gen Alpha classes... seems to just be a bubble though.
I wrote about the 67 phenomenon and how your book basically described it Beforehand! Hope I was not too far from what you meant!
https://morebookslesspills.substack.com/p/book-rx-6-7-algospeak-how-social
67 https://youtube.com/shorts/xhEk4E8IZLg