I've long believed
that "government is a lagging indicator of social trends." By this I
mean to say that, by the time an issue is being debated by the government, it's
already stale. I cannot prove this, of course, but I often spy such issues in
the news. Perhaps it's merely confirmation bias, but still…
One such issue is
the matter of Facebook and social media. For several months now, we've been
inundated with news stories about Congressional hearings and legislative
debates involving what should be done about the power of Facebook, Google,
social media, and the likes. Part of this is dressed up in the familiar
conspiratorial language of "national security." After all, the
argument goes, Russian meddlers used Facebook to tip the 2016 US presidential
election toward chaos. Another part of it is dressed up in the familiar
conspiratorial language of "media bias." After all, the argument
goes, Google manipulates search engine results to promote certain advertisers
above others; who's to say that they're not doing this when it comes to political
issues?
There may or may not
be a kernel of truth to these arguments; I can't say for sure. The amount of
money that the Russian meddlers are said to have spent to "tip the
election" is a drop in the bucket compared to legitimate domestic campaign
spending. One would have to believe that Russian meddlers spend Facebook
dollars more shrewdly than the shrewdest campaign managers in the largest
political high-stakes game in the world. That strains credulity, but at the
same time I don't really know the truth; I'm just musing about it. As for
biases in Google searches, it is likely impossible to disambiguate between what
adjustments Google makes internally to its own algorithms and what adjustments
are made in response to legitimate SEO and search placement spending.
What I can say for
certain is that, although these topics are relatively new to the cable news
cycles, they are old, boring controversies among people connected to those
issues. For example, everyone already knew way back in 2015 that the Facebook
news feed was getting progressively more insular and incendiary. I myself have
been using non-Google search engines for nearly ten years already. (I first
migrated to Bing, and then when Bing started screwing with search results as
much as Google does, I migrated to even more obscure choices.) All that is to
say that these are stale matters for people like me. We've already moved on; no
legislation required. There are plenty of alternatives to Google for search
engine services and free cloud storage, so why bother with a Congressional
investigation? The rational thing to do would be to make a simple, personal
change in your own life and leave the rest of it behind you.
As for social media,
it's death has been a long time coming. I think "the kids" moved on
to more secure alternatives like SnapChat years ago. At this point, the only
social media presence you'll observe from young people is professional profiles:
LinkedIn profiles that look like resumes, Instagram feeds that showcase a
youth's "side-hustle" business of some kind, few and sporadic photos,
and only the best-of-the-best. To catch a glimpse of a young person's social
media in the year 2018 is to see a handful of photos carefully curated to make
him or her appear simultaneously glamorous and inoffensive.
And older people are
finally starting to catch up. Already, most people have grown weary of posting
long diatribes or sharing important news stories. Instead, they share interesting news stories, such as science and
medical articles, and if they post about politics at all, they post memes. As
to sharing photos, those photos that are shared tend to be those same glamorous
and inoffensive photos the youth share, or else they are mainly boring: people
blowing out birthday candles, couples posing in front of holiday decorations,
smiling children playing with ordinary toys, occasionally a plateful of food.
(Even the food photos have a bad reputation these days, though.)
Social media will
continue for a long time, of course, but its presence as a cultural force has
mostly been obliterated. No one is interested in that crap anymore. I can only
hope that people find their way back to public spaces and telephone calls, parties
and gatherings, sporting events and music concerts. The more we interact with
each other live-and-in-the-flesh, the better off we are.
This was all a
long-winded sort of way to tell you that I've read 1,200 pages - in real books - in just two weeks' time. How
did I do it? I replaced all my social media time with books. I'm always
reading, be it a social media feed or a book; it may as well be a book.
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