The Social in "Social Media"

Reflections that have brewing in my brain for several weeks on my relationships with others, especially one-way social media interactions.

Jan 13, 2021

Hello! What a week last week was. What a week this one is. I need to stop remarking on things like this because we’re just constantly adrift in unprecedented times it seems. In case you missed it, last week I shared part of a conversation I had with my friend Kristine about her experience teaching. Once again, I am not here to talk about the coup but I feel like I do need to acknowledge it because it’s still on everyone’s mind and the information released in its aftermath has been… I would say jaw-dropping but I dropped my jaw on the ground long ago and haven’t found the energy or ability to pick it up quite yet.

Liam Bright @lastpositivist

Demanding to know who gave IRB approval to the American experiment

Some of the coverage on this that I found helpful while also inevitably jarring:

They Say This Isn’t America. For Most Of Us, It Is. on the myth of America. This quote feels important: “I was struck, again, by the ways we are living in a story so many of us refuse to actually read.”
The Pro-Trump Mob Was Doing It For The ’Gram, on what the MAGA people were after since they couldn’t feasibly seize actual power over the US
‘It Was No Accident’ Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal on surviving the siege. on her experience being inside the Capitol with the appropriate amount of rage and forethought, which is more than some of her colleagues are demonstrating.
How They Stormed Congress from The New York Times The Daily podcast diving into the way the attack on the Capitol was organized online and who saw it coming.

Also, this tweet. Watch the video in the replies and think about how this man put his body on the line in front of a white supremacist mob to lead them away from the Senate floor.

Ryan J. Reilly @ryanjreilly

One of the best humans I know had some thoughts on watching U.S. Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman face down that mob of Trump-loving insurrectionists that was steps away from the floor of the Senate. Sharing here, with his permission.

Again, I will offer you some content that is not about how our democracy’s crumbling has accelerated before our very eyes and we cannot feel it fully because we have been numbed by tragedy after tragedy. I would ask though that you please read some from both these lists.

Things I read this week that I would recommend:

Okay, Caesar, Let's Go Home on the pure joy of owning a dog, a joy I am hoping to attain this year (you’ll know when it happens because photos will be in this newsletter)
what it means to pandemic, solo from Anne Helen Petersen’s excellent newsletter Culture Study is a collection of a few stories of people weathering the pandemic alone and I promise you it’s actually not sad
What was fun? contemplates what exactly “fun” is and its history and how the pandemic managed to kill it even in things we’re still able to do that were once fun
The Race to Redesign Sugar, on exactly what the title says. There’s a particular kind of joy in learning about a mundane aspect of life and realizing there are people who are so dedicated to understanding or altering it.

Big thanks to all the people ~actually reading~ this! I put more effort into these newsletters than I put into most aspects of my life, unless you think these are mediocre or bad, in which case I put minimal effort and don’t care at all about it.

I love when people send me links or thoughts or tell me they felt compelled to send it to someone else. For the sake of transparency, I will inform you that the unprompted proposals of marriage to reject and donated buildings in my name counts so far are both unfortunately still zero. Alas.

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Oh yeah we’re Facebook “friends”

A parasocial relationship is defined as the relationship between an audience and performers in the mass media, one which over time causes audience members to develop an illusory sense of friendship, intimacy, or understanding of the performer.

It’s easy to connect this to our fascination with celebrities and influencers. It’s like we really know them and we’re friends… except we’re not. YouTube vloggers and lifestyle influencers in particular blur the line because they show us the details and texture of their lives to a level I don’t even have for most of my friends. I know Jenn Im’s day to day routines but I can’t claim to really know most of my friends’ daily routines. There are YouTubers I stopped following years ago, but every now and then I will look them up on social media, trying to figure out if they’re still in their relationships, happy to see them in their curated and (at least seemingly) happy lives. It feels strangely similar to what I do with acquaintances I have lost touch with “in real life.” IRL feels like it’s an inappropriate descriptor of what is not on the Internet anymore after the Very Online year that we all had.

The term “parasocial relationship” was coined in 1956, and was referring to TV and radio at the time. Now though, with social media, we’re all performers, aren’t we? There’s a certain version of ourselves we’re presenting online, both consciously and subconsciously. Even if you’re not constantly posting or scheming the color palette of your Instagram, most people I know have a certain type of content they put out there when they do. I’m not going to dwell on this point too much, potentially because I’m assuming you’ll agree with me.

While I was already somewhat addicted to social media prior to the pandemic and definitely felt this before, it has truly been amplified now that I cannot see my friends and have no idea when I’ll get to see them next. When I say social media I mostly mean Twitter and Instagram, and kind of Facebook although I am constantly trying to leave Facebook. LinkedIn is its own special circle of hell. I feel like “keeping in touch with people” is seen as one of those universal positive actions, but more and more I’m not sure it always is. I still follow / am Facebook friends with some people from high school and college I have long lost touch with. They’re less people and more concepts at this point. Yet, because I still get a glimpse of their lives through their posts and stories, I have this sense that I kind of still know or understand them. People who post more often I think I know better. But they didn’t send me a message and specifically tell me any of the details they’re sharing. I’m just a part of the broader audience. I’ve found myself severely underestimating how long it’s been since I’ve spoken to certain people because they post enough on social media that I know their life updates and general feelings on things. Passively keeping up with people sometimes stands in for the more inconvenient work of actually keeping in touch. It is easier, I can do it at my leisure, and still evokes similar feelings even though the connection isn’t really connection. I have friends who are very active/open on social media who have been surprised by DMs or comments from people they do not know well or do not know at all acting like they’re friends. Parasociality at work. It feels different with non-celebrities though. We’re all tiny unpaid influencers now!

Being open, but make it TL;DR

I think about this with finstas (“fake instas,” which despite the name are actually more real and usually involve people sharing more about their personal life to a select group of friends), where I have learned about struggles my friends and acquaintances have gone through with respect to mental health, sexual assault, intergenerational trauma, and more. Instead of sharing these deep and personal matters as a part of an accumulating conversation, they appear on my newsfeed between pictures of someone’s dog, and now I know this about my friend, but I also feel like it would be weird to try to talk to them about it sometimes, because they didn’t actively decide to tell me specifically. I also feel similarly on Twitter sometimes, where people are willing to share pretty personal feelings and details to followers they do not know, and gradually I feel like I’ve pieced together a relatively cohesive concept of who they are. People also tend to be more flippant and sometimes outright aggressive on Twitter, in a way where I am intimidated that often doesn’t match up with their demeanor in person.

Sometimes I find a good article or have a stupid thought and I go through the process of figuring out where to put it. Is this a tweet? Is it a finsta post? Should I text my friend who would relate or find this interesting? Is it long enough to write a newsletter about? Partially this is about subject matter, but honestly it is also often about whether I want someone to respond to me or if I just want to put it into the void. Sometimes writing a long description of how I am feeling bad and posting it, where it is unlikely to receive more than likes from friends, just feels easier and more comfortable than having to express it directly to a friend and have them respond with questions or advice or whatever. I don’t always crave engagement, but upon reflection… why am I sharing then? I guess to update people, but then we end up in that weird zone where they know but I didn’t explicitly tell them. Some of it should just go into a journal, which is something I’m trying to work on.

Honestly, some thoughts do not deserve homes outside our heads and I think social media has really offered a dumping ground that encourages us to believe all our thoughts are worth sharing. This obviously maps onto misinformation, political polarization, and the social media bubbles we tend to inhabit, but that is a whole different can of worms. I will note here that because of that even if you personally don’t really exist on social media, you are inevitably affected by the consequences of others doing so.

This is not to say that every social media post needs to be profound and impactful, I just feel like sometimes when I share mundanities or something I’m upset about it ends up lingering with me for far longer than if I just… let it pass.

As my screen time on social media has ticked upwards during this pandemic, I personally feel more and more prone to sharing my pointless thoughts or experiences into the void. I’ve been thinking about this Instagram post a lot (thanks Phoebe!), which says on the sixth slide:

“… A large part of our excessive, unnecessary manifestations come from a terror that if we are not somehow signaling all the time that we exist, we will in fact no longer be there.” (Peter Brook)

I know that obviously I will exist whether or not I maintain a social media presence, but this resonated with me in that sometimes I feel like I am shouting into the void to confirm that I still exist, that I still matter. Sometimes it’s really not about if anyone is listening and responding to it, I just crave being heard.

It’s my world and you’re all just living in it (JK you wish)

A worry I have in this vein is that we’re really encouraging main character energy to an unhealthy extent. While self-love is important and making fun of coming-of-age movie tropes is fun, acting like you are the main character of the simulation we’re all in is ultimately not great for meaningful connection, for solidarity, and for empathy. My friend Christina wrote this in her newsletter a while back and I’m still turning it over in my head:

“we’ve heard about the male gaze, but what about the public gaze? for me, it follows me everywhere: I wonder if I should film my mom cooking food, a palatable recipe for a mostly-white tiktok audience to potentially ogle over; I post my rollerskating progress to my close friends story in a facsimile of personal connection, when in reality it’s the only motivation I have to go outside; I dress nicely for once and immediately reach for my phone camera to document the occasion.
but here’s the question: if everyone’s the ‘main character,’ who are the side characters? how can we begin cultivating community when everyone’s obsessed with cultivating themselves first and foremost?”

Discussion of this idea of “main characters” always reminds me of the scene in High School Musical 3 where Sharpay and Tiara fight for the spotlight. But now I guess it’s all of us? Makes for a real chaotic show.

I hadn’t thought about this since I saw HSM3 in theatres in 2008 (yes, that is the year it came out).

Doing things “for the ‘gram” or “for the aesthetic” seems pretty normal now but the mental energy expended trying to arrange our lives into digestible bits and putting them out there for viewership from an audience of hundreds is taxing. This isn’t to say I’m mad about people sharing on social media. I enjoy being a part of the audience, and I still do post. Increasingly though, it just feels like a short-term dopamine hit habit and encourages mindsets that are damaging. The more time we spend producing, directing, and editing the main character story arc, the harder it gets to really hold others in as high of regard and the harder it gets to value and build community. Quarantine has certainly encouraged being all in our heads because, where else are we going to be? But the longer that remains the case, the more I feel like I am simultaneously tearing myself apart and also hyping myself up to an unnecessary degree. We are so myopic as human beings and we incorrectly correlate proximity with importance constantly; for example, please see how it seems like 75% of stories/explanations about why someone cares about a cause is because they or someone they personally know has been affected. Now that I am mainly stuck with myself as the object in focus, it’s getting harder to try to step in others’ shoes and it’s easier to tend towards self-involvement and self-importance.

In recent months, I’ve been fixated on the idea of unknowability. The reality is that you cannot truly know anyone else because your knowledge of them is shaped by your relationship to them and is interpreted through the lens of who you are. You can’t assume you know exactly what to expect from anyone, even those closest to you. Potentially especially those closest to you, because they are the people most wrapped up in your personal identity and who you presume the most about. This is called the closeness-communication bias. We assume that because we know someone, we can predict how they’ll react or what decision they’ll make next, and so instead of paying attention, we project our image of them onto them and don’t really listen. This may explain seemingly abrupt divorces or falling outs.

Everybody has a rich interior life that we’ll never be able to fully grasp! That’s unsettling both because the thought of never truly knowing someone else runs counter to our whole true love ideal and also because it’s profoundly lonely to think that nobody will ever truly know you completely. My friend Lina (hi Lina) would offer a counterpoint to the latter because it is also very special to know that there are parts of yourself you don’t need to share, that are truly just your own. It’s unsettling (to me), but it should also encourage empathy and patience. It should remind us constantly to give the people we love space to grow and change and remind us to pay attention to them as they do it. It is also a reminder to myself to not be fastidious in adhering to behavior and opinions that once felt very central to my identity if they no longer feel that way.

To tie my fascination with unknowability back to what we were originally mulling over, since everyone is unknowable, all we have is an idea of who they are based on our interactions with them. That’s pretty easy to agree upon. Okay, but what’s been haunting me is the additional versions of ideas of me (and you) that exist out there not just from my direct interactions with people. I have an idea of someone that now consists of both our personal interactions and also the content of their social media posts. You, reader, have an idea of me shaped by how we’ve interacted along with my social media activity, AND the words I write in this newsletter! There are a couple people subscribed that have never even met me, so they’re forming impressions of me purely off of this. This is not necessarily bad, it’s just something that I’ve been thinking about. The longer I go not directly interacting with people, the more dominant their social media persona is in my concept of them. There is something to say here about how we curate our social media personas and what we leave out.

Sometimes I am pointlessly tweeting because I am desperate to not be unknowable. I want to share and to be known. Sometimes I am pointlessly tweeting because I want to be heard, because it makes it feel more like I exist. And sometimes my thoughts lead to interesting conversations! But sometimes I am tweeting because the pseudo-interaction of people liking my tweet feels adequate, though it is not.

Small Screens

Several weeks ago I read a piece in the newsletter Griefbacon (haven’t looked into the reasoning for the title yet, but I promise I will), titled “small rooms,” about literal and metaphorical small rooms we’ve been living in during the pandemic, and this part sticks out to me:

“All year I’ve watched the neighbors across the street—like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window, trying to conjure some murder mystery soap opera drama from the quiet hints of people’s mundane lives coming and going across their un-curtained windows—and their lives are small rooms too, repetitive enough that after months now I can track and anticipate their movements across the visible space of their windows. A small space creates repetition quickly; here we are again, walking the same path, back at the same starting point.“

For the rest of us who do not live in New York City (the voyeurism across apartment buildings feels distinctly NYC to me even though it’s probably feasible in most other large cities), the small rooms we’re peering into most often now are through our small screens this year. Snippets of peoples’ lives, but the ones online are the ones they choose explicitly to share. Still, I feel now that I can anticipate the kind of content I’m getting from certain people. This person is going to share an Instagram story of her breaking social distancing that will make me cringe, this person is posting because he made very aesthetic-looking food, this person is sharing mutual aid requests. I find it easy to forget that these are out of context snippets, that I don't really know what’s going on in peoples’ heads. What they share on social media is likely not the dominant part of their personality, just one small slice. People are unknowable. My friends are unknowable. I am unknowable.

We’re all in our own small rooms (please, stay in your small rooms we are still in a pandemic), sometimes we’re shouting into the void and sometimes we’re absorbing everyone else’s little shouts. I’m trying to be more conversational on social media when I use it, instead of pretending I’m in touch with people because I liked their tweet or Instagram post. I’m trying to remember that in these ten months while I’ve been growing and changing my mind and learning new things about myself and others, so has everyone else. I’m trying to have empathy for people around me doing things I don’t understand or don’t expect, because I’m sure I do things they can’t understand or don’t expect. I’m trying.

This is me trying. A statement and also a song on folklore I didn’t like too much at first, but have grown to appreciate. Have I mentioned I love Taylor Swift yet? Well, I do. Anyways. It’s a song about admitting that you’ve screwed up and telling the other person that you are trying. We focus a lot on the apology aspect of relationship conflict, but learning how to try to change and how to accept peoples’ trying, even if it is not immediately successful, is hard and complicated too. There’s a consistency and compassion that it requires that I feel like I have lost (or maybe never had) the patience for. I don’t want to be a curmudgeon blaming social media for everything, but as it has come to occupy a larger and larger space in my life in the past months, I do feel like the one-way nature has made me more likely to focus solely on how I feel in reaction to something and what I think in a way that isn’t conducive to complete forgiveness or to the changing of opinions.

Except literally this newsletter, right now, is not me trying, unless you reply to this email or message me some other way. Or else it’s still parasocial. But that’s not necessarily bad either!

Thanks for making it to the end! I hope you revel in your unknowability and give others the space and grace to do the same. I would be honored if you subscribed and/or shared this with friends!

Third Thing

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