Clarification of My Quote on Make Me Smart Podcast: Free Social Media Needs Stiff Competition

Some cool news: The Make Me Smart with Kai and Molly podcast (MMS) quoted me in episode "91: How do you get out of your echo chamber?". Is you want to go straight to where Molly reads my quote, click here.

The frustrating part of the said news: my quote was not put in the right context. I won't say the quote was read out of context, just not in the context in which I said it. And honestly, the incorrect context lies in my court.

I consider myself a fan of the MMS podcast. On my list of podcasts in the order that I download them, I have MMS at number 6. Previously I had it at 4 and 5 at different times. I now have two other podcasts that make my podcast listing more efficient earlier on my list. I don't write this essay to trash or criticize MMS, especially since I play a part in fogging up the context. I simply want to clarify the context of my quote and to prop up the theme of the podcast: "Because none of us is as smart as all of us."

MMS didn't quote me as an expert, a specialist, or anything like that. They quoted me as a participant in a Facebook forum named after MMS but started by a fan, not as an official group of the podcast. Since then, it has become loosely (or somewhat closely) affiliated with the podcast. I find the group provides a welcome respite from the general social media, news, and blogosphere.

I say the above as the resident cranky moderate. Socially, I'm a pluralist Leftist. Economically, I have a penchant for Left-leaning economics on the basis of fairness. I also acknowledge that sometimes financial intermediary schemes like insurance, universal healthcare, pensions, social security, disability insurance, welfare, and other schemes can feel unfair to the privilieged with inherent advantage (healthy, high income, high assets, etc), but their loss is worth it for the massive lifting of burden for those under duress, even when the burdened can never be rid of their duress.

However, I do not see capitalism as something inherently wrong nor created with some long-term design to mold the future. At most, I see the current results of capitalism and social control as results reached by short-term politicking, Machiavillainian maneuvering, realpoliticking, and the common human fragility of social group dynamics that have remained with us since before we became human and before we established civilization. The evils that humans have stratified in society have come from our wiring for dominance hierarchy, not some higher level of thought that crafts society much further than today, tomorrow, or beyond the interests of gaining and maintaining power in our current state of society.

The evils of dominance hierarchy no longer surprises me, even as the atrocities from it disgust me and motivate me to fight it. If you've followed the Lextopia long enough, you have become familiar with my surprise at our ability to overcome our urges for powermongering in our dominance hierarchy. It surprises me, I don't understand how some of us humans have reached the point where we aim for such empathic goals rather than settle for becoming part of the dominance hierarchy. I like to think I am someone who believes in real justice while I push for more fairness and empathy in our society and world. Yet I still have yet to understand how I and others have reached this point of aiming for justice.

So I'm that kind of Leftist moderate in a forum that the vocal members of the group seem to have a division between right-leaning Libertarians and capitalism is inherently evil Leftists. Mind you, one of the themes of MMS is a questioning whether capitalism is inherently immoral or amoral, or whether it can also encourage moral behavior. Lately in my stubborn moderation, I may have created my own little media bubble in the forum.

A few of the big discussions in the group and on MMS itself have been discussions that we have all probably engaged in since 2016:

• Our media bubbles
• The role that social media, especially Facebook, has played in elections
• What can we do to defend against the media bubbles and become better educated, independent thinking media consumers and civic participants

MMS, it's "parent" network, Marketplace (a part of American Public Media), and elsewhere in the media, intelligentsia, and hopefully the watercooler spheres have done a fair amount of discussion about whether Facebook is a technology company or a media company.

For a good while, I fell on the side of Facebook is a technology company. I generally thought of Facebook as a social media website. We signed onto Facebook via a web browser. If we signed into Facebook by an app on our phones, our service provider, for the most part, treated it like any other app or web browser without any more or less privileges than any other app. Even the aspects of the Facebook app that accessed parts of our phones that we didn't expect and things like that, I consider that a separate conversation from the technology vs media company debate.

The way I saw Facebook in regards to this question: Facebook doesn't generate the content, so it doesn't have any editorial say in creating content. Facebook might show some editorial judgment when it comes to deeming whether content is pornographic or some other level of inappropriateness, up to a point. I hadn't seen Facebook judge what content could be or not be shown based on any political or subject-matter bias other than appropriateness to a "general audience". Yes, the Facebook algorithms made for an annoying determination of what would show on our timelines based on the supposed habits of ourselves, our friends, and friends of friends (if we didn't adjust some settings manually). Even then, though, our behavior determines the results of those algorithms, not Facebook direct influence.

Throughout my education that I can remember in the '90s, both high school and college, and also through autodidactic reading of my own, I learned that we need to watch, listen, and read our media with our criticial facilities. We need to know

• The bias of the author and the content provider
• Our own biases and susceptibility to bias
• The layout of biases in the world's patchwork of biases
• How to filter through all these biases to determine truth, whether we like the truth or not

Since this whole discussion about the power that social media has over the population, I've wondered about how much teaching critical reading has degraded in our society. I also had to remind myself that I came from the Northeast coast of the United States. I grew up in a fairly upper middle class town in the ex-urbs of Boston that had its fair share of abolitionist meetings and socialist gatherings in the mid-1800's. As early as 5th grade, I had history teachers explaining to my classes that history books and primary resources were mostly written by old white men. I've had a fairly privileged education. I had to acknowledge that maybe this lack of critical reading skills had less to do with our time in history and more that our national educational standards have a pretty low bar (coming from geographical bias).

Then I saw a retweet of this article: "How Duterte Used Facebook to Fuel the Philippine Drug War". Take the time to read this article, which illustrates pretty clearly how Duterte, his supporters, and his campaign manipulated Facebook to distribute authoritarian thinking in the Philippines. I bet the same thing occurred in Myanmar and their complacency about the Rohingya genocide that occurred in 2017. This article will show you how people can manipulate Facebook and other social media vehicles into dangerous propaganda machines.

The way that critical media consumption by individuals can be short circuited comes down how Facebook has provided data-free use of its app and internal browser to people using wireless Internet outside of the United States. Some mobile services providers in the United States provide similar services for music apps, video apps, Youtube, Netflix, etc. etc. I believe. I don't remember seeing these kind of deals advertised in the United States over the last year or so. I remember, however, these types of deals being offered for awhile, especially when 4G first became popular.

Maybe it doesn't sound like a big deal to some. Free entertainment through social media, free music, free movies, and the such for people have an account or subscription to some service that provides an app automatically downloaded on your phone at purchase time. The big problem occurs, however, when Facebook or some social media becomes the only way someone can access the World-Wide Web through the app's internal browser. No other browser will work on that phone, just the app internal browser. Facebook's internal browser doesn't allow you to manually type in a web address. It only allows you to access web sites that Facebook has a link to on a Facebook stream or that is linked to through a chain of websites that has a original link on a Facebook stream. You can't do your own manual Google search or anything unless someone links to Google on Facebook.

Per that Buzzfeed article, Duterte and his supporters abused this feature of Facebook. I'm sure the same goes for the Myanmar genocides and other governments and movements based on controlling the information in our brains. I have to wonder how much of this feature plays into the 2016 POTUS Election in the United States. Did this free data use of social media contribute to the Arab Spring (I'm currently ruminating on the Arab Spring because a book that I just finished reading valorized the Arab Spring without acknowledging the backlash afterward, which makes me think the book was published before the backlash)?

About eleven weeks ago on the MMS Facebook group, someone posted this article/essay: "The Baloney Detection Kit: Carl Sagan's Rules for Bullshit-Busting and Critical Thinking". The article/essay does provide some good tips and references a book that I have checked out of the library and queued up for reading at some point in the near future.

They posted these tips after the Buzzfeed article about Duterte abusing Facebook, so I felt obligated to link to the Duterte article and type the following:

I would have agreed with you then I read this article last night about how Duterte pretty much used Facebook in the Philippines in a Trumpian/Putinesque along with supporters because FB pretty much is one of the only ways that Filipinx can access the Internet. Scary stuff.

Then there's Myanmar ethnic cleansing using FB to grow the cleansing.

Yes, critical reading is important, but apparently so is having multiple affordable avenues to access the Internet, enough I guess is an argument for viable competition?

Please excuse some of the unintelligibility of my typing. I had typed it up on my cell phone while at a diner waiting for dinner.

MMS likes to play voice memos from fans of the show. Imagine my surprise when about two weeks ago, one of the producers replied to the thread, asking me to record a voice memo that focused on the last paragraph. I cleaned up the language while drafting a script then recorded a voice memo. Later that night, I drafted another, longer script then re-recorded the voice memo. In the clean up, I tried to include a clause or sentence that made my intention clear that my comment had to do with political propaganda that comes through free media resources.

Which now, upon the reflection of this essay, makes clear why the MMS crew associated my comments with government censorship and government control over media. I appreciate MMS thinking that my comment had to do with government censorship and government control, but I did not make this comment within that context.

I had made this comment in the context of an economic and financial milieu that doesn't allow citizens the availibility of a media either

• Free of bias
• A variety of bias that encourages people to question their sources in a productive fashion

Instead, when the only reasonable access to media is one in which an individual citizen can't direct themselves (say through a general Google search or freedom to purchase whatever magazine or paper they want) and vulnerable to skillful manipulation by political interests, especially those with an authoritarian bent, other easy options for accessing the Internet and content must be provided. At the very least, technology companies that don't want to be media companies must

• Use algorithms that also provide opposing biases as a default
• Mobile service providers need to provide similar contracts for data-free apps to other online services of the same like and kind but with different algorithms (Twitter in comparison to Facebook, Pandora in comparison to Spotify, etc.). There needs to be a competition of data-free apps
• Provide a data-free web browser that allows the user to manually enter web addresses rather than restrict use to links from the parent app or chains of links that originate in the parent app

I take the blame on the context issues of my quote. Navigating social media on cell phones doesn't lend itself to clear expression of complex topics, even considering just potential mistypes from a digital keyboard and mistakes from just trying to rush through something. I have sent a text to my boss meant for my wife once or twice. Thankfully, I never sent anything sensitive, but these mistakes have taught me to be careful about texting and set up a manual safe guard or two so that if I send a text to the wrong person, it's a friend, not my boss. If such mistakes can happen with just texts, imagine how dangerous it can get on social media.

Nonetheless, I wanted to

• Take this opportunity to clarify the quote of me
• Promote the episode of MMS that is my premiere to a large media platform
• Thank MMS for this platform and opportunity to clarify my thoughts
• Let more people know MMS is a cool, fun, and informative podcast and that they should listen to (frankly, even just fellow Chicago residents might find the interview of Rahm Emmanuel from last year interesting)

How cool is that?

If you like what you see here and in the past and want to free me up for more, support my endeavors by Buying Me a Coffee!

Be More Productive and Fulfilled by Reducing Social Media Use

Jump to LINKS OF NOTE

I got a lot done one night last week or the week before. Minimizing my time on social media, mostly Facebook and Twitter, likely had a lot to do with it. I cut down after noticing a correlating relationship forming between my exploitation of social features on my phone and frustration about not getting as much creative/productive things done as I would like.

When people talk about changing their relationship with social media, they often talk about taking a break or vacation from it or just dropping it completely. Let's be frank here: they're talking about Facebook. People have strong reactions to Facebook. I don't know why.

I don't intend to go cold turkey. I want to remain involved, just in a more limited capacity. Social media, on its own, doesn't cause me to have a direct emotional reaction. I like to think this decision comes as a rational response to feelings triggered by many responsibilities and dreams not getting attention.

A few months ago I had gotten a bunch of writing done. I wrote semi-regularly here. I had done a bunch of brainstorming for my project, then I rewrote a couple sections. I had a hard time progressing forward but had a bunch of ideas/goals for some earlier scenes. Other things got done, too, including chores around the house and financial shenanigans.

Even more frustrating: the social media stuff hadn't helped me progress in the short term, professionally or personally. Maybe I've planted some seeds and gotten some attention. Without substantial material to present someday, though, this attention doesn't mean a thing.

I found myself appreciating tropy criticisms about society just cycling weekdays, stories involving time loops of characters experiencing the same day over and over again and, heck, even the Nine Inch Nails song, "Every Day is Exactly the Same".

I felt that weekends sucked, too. Both weekdays and weekends, I never felt like I had the time to finish what I had set out to do. Cutting down social media probably doesn't free up all the time I need, but it helps.

Social media and chores may put me into addiction territory a little. Griping about people wanting to hang out doesn't sound healthy. People want to be around me, but I don't want to be around them. They get in the way of me getting things done. Alone, I can hopefully do things I REALLY want to do. But I never get the cyclical daily things done.

I like the idea of people. I don't always appreciate people.

I force myself to hang out with people. Rationally, I know it's the healthy thing to do. Makes for a great reason, right? We should all hang out for health reasons, not for fun and enjoyment.

I had reached the point of living in the moment. It didn't give me serenity and peace of mind, though. It stressed me out. It anesthesized me. It turned off my brain rather than help me reach mindfulness and awareness. It had silenced my monkey brain, not through calming it, but by exhausting and deadening it.

All the same, these attempts had a goal to free up time for actual productive activities. I don't enjoy cleaning for the sake of cleaning, packing lunch for the sake of packing lunch or packing clothes for the sake of packing clothes.

Maybe working with the numbers of finance takes me into the moment of letting go. It gets repetitive, though, and still acts more as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. This state becomes especially true when I have a system together that has more to do with numbers than the reality those numbers represent.

Instead of continuing on the daily rotation and rather than go cold turkey, I've cut back on social media. I try to keep my social media to morning and evening dental rituals and during lunch time.

Most of my activity involves catching up on groups and people that I've set up to receive push notifications on my phone: Close friends on Facebook, starred people on Twitter and some groups on Facebook.

One of the more interesting things: Intense tunnel-vision interactions don't happen as much. The many hours between online social time keeps me from falling in hard. I find myself able to filter my thoughts rather than obsessing over the next clever retort to some acquaintence or stranger.

As intensity dies down, though, I find myself having more genuine interactions with more immediate circles. I can catch myself from spouting off intense emotion.

I learned indirectly through a friend's kid that Google Chrome has a silly game embedded in it. When the dinosaur pops up because a Web page doesn't work, you can push space bar to start a game of hurdle the cactuses as a T-Rex.

When I showed it to Michi, I might have gotten her a little addicted to it. Oops!

Interesting opportunities also pop out more to me, too. Rushing through feeds, thoughts and comments, I'd feel too emotionally fatigued to take advantage of them. Someone invited bloggers to check out a play they're putting on for review. I plan to make the time to see it then write about it here. I haven't gone to a play in a long time!

If you're curious, it's Queen Amarantha being put on by Otherworld Theater.

Carving time away from social media challenges me, though. I try to use my Smartphone Wi-Fi at home for just podcasts and music. When I can, though, I try keeping the Wi-Fi off while working on the computer. I'll play music on the stereo or computer. Spotify has more power on the computer, anyway.

But the social media calls to me through the Smartphone. When I have a spare second, transitioning between tasks or even doing a boring chore that fits into the neverending cycle, I want to turn on the data to look at Facebook or Twitter. I want to get down and dirty with people, joking about stupid stuff, post articles, share articles, having witty arguments, argue politics then get into an all out writing brawl every once in awhile. I want to feel that surge of dopamine and endorphins as I tear and lash into social media.

I've done it, too. The weekend, without the structure of schedule, proves especially hard. Social media constantly calls, By habit, the phone comes out of my pocket. As I'm about to touch the Wi-Fi button, I stop myself. I have better things to do. And sometimes, I still turn it on and engage.

When I stay away, though, I get quite a bit done. I can swim in my thoughts. I can make progress. I can spend quality time with Michi. I can feel myself experience moments, not in a rush of endorphin flow. Rather, it has more of a relaxing bubbling up of thoughts and feelings.

I engage with parts of me I've forgotten. I buried them. I've had to make more apparent progress or not even progress, but productive procrastination.

I will try sticking with it. My quality of life has improved. I've had some innovations here and there. I've felt more serenity and enjoyment than I've felt in awhile. I've even touched upon those moments from the past where I've grappled with emotional road blocks and growth challenges, defeating for the spoils of blossoming into life.

I plan to keep minimizing my social media activities to a minimum during the day. I still want to engage with it. I plan to still get something out of it. I just plan not to over indulge, not to lose myself in it. I guess it can fall into that old saying, something about the person who talks a lot doesn't say much. The person who speaks little, however, can say a lot.

Don't write me off as a curmudgeonly Luddite. You'll see me around, probably even moreso here on the blog. For all I know, you might even see me more standing out rather than all buried in the masses of social media. I hope to contribute to more big things getting out, too.

Yeah, you'll see me around.

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LINKS OF NOTE:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Nine Inch Nails
• "Every Day is Exactly the Same"
• Google Chrome
• Michi Trota's Geek Melange blog
• Queen Amarantha
• Otherworld Theater
• Luddite

Jump to Top

Have I Fallen that Behind on Internet Trends?

The Chicago Red Eye says:

Blogging Over?
Experts say craze fading, some say it's just evolving

Well, crap! I've fallen behind, yet again. Maybe I really do need to get on over to Second Life or get my butt on over to China.

Seriously, though, my ability to keep with this stuff has gotten horrible with age while my dreams and ambitions have stayed the same as my teenage self. I really do need to get a best seller sold or get moving on some kind of freelance writing career. This whole hanging out an insurance agency and doing things for money really just doesn't cut it anymore. I'm turning into a dinosaur.

On a good note, finished another draft of the angsty mental power short story, and it has gone into some interesting directions. Now to type it up, submit it to the Chicago-SF writing workshop then get some writing done on that novel. Yay!

Social Media Survey Question

How long does it take for the comments section of a blog to become redundant, incoherent and pointless to take seriously?

Search for Real Life Jobs on Second Life

This one really takes the cake:

Help Wanted in Second Life

Dang! I thought I would just have to market my writing on Second Life. Now I have to search for a real life job on Second Life.

I have a whole lot to catch up on, on top of working on wedding vows and writing a novel and bachelors project. It should all come in time after I've finally gotten my insurance license.

Still. . .it's a lot for someone near-30 to take in. Thing is, except for this falling behind the tech, my dreams and aspirations make me still feel like a teenager or college student. I feel disconcerted. . ..

Religion in Second Life

As a follow up to yesterday's entry:

<Faithful build a Second Life for religion online

Scary Revealed Truth About Speculative Fiction and Publishing

The title of this entry almost says it all about:

Xcentric.com
Jason Stoddard: Science Fiction Writer

Majority of the time, the author addresses fears that I've mostly been able to bury under empty rationalizations. Digital distribution can skew the supply and demand economics of traditional storytelling writing that pitching novels and short stories to publishers may not necessarily cut it anymore. That market may go obsolete eventually, simply because the Internet and its distribution channels has created an expectation of free entertainment. New models must get created, and this guy, even though he doesn't know what will work, doesn't fear bringing up the problem and ruminating about possible solutions that may or may not work.

On a nice note, he publishes his less successful stories on his blog that he couldn't bring himself to polishing enough to sell or just couldn't find a home elsewhere. They have some compelling elements, and I can respect the man for having the imagination and balls to have horrible things happen to people and to have real callous people that you can believe could exist and, scarily, prove relatively compelling.

Overall, though, as an amateur writer, I can see why they haven't found homes. They need tons of fleshing out for both details and showing expostion rather than telling it. Plenty of interesting situations show and intimated, if only he took the time to develop the stories into something amazingly enjoyable. To each their own, and a writer can only handle so much of working on one story or idea. And, personally, I'd have a hard time working a ton on these stories with horrifingly and callous aspects.

Don't fear too much, though. Jason also provides plenty of advice on how to market during this transition stage from the traditional publishing world to the world of, as he calls it, the Mediapool. He has plenty of good ideas, but honestly -- and this may have to turn into another entry of mine -- all the social media overwhelms me.

I don't know how much of this intimidation comes from having a busy life of working as an insurance agent while trying to write fiction, from ADHD or from any other aspect that may influence my semi-instinctual aversion to all the stimulation and work it takes to get involved in social media. Hell, real time face-to-face socializing can overwhelm me at times. At least social media doesn't happen in real time, mostly. . ..

Also, he seems to take a strong stance on trying to make something happen, similarly to Demis McGrath. Jason often complains that traditional science fiction writers have moved away from writing in hard science and having lost their appeal to much of the world. At the same time, the people with tons of potential for becoming fans spend a lot of time on social media like Second Life or Boing Boing. This guy just about describes me when he describes the science fiction writer, and it strikes fear in my heart. Admirably, though, Jason wants to bring the social media users (hopefully not filled with Trolls) and science fiction writers for the good of both.

So yeah, this Website scares me because it reveals the Truth about the future of publishing and other forms of entertainment that can get recorded combined with the shrinking potential of becoming a content creator without also becoming a minor marketer. For those who don't know, both things take a lot of damn work. Hopefully I can muster up the time, the energy and know how to make it work for me. Until then, though, I'll just have to hope that the traditional publishing world can prop me up. Here's to people enjoying a book with pages in it over reading electronic devices with text and the part of human nature that is conservative when it comes to innovative (even as I curse that nature when it comes to socially just innovations).

Yeah, I'm something of a hypocrite. Sue me.