A while back, a close friend of mine wanted to build a bit of traction on an art account on Instagram. They didn’t depend on it for a living or anything, but still. Building a following for your work outside the realms of your 9 to 5 might be useful someday. I wanted to help, so I tried sharing their art wherever I could, too. Reposting on my personal social media, asking a few close friends who I knew were nice folks to like and comment, you know the like.
There was only so much I could do for traction, since, well, I’m not someone with a 1000+ followers. I decided to turn to the people besides me at the time. My colleagues. Half a year into my job, I’d thought I’d formed an attachment of sorts to them, so I thought it’d be okay if I asked them to drop a follow on this account to help a budding artist out.
Oh boy, was I wrong. The reaction was completely out of left field for me. I think I’d asked, what, four colleagues to check out the account.
Three of them flat-out refused to follow. Out of these three, two did not want to mess up their follower/following ratio. Keep in mind, these are working adults. One said they weren’t into “art” and proceeded to show me their feed, trying to prove that all they get were memes. (A few months later said colleague posted a painting of theirs saying that they’re rediscovering an old hobby. Go figure.)
My first reaction was one of bewilderment, but slowly I’m beginning to understand that instances like these aren’t all that uncommon. People might even sympathize with the reaction(s) I got when I approached the people mentioned above. That incident popped into my mind while I was walking today, which leads to this rather… rambly post. Bear with me please.
I’ve got a rather new photography account myself, and it is sort of hard for me to gain followers. A few of my photos get a below average amount of likes, which makes me think perhaps that photo just sucks, and maybe I should be posting better stuff. Perhaps I could’ve taken a particular photo in a better way; perhaps I over-edited it, or didn’t do a good enough job.
But then I realize, you know what? I made that account for myself. They’re MY photos, they represent MY creative vision of the world. I shouldn’t be trying to change the way I see things for a few more internet points.
The way things are, it’s getting harder and harder to dissociate your own happiness from the response generated by your own social media posts. And I say this from the perspective of someone who’s primary livelihood isn’t dependent on social media.
Every company having a social media service will tell you when you’re initially signing up that this is a platform for you to show yourself online, for you to stay in touch with loved ones, for you to stay up to date.
Nobody will tell you that sometimes, you don’t create content for the sake of showing yourself online, that you’ll be creating content for whatever the platform prefers. That staying up to date can have a profound impact on you. (Staying in touch with loved ones is a big plus though, ngl).
People around my age, give or take a few years, form the last generation that witnessed the transition to a world governed by public perception on the internet. Everybody who came after found themselves in a world that had already changed due to a few algorithms. They don’t know of life before the internet.
When you bring up social media as a concept in front of people, I’ve noticed the following dominant perspectives:
- The tech perspective
- The (for lack of a better word) boomer perspective
- The boon or bane perspective
Let’s try and briefly go through these.
People who look at social media through the lens of technology… do just that. Social media platforms are just the result of the execution of millions of lines of code to them. They’ll appreciate the design of a system, they’ll appreciate its scalability, what it offers, how it runs. Social media to them is the platform itself; a new feature being added is a feat worth applauding.
Boomers spent the majority of their formative years in a world unaffected by social media. To them, life was inherently simpler before we became glued to our notification counts. Social media is a hassle in an already complicated world.
This brings us to the third perspective, people who try and think critically about social media, not just in terms of what it offers to the vast majority, but also in terms of what it costs them. This is the perspective that is increasingly gaining traction today, and perhaps, it is the perspective we ought to be paying more attention to.
In 2020 Netflix released a documentary called The Social Dilemma. The film was structured around interviewing people who played crucial roles in the development of technologies that govern the internet of today, from designers to investors. It was perceived to be riveting and incisive, and rightly so.
A recurring theme throughout the interviews in the film is that of unforeseen circumstances.
Some incredibly smart and talented people put their minds together in order to create a feature to make things easier for their targeted audience. Some of these features seemed innocous at the time of their inception. Features like the scrollbar, or the like button. The people behind them, for all their intellect, couldn’t have predicted the ramifications of their actions at the time. They had no idea the impact seemingly minor things like a number below a photo could have on the psyche of users years down the line. It wasn’t their job to think of such things. They were hired to build stuff, not… hypothesize about consequences at a later date.
Today our world is run by capitalism. The current system rewards those who create value. Value defined by the system, not the creators. If a thing has materialistic value at scale, people who generate it are rewarded handsomely. It’s just how it is today. This is why professions like engineers, doctors and lawyers are sought after to a ridiculous extent. This is why so much emphasis is spent on building, and building, and building. Your work has to be actively seen and experienced for you to thrive, to succeed. Professions that bring value that isn’t quite so tangible are slowly taking the back seat in our march to progress.
More and more people are of the opinion that concepts like art, music, photography, stories aren’t worth it. They don’t have apparent material or practical benefit to society. Art is dying a slow death, and our world will be a bleaker place for it.
Far, far too much emphasis is being placed on the shoulders of a few billion-dollar companies who came up with different ways of connecting people on the internet. Somewhere along the way, these companies morphed into colossal advertising machines built on scrutinizing every little thing about you available on the internet.
They’re run by people who aren’t afraid to do shit as long as their shares keep rising, ethics be damned in today’s world. In the name of progress, more and more features are added on the fly without anybody giving a damn about the consequences this has on human psyche. We haven’t evolved to process the amount of information a news feed throws at us every minute.
We idolize those who build, while not giving a second glance to those who can help us understand the consequences of building at such a scale. The spotlight is almost always on people who give talks, host podcasts, write books glorifying hustle culture, building wealth, the grind. These people don’t generally talk about what happens when you go against the norm they’re preaching, or fail to hold up to the expectations more and more media is placing on you.
They don’t talk about it, because they can’t. They don’t have the expertise to attempt solving problems they created in the first place, all to perpetuate the wheel of progress. People who DO have expertise, or ideas going against the norm, however, aren’t given nearly the same amount of priority because, once again, the value they create isn’t inherently tangible or materialistic.
I guess, the point I’m trying to make is, perhaps we should be focusing a bit more on people who help us deal with the pressures of the modern world in their own wonderfully unique ways, rather than focusing on those who focus solely on generating value.
The advent of social media has, more than anything, made a strong point of the role of tech in a dynamic world. I’m inclined to believe this is true. Tech has and absolutely will continue to change the world. However, if there’s anything the inception of social media has taught us, there is a chance for unforeseen ramifications to result in far-ranging damage to us years later. This time around though, perhaps we have a chance to change that.
Tech will change the world, but to change the world for the better, tech cannot be the only driving force behind this change. We need more thinkers, psychologists, artists, writers… I don’t know. People who can attempt to understand the impact deceptively simply features can have on our minds at scale, and aren’t ostracized for speaking against the norm. People who make it easier for us to deal with the scale at which things are changing in the name of progress.
Let’s circle around to the incident I described earlier, regarding the small art account.
When you look at a social media profile, you’ll generally be able to identify the following elements:
- The chosen username of the person behind the profile
- A display picture
- The number of accounts they follow on that platform
- The number of accounts who follow them
- A timeline of their content
Not too complicated, yes? Combined, these elements serve to let casual surfers quickly identify the type of content a particular account creates, along with a rough estimate of its reach. You’re able to decide if an account is worth having on your news feed.
How did these elements morph into stuff like follower/following ratios? Who guided this process? Where did they come from?
Nobody pushed them into production as a feature to onboard more users. Numbers on a screen, representing quantitative datapoints, combined in strange ways into something qualitative; fusions that don’t help the vast majority of users.
The people who built the aforementioned elements did NOT plan on this. They couldn’t have predicted the impact numbers on a screen would have on impressionable minds a decade after inception.
It’s only now that people are even attempting to break the grasp of algorithms too complicated to fathom. Facebook’s (cough cough Meta’s) rather rough week might be an optimistic indicator for some. Companies are diving into uncharted territory without fixing the mistakes of what happened the last time they attempted to do this.
One can only hope that we look away from our screens soon enough.
