I’m not using it much, but a small step this week was resurrecting my presence on mastodon. I’m here now – @lloyddavis – this blog also has ActivityPub enabled so all posts are full-text published at the seemingly tortologous @perfectpath.co.uk@perfectpath.co.uk – I still don’t fully understand how it works, I’ve just flipped a switch, so I’m not sure why there’s a big gap in the timeline since October last year but, that’s not that important.
The two threads I pulled on a bit yesterday are of course intertwined – the hope has to be that writing in public using your own voice and out in the open (with caveats for personal safety) is the antidote to the kind of horror that’s taken over lots of public discourse.
I don’t have as much writing time today. I’ve still got lots to say, but I’ve got lunch with some old pals from GSA who I love dearly and wouldn’t miss it, but it carves out a chunk of my day and my attention. It takes time for me to get going and then I need more time to actually get these words down and in the right order. Part of rebooting this blog has to be more self-acceptance than I’ve had in the past. I’ve been lucky this week to have had a few days of being able to give almost full attention to thinking and writing – and that has to be tempered with days like this where there’s more thinking than writing, with the thinking not having to be so deep, although it’s always going on. It’s just a log. On the web. And some days the log contains evidence of much movement and others are less detailed. That there’s anything at all is good progress.
Also, Laura just came in with a bit of chocolate brownie from Gail’s that she’d been given in compensation for them not being able to fill an order. She wanted to share the angelic miracle – it felt like there was zero flour, all sugar and butter, but in a really good way. Like any angelic miracle, I suppose, it can’t be described in words, that’s what ineffable means, innit? But now my mind is racing much faster than my fingers can deliver!
I’ll be thinking about this “Rebooting the Blogosphere” idea for a while. Interesting that the provocation for this thinking is FB “exile” – it reminds me of the energy that gets released whenever a platform goes down or otherwise goes awry – the energy of “I’ve got to find an outlet for these impulses in me, and this platform provided that, and now I’m angry/frustrated by the options that are left”. The experience for Typepad users over the last month or so is another of these (compounded with the grief at the loss of all those old thoughts, ideas and experiences once captured and now maybe somewhere in the Wayback Machine… if you’re lucky….)
Some folk take that energy to the so-called “indieweb” – which is fine and works well for those whose temperament it suits. It’s always felt a bit to me like throwing the baby out with the bathwater (and then getting a new baby?) – or like “We don’t want to drive a Tesla, so we’re only going back to driving cars without electronics – don’t worry if you don’t have your own starting handle, I can 3D-print one for you…” I know that it’s not as extreme as that, but it’s hard to shake that prejudice, especially at the point where you’re feeling frustrated.
Steph talks about it being (or feeling) “easier” to hang out on The Socials. There must be some known cognitive bias here, like I feel it’s easier because I’m not actually taking into consideration all the things that I’ve lost – is that a hidden cost fallacy, mixed up with some loss aversion or what? Each app feels easier but none of them do all of the things I want to do and even if they did, each one also comes with a different audience or network and a set of very subjectively experienced social norms for how you should communicate with people there. That feels like having five phone providers and you have to choose which provider’s subscribers you want to talk to before you can say anything, or else hack together something that copies your messages to everywhere and disregards local social norms so you look (and feel) like a robot.
On top of all this, we’re living in a culture where we are encouraged to take the blame/responsibility for everything that goes wrong around us. It’s never the system’s fault, it’s ours. It’s not the idea that five people are somehow allowed to own and control the majority of the economy, it’s your own stupid mental health, so do your stupid mental health walk. And if one of our tools doesn’t work for you, well suck it up, everyone else is having a great time using it – do better or go away.
Today I learned that the Ray Noble/Al Bowlly version of this (the one you’ll know from “The Shining” or, I hear “Ready Player One”) was recorded in Abbey Road Studio 2 – just another amazing bit of musical energy in that space.
So about that hypothesis…
I said yesterday that “algorithmic feeds of the For You Page type become, over time, the same as anonymous feeds of the 4chan type.”
What am I trying to get at here? What is it about anonymous feeds that stands out for me? I think it’s the lack of consequences. You can say anything you want and get away with it. If you are called to account, the people doing it are anonymous themselves (at least if they’re on the same platform). And funnily enough, it seems that allowing people to leave their human identity at the door, ends up with people not treating others in that space as human either (let alone the “others” on the outside), but that doesn’t seem to matter, because everyone’s in the same boat. Yes, everything escalates quickly, and things that would be outrageous in a newspaper are commonplace – this is the troll culture that you catch glimpses of IRL from time to time, some of it requires that you get immersed in the culture, some of it is more obvious, but like all cult(ures) the experience of being an insider depends on there being outsiders who don’t understand all the layers of what you’re doing.
And, as an aging guy, doing OK (so far!) under capitalism, and with a socialist heart, I am definitely not an insider (or even a well-educated student) of 4chan, 8chan or whatever anon imageboard site the “cool (not cool) kids” are into right now. But as a once disaffected youth who hated the world, yeah, I can dig the vibe.
There have always been annoying, nihilistic kids like this, but it feels like it’s bled into more mainstream culture of late – the good news about the internet has been that you can find your people, the bad news is that any awful person in the world can also find their own awful people.
I'm the founder of the Tuttle Club and fascinated by organisation. I enjoy making social art and building communities.
Perfect Path 