In this, I'm not doing my due diligence as a servant of the corporate ecosystems that have shouldered their way in between us. Nor am I engaging in Building My Brand, which is now mandatory if you're going to be a successful creative of any ilk. This has happened before.
It's because I go through patches where I find the entire social media experience a little loathsome. What do I get out of Meta's ecosystem, for example?
Threads is just X, just hot takes and outrage, a howling, grasping storm of fermented egotism. I get Tiktokified compulsive distractions on Insta, burps of short form comedy or action or musical recipes, tuned specifically to my interests, designed to mete out the dopamine. Facebook, which once was old friends and a few ads? It's now almost entirely ads, plus short form videos, plus posts from random hungry influencers who've paid Facebook to promote them.
A small fraction of it is anything that matters to me. A picture of friends gathered with family, or some delightful news, or someone in need of prayer and encouragement.
While I love encountering these things on social media, they're like recovering a gold ring swallowed by one's dog. You're glad to see it, but the process of getting there leaves something to be desired.
There are many people I know on those platforms, but the algorithms warp my perception of them. I'll see the same meme, posted and reposted within subnetworks of souls. The same jokes. The same rageposts. The sharers frequently cease to be the fully unique people I know, and become more reflexively neural, passing along whatever signal that's resonating across their fully-commodified web of interrelation.
It warps our nature. It warps my own. On social media, I am shallower and more reactive. On social media, I am more avaricious and trivial, as the perfectly targeted baubles dangled before me cry for clicks.
That's overstating it, you might say. The medium is just a medium, you might say. It's just a tool, and you can use it without moral hazard.
Oh, honey. Bless your little Saruman heart. It's not that at all. It is an implement made with hidden intent, a sword whose handle is saturated with opiates, a blanket impregnated with smallpox. It's a Skinner Box designed to ensnare us, because we are the product, not the purchaser. Our intent may be old acquaintance not being forgot, but their intent is compulsive engagement.
But without it, we vanish. We have no platform. We are not relevant. We are friendless. Surely, surely, those things are worth the sacrifice. What's the point of this bit of online journaling, for example, if it's not widely read?
Again, I am meant to desire platform and relevance. I'm supposed to crave the approvals, the likes, the comments, the reposts. It's The Work, one might cluck. Sure, you don't like it, but if you want to succeed, you've got to do it.
Do I?
Want to succeed, that is? Or, rather, do I want to succeed on the terms established by our blighted culture? Do I want fame and lucre, influence and social power? Are these my priorities?
Do I want to announce everything I do with trumpets, to act that I might be seen by others, to declare my righteousness on the street corners of our mammonized sociality? Do I want influence, and power, and to be celebrated by all?
If I said I do not desire that success, I would be lying. I do desire it. Part of me certainly does. Lord have mercy, do I want that. Having tasted it, I hunger for it. I lust after it.
And there, as a Christian, lies the heart of social media's moral hazard.
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