Thinking again about this whole “Gopher / Gemini / Small Web” business, and trying to assess what place it may or may not have in my life.
These days I've accrued a bit of a following on “Social Media,” thanks to how much cute fanart I've been drawing since March. This has been both good and bad — it's genuinely really nice to know there are hundreds and hundreds of people who like my art; and through making art, engaging on these platforms with other artists, I've made a lot of friends. Not just “oomfs” or whatever, but people who I talk to every single day, who help me with my homework and stay with me when I break down.
So never in a million years would I say, categorically, that I regret getting into social media. But I can't deny that it hurts. The current climate of paranoia, of stalking people's alt accounts, writing callout posts about whatever strange thing they're into, and exposing it to an audience of children, has left scars in me. I have this wellspring of fear and pain and anxiety, this layer of tacky dread smeared on every surface, that gets set off by the smallest of triggers.
But that's not really what I want to talk about tonight. The real worst thing about social media, to me, is what I just call the Doldrums. Scrolling aimlessly, glancing over post after post, but absorbing nothing; compulsively checking your notifications a hundred times a day. The worst offenders for this have to be short-form video, TikTok and YouTube Shorts, but other streaming services walk the same road.
All of these activities share two things in comon. Firstly, they're kind of brainless, automatic. They're purely consumptive, in a way that asks no effort on the consumer's part. Now, I'm no Adorno — I'm not going to go after anyone for buying into the Culture Industry.
Mindless entertainment has its place.
The Doldrums are mindless, but worse than that — they're not very entertaining either. Modern social platforms are designed to keep us locked in that state for as long as possible. Thinking little, feeling less, kept just engaged enough to keep going, just bored enough to keep panning for more flecks of gold in a river of industrial sludge.
With the rise of LLMs, it's only going to get worse.