I cared very much about Twitter (I was verified early on for my job) because it had been incredibly useful to my career and even some friendships and was surprised to discover after leaving (I stuck around post-Musk until it became a bottomless pit of harassment) how much I don’t care about it. In fact, while I do feel a bit disconnected from my industry peers I feel free. I read more, I spend more time on DuoLingo and at the gym, and I’m less stressed.
I've been on twitter since 2010 (never verified) and have found a few thriving professional communities that have quickly become an important part of my networking. So I'm on significantly more than I have been in the past -- and I haven't seen anything resembling a "bottomless pit of harrassment" that the narrative insists is true.
I suspect the harassment will be less now that I'm not verified. Commenting on threads with a legacy blue check was an invitation for harassment for a couple months. I would also get a ton of harassing replies anytime I was quoted in the media (I have a pretty public-facing job). It was already kind of bad before Musk to be honest, but there were tools to weed it out that have since been shut down.
"The narrative" insists that's true because for many people--especially women, especially minorities, especially people with public-facing jobs in various sectors--it is true.
That's the narrative. I question whether or not there's actually any data that backs that up.
Plus I just don't get the whole "harassment" construct. Some of the controversial writers that I see on Twitter like Andy Ngo or Ian Cheong have literally millions of followers and attract a ton of negative attention. As far as I can tell they just ignore most of it and repost the choice 1% that will earn them political points by casting the opposition as unhinged crazies.
It helps to remember many people's first real exposure to the internet is through places like twitter. They didn't spend the mid 00's on /b/ and message boards being exposed to all sorts of crazy shit.
They don't know about not feeding the trolls. They barely even understand the concept of a troll. Receiving a DM to kill themselves may be the first time they've ever been told something like that, not the 400th. They have no clue that it's just some bored kid trying to get a reaction.
And so, as crazy as it seems to us, they take it personally and seriously. Layer on some silly narrative about erasing the minority community they are a part of, and they truly believe they are being victimized.
"They have no clue that it's just some bored kid trying to get a reaction."
Yeah, the interesting thing is that there is still a divide between the "internet savvy" (for lack of a better term) and the "normies". Even when 95% of the population (even the homeless!) has a cel phone that has internet access you still have bored 17 year old trolls who are sophisticated operators targeting their far less savvy peers.
Plus at the societal level there is now a cachet to victimhood. So you have the targets of trolls, who are at some level eager to be trolled and to respond with the appropriate level of drama, and the trolls themselves who thrive on getting a rise out of their targets.
The worst part of all those types coming online and still not understanding how it works has been the overuse and destruction of the word troll (not you) by the media and by extension the people that don't know better to mean anyone saying mean things or things I don't like.
This is opposed to the classic/original definition of someone trying to get a rise out of people by much more subtle means which leads to classic and correct advice like "don't feed the trolls"
I go fishing with my in-law's neighbour a few times a year. Old guy, big fan of Trump, etc. He recently got facebook and loves telling me about all the trouble he starts with the vegans.
Oh FFS I have more than enough anecdotes on this, particularly from women of color from outside of the US. It’s literally my work. But if you require academic studies you’re already too late.
"Anecdote" is the problem--and it's pretty much the opposite of what an academic study is supposed to be.
And you're not even responding to the second point: who cares? I just signed up for Twitter but as far as I can tell you can block people. If somebody pisses you off why not just ignore them?
Right, and what I’m saying is empirical studies take time and this is a new phenomenon.
Yes, I can block people. I’m a strong woman in my 40s with tons of privilege and resources. That’s really not true of say, a Pakistani female journalist who is additionally under pressure from the state. But hey, let’s wait for academia to produce a report. I’m sure the death threats will be fine.
Of course, since Musk ended free access to Twitter's API, which provides the data that researchers use to study the platform, it’ll become more difficult to furnish you with the proof you seek.
I’m not sure why you’re saying that to me. Did you mean to reply to someone else? If you’re picking on one data point, I should warn you I have no intention of debating this online (with friends in person, absolutely, but not online with strangers). I just linked to data that I thought might be helpful/interesting.
Groomer is very commonly used as an anti-trans insult directed at those partaking in drag queen story hour. I see this used consistently as an insult/accusation by conservatives to reference lgbtq individuals in general...
Yeah the MO of those studies was basically to compile a list of say 2 objectively nasty words and 18 random words someone somewhere found offensive - and conflate the rise in both. This is not a very accurate way of assessing "hate" speech on the platform.
Firstly I would like to apologize for the harassment which you no doubt received. I would be in favor of eliminating most if not all anonymous accounts on the internet, which I think would correspondingly end most of that.
But WRT the "narrative" of increased harassment over the status quo - I would be firm. The plural of anecdote is not data and humans are notoriously terrible at identifying actual trends in the absence of data. If it "feels like" harassment has increased, where's the corresponding data to confirm that? Not even the vaunted BBC could demonstrate this when Musk pressed them on this point last week.
If the "narrative" trends were true, I should think the data would be everywhere given the elite's treatment of Musk's iconoclasm. Yet all we get is an onion: layer after layer of narrative with no substance underneath.
A lot of what people dislike about Twitter is really a description of Politically Relevant Twitter. The time I spend on Politically Relevant Twitter is, in fact, a complete waste of time, about as productive as making snide comments to your TV (which I also occasionally do). But there are other parts of Twitter, often industry-specific, that really don't exhibit the same pathologies. FinTwit is really one of the greatest things ever.
One of the narrators -- it's all people who knew him -- started out saying that "Tony was the coolest," but then going on about how, no, he actually wasn't, and how coolness is sociopathic. It was glorious and well put, and if I had the paper version I'd probably bother to type it word for word. In fact I recommend the paper version because some of the voice actors are atrocious.
Your thoughtful post somehow made me think of Hemingway's macho ethos of "never complain, never explain," which I connect with the ethos of not caring. And it made me wonder how Hemingway would have used Twitter or not.
An advantage of writing is creating a self-legacy that you can look back on and see what you were thinking and feeling at certain times in your life. Writing the way you do is certainly a deep form of both self-expression and the natural human desire to be "known."
I think all social media sites will have a shelf life. If you want a laugh, go re-watch The Social Network and see what they thought the future of Facebook would be versus what it is now. If Twitter is fading in importance it has more to do with that. Personally, Twitter is at its best during high profile sporting events where it can be fun to see how everybody is taking in the game. Beyond that, it is largely a culture war battlefield and gets exhausting. Maybe it has gotten worse since Musk took over but to say it was not that way before but is now must be following different people than I am.
Facebook killed itself and this is a real tragedy. It was the most useful app for many years. Basic timelines, groups, events and calendars, business splash pages and calendars. It was the homepage of the internet. And then they decided to promote negative engagement because it drove use and then add revenue. They overrevved the engine and blew it up. In another 10 years with enough time between we'll look back and see that they could have been the infrastructure of half the internet but threw it away for short term gain and that nothing has been quite as useful since.
I have noticed that many psychological problems in humans stem from not being honest with themselves about what they really want and what motivates them.
I am witnessing two humans divorce in real time, and the reason they got married in the first place is because he didn't want to admit that he is a homosexual and she just wants to play video games.
So much better to be a cat.
Or sitting through an after-meeting entertainment with a bunch of Germans who were trying to impress themselves mostly that they were Serious European Intellectuals by listening to an opera soprano. The looks on their faces as this diva wailed like a wounded owl when she hit the high notes was entertainment enough. But everybody had to sit through it and pretend to enjoy the ordeal, lest they out themselves as Unserious.
I can tolerate opera, but they should have gotten a better singer. That even I could tell that this was a second-rate soprano and the Cultured Intellectuals couldn't or wouldn't says it all.
Apr 24, 2023·edited Apr 24, 2023Liked by Freddie deBoer
I've had a complicated relationship. It's a bad habit that I enjoy and find a bit addictive with professional, transit activism, and related social network benefits.
That said, I had and maintain a much more positive relationship with blogs and RSS feeds which had similar rewards. I think part of the dynamic is an acknowledgment that regardless of coolness, twitter is unhealthful despite its benefits. Alan Jacobs has written extensively on this. But I do think that the coolness and status dynamics you capture make harder doing anything about the unhealthful parts.
Ed West wrote an interesting article about the Will Storr's book "The Status Game." "Status is extremely important to wellbeing, so much so that it can have a profound effect on our health...and Storr identifies three methods by which we reach the top: dominance, competence and virtue (although most people use a combination of two or all three). It is the last of these which is the most interesting, and sometimes the most dangerous, inspiring immense cruelty."
I love Freddie's callout about "superficial egalitarianism but implicit hierarchy." I've been really examining my own behavior and orientation towards using virtue — which I very sincerely seek, as it's intrinsic to my definition of living in integrity, a primary motivating force for me — as a way around being caught in some superficial scramble for status, and yet still actually being a workaround for status anyway. There's no way I'm exempt from this. Like Freddie, I care intensely about everything, and it is a really urgent and kind of draining way to live. It also leads to immense frustration with both people who seem too busy to care, and with (of course) the culture being examined here.
If I had to sum up my approach to status, it might be something like, "Through both caring and working on things that reflect that caring, I am demonstrating unimpeachable goodness that should confer upon me some degree of status and appreciation." The part I don't always say out loud, but do think a lot, is, "I am immensely disappointed in the broad swath of people who are too self-absorbed/spoiled/immature/caught up" to do the same, which essentially points to the fact that in my own mind, there's a status hierarchy and I am obviously up there in my own estimation.
Doesn't really mean much except to say that maybe being honest about what we do for status could be a relief to ourselves and others.
Insightful. I really like the way you show the chain of thoughts / feelings that we use to get ourselves to the status we want, and the inherent judgement of others that comes from them not valuing the same things we value.
Thank you for that! It's not a particularly flattering self-portrait, so I'm glad you liked what I was trying to do — truly makes it worthwhile to put out there.
"Through both caring and working on things that reflect that caring, I am demonstrating unimpeachable goodness that should confer upon me some degree of status and appreciation."
But this is madness. Even the Christians believe that there is no fairness in this world and that justice is reserved for the next one.
And speaking of Christians: aren't the most virtuous types somebody like the Catholic nuns who vanished into the Arizona desert, to labor for years in obscurity raising tiny adobo churches and serving a flock that consisted of poor Hispanic immigrants? They have no expectation of rewards or compensation in this life and the goal of their ideology is active suppression of the individual in service to the greater good.
Absolutely! I certainly wasn't saying that it's an awesome or holy state of being. I was pointing to the opposite: trying to dust out the cobwebby corners of status-seeking superficiality in my own life, to at least dismantle one psychological barrier to living the way those you are describing live (or at least living more honestly as me). I agree that fairness might not be on the table, and I'm not at all sure I'll get there in this life, but I was hypothesizing (out loud) that considering and admitting to our own tactics could be useful.
Yeah, definitely. From my perspective the mindset that you are describing is widely held. Especially in these polarized times there is an unfortunate tendency to conflate virtue with one's politics and it's common enough to be destabilizing at the societal level.
YES! Exactly. I also think self-righteousness SEEMS like a good feeling but actually FEELS like a spin-cycle prison. When we're completely locked into one worldview, we tend to look at everything through that lens and are constantly in a state of attack or defend, and miss the deeper and more timeless qualities of "virtue."
I'm struck by how few people consider leaving Twitter in earnest because it's "so bad now." They rage against $8 blue checks, but tweet and tweet and tweet, increasing engagement and making money for Twitter.
And you're correct: they're bitter I can now pay $8 for the same blue check that used to make them "somebody."
I enjoyed Twitter but deleted my account & app last New Year’s Eve and generally haven’t looked back. Occasionally though someone will link me to a tweet - a journalist making a point perhaps, or maybe speculative insight on the upcoming NFL draft. The deal with blue (or white, whatever) checks these days is irritating! I have to manually verify if the account is legit, usually by looking at how many followers it has,
neat my comment posted while I paused to walk down the hall. Comment continued:
... usually looking at how many followers it has, and if I decide to look at the comments I scroll down on the tweet, only to see like two relevant comments before Twitter points me in the direction of the latest Musk tweet. Blegh.
What Freddie had suggested about a "pay to have your identity be verified" would have been a much more useful way of going about things. Identity verification need not be coupled with status -- while entities like the New York Times or ESPN have the most vested interest in their audiences trusting they are who they say they are, regular people who use the site for professional networking or even making friends can probably see some value in not being catfished.
And uncoupling the additional features you can purchase from the blue checkmark would be wise. Even without Elon Musk's shenanigans, it's kind of embarrassing to have everyone know that you pay to enhance your experience on "the hellsite" or to have the algorithm boost your tweets.
Great piece. I find the affectation of not caring - and, as you say, particularly its relationship with status and 'cool' - really fascinating. I wonder when it was decided that earnestness, commitment and sincerity were not desirable traits, at least in groups. (My instinct is most people tend to find them desirable, or at least not off-putting, in life partners and close friends.) In the UK it's very bound up with social and economic class, summed up in the pejorative adjective 'try-hard' - it's a lot easier to not give much of a shit when you don't have to hard-scrabble for the necessities. (I mean, I'm sure it's bound up with income and social class everywhere, but in the UK we have a particularly well-internalised and unrelenting system of behaviours associated with 'class' , which is not always the same thing as income bracket.) But yeah I'd be really interested to know what the other drivers are, because it's so fucking dumb and has so many terrible outcomes.
Actually I found the blue checks were often a good way to pick out the biggest jerks on Twitter so as to avoid them, so the idea was useful to me in that sense.
You’re a good writer, and I’m always fascinated by what you have to say.
I know you didn’t write this to receive compliments, but I also understand basic psychology. And I’m a writer myself. Having one’s work acknowledged is a basic human need, for all the reasons you artfully detail above.
The other issue is otherwise intelligent people not being aware of how they are being manipulated by the engagement algorithm. Twitter isn’t showing you things in chronological order or in order of “real” importance or “real” popularity it’s showing users what’s most like to get them engaged. That ends up violently skewing users perceptions of what is popular, valued, etc.
I despise Elon Musk and all the right-wing trolls he's unleashed on Twitter for sure, BUT -- I also despise hierarchies. So watching the virtual Versailles Palace that was pre-Musk Twitter getting stormed by the torch and pitchfork crowd has been amusing to say the least. The "acting like they don't care" posts while their precious palace burns down around them has just added to the amusement.
"It's exhausting, being a person." Amen.
It's exhausting not caring because you end up spending so much time deciding what not to care about.
I cared very much about Twitter (I was verified early on for my job) because it had been incredibly useful to my career and even some friendships and was surprised to discover after leaving (I stuck around post-Musk until it became a bottomless pit of harassment) how much I don’t care about it. In fact, while I do feel a bit disconnected from my industry peers I feel free. I read more, I spend more time on DuoLingo and at the gym, and I’m less stressed.
I've been on twitter since 2010 (never verified) and have found a few thriving professional communities that have quickly become an important part of my networking. So I'm on significantly more than I have been in the past -- and I haven't seen anything resembling a "bottomless pit of harrassment" that the narrative insists is true.
I suspect the harassment will be less now that I'm not verified. Commenting on threads with a legacy blue check was an invitation for harassment for a couple months. I would also get a ton of harassing replies anytime I was quoted in the media (I have a pretty public-facing job). It was already kind of bad before Musk to be honest, but there were tools to weed it out that have since been shut down.
"The narrative" insists that's true because for many people--especially women, especially minorities, especially people with public-facing jobs in various sectors--it is true.
"...especially women, especially minorities..."
That's the narrative. I question whether or not there's actually any data that backs that up.
Plus I just don't get the whole "harassment" construct. Some of the controversial writers that I see on Twitter like Andy Ngo or Ian Cheong have literally millions of followers and attract a ton of negative attention. As far as I can tell they just ignore most of it and repost the choice 1% that will earn them political points by casting the opposition as unhinged crazies.
It helps to remember many people's first real exposure to the internet is through places like twitter. They didn't spend the mid 00's on /b/ and message boards being exposed to all sorts of crazy shit.
They don't know about not feeding the trolls. They barely even understand the concept of a troll. Receiving a DM to kill themselves may be the first time they've ever been told something like that, not the 400th. They have no clue that it's just some bored kid trying to get a reaction.
And so, as crazy as it seems to us, they take it personally and seriously. Layer on some silly narrative about erasing the minority community they are a part of, and they truly believe they are being victimized.
"They have no clue that it's just some bored kid trying to get a reaction."
Yeah, the interesting thing is that there is still a divide between the "internet savvy" (for lack of a better term) and the "normies". Even when 95% of the population (even the homeless!) has a cel phone that has internet access you still have bored 17 year old trolls who are sophisticated operators targeting their far less savvy peers.
Plus at the societal level there is now a cachet to victimhood. So you have the targets of trolls, who are at some level eager to be trolled and to respond with the appropriate level of drama, and the trolls themselves who thrive on getting a rise out of their targets.
The worst part of all those types coming online and still not understanding how it works has been the overuse and destruction of the word troll (not you) by the media and by extension the people that don't know better to mean anyone saying mean things or things I don't like.
This is opposed to the classic/original definition of someone trying to get a rise out of people by much more subtle means which leads to classic and correct advice like "don't feed the trolls"
Simple and great example of trolling.
https://www.reddit.com/r/greentext/comments/um8bzu/anon_has_a_grandfather/
I go fishing with my in-law's neighbour a few times a year. Old guy, big fan of Trump, etc. He recently got facebook and loves telling me about all the trouble he starts with the vegans.
Oh FFS I have more than enough anecdotes on this, particularly from women of color from outside of the US. It’s literally my work. But if you require academic studies you’re already too late.
"Anecdote" is the problem--and it's pretty much the opposite of what an academic study is supposed to be.
And you're not even responding to the second point: who cares? I just signed up for Twitter but as far as I can tell you can block people. If somebody pisses you off why not just ignore them?
Right, and what I’m saying is empirical studies take time and this is a new phenomenon.
Yes, I can block people. I’m a strong woman in my 40s with tons of privilege and resources. That’s really not true of say, a Pakistani female journalist who is additionally under pressure from the state. But hey, let’s wait for academia to produce a report. I’m sure the death threats will be fine.
https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/New-Report-Suggests-Hate-Speech-Rising-on-Twitter/645482/#:~:text=“Sprinklr's%20analysis%20found%20that%20hate,%2D%20all%20while%20increasing%20transparency.”
https://www.montclair.edu/newscenter/2022/10/31/study-finds-hate-speech-on-twitter-increased-following-elon-musk-takeover/
https://sites.tufts.edu/digitalplanet/musk-monitor-under-musk-hate-speech-is-rising/
https://beamdisinfo.org/deployments/antisemitism-on-twitter-before-and-after-elon-musks-acquisition/
https://counterhate.com/blog/the-musk-bump-quantifying-the-rise-in-hate-speech-under-elon-musk/
Of course, since Musk ended free access to Twitter's API, which provides the data that researchers use to study the platform, it’ll become more difficult to furnish you with the proof you seek.
"'Groomer' is not a slur against LGBT people 'Groomer' is a term to describe sometime trying to surreptitiously introduce children to sex"
That's "anti-LGBTQ" to you?
I’m not sure why you’re saying that to me. Did you mean to reply to someone else? If you’re picking on one data point, I should warn you I have no intention of debating this online (with friends in person, absolutely, but not online with strangers). I just linked to data that I thought might be helpful/interesting.
Groomer is very commonly used as an anti-trans insult directed at those partaking in drag queen story hour. I see this used consistently as an insult/accusation by conservatives to reference lgbtq individuals in general...
Yeah the MO of those studies was basically to compile a list of say 2 objectively nasty words and 18 random words someone somewhere found offensive - and conflate the rise in both. This is not a very accurate way of assessing "hate" speech on the platform.
Firstly I would like to apologize for the harassment which you no doubt received. I would be in favor of eliminating most if not all anonymous accounts on the internet, which I think would correspondingly end most of that.
But WRT the "narrative" of increased harassment over the status quo - I would be firm. The plural of anecdote is not data and humans are notoriously terrible at identifying actual trends in the absence of data. If it "feels like" harassment has increased, where's the corresponding data to confirm that? Not even the vaunted BBC could demonstrate this when Musk pressed them on this point last week.
If the "narrative" trends were true, I should think the data would be everywhere given the elite's treatment of Musk's iconoclasm. Yet all we get is an onion: layer after layer of narrative with no substance underneath.
Same.
A lot of what people dislike about Twitter is really a description of Politically Relevant Twitter. The time I spend on Politically Relevant Twitter is, in fact, a complete waste of time, about as productive as making snide comments to your TV (which I also occasionally do). But there are other parts of Twitter, often industry-specific, that really don't exhibit the same pathologies. FinTwit is really one of the greatest things ever.
Had to check and see whether that was financial twitter or Finland twitter.
What's great about Twitter is that there probably is Finnish Twitter. Fascinating Twitter communities:
Fin(ancial) Twitter
Market Structure Twitter
Movie Review Twitter
Cigarette Aesthetic Twitter
Bagpipe Twitter
Tennis Twitter (actually, this is also becoming annoyingly political)
Gimmick Account Twitter (current favorite is https://twitter.com/wejustnormalmen/status/1650424340129935362 )
In my books Freddie, your skills as a writer alone make you cool. At least on the Internet.
The 'not caring about anything' would be not cool, definitely a turnoff.
Nihilism is out. Everyone cool knows that.
Pssh, no one ever cared about nihilism anyway. Wait...
I just heard a terrific digression on the nature of coolness yesterday in the audio version of this book:
https://www.vogue.com/article/bourdain-the-definitive-oral-biography-laurie-woolever-interview
One of the narrators -- it's all people who knew him -- started out saying that "Tony was the coolest," but then going on about how, no, he actually wasn't, and how coolness is sociopathic. It was glorious and well put, and if I had the paper version I'd probably bother to type it word for word. In fact I recommend the paper version because some of the voice actors are atrocious.
Your thoughtful post somehow made me think of Hemingway's macho ethos of "never complain, never explain," which I connect with the ethos of not caring. And it made me wonder how Hemingway would have used Twitter or not.
An advantage of writing is creating a self-legacy that you can look back on and see what you were thinking and feeling at certain times in your life. Writing the way you do is certainly a deep form of both self-expression and the natural human desire to be "known."
I think all social media sites will have a shelf life. If you want a laugh, go re-watch The Social Network and see what they thought the future of Facebook would be versus what it is now. If Twitter is fading in importance it has more to do with that. Personally, Twitter is at its best during high profile sporting events where it can be fun to see how everybody is taking in the game. Beyond that, it is largely a culture war battlefield and gets exhausting. Maybe it has gotten worse since Musk took over but to say it was not that way before but is now must be following different people than I am.
Facebook killed itself and this is a real tragedy. It was the most useful app for many years. Basic timelines, groups, events and calendars, business splash pages and calendars. It was the homepage of the internet. And then they decided to promote negative engagement because it drove use and then add revenue. They overrevved the engine and blew it up. In another 10 years with enough time between we'll look back and see that they could have been the infrastructure of half the internet but threw it away for short term gain and that nothing has been quite as useful since.
I have noticed that many psychological problems in humans stem from not being honest with themselves about what they really want and what motivates them.
I am witnessing two humans divorce in real time, and the reason they got married in the first place is because he didn't want to admit that he is a homosexual and she just wants to play video games.
So much better to be a cat.
Or sitting through an after-meeting entertainment with a bunch of Germans who were trying to impress themselves mostly that they were Serious European Intellectuals by listening to an opera soprano. The looks on their faces as this diva wailed like a wounded owl when she hit the high notes was entertainment enough. But everybody had to sit through it and pretend to enjoy the ordeal, lest they out themselves as Unserious.
I can tolerate opera, but they should have gotten a better singer. That even I could tell that this was a second-rate soprano and the Cultured Intellectuals couldn't or wouldn't says it all.
I've had a complicated relationship. It's a bad habit that I enjoy and find a bit addictive with professional, transit activism, and related social network benefits.
That said, I had and maintain a much more positive relationship with blogs and RSS feeds which had similar rewards. I think part of the dynamic is an acknowledgment that regardless of coolness, twitter is unhealthful despite its benefits. Alan Jacobs has written extensively on this. But I do think that the coolness and status dynamics you capture make harder doing anything about the unhealthful parts.
Ed West wrote an interesting article about the Will Storr's book "The Status Game." "Status is extremely important to wellbeing, so much so that it can have a profound effect on our health...and Storr identifies three methods by which we reach the top: dominance, competence and virtue (although most people use a combination of two or all three). It is the last of these which is the most interesting, and sometimes the most dangerous, inspiring immense cruelty."
I love Freddie's callout about "superficial egalitarianism but implicit hierarchy." I've been really examining my own behavior and orientation towards using virtue — which I very sincerely seek, as it's intrinsic to my definition of living in integrity, a primary motivating force for me — as a way around being caught in some superficial scramble for status, and yet still actually being a workaround for status anyway. There's no way I'm exempt from this. Like Freddie, I care intensely about everything, and it is a really urgent and kind of draining way to live. It also leads to immense frustration with both people who seem too busy to care, and with (of course) the culture being examined here.
If I had to sum up my approach to status, it might be something like, "Through both caring and working on things that reflect that caring, I am demonstrating unimpeachable goodness that should confer upon me some degree of status and appreciation." The part I don't always say out loud, but do think a lot, is, "I am immensely disappointed in the broad swath of people who are too self-absorbed/spoiled/immature/caught up" to do the same, which essentially points to the fact that in my own mind, there's a status hierarchy and I am obviously up there in my own estimation.
Doesn't really mean much except to say that maybe being honest about what we do for status could be a relief to ourselves and others.
Insightful. I really like the way you show the chain of thoughts / feelings that we use to get ourselves to the status we want, and the inherent judgement of others that comes from them not valuing the same things we value.
Thank you for that! It's not a particularly flattering self-portrait, so I'm glad you liked what I was trying to do — truly makes it worthwhile to put out there.
"Through both caring and working on things that reflect that caring, I am demonstrating unimpeachable goodness that should confer upon me some degree of status and appreciation."
But this is madness. Even the Christians believe that there is no fairness in this world and that justice is reserved for the next one.
And speaking of Christians: aren't the most virtuous types somebody like the Catholic nuns who vanished into the Arizona desert, to labor for years in obscurity raising tiny adobo churches and serving a flock that consisted of poor Hispanic immigrants? They have no expectation of rewards or compensation in this life and the goal of their ideology is active suppression of the individual in service to the greater good.
Absolutely! I certainly wasn't saying that it's an awesome or holy state of being. I was pointing to the opposite: trying to dust out the cobwebby corners of status-seeking superficiality in my own life, to at least dismantle one psychological barrier to living the way those you are describing live (or at least living more honestly as me). I agree that fairness might not be on the table, and I'm not at all sure I'll get there in this life, but I was hypothesizing (out loud) that considering and admitting to our own tactics could be useful.
Yeah, definitely. From my perspective the mindset that you are describing is widely held. Especially in these polarized times there is an unfortunate tendency to conflate virtue with one's politics and it's common enough to be destabilizing at the societal level.
YES! Exactly. I also think self-righteousness SEEMS like a good feeling but actually FEELS like a spin-cycle prison. When we're completely locked into one worldview, we tend to look at everything through that lens and are constantly in a state of attack or defend, and miss the deeper and more timeless qualities of "virtue."
Indeed. Cf. Slaw/jiji convo, above.
I'm struck by how few people consider leaving Twitter in earnest because it's "so bad now." They rage against $8 blue checks, but tweet and tweet and tweet, increasing engagement and making money for Twitter.
And you're correct: they're bitter I can now pay $8 for the same blue check that used to make them "somebody."
aha, but the fact that you can now pay for it means it is not the same checkmark. It's meaning has in fact been inverted.
I enjoyed Twitter but deleted my account & app last New Year’s Eve and generally haven’t looked back. Occasionally though someone will link me to a tweet - a journalist making a point perhaps, or maybe speculative insight on the upcoming NFL draft. The deal with blue (or white, whatever) checks these days is irritating! I have to manually verify if the account is legit, usually by looking at how many followers it has,
neat my comment posted while I paused to walk down the hall. Comment continued:
... usually looking at how many followers it has, and if I decide to look at the comments I scroll down on the tweet, only to see like two relevant comments before Twitter points me in the direction of the latest Musk tweet. Blegh.
So you used blue checks to decide if someone was "legit?" No blue check, you don't read? I find that so strange.
For news? Yeah. I don’t trust @ESPM for trade rumors.
I think the big lessons from the last two years was that masks don't work and the lab leak theory is viable. How many blue checks got those wrong?
What Freddie had suggested about a "pay to have your identity be verified" would have been a much more useful way of going about things. Identity verification need not be coupled with status -- while entities like the New York Times or ESPN have the most vested interest in their audiences trusting they are who they say they are, regular people who use the site for professional networking or even making friends can probably see some value in not being catfished.
And uncoupling the additional features you can purchase from the blue checkmark would be wise. Even without Elon Musk's shenanigans, it's kind of embarrassing to have everyone know that you pay to enhance your experience on "the hellsite" or to have the algorithm boost your tweets.
Great piece. I find the affectation of not caring - and, as you say, particularly its relationship with status and 'cool' - really fascinating. I wonder when it was decided that earnestness, commitment and sincerity were not desirable traits, at least in groups. (My instinct is most people tend to find them desirable, or at least not off-putting, in life partners and close friends.) In the UK it's very bound up with social and economic class, summed up in the pejorative adjective 'try-hard' - it's a lot easier to not give much of a shit when you don't have to hard-scrabble for the necessities. (I mean, I'm sure it's bound up with income and social class everywhere, but in the UK we have a particularly well-internalised and unrelenting system of behaviours associated with 'class' , which is not always the same thing as income bracket.) But yeah I'd be really interested to know what the other drivers are, because it's so fucking dumb and has so many terrible outcomes.
Actually I found the blue checks were often a good way to pick out the biggest jerks on Twitter so as to avoid them, so the idea was useful to me in that sense.
You’re a good writer, and I’m always fascinated by what you have to say.
I know you didn’t write this to receive compliments, but I also understand basic psychology. And I’m a writer myself. Having one’s work acknowledged is a basic human need, for all the reasons you artfully detail above.
The other issue is otherwise intelligent people not being aware of how they are being manipulated by the engagement algorithm. Twitter isn’t showing you things in chronological order or in order of “real” importance or “real” popularity it’s showing users what’s most like to get them engaged. That ends up violently skewing users perceptions of what is popular, valued, etc.
I despise Elon Musk and all the right-wing trolls he's unleashed on Twitter for sure, BUT -- I also despise hierarchies. So watching the virtual Versailles Palace that was pre-Musk Twitter getting stormed by the torch and pitchfork crowd has been amusing to say the least. The "acting like they don't care" posts while their precious palace burns down around them has just added to the amusement.