LIKE ME!

For a long time, I resisted the Facebook LIKE button. To me, it was an avatar of everything I hated about Facebook -  this lazy, de-personalized, systematized social relation. If you REALLY like something, you can afford to write two, three words…maybe even an ENTIRE SENTENCE! Right? Just like txt-speek leaking into the internet, I found the like an abhorrent phenomenon. Is it that hard to express yourself? Is it that difficult to write “to be honest” instead of “tbh” or “talk to ya later” instead of “ttyl”? Let’s be honest – you’re not in a rush there. You’re not texting and trying to save credit, or writing on the fly. You’re seating your fat ass in front of your PC and procrastinating. Is it that tedious to write up a full sentence instead of a slew of acronyms? Can it be that laborious to write “I love the chorus of that song!” instead of clicking LIKE.?

This means: I find it really hard to express my enjoyment textually

 Needless to say, while I held on for long, I now click like just like anyone else. I still feel a pang of guilt when I don’t write something more but most of the time – I simply cannot be bothered. And there is the key.

If observed from a far enough vantage point, the internet is evolving to a position of distancing. I’ve mentioned before how using social networks, and the internet in general, leads to living in a entirely different social stratosphere. The rules are all different, the etiquette askew – Put a smiley, or you will appear angry, don’t use caps or it will seem like you are shouting, don’t like funeral posts (or do?), send birthday wishes to people you barely know….the list goes on. Twitter has the hashtag and the 140 character limit - what better way to funnel communication into a junk food format? Let us not even go into the abbreviation LOL (laugh out loud, for all you cavemen). I've heard people SAYING LOL in REAL LIFE. As in in my face, not ironically. Do you realize how paradoxical that is? You are SAYING a ABBREVIATION of the sentence LAUGH OUT LOUD. If you use LOL in any manner, ask yourself - when is the last time you've used LOL while ACTUALLY LAUGHING OUT LOUD? Yes, I realize I'm not exactly re-inventing the wheel here - the LOL silliness has been documented even in its early days. But it's the bizarre nature of these internet communication rules and regulations that leave an impression.

    You don't see it, but this man is laughing out loud so hard,  that clock might fall off soon.

What’s startling to me about this phenomenon is that if one analyses it further you will notice its rituals and traits are actually tools for social distancing. This is why people rant endlessly about how computers will make you asocial – because they make you a different KIND of social. A lazy, speedy kind of social.

All these traits of the “new internet” social relations are built to take social responsibility from you, to make it as easy as possible NOT to communicate with someone. Like weapons – the evolution of weaponry consisted of moving the killer as far away from the victim as possible: first a stone, then a knife, then a sword, then a bow, then a gun, then a missile. The same goes for social relation in the 21^st century – its about being social but having as little possible contact with another human as possible.

OMG! LIKE!

You don’t NEED to write why you like something, it’s a waste of time and it demands conversation – and we don’t want conversation. We just want the other person to acknowledge that you find whatever they have shared valuable.  This is also key – eliminating the need for reproach.  With Facebook you can now congratulate someone for something WITHOUT EVER NEEDING TO TALK TO THEM. Until this, the only option was to SMS them – but that implied specific contact, almost like sending someone a personal message in their inbox. It calls for an answer, re-approach. If it is, however, on someones public page, this response is not necessary. There is no NEED for additional communication – I understand you don’t want to talk to me any more, and you understand I don’t want to talk to you. It’s like that friend you meet on the street and you agree to have coffee sometimes, knowing full well neither of you will ever heed that call. Except now it’s for everyone.

Very soon there will be an internet “protocol”, if you will, for almost every kind of social exchange. You will write Cto (check this out), followed by a link. People will like it. You’ll receive an invite for an event which you will decline, clicking on a “I’l be busy that day” button that automatically responds to the invite with that sentence. You’ll arrange stuff over Skype, with smileys at the end of every sentence because hell, you don’t wanna offend anybody! The sentences will be short, and anything longer (probably copy-pasted) will be written off with a tl:dr (too long, didn’t read). If you need to work with someone, on something, it’s better done via Skype chat or Google docs – that way you don’t actually have to TALK to the person, you can just hurl ideas at each other and conclude them with acronyms (GJ!). Finally, you’re going to see a video or two that you really enjoy, and like it on Youtube. You wont be bothered to actually write why you like it, the top comment is already a witty, short version of what you want to say – so you like that too. Gj! The less human contact, the better. Because who has time for that shit anyway?

A QUESTION OF CONTENT

In my previous post (here) I've discussed my slow retreat and reproach to the internet. While I've already begun distancing myself from social networks, reducing my output there steadily, new revelations regarding the flow of information have come to mind.

Recently,  a re-curing theme has appeared in my thoughts and surrounding: Empathy. I've been re-reading the magnificent Hyperion books by Dan Simmons, and one of the central themes in them is empathy. My sister Majda is doing some photography art that deals with empathy. And the internet itself, and my retreat from it, has made me think about what role empathy has when applied to internet content.

This has all lead me to conclude that any form of content being spread viraly, be it on the internet or beyond, has some sort of value. The question remains to what extent is this value for the reader.

Allow me to explain. You see a post online about somebodies dog dying. You think, hey, my dog died - I know how that feels. You click like, or share, or whatever. In this case the only reason you spread, or support this information is because of empathy.

This is the same reason why observational comedy works so well in stand up. You like it because you can identify with it. Lets call it the "Hey, I know this!" syndrome.

Lets apply this to social networking. A while back I wrote a tweet that was specifically designed to test out this idea: that content is judged on how well it can relate to you, not on its actual meaning. The tweet was about a very personal event that is individual, and related to a specific person - something that only I and that person would find meaning and value for. However, it was phrased ambiguously - it could be about anyone.

Needless to say, it was re tweeted and commented upon, with people behaving like it was their own experience, and even giving advice on how to cope with the feeling. They were taking a situation that is clearly individual and applying it to their own case. They were giving it meaning where there was none (for them), clearly seeing themselves in the events described.

This phenomenon is far older than the internet - think of the horoscope. The art of reading someones horoscope is consisted of bombarding the person with statements that are general, ambiguous and above all - emphatic. You give someone a very broad koan on love and they will find themselves in it. Any human emotion - we all feel it, and we want to find ourselves in them (A demonstration of this was performed by Derren Brown in this experiment) This is why non-concrete song lyrics work best - its not talking about this guy's break up, its talking about YOU, etc.

So why this long explanation about peoples need to empathize with content? Because it is critical to evaluating the true value of information. Think about it: if the only reason you are spreading information is because you can recognize yourself in it, then maybe that information has no value?

Or maybe it does, but it needs additional features to make it worth spreading. One of the reasons I like internet memes and 9gag so much was because they make me laugh, but also because some of them describe something I can empathize with. A rage-face comic about bashing your little toe to the leg of a chair - thats not so funny, but I can instantly identify with the situation. Its empathic content devoid of any true significance other than "Hey, I know this!". Paradoxically, this is also why I am hesitant to indulge in 9gag and memes - they bring no use, no true content, no significance to my life other than short-term entertainment.



A discussion with a friend led me to thinking about what qualifies as indulgence online and what is actual content, and we decided that articles provide information and value, while memes tend not to. This form of classification should be more concrete. If one had to phrase it:

If the content examined only serves to give you brief entertainment or moments of empathy it has no informational value. Therefore one should refrain from spreading it, or at least spending large quantities of time on it.

This kind of thinking might seem spartan to some, not to mention the fact some might remark I should be the last person to be saying anything about "spamming on the internet". But I think my days of procrastinating and spreading every bit of meaningless info give me qualification to now speak of it, and to stop doing it.

In the end, it is a question of content. What do you gain from the content you consume every day. If it is nothing but a laugh and some empathy, the content is trivial. If it is information, inspiration - if you learn something - then the content is worth spreading.

I implore the 5 people reading this to spread it if they agree with it, and if they believe it informative for others in any way. If upon reading this you thought, "Hey, I know this" -  then maybe better leave it at a casual Facebook like.

INTERNET FATIGUE

It might seem contradictory to talk about internet fatigue on an internet blog, but bear with me.

I grew up with the Internet. I was born in 85' and was awarded what I see now as a massive advantage in the form of having computers in 90's Serbia.  Myself and a select group of friends enjoyed all the benefits this entailed. We played games at home when the arcade was the closest thing to a game most kids could have. We listened to music, we watched sad, pixelized gif porn, we wrote in Microsoft Word and even printed out the stuff we wrote.

Then, off course, came the internet. 

I will not bore you with descriptions of my elated exploration of this new world. What I will do is immediately draw a parallel with pagers and cell phones. The staggering ability to communicate with someone almost instantaneously, to carry a phone in your pocket and be able to call from wherever you might be was something similar to what later came with services such as internet chat. I caught myself at the ripe age of 13 talking to a girl from Australia, via internet chat. This blew my mind at the time: there I was, communicating with someone halfway across the world, in real time. Considering I spent a large chunk of my life sending actual mail to my childhood friend in Barcelona, this was revolutionary.

Now fast forward 13 years. Social networks, Skype, blogs. The endless array of possibilities has flourished with breathtaking speed. The discussion here is not about whether or not these services benefit humanity - off course they do. Just like cell phones, television and radio before it, these are advances in technology that bring untold progress to the world. But just like these other forms of media, there are negative side effects to consider.

And this is how we get to the headline: internet fatigue. As someone who was weaned on the internet from a young age, I've found it instinctual to embrace any form of internet entertainment and communication without inhibition. A new social network? Bring it on. Another way to view videos and listen to music? Give it here. I've found apologists of internet abstinence to be narrow minded and infantile - very similar to the hippie ideas of not watching TV or even listening to radio.

What I came to realize in time is that the internet, just like any other kind of media, is similar to food - you need it, but you must be careful of what and how much you eat. While this analogy might seem a bit off - you will not die without the internet, while you most certainly will die without food - it is not fully delusional. Think about it. Man is a social animal, and one must socialize in some way in order to survive. The internet is a relatively new way of communicating, but so was TV or radio. While TV and radio might have been one way, they are still a form of communication. People that don't use the internet but still "survive" by communicating traditionally come across as an old tribe living on healthy meat from hunting and vegetables they harvested. The people that do use modern media such as the internet would be us - living on processed food but having a wide choice of foods around us, enjoying the luxury of not having to hunt. The same rules that apply to a healthy diet can apply to the internet: moderation, some selection in what you consume, restraint and a healthy dose of exercise.

This analogy has gotten old, but it only served to outline my attitude at the moment: I suffer from internet fatigue.

It could be I'm getting older. It could be my current surplus of free time. It could be none of these things. But the fact remains I am beginning to drown  in the flood of information I willingly inject into myself every day. Social networks have become the death of normal inter-human relations and have spawned a new social dynamic that I find loathsome and depressing, even though I understand it and can manage fine within its odd rules. The tide of content that surrounds us, such as pictures and videos, is becoming increasingly trivial and diluted, to the point of using all usefulness.

The mental junk food the internet feeds me has evolved unto me the addict paradox of a fat man: I eat the junk because I need it but I hate myself for doing it. Your day becomes engrossed with endless pictures, videos or even text that have no concrete purpose and productive value. They are funny, for example, but even funny has but small purpose in the whole day. Should spend the whole day getting cheep thrills or can I use it as a temporary uplift before going on with the rest of my day?

Here lies the key: using it for what its supposed to be used for. Use it all, but use it well. Social network are to help you socialize - if you're not, then you're doing something wrong. Funny pictures, videos or text? Great, as long as they serve their purpose as a brief respite and entertainment in your day. This is an iterative process for me. I am still figuring out new ways to deal with the fact I need the internet but I am getting more and more tired of it as it drains me of time and energy.

I despise cliched "change-your-life-in-5-steps" methods of altering your behavioral pattens, but I prefer even those to a lack of action. My steady retreat from the internet will be just that - a step backwards that will allow me to approach it with a more wizened outlook, a chance to re-enter the internet world with a careful eye on what I consume.

This is not farewell to Facebook, 9gag, Youtube or any of those. This is but a small kiss on the mouth and a plea to "take it slow".