#meToo and Stand Alone Complexes
Controversy aside, the “#meToo” movement was on balance a positive event in human history. To my knowledge it’s the first overthrowing of a power structure at the hands of a decentralized group galvanized by social media. In a way, the “revolution WAS televised”…via Twitter!
In many ways, what fascinates me about “#meToo” is also present in “#blackLivesMatter”, although to a different extent because the African-American community has had a long history of speaking “truth-to-power”. The situation with sexual harassment in Hollywood, all over corporate America, and the world as a whole has the additional complication that there was basically no overt network of support for those who speak up, and this is because everyone associated with undermining an abusive man in a position of power had something to lose.
This kind of situation can be modeled as a strike negotiation in game theory. In the scenario, a strike is only effective if at least 10% of the workers effectively strike. I said 10% because that’s considered to be the tipping point for any social movement since research has found that that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society. If less than 10% of the workers strike, then the group effort will be to small to be successful in contrast downward wage pressure from management.
Because of a reverse Tragedy of the Commons, no worker than has a rational incentive to strike because they can’t risk being a losing striker who gets punished by management. Because of the ToC, the strike never even begins because there is no rational expectation that a sufficient critical mass of workers will emerge. Much in the same way, many survivors of harassment and assault went years without speaking because they knew the “he-said-she-said” dynamic of the situation would most likely lead to an excruciating process.
Social media changes the game however, because our Internet-enabled interconnectedness enables a first-mover to more quickly signal a bold first-follower that they are not alone, which leads to an rapid clustering of fellow survivors that enables the strike (in this case a movement towards reform) to be successful. The viral way in which the movement unfolded shows us how quickly history can unfold and social change take place now that social media and the Internet have brought us together.
Every #meToo response only compounded upon the effectiveness of the meme as it spread virally faster and faster. In a game theoretical way, the risk function for each worker contemplating become striker transformed into exponential decay, thereby leading to a runaway effect as more survivors felt empowered to speak up about their own trauma because for the first time they could confide in society not dismissing them.
This brings me to my question: can this process become self-directed? Right now, every other social-media-enabled social revolution (including the Arab Spring) has been emergent as opposed to designed, but can that change? Theoretically, through the social networks that can exist in the status quo we could create a semiotic reference point (meaning-making symbol) that can precipitate about meaningful social change. Were it possible, for example, to design hashtags specifically to provide a shared frame of reference for a marginalized group that is speculated to exist, it would enable through semiotics to create symbols that make these groups emerge to light.
The mimetic undertones of this entire line of thought brings to memory the concept of Stand Alone Complex (SACs). I have frequently talked about them with my friends, but I don’t think I’ve ever referenced them on my blog. SACs can be understood as emergent copycat behavior without an original. For those of you familiar with Baudrillard, you can think of it as a precession of simulacra, as a bunch of individuals emulate each other’s behavior. In the case of a SAC however, the social copies or simulacra do not have an original, so it’s a tree without a beginning point.
A good example of SACs include “the 13th Reasons Why” copycat suicides, the rise in intentional forest fires when the media reports a forest fire as pyromaniacal as opposed to natural, the Blue Whale Suicide Game. All of these movements are constituted by copycats of people who think they are imitating some original perpetrator when there actually isn’t one. The example I always give posits the scenario of you waking up one day and discovered not only that ISIS (ISL if you prefer) is not real but also that it’s actually just a collection of entirely separate radical groups in Syria and Iraq. Imagine if you discovered that it never existed in the first place, but is rather a concept that emerged because the media randomly fixated on a particular symbol on a flag: take a moment to process this…
So far I’ve only given negative examples of SACs, but positive emergent copycat behavior can waterfall into advancing a good cause. Specifically, I suspect a semiotic mechanism can be designed so that, just like a hashtag in 2017, it can trigger mass emulation to enable more “strikes” (IE social movements). That’s why I am personally really getting into semiotics and the history of advertising: they hold the key to designing socially positive stand alone complexes.
