Why is quality conversation so hard to find on social media?
One of Arianee’s core beliefs is that communication, be it between brands and consumers or individuals, should be genuine. Technology has allowed for more transparency and authenticity within online/digital conversation, but it has also been one of the main reasons why a significant amount of confusion and strife can be found when people communicate on various platforms. We’re constantly dancing under the Damoclean sword to make sure that our personal impact is positive, but let’s zoom out and consider why it is that quality conversation can be a rare find on social media.
The science is clear－social media is often bad for society. Apparently, it should have been called anti-social media! In spite of innumerable studies concluding the same overwhelming dark side to our social media participation, we keep on engaging. We’re doing it to ourselves. In a complete vindication of the assertion that social media can become addictive and prime you for addictive behavior, we just can’t stop, it seems.
There are good reasons why conversations often lose integrity when enabled by the various social media platforms, and it’s something unpalatable for most, as it points to our still simian nature. There’s lots of posturing, lots of look-at-me displays, lots of pseudo-socializing on social media.
There’s always a vicious undercurrent of FOMO and loathing just beneath the surface of social media, and we’re abdicating our responsibility when we ignore it. Modern social media is made to be a wholly gratuitous experience. There is no education, valuable learning, or personal growth to be had from it, it’s just the monkey clan having found a fig tree in fruit.
It’s all about self-indulgence, and it’s little wonder then that social media comes with a sting in its tail!. Too much of a good thing eventually really sucks!
Why do social media conversations break down so often?
The simple truth is, constantly comparing our life with others’ lives isn’t mentally healthy, yet it’s the most enabled function of social media, like it or not. The constant stream of visual imagery and sassy commentary lands on a brain not designed to give such neurotic attention to comparison with our fellows. It’s not a good input, it’s unhealthy because it perverts the very functioning of our intelligence, our ability to be comfortable inside of our own skin.
Social media enables a different kind of liaison, and it’s all very ape-like, trying to dominate or alternatively save face, constant comparison, and jostling for position. Because we can engage with thousands all the time, our sense of community is distorted (excessively enlarged), as well as our responses within that community (often shallow and dismissive). All in all, as it currently stands, it’s a space of anxiety. We can be hostile without immediate repercussions, and we can dominate others’ opinions by trolling or simply excluding contacts.
Those are powerful tools for those who would ordinarily lack them in real-time situations. Social media often brings out the worst in us－the vainglorious and petty ambitions and closed-mindedness we’ve all encountered online.
There is a callousness that stems from a medium of engagement that lacks any immediate and painful repercussions for being a jerk! Many find a new lease on life by habitually jeering at others on social media. Their relative anonymity and remote existence enable nastiness that would never be dished out in their local neighborhood.
Social media needs some society
So, is social media just a cancerous thing, does it need to be dismantled, do you need to exit and never return? Social media does have certain undeniable value. Sharing pictures with family and childhood (real) friends is great, no one will dispute that. What social media needs to eliminate the vitriol and nastiness, is decency. Decent society. The same protocols as conventional society.
That’s harder to manifest than you might think, especially when Facebook engineers and other platform schemers go to great lengths to make things as addictive and compelling as possible. The way improvements will happen is the same way it happens in real life－involve yourself with good things and good people. Social media enables lots of emergency participation, when something has arisen in your neck of the woods or someone needs resources or advice you can give them. If we make sure that we follow and interact with charities or even religious movements that ring for us, that helps to balance out the dark side of social media and make things better.
If we want our digital society to better reflect the decency and neighborliness we can expect in our land-based societies, we will have to apply the same rules of behavior that allow our current societies to function. Making social media better starts one person at a time, it starts with each of us taking responsibility for the kind of person we want to be.
Peppering your online presence with good people and good activity makes it hard to return to being ugly to people, even when the mob mentality seems to be encouraging you to join in slander or nastiness against another person or organization. Always ask yourself, what’s the value in what you’re saying? If there’s no goodness or real value, don’t do it.
We need new forms of social media
Can you imagine a social media reality that was broadly praised as a builder of good societies? What if in spite of age, religious, and political differences between people, there was nonetheless broad consensus that social media platforms had done a lot to build up human decency and neighborliness? It’s less hard to imagine than you might think, and we desperately need to reimagine social media right now. If we want to have real fun and make social media an avenue for human happiness rather than despair, a good place to start would be the history of the pre-internet civilization of humankind.
Modern societies of today have historically been built upon notions of property ownership and personal responsibility. That ownership, both private and socialized, creates a sense of belonging, nationality even, or a broader human kinship. This generates an ethos of responsible interaction, which is surely an eloquent definition of civilized society if ever there was one. The home ownership laws manifested by the nation-states of the 19th and 20th centuries were put in place as a way to favour and embed the kind of social order that made for good manners, honest conduct, and the assurance of personal safety.
What would social media built along those lines look like? How would ownership propel responsible behavior online anyway? The rising star of NFTs might just be a timely solution, and some kind of tokenized architecture applied to a social media platform would ensure that users maintain the same ethos of the platform. When everyone on social media has an ownership stake, it comes down to how they would want to feel on social media, and not being able to feel good at others’ expense. An ownership strategy would propel everyone towards building a safe and genuinely fun environment for everyone else, because what we build is what we ourselves experience.
In fact, NFTs could allow social media to morph into a new form of genuinely social media, where a decent and supportive society would be the ideal that informs the common experience. When you consider how common far less pleasant experiences are on the current platforms, that would already be a huge step in the right direction. Social media can be genuinely uplifting, enriching, and loads of fun, and it’s up to us to start the party!
Arianee remains committed to building the tools that allow for the evolution of conversation. Through an open mind and steadfast optimism, we believe that we can become better angels of our nature and once again find ways that not only connect us, but bring us closer together.
