Attraction of Attention Sucking Machines

In which I put forth an opinion grounded solely in one person’s observations, gut feeling, and in no means really expected to be accepted as a theory of merit. This is also blogging as in writing as in the Dave Winerian sense of the unedited voice of one person.

As a preface and likely point to wander off target, I’ve become acutely aware that what keeps being written and talked about as “social media” has become extremely narrow and limited to those platforms, many that exist now, that do more or less what twitter did long ago. They are really just large shared spaces of messaging. Toss in the platforms that come to mind, plus all of the variety we sp[in as collaboration tools (Slack, Teams et al).

This is hardly what I think of as social media, especially if you were arounf online in the late 2000s. Take in the extensive Wikipedia article on Social Media:

Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation, sharing and aggregation of content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongst virtual communities and networks. Common features include:

• Online platforms that enable users to create and share content and participate in social networking.
• User-generated content—such as text posts or comments, digital photos or videos, and data generated through online interactions.
• Service-specific profiles that are designed and maintained by the social media organization.
• Social media helps the development of online social networks by connecting a user’s profile with those of other individuals or groups.

The term social in regard to media suggests platforms enable communal activity. Social media can enhance and extend human networks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media

Or try from the History Cooperative, The Complete History of Social Media: A Timeline of the Invention of Online Networking if you can scape through the ads and popups, there is actually text.

Social media is understood as the different forms of online communication used by people to create networks, communities, and collectives to share information, ideas, messages, and other content, such as videos.

Two things stand out from this definition:

1. Social media must include online communication, meaning the history of social media cannot begin before the invention and widespread adoption of the internet; and
2. Social media depends on user-generated content. This is why typical websites and blogs do not get included in the world of social media. Only certain people can post to these sites, and there are significant restrictions on the types of content that get uploaded.

https://historycooperative.org/the-history-of-social-media/

I would disagree strongly with point number 2, that looks at blogs or web sites as entities- if you think of the ecosystem of blogs that interlinked based on the choices of authors, and connected through the contributions of comments and back links via trackback pings, my contention it was very social.

And what’s funny is that many people seem to leave out the mega social media godzilla, YouTube.

A key difference for this rather narrow view of social media as mini posts that come at you like a firehose, is that the site or provider feeds them to you, with or without algorithmic influence. For the social layer of blogs, you have to take the initiative and effort to find the blogs and go there (do not get me started on the role of RSS here).

For me social media where the places that provided a service, function that was useful to me as an individual, but created a whole new layer of value and possibility done in the space where others were doing the same (e.g. social bookmarking, photo sharing a la flickr). Im many ways I think of collaborative document editing that we almost take for granted in Google Docs, had this flavor. I still recall the tingle of excitement the first time, me, living in Arizona was editing a document in Writely- the precursor to Google Docs – at the same time my colleague Phil Long was making changes I could see from his location in New Jersey (yup got a link, February 6, 2006). And if you want more waving, ask me sometime about 43 Things.

Not sure what difference it makes, but I maintain what we call “social media” is a bastardized winnowing by software barons who learned a way to suck pennies from our acts.

Back to the Topic

My self-editor is chiming in. What do I mean by attention machines? It’s hardly novel to criticize today’s narrow band view of social media, tons and tons have been written on the Attention Economy. The whole point of these things is to draw us in, encourage us to create content, cleverly design the environment to be one where you do not leave, and count, measure, store all our interactions.

In sticking a fork in Facebook (that was the second time, there was an earlier effort), much was about the slimy experience of being used in catfishing, plus the known awareness of surveillance, much was just personal. Something about the face, voice, and swagger of Zuckerburg made me sick, he was all the stuck up kids I hated in highschool. Plus, his whole vast fortune was rooted in the frat boy exploitation of rating women.

But more than that, as I recall, was a sickening feeling of how often I was getting in bed at night, or waking in the morning, and scrolling, scrolling to see what people were doing.

And that I realized was a trap. It was the pointless time of scrolling instead of doing something else with my mind. I am hardly over that, just sometimes aware that the desire to know, to be informed, aware, even amused by the streams is hard to dismiss. Yet, I still heartliy believe in the early brilliance of Clive Thompson on How Twitter Creates a Social Sixth Sense | WIRED (archived 13 Nov 2022 15:20:37 UTC).

Yet seeing the ongoing desire for “where we we go for all the conversations about” (fill in your favorite subjects, discipline, or just education) and the choices being made seem almost more about being heard than being part of something bigger. Why go to weird and clunky Mastodon if “you can’t find anyone there” (I hear that a lot). Run to Bluesky because “everyone is there” and (this one bites bad) “it’s just like Twitter was in 2010.”

Scarp the blog and start of a SubStack?ButtonDown/Ghost so your words get stuffed into people’s inboxes.

Do you write to be writing or are you writing to get attention? If you do not get likes and boosts and reposts, is it not worth it? Remember

I’m painting much with a broad brush, but at times it seems like we are drawn to the attention machines to get attention as much as that it sucks it from us.

Just a half baked, simmering in the head idea. Please do tell me how wrong I am. Or just Like this post.

Featured Image: Composite of my own photos Milk Machine flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0) and 2020/366/40 ATTENTION PLEASE! flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0). Guess the license for the combo.

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