I have had to learn to unhook my psyche from the need to seek social validation online – the likes on my posts, the comments with ‘yes!’ or a fire emoji. Yet every time I am tempted to open those apps again – especially as a musician, a freelancer, whose career would seem to depend to some degree on the ability to promote oneself, and on the need for some metric to assess current social success as a proxy for likely professional advancement – I am tempted back into a crass mode of communication, a stance borne of desperation, writing posts at fever pitch in an attempt to be heard above the noise, all for the sake of a few likes. Quality of expression doesn’t just take a back seat; it is left behind all together, not coming along for the ride.
One only has to run a quick thought experiment to appreciate the lunacy of the situation we are in, that we can all-too-easily be made to feel that our social status depends on these fickle mediums, the social media platforms, for its very survival. Simply rewind the clock to a time prior, and recall how social validation was an experience enjoyed ‘live’ in the moment, in person with one’s friends, in context, shared, enjoyed and moved on from; it was not something to become so easily addicted to. Or imagine oneself in the shoes of a great artist or personality of a bygone era, and imagine them trying to post to social media. James Joyce. Picasso. Stravinsky. Their works don’t survive because they knew how to get followers. They didn’t succeed because they could gain metrics of social validation through how many people liked their short, snappy, attention-grabbing posts.
If, as the headlines suggest, the recent Meta trial in the U.S. results in ‘the end of social media as we know it’, that may be a good thing on many fronts. Yes, it might spell the end of crass, bite-sized entertainment as the dominant mode of consumption for minds young and old alike, but – and this is closer to the focus of the trial – it will hopefully spell the end for garnering social metrics online.
The internet can be a great space for sharing ideas, exploring new ones, discovering interests and so on; but the engineering of the internet to exploit the weaknesses of the human psyche has led us enslaved to some of the darkest places humanity will go. It’s time to walk out of there.
Ben David Trigg 