Social Media
Essays and more on social media
Packy McCormick and
Social Media
Are Attention Spans Actually Shrinking? (Pt 2)
open.substack.com
You might think that bootlicking of this sort is just how you do business in China. But here’s the interesting twist—TikTok doesn’t exist in China.
A similar app, called Douyin, is available in China. TikTok is only for outsiders. And they love it. TikTok has more than 1.5 billion users worldwide.
Ted Gioia • Where Did TikTok Come From?
social media will never be the impetus for real social change. He compared Twitter unfavorably to the civil rights movement. The Woolworth’s lunch counter protesters had strong social ties with each other; social media, on the other hand, breeds weak ties. Meaningful change comes from strong ties, very little is achieved through weak ones.
The tech platforms aren’t like the Medici in Florence, or those other rich patrons of the arts. They don’t want to find the next Michelangelo or Mozart. They want to create a world of junkies—because they will be the dealers.
Ted Gioia • The State of the Culture, 2024
Ritual is vital because it gives us a sense that we belong to the world. A sense of connectedness, whether to society, nature or the divine, is in turn linked to a sense of psychological wholeness and lower rates of mental illness.
Social media offers the opposite; connection without relatedness.
Alexander Beiner • Myth and Metrics: How Social Media Robs Us of Ritual, and How to Revive It
All social networking apps fall on a spectrum from love to fame.
Li Jin • Love vs. fame: A framework for social applications
Li Jin’s observations on how social media apps/networks fall on a spectrum of love vs. fame
“As humans we are involved in a dance with things that cannot be stopped, since we are only human through things,” says Hodder. We will continue to perform lifestyles made possible by the Internet whether individual social media platforms survive or not, and even, especially, if we log off for good. Social media altered the world in the same way... See more
Daisy Alioto • What Is Lifestyle?
One of the most insidious effects of algorithmic curation is its redefinition of success. In the pre-digital age, greatness was measured by critical acclaim, cultural impact, or historical longevity. Today, it is measured by metrics: views, likes, shares, and subscriptions.
This shift has profound implications for creators. To succeed in an... See more
This shift has profound implications for creators. To succeed in an... See more