MK

It’s a genre of content I like to call “Type of Guy” syndrome, where people on the internet create a mostly fictional straw man to represent a certain kind of person they dislike and then project it onto the one in front of them.

Here we see a really pivotal moment of change, when art must become something that does not make people uncomfortable, so that they will spend money. The kind of person who is expected to consume art is transformed in the mind of the producer. The people who might very possibly love being expanded by what they see are never given the chance.

On the old internet, you could show a different side of yourself in every forum or chat room; but on your Facebook feed, you had to be the same person to everyone you knew. 

The inherent contextlessness of platforms like Twitter also works in the opposite direction, though: It’s easy to use the language of social justice to justify anything we want, and by doing so, weakens real, meaningful activism.

Anybody can speak, but in an increasingly saturated cultural environment, nobody may be listening. Gatekeepers may no longer control what gets published, but algorithms control what gets circulated. Who sees what — in the domain of culture as well as news and commentary — is governed by opaque and proprietary software.

Social media showed that everyone has the potential to reach a massive audience at low cost and high gain—and that potential gave many people the impression that they deserve such an audience.