DISPATCHES FROM THE BLACK HOLE #2: On Social Media and Emerging Mastodons
Have you been on Twitter lately? There’s more than a little ‘last days of Rome’ vibe about the place this last week.
We all know why. Elon Musk finally sealed the deal to buy Twitter, confirming he has more money than sense, and has systematically set about imploding it. Free speech rants, blocking parody accounts, trying to create a new blue tick income stream - the list goes on. This is probably only the tip of a very large iceberg too. And people, as you might expect, have been leaving in droves, or at least weighing up their options.
It really got me thinking about how I’m using social media right now. Much like many reading this no doubt, I’m a bit of an addict. I spend more time on Twitter than most but I’m also on Facebook, I dabble occasionally on Instagram, I have a Discord server which I host for We Made This. This whole debacle has made me consider the very meaning of being ‘on’ some of these sites.
Am I ‘on’ Facebook? I have an account but I don’t post every day. Am I ‘on’ Instagram, which I barely use? Am I ‘on’ Reddit? I would be more if the moderation wasn’t bordering on fascistic. I’m definitely not ‘on’ TikTok or Tumblr or Snapchat, as I’m way too old and grumpy for all their business. I don’t know anymore what being ‘on’ social media really means.
Let me qualify that statement: obviously I do know, on a functional level, what it means to be on social media. I just don’t really understand what we’re doing on there broadly.
Twitter blowing up has brought this into sharp relief. We’ve kind of just accepted that this is the way we do things now, and what we indulge in depends very much on what we crave from the internet. My wife, for example, loves Instagram. She’s always on there watching videos or channels or guides or finding all kinds of craft based things. She has a Twitter but never uses it or posts on it. I’m the exact opposite - Instagram bores me because photographs largely bore me. I love the written word and the flow of information that comes from Twitter.
It’s also, arguably, helped me start building a professional profile. You can’t do that on Instagram if the written word is your business. That’s a visual algorithm factory. Facebook remains provincial and designed for a kind of internal conversation - people have to add each other and there’s a weirdness to befriending someone you don’t know. Do you find that? Even people I follow or mutually follow on Twitter I find strange befriending on Facebook for some reason. It all feels very personal. It feels designed for friends and family.
Facebook groups stick out like a sore thumb in that regard because they almost don’t match the aesthetic. Before Discord came along, they served as the closest replication of the traditional message board software that forged a thousand fandoms and communities before the Facebook revolution; forums built around specific interests. Where they differed was the almost immediate, rampant toxicity and penchant for ‘shitposting’ that dominates most groups that go beyond a modicum of users. Try posting a link to something in one of those that even dares to go against the grain of conventional thinking within those communities? What you get back is an experience I can tell you.
A lot of this depends on what you’re ‘on’ social media for. We’re all there for validation, often not from friends or family but strangers, but traditionally we’re all looking for tribes and followings of like-minded people, often with similar interests. It’s to my mind why the Twitter ‘digital town square’ concept has caused such polarisation, because people actively seek—even unconsciously—echo chambers. They don’t want to spend most of their time arguing the toss with someone slightly to the right or as far right as the Holocaust denier. They want their point of view reinforced and the safety and security of those who will subscribe to a similar world view.
Which brings me to the new kid on the block: Mastodon. Actually, an older kid on the block than we all know. It’s been around since at least 2016 as part of the broader ‘fediverse’; a union of sites and in this case servers subscribing to different tastes, moderated and monitored by hundreds if not thousands of regular people. Mastodon is almost the anti-Twitter; a utilitarian approach to social media which intentionally silos people within spheres of interest, albeit with the ability to converse with people outside of that server (or ‘instance’ as it is known). There is no doubt, having signed up, that Mastodon is different. There is no one size fits all feed. This is social media curated, structured and designed.
In some ways, Mastodon currently feels like the Wild West amidst a digital frontier. I don’t believe it’s necessarily the next step (that’s honestly, painful as it is to admit, probably Zuckerberg’s Ready Player One rip-off to come, the Metaverse) but it is a refuge. Twitter is currently Rome being sacked by the giant Visigoth that is Elon Musk which makes Mastodon a coastal, fortified refuge against the barbarian armies. People are flocking there en masse. Within a week, Mastodon has rocketed up with more subscribers than many of the servers involved can handle. Early adopters exercising their right to test the water elsewhere in case Rome really does fall for good.
That’s where I sit right now. I have my Mastodon account inside a server devoted to film & TV discussion. Some people I know are migrating over and new figures are raising their heads. I have found an app called Metatext which is x10 more useable than Mastodon’s clunky app which more readily recreates the style of Twitter we’re used to. Conversations are happening but everyone is tentative. We know it might not last. We all hope Musk might get bored of his new toy and piss off back into space, allowing the flawed project that is Twitter to remain, much as many of us have our serious doubts about what it’s doing broadly to human civilisation as a whole.
Many of us feel somewhat conflicted about social media generally, especially right now. Each version has evolved into its own eco-system, some generational, all with tribes. It feels to me like we're taking it all for granted. We're not stopping to consider the corrosive effect of a technology that has utterly consumed and transformed our way of life. Don't get me wrong - Twitter and its ilk have democratised millions globally. Social media has opened the floodgates of communication and knowledge in a way we've never seen before. Look at what's happening in Iran currently, where many of the female population are rising up against toxic orthodoxy using religion as its shield - that never would have happened without these networks.
At the same time, Musk's actions on Twitter display the equal and opposite reaction. His zeal in buying Twitter represents less a threat from 'free speech' actors throwing 'wokeness' around with abandon, or indeed the hate fuelled trolls who stir up discord, but rather the danger of the ultra-billionaire with more money and power than some governments deciding what they believe freedom in the social sphere should mean, people who then work accordingly to morph reality around those believes. They are the next step in a narcissistic, gaslighting evolution from the media barons who influence governments and public opinion on a daily basis, often at the expense of the poor and less well off.
I'm not saying Mastodon is the answer. I'm not saying Twitter is lost yet. Nobody truly knows what the answer is. These platforms are here to stay before they mutate into the next iteration, as in all likelihood reality and the digital world grow ever more intertwined and our sense of being 'on' social media takes on all new, practical considerations. All we can really do is vote with our feet, consider our options, hold true to some sense of decent morality, and do what we can to prevent bad actors like Elon Musk (or Donald Trump before him) dominating our social fabric.
So catch me on Twitter, Mastodon and Facebook for now. Who knows where I'll be in a year. All I know is that the future is here now and we all better get used to it.
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