Not that I expected “better” of anyone, and while acknowledging that social media algos surface what’s most likely to generate engagement without regard for any kind of decorum, I was a bit taken aback Saturday to see a profane reference to Joe Biden at the top of a trending topic list.
Unlike the vast majority of Americans, I don’t get offended on behalf of other people, let alone take it upon myself to defend the honor of someone I’ll never meet. And I’ve never been on board with the idea that voters are somehow duty bound to feign affection for politicians they don’t care for just because it’s Christmas or July 4 or Presidents’ Day or any other holiday for that matter.
What does unnerve me, though, is the extent to which platforms allow their AI to conjure controversy, inflame communal tensions and otherwise stoke division in the absence of some meaningful event or substantive news. This harkens back to the somewhat existential discussion from “The Facebook Papers: We’re Not Asking The Right Questions.”
For the better part of 48 hours (so, for most of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day), Americans angrily and mockingly engaged one another over a frivolous meme that began at Talladega Superspeedway in October, when an anti-Biden chant accidentally became synonymous with the name “Brandon.” You shouldn’t trouble yourself with the details. Suffice to say the backstory is just as asinine as the meme itself.
In a testament to the notion that America’s politics has become one long prank call, this particular manifestation of partisan rancor found its way into Joe and Jill Biden’s Christmas Eve telephone event with NORAD’s Santa tracker. Long story short, an Oregon man who identified himself as Jared dialed in and, with all four of his children on the line, insulted Biden using the “Brandon” euphemism. Biden unwittingly seconded the sentiment.
As ABC explained, the event is “mostly” for children “who want to find out when Santa will visit their house.” NORAD doesn’t screen parents’ political affiliation because… well, because that should be irrelevant when the topic is the location of a flying sleigh pulled along by magic reindeer.
It was an unfortunate episode, but in better times, these types of things were quickly dismissed as senseless shenanigans. In the age of social media, though, senseless shenanigans become trending topics. And trending topics become “news” by default, because irrespective of whether something is actually newsworthy, the media is compelled to cover anything that millions of people are talking about, whether it’s a war, a cat chasing a laser pointer or a prank call to NORAD’s Santa tracker.
Why does this matter? Why should you (or I) not simply do what everyone else found it so difficult to do on Christmas — namely, ignore this non-story altogether or else eschew engagement in favor of a quick lament for a country so divided that not even Santa and Rudolph can fix things?
It matters because it speaks volumes about the deleterious effect of social media, the 24-hour news cycle and the interplay between the two.
I’ve called Twitter “a soul-sucking wasteland that’s immeasurably inimical to public discourse.” It’s a digital black hole that tempts otherwise sane people to do silly things, like engage with bots and follow accounts run by outlets and individuals known for the dissemination of misinformation and propaganda.
Simply watching other people argue on Twitter has become something of a national pastime, like rubbernecking the aftermath of a car accident on the highway. And that’s precisely what too many Americans did on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning in 2021.
Facebook is often held up as the poster child for what’s wrong with social media and thereby for what’s wrong with western democracies. Lost in that discussion is Twitter’s role in destroying civility and undermining Americans’ sense of community.
As I often reiterate, real discussion is made impossible by design on Twitter. The expanded character limit (introduced some years ago) was insult to injury — real debate was still impossible, but the space for implicit shrieking, unnecessary punctuation, fire emojis and cartoon middle fingers was doubled overnight. The latter even come in different skin tones now, which means you can celebrate diversity while making an obscene digital gesture at someone you’ll never meet in person.
I’m not optimistic about the prospects for our collective intelligence. And Americans’ sense of civic responsibility and community was in decline decades before the advent of Facebook and Twitter. But we shouldn’t skirt the issue.
In October, when a former Facebook product manager leaked a trove of internal documents which together raised still more uncomfortable questions about the company’s priorities, I suggested the media wasn’t focused on the right issues. The algorithm, I wrote, is using what it learns about billions of people to help third parties manipulate human emotions and affect decision making. In essence, Facebook (the company) no longer controls Facebook. Facebook (the AI) controls Facebook.
While Facebook (and Twitter) may very well be intent on maximizing engagement solely for the purpose of generating revenue, their AIs’ virtually unrestricted latitude in pursuing that engagement is throwing off more than just dollars. It’s wreaking psychological havoc, disrupting democracies and undermining societal cohesion. And it doesn’t stop for Christmas.
Imagine, if you will, living in an alternate reality known as “MAGAland,” a place where you genuinely believe that the U.S. presidency was illegally stolen from the rightful winner, by a shadowy cabal of blood-drinking, skin-eating, devil-worshipping Democrats.
Then, imagine that your response to this atrocity is to say, “Let’s go Brandon.”
The same crowd that once demanded Hillary Clinton be jailed without trial, or that a gargantuan wall should be constructed across the Mexican border, is now reduced to echoing a flaccid phrase so inoffensive it can’t even be described as a dog whistle.
Please, who can have that much imagination? You ask the impossible.
You have that much imagination, you go straight to jail.
After getting up this morning and making my morning coffee, I turned on my computer and did my usual perusal for new Heisenberg articles, and then a quick glance at the aggregated Google news headlines to see what I might have missed overnight from home (I work and live overseas). The very first cluster of headlines was on this “Brandon” nonsense. Dumbfounded, I had to take a screenshot and send to a group of friends back home wondering aloud (yet again) just how stupid we have become as a country. I had seen the “issue” popping in my Twitter feed the night before as I was going to bed. At this point I guess I really shouldn’t have been surprised it made such a prominent position in the Google news feed. But every word of this Heisenberg piece above makes me wonder just how beyond repair we are at this point…
I have begun to scrub my Twitter follows more aggressively and delete what I think is the chaff. But I really need to think hard about why I’m even on there in the first place. What is it actually serving? How Pavlovian does it make me? What are the costs?
I wrote this to a friend re: Twitter the other day: “Sadly I have to stay almost completely off Twitter. The algo refuses to let people follow only the people they want to follow. I follow 17 total accounts and whenever I look at my timeline, almost none of the tweets are from those 17 accounts.”
I’m recently discovering this as well. In addition to a lot of crap I need to cull out, I follow a range of academics (mostly philosophy, political science, and social theory types) in order to see what online zoom-type presentations I might be able to watch or participate in periodically, or to get a head’s up on pieces I might want to read (like Bjarne’s amazing work, notwithstanding the fact that you have consistently posted his work in nearest real time to his publications of them). More and more I have to hunt and peck to see their postings now, loading their names into the search bar, and I’m seeing I’m missing more than gaining as a result. The crap that is often front loaded is indeed mostly the rage capital shit I need to far more aggressively scrub out, if not get rid of this thing altogether.
Bjarne offers to send one e-mails when he releases a new piece. I generally get to see them a few hours ahead of H posting them.
I live in France, and stopped paying attention to U.S. news of any sort a while go. Some stuff still filters through—like this story—but by and large I am oblivious to it all. I have a recurring monthly donation to Stacey Abrams, and I’ll be phone banking and such as the next election season heats up. But I have to say that these sorts of stories are neither productive nor conducive to mental health.
Rick, thanks for supporting Abrams. She deserves all of our thanks and support
At least in the case of Facebook, and probably also for Twitter, social dysfunction is profitable. Bringing more discontent to real life drives more people to look for safety in numbers on social media platforms. FB seems to be banking on the same escapist dynamic with their bet on Meta.
I’m still not convinced that rage is good for ad viewing/purchase decisions – unless you’re selling guns, gold or Armageddon toolkits.
And I cannot see an article about the nefariousness of FB and TWTR without reminding everyone that the research on this is at best mixed while the impact of Fox News is well studied, documented and LARGE…
The same people bitching about the “war on Christmas” ostensibly ruined the holiday by using a profane slur as a “joke”. Of course it wasn’t a joke, it never is when they make this claim. Christmas also isn’t about the birth of their lord and savior either but a way to win your friends and neighbors by having the best decorations and the most and coolest presents. So a fake holiday was ruined by a fake joke by people who are so narcissistic that they think only they matter. I saw the headline about 3 times in my news feed but refused to click any of the links. I was annoyed same as you H. Merry Christmas
I do not have accounts at any of the common social media “services” sites, never have, never will. Too much stupidity encroaches on my life as it is. No need to invite in any more than necessary. I will say, I have found that the private message service available on LinkedIn has allowed me to find some old friends I haven’t touched base with in years. I don’t really care much about the networking — I’m 77 and not really looking for a job. One of my former students found me recently and had heard I lost my wife to Alzheimer’s a couple years ago. He wrote to tell me his wife had just been diagnosed and he wondered if I had any thoughts that might help get him through his trial. We are now exchanging a few messages, none for public consumption, however. I have never understood how people who post on facebook, for example, post secrets and then complain because people they don’t know read what they post and then push back on the poster, who complains about their privacy being invaded. More stupidity. And do people really want to look at what you are eating? Seriously?