Digital Opium of the People
Social media is nothing more than a million people having a conversation, likely with themselves, at the same time. It’s nearly schizophrenic the way that people simultaneously talk past one another. Imagine a room of you and your friends passing the time with one another and chatting. You say “I really like my shirt today” and your friend responds “wow the sky is really blue.” Another friend replies “Kamala Harris is a cop!” This is, in essence, what is happening on every Twitter timeline at this very moment. People who you may or may not actually know are having a discourse, a stream of consciousness with themselves and posting it for the world’s consumption. We can then choose to enter into the discussion with them, continue along to the next person on our timeline, or create our own dialogue for someone else to choose to engage with, or not.
Is this the point at which confidence is so affected by social media? We know that getting likes and retweets sends waves of dopamine throughout our brain. Is this the reason for the feel-goodness that we’re addicted to? Our thoughts have been validated and worthy of the attention of others. Two likes equals two people who enjoy my content and, by extension, maybe me. Five retweets: five people who think others need to see what I had to say. This may bring others to our front door willing to praise us and our thoughts, whether it’s our comedy, our opinions, or our accomplishments. We will be able to hoard our share of the internet social capital that now exists. A social capital that didn’t exist even twenty-five years ago.
Individual social capital is our worth and social standing in relation to others. It allows us to navigate certain social situations with relative ease, or with varying amounts of discomfort. Each of us has social capital to some degree and, to some extent, each of us fights for more or to retain the current amount that we have.
The only situation in which social capital seems to not be necessarily at the forefront are in close friendships and relationships. Here, one’s standing with others is not so much on the market. There is stability in removing a friendship from the “marketplace” of the thousands of interpersonal interactions and impersonal relationships we have on a daily basis. But how does one negotiate this transition from marketplace to a close relationship where social capital is no longer the bartering chip? How does one especially do this in a world of cancel culture that has proven pervasive in many supposed friendships? Cancel culture says “you have done something that I disapprove of and I have decided that you are not worthy of the energy to rebuild and maintain this bridge that connects us” and it allows one to drop out of a relationship like it was a business transaction. There is an underlying assumption that one should know that they are disposable and they should not say anything that could anger or upset a friend who is always capable of cancelling them. The same underlying assumption exists in “ghosting,” where a potential romantic partner determines that this business relationship is complete for one reason or another and drops out of the arrangement without warning. People become a product.
This cancel culture originated on the internet, specifically on Tumblr and Twitter, likely because there was an added air of anonymity because no one is expected to use their real name on these sites. Originally, cancel culture was directed towards celebrities who are, arguably, commodities. They brand themselves as products. The creation of hyper-celebrityism likely began with the rise of Paris Hilton and continued into internet “modernity” with the Kardashians who, instead of commodifying a talent or aspect of themselves, just commodified themselves to the fullest extent, sparking a rise in self-branding and self-promoting. Any time spent on Youtube will reveal this trend as thousands of people have begun getting paid simply for telling stories or living life on camera, but always in a way that presents their life as relatively perfect, because that is what people strive to be: perfect. People are consuming their goals and dreams. The bright side is the camera turns off, at least.
It gets even more extreme with the likes of Jovan Hill who streams nearly every vulnerable moment of his life, frequently crying on camera and divulging about his darkest thoughts. In one sense, it’s admirable because he is dispelling the notion that everyone has a good time all the time, which is often the facade of many on social media. On the other hand, one has to wonder if he has any close friends in real life (irl) that he can turn to in times of need. It appears that he just has his social media account that, in that moment, can provide a fraction of the attention he actually needs from a real person. But why doesn’t he have that real person?
Perhaps he can’t maintain non-virtual relationships. After all, they require real time and energy and even concentration. Before phones, if two friends were hanging out for an hour, that was an hour of time they spent together without distraction. If they wanted to communicate, they had to grab pen and paper and send a letter to one another. Even after the creation of phones but before text messaging, people had to get up to call one another and devote hours to that one single task. At their genesis, phones should have been defined as just a means to continuing a relationship and actually making it easier to develop close real relationships. The opposite occurred, however. Phones have become the relationship. We can text while also doing homework, watching television, and scrolling twitter, none of which we will devote full mental capacity to. Instead we split our brain and it’s power between separate tasks and each will take longer, eliminating the time we can spend indulging in soul-building work and hobbies with ourselves and others. Of course one has to mention the damaging effects of capitalism on individuals when mentioning this constant fracturing of time for the sake of productivity.
Perhaps the isolation that we feel as a result of social media is nothing more than a byproduct of our short attention span due to our increased use of technology coinciding with the intensifying of capitalism. We isolate ourselves and shout on Twitter or Facebook because it is easier than picking up the phone or walking to a friend’s house for a serious conversation with someone we feel may not even pay us the attention we need (remember the fear of cancel culture and the possibility that we may be deemed too much trouble for our worth). So we turn to social media because it allows us to experience the feeling we crave of interaction with others but without the lofty expectations of friendship. Other accounts can fall somewhere between strangers and close friends with no real label. Anything greater than a scroll is already surpassing expectations. A retweet or a like on a post about feelings you experience mean others must have, at some point, experienced something similar. This is the counseling where you’re told that you’re normal, that others have similar thoughts, and communities are built. So Twitter, is just a million people looking for that community to call their own, looking to fill a potentially self-induced void aided by the very technology that binds us. It’s a heroin dealer selling us the drugs that he told us we were nothing without, but now we are nothing without.
