Mass Crowds
A Rhapsody on social media inspired by someone who definitely never used Twitter
I have a strained relationship with social media. It would be an oversimplification to say I hate it because there are aspects I find useful. But it would be a lie to say I like it. I work in digital media so I have to engage with it. People, at times, get carried away blaming all societal ills on social media. It’s not as if the world was a utopia before Twitter and Facebook. There are absolutely some very good things social media has produced. For example, there’s no question it’s helped activists with organizing efforts. It’s helped individuals who otherwise would have no voice to gain a platform. It’s provided community for some people who otherwise would feel even more alone. And there’s just flat out a lot of funny people out there saying weird stuff. It also helps to remember birthdays. That’s a big one.
Social media, like all technologies, are intrinsically neutral. Their utility or lack thereof is derived from how they are used. However, that doesn’t mean that an individual is completely autonomous when using social media because behavioral incentives are built into the platforms and these incentives are constructed to appeal to and play off our psychological impulses. It feels good, I don’t care who you are, when people like and share your content. Equally, it feels bad when people are in the comments ripping you to shreds and insulting either your appearance or your mind.
Beyond that, since most of the largest platforms serve content algorithmically, you encounter a somewhat manufactured reality. People famously say “Twitter is not real life.” This is true in some sense. You can easily come away believing things to be true that are objectively false, and you can also gain the impression certain sentiments are far more widely held than they actually are. But in another sense, Twitter is literally real life — when you interact with it, you are not dreaming. You are awake. Your feed is real, even if all the accounts you are seeing are not. And the content you encounter will in some way, however small, affect you and then you in turn will affect the world.
Because I work in political news, I suppose my feeds are over indexed for pain and misery. Then there’s also the fighting and the name calling, the dunking on people. I sometimes think the ability to quote a thing and make a snide remark is where Twitter really went off the rails. And I in no way mean to excuse myself from this. I’ve certainly shouted into the void thinking, how clever is this!
Social platforms largely rewards extrinsic values such as appearance and fame at the expense of intrinsic values such as community and personal growth. The fame vs community is a tricky one, because I think it can be easy to conflate the two. Having a lot of followers doesn’t necessarily mean you have many close, meaningful relationships. Having a post go viral doesn’t even necessarily mean you said anything wise or important, but it’s easy to see the outcome and think otherwise. They also reward you for spending a lot of time there, feeding the algorithm, figuring out what types of posts work and which don’t.
I said social media isn’t all bad and then several paragraphs haranguing it. So here’s the main thing I like: Curated lists. I have an account called “Sunday” that is just people talking about the NFL. Now this list still has the power to hurt me, but that is because I’m a Browns fan. I have another list called Rhapsody that is mostly just anthropologists, philosophers, scientists and accounts like that.
In that vein, I’ve been brushing up on my Seneca lately and while reading one of his letters, this passage struck me:
“You ask me to say what you should consider particularly important to avoid. My answer is this; A mass crowd. It is something to which you cannot entrust yourself yet without risk. I at any rate am ready to confess my frailty in this respect, I never come back home with quite the same moral character I went out with something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace, some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.
Seneca, a Stoic philosopher who lived in the first century AD, didn’t have a Twitter account. He was writing about going to things like gladiatorial combats, which he considered not just a waste of time but harmful because it induces you to root for violence. He probably wouldn’t like many of the things I like, like football. And I think he has a point, we all know people who can’t really draw the line between, “sports hate” for lack of a better word, and actual hate — people who forget it’s a game and carry true animosity. Again, I’m sad to admit I’ve been there.
But that’s not the analogy I’m making here. I feel unsettled when I spend too much time on social media — which is a mass crowd many of us opt into and spend hours in every day — and it’s not just because of the news or the events in the world. It’s the mass amount of opinions and anger and hostility that come with the news.
“A companion with a malicious nature tends to rub off some of his rust even on someone of an innocent and open-hearted nature — what then do you imagine the effect on a person’s character when the assault comes from the world at large?” Seneca writes.
Speaking only of myself, I can feel this in myself, the desire to launch into a tirade that will help nobody but for a fleeting moment, make me feel as if I contributed something meaningful, a condemnation or a statement of where I stand.
I want to be very clear here that I don't think the problem is an awareness of the world’s faults and issues. It’s that experiencing them through a mob of people so that every thought and idea is simultaneously being criticized and ripped apart is not helpful. I don’t think, on average, we’re built for that sort of information overload. Some people certainly seem built for it, and even thrive in it. I am not one of those people.
Setting aside social media, I’m introverted anyway. I like retreating into my books and my movies and small groups of close friends. But that doesn’t mean a passive resignation from the world. It’s not ignoring the suffering that exists. I try to help where I can in the way I can. It’s why I work in journalism, albeit largely behind the scenes. That’s why I write Rhapsody. I spend most of my time thinking about how to deliver information that I think people need to people who need it. But I think the way in which many social platforms are designed and what they incentivize merely provide the illusion they are aiding that effort.
Elsewhere Seneca writes that if he were offered wisdom on the sole condition that he couldn't share it with anyone else, he would refuse it. So while he advises avoiding mass crowds, he is still a cosmopolitan at heart, his objective is the betterment of humanity. I agree with him, I think, that it can be accomplished more in smaller groups than in massive ones. At the very least, I think it’s what I am best suited for.
I still remember the very first time I encountered Facebook. I was at a friend’s house and his brother, who was two years older than me and about to go to college, was looking at Facebook. You still needed to have a college email address then, so I didn’t have Facebook yet. A lot has been said about how Facebook was about “exclusivity” then, which was true. But I don’t think that’s the only reason it worked well. It was also just a smaller scale, where people were talking to their friends and didn’t feel as if anything they said was going to get ripped apart. The incentives, the purpose was different. A lot has changed in 20 years.