Herding Sheep

Power and Reality

Content creators are presently some of the biggest power brokers on Earth. Millions of people who intentionally use social media to, in turn, influence many hundreds of millions more to fine tune their daily decision making. Everyday decisions that range anywhere from ‘what to find funny’ to ‘who should run the country’. That’s power.

I don’t care who you are, at least one video, podcast, or article online has compelled you to think and behave differently. In someone’s eyes you’ve been an impressionable sheep. At some point during your relationship to social media it will begin to shape your reality, but that isn’t inherently problematic if you’re able to take control.

The Problem

There’s immense gratification in finding people who enjoy the same things each of us do. Never quite far from the clutches of the almighty algorithms, we all play a vital part in also building someone else’s reality.

The moment you engage these platforms you become both an observer and the observed. Think about any of the times where Kanye, the master provocateur himself, broke the internet with some unbelievably audacious bullshit. A lot of us had a front row seat to his antics in real time, and thus became a circus rife with mixed perspectives.

Gauging the opinions of random people is half the spectacle, so our opinions actually matter. Collective views of someone’s content, and the ideas their content espouses, form a constant feedback loop. We tacitly deem content creators to be de facto leaders in their niche because of their platform and personal brand. But that view isn’t always justified, nor does it isolate them from the court of public opinion. All that is to say this:

Social media is for cultivating audiences and not communities. That is the problem.

Despite social platforms making it easier to connect, it’s incredibly easy to get lost in the noise. If we’re being real a lot of us can acknowledge that we may think about someone a lot less because of this. Even if they’re a good friend you haven’t seen in a while, they practically become invisible if they aren’t maintaining their presence online. Not to mention our dwindling ability to concentrate after hours of keeping our eyes glued to these sleek metal slabs mindlessly sifting through digital cesspools of opinions, marketing gimmicks, and mouth watering eye candy every. single. day.

It may be time to admit social media can’t help us the way we need it to. It’s no wonder why we find ourselves plagued with anxiety, depression, and lower impulse control — prolonged depersonalization has us wayyy out of our element!

Between attention from friends, peripheral followers, and the data hoarding corporations who run these platforms, there’s a constant reminder to prudently discern what I put out into the world, what I consume online, and how to develop a persona curating both. Data and information are the only real currencies worth dealing in, and it’s much simpler to impose our ideas on society via these mediums than anything that came before.

And that’s the glaring irony: this should also be a positive! We’ve accepted (and entrenched) a social order that demands attention for relevance, yet the very essence of community is practically nonexistent. In its current form, the internet is platform-based and broadly facilitates collaboration and info retrieval. Communities inherently need that capability, but they also require genuine empathy, active support, and incentives to build stronger interpersonal understanding. You know, shit the average person needs.

So, What Now?

Personally I periodically delete all my social media apps for anywhere from a week to several months. (Lately I’m overdue). I find it easier to make a clean break from these platforms as opposed to consistently moderating my time on them. Not ideal, but helpful nonetheless.

I do not see social media as the thing that will bring people together, but it is here to stay. So the onus is on us to maintain the integrity of our need for genuine connection. Cleaning up our cyber social spaces would help facilitate better communication on and offline. It’s probably impossible to completely moderate content on social platforms without adopting authoritarian methods, but we should still seriously consider alternatives.

With about 70 percent of human communication being nonverbal it’s clear we are predisposed to a bias for more personable interactions with others. The most captivating content finds ways to transcend the divide between the internet and reality both in its focus and presentation. I believe Twitch streamers and top podcasters have been popular because their content is so personalized. You could be watching your favorite streamer and share their reactions in real time, or you could feel like you’re bonding 1 on 1 with your favorite podcaster over a niche interest.

Regardless of what media is prominent in the future I think a solid starting point would be fixing algorithms. They have only gotten sharper and more invasive in the ever intensifying war for our attention. Limiting the reach of misinformation, and getting people out of their own echo chambers, would offer new opportunities to productively communicate and simultaneously preserve our mental health.