I suspect the lack of comments so far is a simple one - how the Frack am I meant to make a meaningful connection/remark after that heartfelt and soul rendering observation. Also "because it is beset on all sides by contradiction, and every time it seems you've made some definitive conclusion, that determination reveals its negating argument". That, if I may use the vernacular, was fraking amazing writing.
My latest theory is it all comes down to advertising. Advertisers are not just indifferent to your welfare, their incentive is to reduce your welfare. They want you to buy more than you need. They have a good reason to manipulate and deceive you and really no reason not to. A grocer wants to sell you a good apple so you come back tomorrow; you want the grocer to survive so you have somewhere close to buy fruit. And the same is true for laptop manufacturers, hairdressers, etc. The advertiser doesn't give a shit.
This matters because everything built on (persuasive) advertising sucks - commercial TV, Google, social media. This is inevitable because the incentives are all out of whack. Would our lives be any worse if advertising were banned?
Part of the story of capitalism has been inventing problems in order to sell solutions. That's been the story forever. What's changed with social media is that the people are now part of a robot-powered optimization loop that is continuously experimenting (by showing people this or that in their "feeds") with ways to increase advertising (and therefore producer) revenue.
Interestingly, Sergey Brin and Larry Paige wrote an article back in the early days of Google explaining how bad advertising would be for search, because "the business model did not always correspond to providing quality search to the users" (https://blog.kagi.com/age-pagerank-over)
I do feel bad for the new generations who have never known a world without tech. Cell phones, social media etc. I remember as a kid having game nights , board games , card games. Getting together with neighbors for them also. Never knew what anyone’s politics were. No one cared and it was impolite to talk about. There’s always a price to progress. I like GPS and info immediately at your fingertips too. But those of us gen x types and older are very aware of the costs of those conveniences .
yeah. Trauma adds a sidenote to loneliness, but being alone is sometimes the only way to go. So I defiantly say I'm not lonely. I'm just alone. Beautifully written & expressed though. Thank you.
It occurs to me in reflecting upon my ‘yeah I’m alright’ response to the question, that I do have two regular weekly catch-ups with my closest friends, one I’ve known for 50yrs (a phone convo) and two I’ve known for about 16 (in person).
Like your commenter from the bush, I have to go to town 3 days a week, and I never feel so lonely as I do on a packed train. Yet when I come back to the bush, and am actually alone, I don’t feel lonely at all.
I was at a party for two of my closest friends about a year ago. About 80 people and I knew 4 of them. I sat in a corner, watching the party, for 6 hours and didn’t talk to anyone. I was profoundly, deeply, lonely and terribly sad. I know that this is part of my…what…personality? Shyness? Being introverted? Dunno. But it is a shockingly sad feeling.
My son berates me for not answering his calls to my 'smart phone'. The reason I give him and others is that I refuse to be on call to a portable thing with the expectation of immediate response. I am often berated for allowing the device to have a flat battery. In addition I see everywhere people staring at an inanimate object as though it has potential to add some meaning to their otherwise dull existence. We appear to be losing the ability to communicate verbally and are allowing our brains to atrophy. There is far too much bullshit on the Internet/X/Facebook and too many gullible souls who believe it.
I will answer calls on my phone if I recognise the number, otherwise never. I try not to pull it out to simply filling the time, however. Taking up late life meditation has helped with that. If I have to kill a minute or three, I just drop into a breathing exercise.
Very late to that particular party, but I recently discovered transcendental meditation. Having previously scoffed at what I considered to be a dope-smoking hippie wankfest, I admit to being completely wrong - meditation is incredibly focusing.
Also, I fucking hate telephones. Always have, always will.
I eventually joined Facebook about 18 months ago, mainly to keep informed about people I know and to keep in touch with them.
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Upon reflection I’ve come to the conclusion that Facebook is a swamp, and an abomination. A veritable hotchpotch. Or, as Justice Michael Lee might have it, an omnishambles.
It’s like a wonderful six course meal dumped in a heap on a table and mixed up beyond recognition - pork chops and broccoli oozing out of custard and crushed apple pie dripping with potato and leek soup. Yuk!
I imagine, like many social media endeavours, Facebook started out as a good idea. A money spinner with a genuine social usefulness.
For perhaps the first time in history, social media provided channels that enable ordinary people to communicate with ordinary people.
This would be well and good if it actually operated that way. Unfortunately it doesn’t.
Like most social media platforms it has been invaded by nut jobs, conspiracy theorists, ego trippers, fruit loops, assorted predators and crazies, including extremists from the left and right, liars and the purely simple minded – most of whom can’t spell and whose grammar is horrific.
One might have thought that Mark Zuckerberg would have reacted to this contamination and done something about it but like Elon Musk and Xwitter he realised that the smelly sludge from the bottom of human rubbish bins is enormously profitable.
It’s a big shame really because lots of nice people innocently post stuff on Facebook despite the stench.
It is, therefore, a platform where one has to tread carefully to avoid getting caught up in its undesirable aspects.
Which is okay for reasonably intelligent users but what about those who are more vulnerable and easily influenced and more apt to believe some of the more ludicrous stuff posted there?
Facebook has the potential to harm those sorts of people. You know, Republicans from Texas and Florida, One Nation supporters from Far North Queensland and teeny boppers with fuzz in their brains.
Once upon a time journalists and media professionals filtered out any obvious bullshit that was provided by their sources.
The absence of this kind of filtering on social media is both its strength and its weakness.
It is now left to the recipient of the material to try to filter it and, unfortunately, far too many people appear to lack the capacity to do this well.
Those spreading misinformation, disinformation and outright lies on social media rely upon the ignorance, naivety and credulity of their readership to swallow what they write.
Various state and non-state actors have developed sophisticated ways to do this and the evidence is that it can generate enough doubt and confusion to create problems for people trying to understand complex social, economic and political issues.
Traditional media has always had a body of laws within which it must operate and which provides recourse for individuals who feel they have been badly treated.
Radio and TV also experiences strong regulatory oversight of their output.
This system has yet to be applied to social media.
Although the government has regulated social media like Facebook in terms of advertising they seem afraid to introduce regulations covering content even though it is apparent that the preferred model of the various platforms of self-regulation does not work.
What scares the lawmakers of course is that if they come down too hard on the platforms they’ll just pack up their tents and leave. Imagine how that would play out for a government facing an election.
It’s a Catch-22 situation of the worst kind.
Without a strong regulatory system social media platforms like Facebook will continue to operate like cowboys. With a strong regulatory system they’ll simply give us the finger and exit stage left.
Meanwhile, poor old traditional media is now trying to keep up with social media by getting down into the sludge with them.
Your comments about Facebook starting as a good idea, while laudable, are sadly far from the mark. It is the successor to Mr Zuckerberg's earlier effort while a student at Harvard, "hot or not", where visitors were presented with two head-shots (scraped from the student identity database) and asked to rank which of them was "hotter". https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/4/hot-or-not-website-briefly-judges/
The term "social media" seriously misuses the term "media" in my opinion, encouraging everyone to categorize it alongside actual publishing activity. The social media websites are best understood as advertising robots, the extremely wealthy owners of which do everything in their power to maintain the illusion that they are not at all "publishers" in the traditional sense, with the social license and responsibilities that go along with that.
As I understand it advertising is disallowed on Facebook accessed on PCs and laptops and is only allowed on mobile phones in Australia. I could be wrong there, the whole thing seems to be in flux.
On that basis it seems, at face value, to be a useful venue for getting people into contact with each other and possibly countering feelings of isolation and loneliness.
For the reasons stated in my comment the invasion by nutters and nasties renders it a very dodgy and dangerous proposition for that purpose.
There's no evil genius at work here extracting our essential life essence. Rather, there's several trends at work, and some unhelpful global actors.
Social media platforms sell our attention (to advertisers) and are good at getting and holding our attention. When social media hoovers up much of our (finite) attention, we have less to spend on other things, like maintaining social connections.
Liberal democratic capitalism remains the worst option apart from all the others (oligarchy, communism, feudalism, absolutism, fascism, dictatorships of the self-appointed-worthies). The diminishing of so many key mitigants of capitalist excess contributes to loneliness. We need "socialist" elements like government involvement in health and education, highly progressive taxation, effective competition laws, consumer protection, labour rights, environmental protection, media diversity, etc.
Pre the smartphone era I blamed the rise of the Rom-Com for increased levels of loneliness. So many Richard Curtis scripts gave unrealistic expectations of finding that one "true love" against the odds.
Also: 2022 marked the point where there were more mobile phones than people in the world. 78% of those were smartphones. One third of the population still don't have one though, but since that's close to the fraction who are under 15, that could be a reason. Facebook claims about 43% of the smartphone owners have active accounts, so there are still quite a few who aren't in that ecosystem. Which is not to diminish the effect that it has on some of those who are.
I video-conference all the time, for work, but find that the only time that I do for social purposes is when someone in the family insist, say at Christmas lunch. I think that the reason for that isn't so much that I'm isolated as that I associate social gatherings so strongly with food. You can't cater a group chat the way you can a BBQ or dinner party. Jibes with your story, I think.
At my work in a national organisation, sometimes the people in other city offices decide to hold a morning or afternoon tea and they invite people along from outside their city. These are an epic fail. The people in the originating office are eating cakes and drinking coffees and talking among themselves and the others watch on like some sort of demented Big Brother (or little sisters). Just doesn't work.
I work for a grant giving charity in London and loneliness and isolation among older people is one of our main targets. An excellent article which highlights one of the western world's biggest problems. I will be making an effort to reach out to an old friend today.
I suspect the lack of comments so far is a simple one - how the Frack am I meant to make a meaningful connection/remark after that heartfelt and soul rendering observation. Also "because it is beset on all sides by contradiction, and every time it seems you've made some definitive conclusion, that determination reveals its negating argument". That, if I may use the vernacular, was fraking amazing writing.
This one hits like a warm embrace on a windswept street. Two thumbs up John. Two thumbs and a wry smile. Thank you👍👍
I found this very moving, John.
My latest theory is it all comes down to advertising. Advertisers are not just indifferent to your welfare, their incentive is to reduce your welfare. They want you to buy more than you need. They have a good reason to manipulate and deceive you and really no reason not to. A grocer wants to sell you a good apple so you come back tomorrow; you want the grocer to survive so you have somewhere close to buy fruit. And the same is true for laptop manufacturers, hairdressers, etc. The advertiser doesn't give a shit.
This matters because everything built on (persuasive) advertising sucks - commercial TV, Google, social media. This is inevitable because the incentives are all out of whack. Would our lives be any worse if advertising were banned?
Part of the story of capitalism has been inventing problems in order to sell solutions. That's been the story forever. What's changed with social media is that the people are now part of a robot-powered optimization loop that is continuously experimenting (by showing people this or that in their "feeds") with ways to increase advertising (and therefore producer) revenue.
Interestingly, Sergey Brin and Larry Paige wrote an article back in the early days of Google explaining how bad advertising would be for search, because "the business model did not always correspond to providing quality search to the users" (https://blog.kagi.com/age-pagerank-over)
I do feel bad for the new generations who have never known a world without tech. Cell phones, social media etc. I remember as a kid having game nights , board games , card games. Getting together with neighbors for them also. Never knew what anyone’s politics were. No one cared and it was impolite to talk about. There’s always a price to progress. I like GPS and info immediately at your fingertips too. But those of us gen x types and older are very aware of the costs of those conveniences .
yeah. Trauma adds a sidenote to loneliness, but being alone is sometimes the only way to go. So I defiantly say I'm not lonely. I'm just alone. Beautifully written & expressed though. Thank you.
Lovely ❤️
It occurs to me in reflecting upon my ‘yeah I’m alright’ response to the question, that I do have two regular weekly catch-ups with my closest friends, one I’ve known for 50yrs (a phone convo) and two I’ve known for about 16 (in person).
Pretty old-school for 2024
John, some of your best stuff.
Beautifully said JB, as always ♥️
Like your commenter from the bush, I have to go to town 3 days a week, and I never feel so lonely as I do on a packed train. Yet when I come back to the bush, and am actually alone, I don’t feel lonely at all.
I was at a party for two of my closest friends about a year ago. About 80 people and I knew 4 of them. I sat in a corner, watching the party, for 6 hours and didn’t talk to anyone. I was profoundly, deeply, lonely and terribly sad. I know that this is part of my…what…personality? Shyness? Being introverted? Dunno. But it is a shockingly sad feeling.
I feel the same. It's why I try to avoid parties and big groups. I'm happier alone, or in one to ones.
My son berates me for not answering his calls to my 'smart phone'. The reason I give him and others is that I refuse to be on call to a portable thing with the expectation of immediate response. I am often berated for allowing the device to have a flat battery. In addition I see everywhere people staring at an inanimate object as though it has potential to add some meaning to their otherwise dull existence. We appear to be losing the ability to communicate verbally and are allowing our brains to atrophy. There is far too much bullshit on the Internet/X/Facebook and too many gullible souls who believe it.
I will answer calls on my phone if I recognise the number, otherwise never. I try not to pull it out to simply filling the time, however. Taking up late life meditation has helped with that. If I have to kill a minute or three, I just drop into a breathing exercise.
Very late to that particular party, but I recently discovered transcendental meditation. Having previously scoffed at what I considered to be a dope-smoking hippie wankfest, I admit to being completely wrong - meditation is incredibly focusing.
Also, I fucking hate telephones. Always have, always will.
I eventually joined Facebook about 18 months ago, mainly to keep informed about people I know and to keep in touch with them.
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Upon reflection I’ve come to the conclusion that Facebook is a swamp, and an abomination. A veritable hotchpotch. Or, as Justice Michael Lee might have it, an omnishambles.
It’s like a wonderful six course meal dumped in a heap on a table and mixed up beyond recognition - pork chops and broccoli oozing out of custard and crushed apple pie dripping with potato and leek soup. Yuk!
I imagine, like many social media endeavours, Facebook started out as a good idea. A money spinner with a genuine social usefulness.
For perhaps the first time in history, social media provided channels that enable ordinary people to communicate with ordinary people.
This would be well and good if it actually operated that way. Unfortunately it doesn’t.
Like most social media platforms it has been invaded by nut jobs, conspiracy theorists, ego trippers, fruit loops, assorted predators and crazies, including extremists from the left and right, liars and the purely simple minded – most of whom can’t spell and whose grammar is horrific.
One might have thought that Mark Zuckerberg would have reacted to this contamination and done something about it but like Elon Musk and Xwitter he realised that the smelly sludge from the bottom of human rubbish bins is enormously profitable.
It’s a big shame really because lots of nice people innocently post stuff on Facebook despite the stench.
It is, therefore, a platform where one has to tread carefully to avoid getting caught up in its undesirable aspects.
Which is okay for reasonably intelligent users but what about those who are more vulnerable and easily influenced and more apt to believe some of the more ludicrous stuff posted there?
Facebook has the potential to harm those sorts of people. You know, Republicans from Texas and Florida, One Nation supporters from Far North Queensland and teeny boppers with fuzz in their brains.
Once upon a time journalists and media professionals filtered out any obvious bullshit that was provided by their sources.
The absence of this kind of filtering on social media is both its strength and its weakness.
It is now left to the recipient of the material to try to filter it and, unfortunately, far too many people appear to lack the capacity to do this well.
Those spreading misinformation, disinformation and outright lies on social media rely upon the ignorance, naivety and credulity of their readership to swallow what they write.
Various state and non-state actors have developed sophisticated ways to do this and the evidence is that it can generate enough doubt and confusion to create problems for people trying to understand complex social, economic and political issues.
Traditional media has always had a body of laws within which it must operate and which provides recourse for individuals who feel they have been badly treated.
Radio and TV also experiences strong regulatory oversight of their output.
This system has yet to be applied to social media.
Although the government has regulated social media like Facebook in terms of advertising they seem afraid to introduce regulations covering content even though it is apparent that the preferred model of the various platforms of self-regulation does not work.
What scares the lawmakers of course is that if they come down too hard on the platforms they’ll just pack up their tents and leave. Imagine how that would play out for a government facing an election.
It’s a Catch-22 situation of the worst kind.
Without a strong regulatory system social media platforms like Facebook will continue to operate like cowboys. With a strong regulatory system they’ll simply give us the finger and exit stage left.
Meanwhile, poor old traditional media is now trying to keep up with social media by getting down into the sludge with them.
That is a lose–lose situation for everyone.
Your comments about Facebook starting as a good idea, while laudable, are sadly far from the mark. It is the successor to Mr Zuckerberg's earlier effort while a student at Harvard, "hot or not", where visitors were presented with two head-shots (scraped from the student identity database) and asked to rank which of them was "hotter". https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/4/hot-or-not-website-briefly-judges/
The term "social media" seriously misuses the term "media" in my opinion, encouraging everyone to categorize it alongside actual publishing activity. The social media websites are best understood as advertising robots, the extremely wealthy owners of which do everything in their power to maintain the illusion that they are not at all "publishers" in the traditional sense, with the social license and responsibilities that go along with that.
As I understand it advertising is disallowed on Facebook accessed on PCs and laptops and is only allowed on mobile phones in Australia. I could be wrong there, the whole thing seems to be in flux.
On that basis it seems, at face value, to be a useful venue for getting people into contact with each other and possibly countering feelings of isolation and loneliness.
For the reasons stated in my comment the invasion by nutters and nasties renders it a very dodgy and dangerous proposition for that purpose.
Much of what you see on Facebook these days is “sponsored content” regardless how of what sort of device you’re on.
There's no evil genius at work here extracting our essential life essence. Rather, there's several trends at work, and some unhelpful global actors.
Social media platforms sell our attention (to advertisers) and are good at getting and holding our attention. When social media hoovers up much of our (finite) attention, we have less to spend on other things, like maintaining social connections.
Liberal democratic capitalism remains the worst option apart from all the others (oligarchy, communism, feudalism, absolutism, fascism, dictatorships of the self-appointed-worthies). The diminishing of so many key mitigants of capitalist excess contributes to loneliness. We need "socialist" elements like government involvement in health and education, highly progressive taxation, effective competition laws, consumer protection, labour rights, environmental protection, media diversity, etc.
Pre the smartphone era I blamed the rise of the Rom-Com for increased levels of loneliness. So many Richard Curtis scripts gave unrealistic expectations of finding that one "true love" against the odds.
Bravo. This makes sense.
A recent article on theintercept concludes that the Qanon grew out of the moral panic around sex trafficking that resulted in craigslist blocking personals and backpage being taken down: https://theintercept.com/2024/04/27/backpage-com-sex-trafficking-qanon-conspiracy-moral-panic
Also: 2022 marked the point where there were more mobile phones than people in the world. 78% of those were smartphones. One third of the population still don't have one though, but since that's close to the fraction who are under 15, that could be a reason. Facebook claims about 43% of the smartphone owners have active accounts, so there are still quite a few who aren't in that ecosystem. Which is not to diminish the effect that it has on some of those who are.
I video-conference all the time, for work, but find that the only time that I do for social purposes is when someone in the family insist, say at Christmas lunch. I think that the reason for that isn't so much that I'm isolated as that I associate social gatherings so strongly with food. You can't cater a group chat the way you can a BBQ or dinner party. Jibes with your story, I think.
At my work in a national organisation, sometimes the people in other city offices decide to hold a morning or afternoon tea and they invite people along from outside their city. These are an epic fail. The people in the originating office are eating cakes and drinking coffees and talking among themselves and the others watch on like some sort of demented Big Brother (or little sisters). Just doesn't work.
I work for a grant giving charity in London and loneliness and isolation among older people is one of our main targets. An excellent article which highlights one of the western world's biggest problems. I will be making an effort to reach out to an old friend today.
"We all live and breathe and die alone together."
Neil Murray (the whitefella from the Warumpi Band), Calm & Crystal Clear