Social Media as a Funhouse Mirror Factory - But are we having any fun?
Plus FIVE THINGS that have changed dramatically, TRUpreneur’s first article on The Entrepreneur’s Adventure and FTW on Influencers
Still wrangling Substack into shape. Not the easiest platform to figure out so I’m still making mistakes. My apologies for these. Someone asked about comments or liking: there is a section found at the bottom of every email. Also my editor keeps overcommitting me to too much writing to meet my Monday deadline. That will change by next week when I put him into his proper place. Thanks.
The Headliner: New Research about Social Media sounds scary
But is it all just illusions created by a Funhouse Mirror
I have a friend who, during the pandemic, said words to the effect: “I always knew I was sharing this world with bozos, I just didn’t know how many of them there were.” She was prompted to make this observation after pending more time on social media while being shut in and having less real life things to do. When I was in my 20s we used to shake our heads sadly at the people buying National Enquirer and its competitors in the grocery stores. Now evidently everyone is signing up for a subscription.
It could however just be an illusion caused by pernicious effects of these platforms.
Before I get to this intriguing new research from Jay van Bavel and co-authors, consider this study from Pew Research, also from last week, as a scary part of social platforms related to acceptance: “Adults under 30 nearly as likely to trust information from social media as from national outlets”. Thirty to forty-nine year olds are not that far behind. I know that there are countless problems with legacy media but this trend is worrisome to me, especially when you take Jay and Co.’s new work into account.
This study is really a set of insightful arguments based on their integration and synthesis of recent research about social media across a number of knowledge domains (found here or here). Lots of psychological insights about norms, group identities and the like.
Here’s my take on it, and where the fun begins. Relatively few people (like really few) post extreme content but they do at exceedingly high volumes. They don’t really have lives as the rest of us understand life to be. But if they are part of one of your core identifying groups (these seem to have become a primary organizing feature of this century) you may be inclined to support it in whatever way the platforms of your choice let you. This is especially true if it is negative or generates anger. Each platform’s algorithms (they are not singular, as in the monolithic The Algorithm, as intoned by the late James Earl Jone’s basso profundo) exploits this human tendency as they want to encourage mindless addiction - sorry I meant compelling engagement - and before long this extreme viewpoint is everywhere and becomes embodied in each groups’s norms. Got it?
The authors came up with the powerful metaphor of a Funhouse Mirror. So when people look into the mirror they do not see reality as it is, but “a distortion caused by a small but vocal minority of extreme outliers”. The features of the software platforms mean that moderate and insightful views, beliefs and norms of the majority are lost in the digital sands.
The statistics from this paper are mindblowing:
3% of users are toxic but they produce 33% of all content
74% of online conflicts are found in only 1% of communities
5 billion social media users worldwide, averaging 2.5 hours per day
This latter point is why I have less sympathy for younger people complaining that there aren’t enough hours a day to get things done anymore. Scrolling through an estimated 300 feet of newsfeed each day can be tiring and distracting. For those into self improvement maybe cut back to just 150 feet.
The study outlines a number of different scenarios of how each platform tends to end up with its own extreme sets of norms, from Instagram’s focus on attractiveness, consumer reviews being “the best or the worst”, and LinkedIn focusing on success and accomplishments, leaving ordinary people, with ordinary stories and ordinary perspectives behind. The latter is one of the reasons that I’m launching a newsletter called Trupreneur to deal with the real issues that entrepreneurs will face, not the “just follow my model its so easy” that is found in most places. The first article is found below.
There is a humorous side to this effect on social media. I mentioned previously that I’m booking a long tip to celebrate turning 70. I read a few comments on sites like Booking.com, Expedia and VRBO that had me laughing with their unintentional self parody (and of course with a very low rating of the accommodation):
‘Very hard to get there by car and the taxi cost us a fortune’. Site was billed as a remote wilderness farm.
‘The road was very difficult to drive on with all the curves’. Site’s claim to fame was a breathtaking view from the top of a mountain.
‘There was no air conditioning’. Clearly stated in the information that there were ceiling fans only. ‘There was no large supermarket’. The provider plainly stated bring your food in as there are no commercial stores nearby.
More troubling though are the negative effects. I just read a report this morning from the United States written by two long-term political analyst proposing the same thesis as why Republicans and the Democrats are not appealing to average voters creating a 50/50 persistent divide. Each party is being dominated by the voices of their extreme stans drowning out the majority moderate - in their terminology normies - viewpoints.
But the cynic in me sees something more, something deeper. For years there have been many attempts at putting forward positive information and deep analyses that show just how good things real-ly are. But voices like Stephen Pinker’s and news agencies like Good News Network and Positive News network are usually declaimed as Cinderellas and their under-reported stories that show where real progress is made go unread. Reality, it turns out, is pretty good. But that is not the narrative we collectively choose. I believe the arguments made by Jay van Bavel and co-authors underestimate the hand human nature has in all of this because - like a horrific accident scene we pass on the highway - we actually want to stare into the funhouse mirror.
Secondi: FIVE THINGS that have changed dramatically
Analysts and commentators view of Netflix. The content spend will kill them, cashflow will never be sustainable, no profits in sight, big competitors like Amazon, Disney and Apple will eat them for breakfast. Nope, the recent quarterly report shows that Netflix won the streaming wars.
Our aversion to nuclear energy as part of our future. Nuclear has been on a long term decline that started with our over-reaction to Three Mile Island and picked up speed with Chernobyl. But Three Mile Island is back from the dumpster, Bill Gates got his micro nuclear plant approached, and other high tech companies are jumping on completely on board.
Our unabashed keenness for WFH / remote work. The pandemic accelerated a trend away from in-office and on-site, in favour of Working From Home and being a digital nomad. Its virtues were extolled endlessly (maybe an extremism from a funhouse mirror?) but there were some doubts about it being perfect for everything. AWS is the latest in wanting people back in the office full-time, entrepreneurs who signed up for remote work long ago see significant downsides, and a firm actually hired a remote North Korean worker who hacked them. You make this up.
Our infatuation with testing our own DNA. A few years ago everyone we knew - from the young to the elderly - went mad for testing their own DNA. I thought they were all crazy. Turns out I was right. Evidently only so many people want to know the percentage Denisovan or Neanderthal they reputedly are .Of course many also had their DNA used to convict relatives. Turns out there was no business model for this Ancestry stopped tests a while ago and 23AndMe are changing their direction with testing.
The great market promise for augmented / virtual reality. It seems like only yesterday that kids were merrily running into traffic chasing synthesized cartoon characters on their smart phone and the Metaverse was coming at us full force. The promise included real use cases, in digital parlance, as well. Well I hate to tell you but that the promise is tarnished. Microsoft quietly ended their Hololens project which was supposed to have lots of business applications and Business Insider (behind paywall) reports on how few apps Apple’s Vision Pro has. Pokemon Go is still flying high though.
And if you’re enjoying Monday Morning Tonic, consider forwarding it to someone else you think might like it.
TRUpreneur Launches
Providing guidance for The Entrepreneurs’s Adventure
I got waylaid a few years back as my musculoskeletal infrastructure decided to let me down. I had planned an active membership group to help budding and struggling entrepreneurs start, stabilize and succeed. I’m mostly back up now with the same objective just different means: a Substack newsletter.
I believe that there is a market need for an honest, unvarnished approach to providing helpful and realist resources for entrepreneurs, particularly those with consulting and creative services endeavours. All I see available is overhyped and simplistic information (like final section below) often incomplete or focusing just on one small aspect of an entrepreneur’s job. That is why I’m calling it TRUpreneur. Here is the first article. Click for more if you are interested.
It’s strange looking back now to when it really hit me that my life had permanently changed and that I - and my partners - were actually starting our business and becoming full fledged entrepreneurs. It wasn’t when we pre-sold our first few clients that allowed us to start and not worry about revenues. It wasn’t after we had deep discussions with other people who would join us in the initial few months, ensuring that we had people to do the work. It wasn’t when we put together financial progressions and plans that showed that we were viable for at least 6 months.
Click here to read the rest of all about how I got going as an entrepreneur, how much I value it’s difference, and why I think it is an adventure
FTW: Influencer
The George Orwell Say What You Mean Department
This week I asking you to Forget This Cultural Phenomenon / Movement, not a word. Now influencer sounds all folksy and helpful, like depression era How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. The word is absolutely baked in to our semantical infrastructure now where people don’t even realize that they’re over using a word, that’s anathema to me.
Let’s start with a definition.
“A social media influencer, usually referred to as simply an influencer, can be any individual with a significant follower count on a platform. They typically have established credibility within a certain niche and use that authority to to connect with people via social media“
Fair enough.
It started benignly with celebrity following. “Wow direct access to my favourite FILL IN THE BLANKS person”. Actual direct interactions ensued. Then the celebrities figured out that they could harness this wellspring of influence. You might have seen the news snippet outlining how Taylor Swift is now a billionaire but more legitimately - “based solely on songwriting and performing," than Rhianna who made much of her fortune on lingerie and makeup.
At the same time another completely different type of influencer arose as people who started to dominate one platform. They learn it early and then create outsized followings, some of pure entertainment (MrBeast on Youtube) new music star hopefuls on TikTok, and and young women on Instagram about fashion and, like Rhianna, makeup.
Since then, the number and size of impact of these people has grown immensely. I couldn’t lay my hands on it to link to but I recently read some survey results that said that it is suddenly becoming a career option A large percentage - like 70% - of teenagers want to become influencers.
Interestingly, the pictures above constitutes what AI visual tools think that social influencers look like. The image on the right is after much to-ing and fro-ing but hard to not have them all really good looking. Evidently females must be young and have swooshy hair. Couldn’t get it to create an older female influencer. Remember that AI just reflects everything it’s been fed (ingested is the word) from our world.
I have tried to follow some of these influencers hoping to learn something whether computer and electronic nerds on Youtube, graphics designers on Pinterest, or people wanting to help you start a business on Instagram, Quora and LinkedIn. Depending on the particular platform these people bombard with posts, talk or write at great length, say extreme things, say things repetitively, and sound like a cross between 1970s K-Tel announceras and blatant exhibitionists. This is all to game the system, which is how they got to the top of their particular platform’s heap.
But I didn’t learn much.
To me much of this is all a con. But then I’m a battle worn cynic and skeptic who can see BS a mile away. Most people seem to love being conned and it is an obvious effective and rewarding strategy. I can’t help but think of my grandfather, borne in 1878, who had the barest of high school education. He lived through the snake oil boom of the late 1800s. I can hear his voice, after I had shown him a few Youtubers and TikTokers do their thing while he sat contentedly smoking his beloved cigars on the couch. He would turn to me and say, “What bunk! They are just shameless in their manipulative selling while pretending to be honest. ” But Grand-dad I would protest people buy stuff from them and willingly calling them influencers as a positive thing. He’d take another puff and say, “They are laughing their way all the way to the bank.”