I recently finished Filling the Void: Emotion, Capitalism & Social Media by Marcus Gilroy-Ware. The book plays to all my biases around social media, so it wasn’t a surprise I generally agreed with the author’s criticism of social media companies (primarily Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, although Google sneaks in there as well) but he surprised me on two counts. First, he managed to clearly demarcate where the anti-social media argument must stop with particular attention to technological determinism and the accompanying nuances. Secondly, I had ignored the word “capitalism” in the title because I thought it related primarily to the lack of regulation of social media companies and the dangers inherent in their for-profit status, but in fact his aim was indeed at the entire system, which I thought came across as passionate but much less factual than his otherwise well-researched argument.
Before I sum up my opinion, I’m going to copy a few of my favorite excerpts from the book and a brief reaction.
“The effects of social media use are pretty wide-ranging, and study after study shows that our satisfaction with life, body security, social relationships, and overall psychological wellbeing are negatively affected by the consumptive use of social media platforms, and improve quickly when we stop using them.” (pg. 7)
This is a thesis statement for why this whole topic deserves serious attention from all of us, and self-reflection on our own usage patterns.
“We are now, you often hear, an “information society,” largely thanks to the internet. Writing before “social media” existed, Todd Gitlin (2003) argued that terms such as “information society” or “information technology” were “instant propaganda” for a positivist view of what technology of the internet could bring its users. (pg. 14)
Labeling is so critical…Gilroy-Ware goes on to point out that the very term social media is inherently positive – “social media is not a neutral term and should not be above critique.” In fact,
“Those who scolded me for seeming as though I had overlooked the social benefits they had experienced on social media were missing the point. It is not that “social media” aren’t intensely social, so much as the fact that they neither have the exclusivity on sociality in the way that their name appears to suggest, nor function in an exclusively social role…” (pg. 20)
Just so. The knee-jerk response to social media critique seems frequently to be that the critic is anti-social, or somehow warped in their ability to use and appreciate the platform when compared to the average person on the platform.
“Banal, throwaway statements of the form “social media is changing us” typify a variety of lazy thinking known as technological determinism, typical of how technologies are often discussed and understood as their usage changes gear from early adopters to more mainstream usage. To see things according to a technologically deterministic outlook is to believe that technology can somehow induce or suppress our behavior, as though we have no control. Technological determinism is the belief that adding a “pride” flag emoji will make life easier for LGBTQ individuals, or that replacing the “gun” emoji with a fun-looking bright-green water pistol will somehow do anything to ameliorate gun violence….The technology invites you do certain things in ways that undoubtedly influential, but there is nothing in that technology that forces you to do them.” (pg. 23)
He gets a bit contemptuous towards the end but the examples are illustrative, and I think this is a critical point for those of us concerned about social media but can sometimes struggle to clearly articulate it. We are tempted to argue the determinist path, but this isn’t a pedantic difference – the truth is more subtle but more damning.
If your “friend” Johnny spends an excessive amount of time on Facebook, for example, is it because Johnny is at fault, or because Johnny’s brain, being that of a human being, will tend to seek certain things that Facebook convincingly promises and because the economic and social pressures under which Johnny and many people in Johnny’s society live are inclined to exacerbate compulsive behaviors such as the overuse of social media?” (pg. 24)
A nice reminder that deriding the social media user is silly as well as petty.
“The irrationality with which people are increasingly using social media suggests that they are driven by far deeper and more powerful psychological forces that social media platforms are able to unleash and harness.” (pg. 30)
As per above, social media does make you do anything but they happily piggyback on things that do in order to get you to spend time on their platform.
“When more conspicuously technological entities, such as robots or mechanical devices, are applied to basic acts of human life such as cooking, sex, health, or sociality, the most common response is suspicion, and rightly so as we resist the ongoing technologization of our intimate lives. We recognize that pleasure occurs least often in automatic, predetermined, or technologized area of our lives. Yet in social media we are happily welcoming massive technological edifices into our lives, our homes, our beds, our cars because they have found a way to be pleasurable without being too conspicuous.” (pg. 32)
I think this statement is less self-evident than the author seems to, but generally speaking I agree. Merely anecdotally, the millennial (*retch*) desire for “experiences” and items like bread-baking and artisanal everything aligns nicely with this statement. As technology homologizes parts of our life (the AirBnb aesthetic, centralization of taste-making websites, open-floor plan nonsense at work) the places that remain unique and pleasingly analogue receive more attention.
“Secondly, the procrastination study (Meier, Reinecke & Meltzer, 2016) argues that the primary draw of social media is not functional, but dysfunctional, and finds that Facebooks is ‘often selected impulsively and in an uncontrolled manner‘ (emphasis added).” (pg. 33)
This one hit home for me because of its implications around self-control, and the needs to exert it in order to not use these platforms. I do not use social media, but am all too aware of a shortlist of websites that I click to reflexively when a moment of dead space (more on that later) arises. If social media consumption is just an impulse, and we assume changing that drive to fill the void with novelty is impossible because it’s biological, where does that lead us? Thought-provoking question that I have too much of a headache to address right now. Also, he digs into that later.
“The underlying pattern that involves continuous navigation of novel media is a hallmark of a social media timeline, and it is this architecture that reveals social media use as a form of consumption.” (pg. 36)
Consumption, consumption, consumption. The infinite scroll and dynamic updating were truly the two volatiles that, when combined, makes social media such a potent consumption tool. There is an endless list of items to scroll through, and it’s possible – unlikely, but possible – that if you come back a few minutes later, the infinite scroll could offer up a new trove of temporary diversions! As he evocatively quotes earlier in the book, “Facebook is like a fridge: You know there is nothing new inside but you check it out every 10 minutes.”
“By allowing the user to encounter a stream of novel media stimuli from familiar sources, the timeline facilitates an easy way to feel something other than the emotions that the user would otherwise be experiencing at that moment in time. According to the research of psychologist Marvin Zuckerman (1980), this behavior is called “sensation seeking.” Human beings, psychologist J.H. Patton tells us, are “aggressive sensation seekers” (2014). This momentary distraction from the user’s emotional reality provides an excellent means of emotion regulation.” (pg. 38)
Escapism, my old friend! Gilroy-Ware doesn’t use that word, preferring to keep us grounded in the science (which I applaud him for) but the synonym lurks in the background. An interesting point left unexplored is what I think of as the depth of the escapism. If social media and its ilk offer brief dips of emotion regulation, would procrastinating by watching an entire TV show or reading a book offer a more complete regulatory experience? At what point does regulation become actively engaging with a new activity?
“…a further reminder that social media cannot be studied purely as a series of convenient practical tools, and that their appeal goes much deeper than that. The way social media distil psychological stimulation and emotional arousal into a consumable experience is what gives them their power.” (pg. 49)
Well summarized.
“This mistaken belief in in our rational, controlled relationship to the timeline – however subconscious – echoes the narratives that, as described in Chapter One, we have always been fed about the role of technology in our lives as something that works for us, and makes our “hunting” easier and more efficient, but this illusion is exactly what gives the timeline its power.” (pg. 60)
The rational pitch these companies deliver to us puts me in the mind of a technology executive testifying before Congress and simply explaining, with a broad shrug, how valuable the market finds their service and that they are simply trying to deliver the best product they can. It’s just east and efficient, it makes the real stuff we care about that much easier to access – but of course, it’s an illusion, and however much time we spend on the real stuff, we spend far more in the hunting, such that the hunting and the real stuff become conflated.
“The timeline is now an addictive hosepipe for the commodified culture and public sphere of its users, where people spend time at home, at work, or even in the middle of the night looking at whatever might be there, without the need to discriminate between these formerly separate areas of culture.” (pg. 63)
Great image.
“Whether we call it escape, distraction, hedonism, we are as motivated to do it as a means of avoidance as we are a means to pursue pleasure for its own sake.” (pg. 68)
A fair point against technological determinism, that the technology is enabling us to feed predilections (like procrastination) rather that creating them.
“One of the many myths about contemporary life on planet Earth that we are repeatedly asked to accept is that since life in the developing world is often a grim struggle to daily survival, life in the developed world must be pleasant, easy, and happy.” (pg. 75)
A nice note that the issues that underpin some of needs and emotions that drive social media.
“It is common for people to “humble brag” about how little sleep they set by on, and perhaps it is no surprise that British ex-prime minister Margaret Thatcher was said to get only four hours per night during her heyday of wrecking Britain.” (pg. 87)
Just a great slam.
“Despite the average woman having 164 friends on Facebook at the time of writing, and the average man having 144, most people would turn to no more than five individuals for support (Dunbar, 2016).” (pg. 93)
I love this statistic, I think it so clearly cuts through the image to the reality, and illustrates the gulf between the much-vaunted utility of social media with the comparatively precious deep personal relationships, which actually sustain us.
“A new car, new laptop, new dress may make us feel happy momentarily, but there is a big difference between hedonic happiness, associated with pleasure, and long-term fulfillment, known as eudaimonic happiness. … Even if the having of the hedonic pleasures afforded to some of us will not make us happy, the constant feeling of not having – of missing out – will also build anger, resentment, and a feeling of injustice, that all take their toll.” (pg. 95 & 96)
Again playing on the idea that the material abundance of the developed world does not mean that we cannot have issues.
“Mark Fisher makes a very important point about how his students behave, and introduces the concept of depressive hedonia. ‘Depression is usually characterized as a state of anhedonia,’ he writes, but depressive hedonia is constituted not by an inability to get pleasure, so much as by an inability to do anything else except pursue pleasure. There is a sense that “something is missing,” but no appreciation that this mysterious, missing enjoyment can only be accessed beyond the pleasure principle.” (pg. 104)
Useful terminology, and a phenomenon I think is hugely present.
“When taken together, the emotional distress of life under capitalism, the ersatz compensatory role of hedonic media consumption, and the consumption-centric orientation of social media reveal that the compulsive social media use is driven by the desire to soothe and to be distracted from the generalized emotional distress and malaise of everyday late-capitalist life. I refer to this behavior as filling the void.” (pg. 106)
Gilroy-Ware introduces the titular term, as last. I think it’s a bit melodramatic, but it does provide a clear image of what’s driving social media use, the needs they tap into, and why we should act to address this convergence.
“Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram may be free, but they are still corporations that make money from your using them. Whatever their original form, they have evolved to encircle and exploit the unhappiness of capitalist subjects while providing them with depressive hedonia in the form of the timeline. Emotions, once considered worthless, have now become a site at which value can be mercilessly extracted for commercial gain. As social media incorporate themselves ever deeper and into more intimate aspects of our lives, they become the fastest, cheapest way of filling the void, and it is their strategy to do exactly this to which the next chapter turns.” (pg. 108)
A great summary of the first half of the book, although the phrasing “capitalist subjects” might be a bit too feudal for me – I don’t think we are on the road to serfdom in this particular instance, but the forest around the roads we are traveling are certainly bandit-plagued.
“Google, for instance, long had the motto “Don’t be evil,” which is interesting not only because it acknowledges that the company is in a position to be “evil,” should it choose to be, but because when Google restructured in October 2015, the motto was dropped entirely. Perhaps it was planning to be a bit more “evil”?” (pg. 117)
I remember when they dropped the motto and had the same thought!
“…typical of the broader platform of social media corporations: You give us something, and we sell it for advertising purposes. Similarly, in January 2012 when Google revised the terms of use for all its products, it was in order to track users across all their devices and all products. In August 2016, Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp, trusted by users because of its end-to-end encryption, announced a change to its terms of use that allowed it to pass your phone number and user-profile data to its parent company Facebook, despite having promised never to do so, although a subtly placed opt-out switch was available.” (pg. 121)
Nice examples that point us back to the much-discussed user agreements we all agree to, and what’s in the fine print.
“In so far as the data and insights collected about us are sold, we are being sold, Balkan argues, and the only other time human beings have ever been sold in the past was called slavery, he has said, somewhat provocatively. “It’s about time to ask ourselves, however, what are we to call the business of selling everything about a person that makes them who they are apart from their body?”” (pg. 123)
As Gilroy-Ware says, provocative, but a fascinating way to frame the problem – after all, the companies are extracting value from people.
“Writing in 2008, when Facebook had just fifty-nine million users, author Tom Hodgkinson wrote of Facebook that “we are seeing the commodification of human relationships, the extraction of capitalistic value from friendships.” This is true, but commodification is old-hat entry-level capitalism compared to how social media work. What social media and especially Facebook, do is effectively parasitise various aspects of their users in order to become part of their lives: Their sense of technology as something that should work for them, their boredom, their depression, their existential angst, their desire to be appreciated, and their existing social relationships.” (pg. 137)
See the above!
“…follower counts, a numerical measure of seeming authority and importance.” (pg. 138)
A brief line but a great one, reminding me of friends off-handedly quoting me the number of likes or views that a post generated.
“We are measured, compared, blamed for our own problems, and pressured to compete according to terms on which we cannot “win,” all while our sense of a bright future and a clear path towards it is taken away by political, economic, and even ecological factors beyond our control. What results is a feeling of emptiness, uncertainty, stagnation, and fear that can only ever be blocked out or escaped from by participating in various forms of enjoyment and consumption, which the corporations of the developed world are only too happy to provide. Capitalism has become established as a culture to which there is no alternative, and from which there is no escape, except subjectively and momentarily via consumption. Social media, as businesses themselves that feed on our need to be distracted from this system, are the most faithful manifestation of this system of all.” (pg. 146)
Strident in tone, but a nice ‘top down’ summary of the author’s position in what is mostly a ‘bottom up’ book. I don’t agree with his rather absolutist view on capitalism.
“Such architectures allow the capture of data about exactly what is meaningful and important to each user, which both provides a saleable commodity in the form of marketing data, and allows social networks to make themselves increasingly indispensable in the day-to-day emotional life of the user and to pass on the commercial value of this proximity to their advertisers.” (pg. 147)
The sentiment is familiar by now, but this is well put.
“Shakespeare scholar Emma Smith has also argued that “we need to remember how to forget,” calling the insistence on remembering everything hyperthymesis. “Memory has become prosthetic – outsourced to the internet, to external hard drive or cloud storage system. What should we remember? What should be preserved? The paradox of the digital future is the burden of the past that we are constantly archiving,” she says (2016).” (pg. 156)
I love that a Shakespeare scholar makes an appearance here. I love her view and her dubbing a Greek name onto our digital problem. Also, the echoes of Ghost in the Shell some thirty years on…external memory devices, anyone?
“Networks such as Facebook and Twitter are designed and built by human beings, mostly American, mostly white, mostly male, and mostly in California, who have a culturally-specific subjective relation to the media and culture for which their technologies have become the conduit, and who will inevitably build their platforms according to this outlook. At all times we should be asking ourselves: Does the way I use this technology, the way it has been designed, and/or the way it is operated, change the way I think about the areas of life to which it relates? Is what I see subtly cheapened, overvalued, or distorted by the medium? When, as with social media, technology can come to relate to so many areas of our lives, these questions should be constant, and posed with every use.” (pg. 157)
A much more subjective argument, the narrow authorship of these technologies is a point well made, and recent articles on how smart speakers like Alexa respond best to California accents drive home the tiny ways this can make a difference, although I think this is a much more intractable issue than the larger topic of social media and data collection and use – how you regulate (and indeed, whether to regulation) hubs of innovation is a very different issue.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.” (pg. 169)
This is a quote from Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism, and while it didn’t strike me as a particularly successful quotation for the topic of social media, it seems immensely relevant for the current political environment, “fake news,” and political polarization.
That’s it! Not a short list. In the time it took for me to transcribe all these quotes, I’ve been able to reflect more on the book. I think Gilroy-Ware does an excellent job of assembling empirical evidence for a topic that too frequently runs on gut instinct and cognitive dissonance. He chisels away at the common arguments around technological determinism and, with his empirical data, digs into the users of the technology for the reasons behind the success of social media’s success. Towards the end of the book, as he begins to build towards a larger indictment of the capitalist system he begins to stretch, running more on rhetoric than the evidence that made him so successful initially. He becomes focused on his thesis sometimes to the point of shrugging off the responsibilities of social networks as platforms, focusing instead on the actions of the human users of the platform, but while his semantics mean the book goes out with something of a whimper, overall it is a very successful analysis of the ‘state of the art’ of social media criticism at the time of writing, and a welcome source to use in the years to come.
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smq.world 