Jargogled Impressions.

I have written earlier about the right and wrong use of social media (see Creating >> Consuming). The gist of it is that when used by a ‘social media voyeur’, it serves as a self-suppression mechanism wherein you are indulging in the lives and times and thoughts and caricatures of others in order to run away from that ‘which should be endured’. In this mode, you are spending inordinate time on social media perusing the walls, the bottomless feeds, the ephemeral stories, or even the long/short-form blogs without an intention to engage with it, to speak to it, to derive something from it. It’s as if social media becomes an extension of that idiot box in your living room with you passively consuming content while actively avoiding the things you need to take care of, or the presence you are required to create in the moment. When used as a self-extension mechanism though, social media can serve as a vital, if not critical, element of growth and meaning. I see lots of examples of thoughtful people using social media to extend their selves, their art, their opinions, their understanding of the world by actively engaging with what they see. These people seem to bury their ego, their envy, their self-aggrandizing ambition to participate in the online dialogue.

Now, there are many types of online handles that ‘participate’. In solidarity with the MB personality tests, let me try and create a taxonomy for these. I am sure social research scientists may have taxonomies of their own so this is merely a personal opinion.

• Trolls take pleasure in nefarious activities that serve to confuse, demean, anger, irritate people. They are often times anonymized, shit-post long-form, and consider their participation essential to keep conceit at bay.
• Naysayers actively engage in questioning ideas, posting ad hominem attacks, or relish the opportunity to start a bar fight, online.
• Skeptics regard themselves as the armchair critics with generalized opinions on everything
• Voyeurs are the most common, too lazy to comment/post, too introspective to not scroll.
• Optimists are the happy ones with something going for them outside the digital realm that makes them optimistic about the future. They are the sharers – those who save links across their various productivity frontiers, share it with their friends, etc. They do everything other than engage with the creators (see below) directly.
• Constructionists are active commenters, wannabe bloggers/influencers, and are thoughtful response makers that drive the IQ level in online conversations higher.
• Creators are the artists, the writers, the bloggers, the doers with pithy apocryphal stories to tell. They are there because they are doing things and in so doing find themselves in a position to broadcast their ideas that will be listened to because people are reaching out to them offline anyways.

Now the sequence here is evident, and an inherent opinion is obvious. I am also clearly drawing some inspiration from this influential article Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution with mops == optimists, fanatics == constructionists, sociopaths == voyeurs + skeptics + naysayers + trolls. The only difference being that in David Chapman’s version the sociopaths arrive to take advantage of the sub-culture. In our case, the social media is the terrarium and not a sub-culture so I took the liberty of expanding it to trolls -> voyeurs.

The creators follow none but find themselves being followed by the herd. They focus on content and mostly let their marketing teams handle the rest. Or they focus on content and locate/affix their sub-cultures in the vast online world, and focus on keeping their doors closed to new entrants (ala mops or sociopaths).

I would venture that voyeurism is worse than trolling for the person concerned. While trolling has negative energy, it is something instead of nothing. Trolling is, in many cases, a vent out of frustration perhaps or evil mischief, either of which is capable of sustaining creative energy and end up being more active than others.

Voyeurism is the kind that most people end up indulging in, especially those that harbor dreams of being heard, reclusive ambitions of being read, and burn embers of being part of a community. Social media is arguably most dangerous psychologically for this group because they are the unfortunate middle –constantly debating between a desire to move to the either extreme but stuck indefinitely in the messy middle.

Being a constructionist or a creator on social media requires an active participation in the world building each of us have to do on the social web. This first step of this world building is when we curate our feeds but the algorithms powering them and that scour for engagement make it all the more difficult to do so. What we see and interact with is today no longer our choice, unless we are mindful or are paying for it. This comes as a direct result of the commercial products that these ‘free’ social media platforms are.

But this ‘machine-guided’ curation is essentially homogenizing the enchanted garden that the internet used to be once. (I remember using StumbleUpon during my college days to stumble upon random sites on the internet and dig up something new). And countering this requires an active editing and constant curation of your feeds that can directly impact what you pay attention to.

We edit things when we understand what absolutely needs to stay. And with feeds that means we need to understand where our sympathies lie amongst the online personas listed above and judiciously filter out any that randomize it for us.

I think some people can do this naturally and without effort or conscious filtering. Their blinkers are so powerful that their attention does not waver and social media holds no power on them, regardless of what kind they are. These people either a) have a strong affinity for the local and the tangible and the objective and the economic, or b) are laser-focused on the sub-culture they are or want to be part of to drive forward the narrative they are in love with instead of an egotistical need to drive their own selves forward.