On Poison - A Review

Happy birthday.

There’s something in the water, and it isn’t good. It’s not fluoride, or cholera, or whatever “natural flavor” they put in coconut lacroix that makes me want to throw up.

It’s hate. And yes, this is one of those blogs.

We often talk about the algorithms within social media in hushed irreverent tones. They are unexplainable, written in dense code their creator cannot even understand. A “black box.”

But we know what algorithms do. They take generalized inputs and create a specific output. Social media algorithms take your attention/time and they turn it into money. How? Ads, data harvesting, you name it. Every click and view is money for Google, Meta, X cetra. Even if you’re not clicking, just seeing an ad is enough for a lot of corporations, especially bigger ones, especially addictive ones.

The sugar industry has proven that just by seeing an ad for a soft drink can make you thirsty. The clothing industry has proven that seeing ads for people in winter coats can make you feel cold. So even if you never click an ad, just seeing one is often enough to drive a sale. To make their numbers go up.

And while we often forget, when a company’s number goes up, that means people’s numbers are going down. You are willingly giving $2.50 to Pepsi Co when you buy a Sierra Mist. And Pepsi spent probably .03 cents to put that ad in front of you.

It is no secret that sugary drinks are bad for you. They affect your bone density, they make your blood thicker, they erode your teeth. But they do taste good. And at the end of the day, you enjoy being on Facebook, so if they make some money off you, it’s no big deal.

You do enjoy being on Facebook right?

Consider the following experiment. Limit your social media use to two 15-minute periods per day. Maybe at 8am and 6pm. When you go online, write down how you feel before and after. Write down how hard it was to keep yourself to the 15-minute timer. Write down what you enjoyed while being on there.

I’ll do it right now. Here’s what I saw*:

-4 Posts from Facebook Groups I am not a part of

-2 Posts from Groups I am a part of

-6 “Memes”

-18 ads

-2 posts from friends (one of which was an AI generated Santa Photo)

Do I feel better after going on Facebook? Not really, I was feeling productive and now I am finding it hard to focus on writing.

Did I enjoy what I saw? I saw a drawing of the Scottish Highlands and a photo of an ostrich that were nice.

Did I stick to 15 minutes? I went 5 minutes over because I got a notification.

I am actually having a lot of trouble working on this blog now. I really figured I could muscle through it, but I feel like my entire day was derailed! And now I’m getting more notifications and am being pulled back to the website. I am silencing my phone and closing the app.

While we cannot fully know what the algorithm entails, we do know a couple of things. It promotes posts with high rates of “discussion,” AKA, posts with a lot of comments, likes, and shares. It demotes posts with external links (it does not want you leaving the website, and will actively do everything in its power to stop you from leaving). Facebook, Linkedin, Threads, and X all prefer posts with videos or photos. YouTube likes video thumbnails with text on them, titles that are around 8 words, and videos that are around 30 minutes to an hour (although this changes often).

All social media platforms have a shared target, and that’s high screentime. They want you on their site/app (preferably the app) and they want you on it consistently. Some platforms want you to come on for 30 or so minutes, log off, and then come back a few hours later, others want you to use them for hours on end or in the background.

This is ignoring the biggest elephant in the room, short form video. Tiktok, reels, YouTube shorts, and whatever else there is, all have two algorithms. They have the recommendation algorithm and the retention algorithm.

The recommendation algorithm is so good at predicting behavior, TikTok has been known to identify when people were pregnant before the individual even knew they were pregnant. The retention algorithm is the stuff they show you to keep you on the app, before the recommendation algorithm runs out.

If we were to concoct a metaphor, the recommendation algorithm is sugar and the retention algorithm is the “refreshing feeling” each sip of soda provides (if only for a brief moment).

Hours can disappear watching these videos. They find ways to entice you and then suck you in. A lot of the content uploaded to these sites is called “slop,” low effort and easy to produce. It is clips from movies with weird filters applied, it is react content where someone is in the corner of a video nodding along, it is gossip content, conspiracy theories, and people who just try to make you mad.

Cop body cam footage is slop. People pretending to have been kicked out of movie theaters/Disneyland/the mall is slop. People pretending to have caught their significant other cheating is slop (and also is a weird fetish, please don’t watch this stuff). Clips from reality shows like Shark Tank are slop. Product reviews are usually slop (and are advertisements, the people making those get a kickback). Recipe videos are usually slop. And I could probably go on for a few hours.

When you watch slop, you feel satisfied for a moment, but it isn’t real satisfaction. It is the gum that loses its flavor within 30 seconds. It is the soda that makes you more thirsty. It is seeing an old friend that used to be really funny but has become too online and immediately talks to you about why Elon Musk is actually “so cool.”

It is poison. Poison designed to keep you engaged and online. Poison to keep your attention locked. Poison designed to show you ads.

And I truly think it is degrading society.

Social media is proven to be highly addictive. It is proven to be terrible for your physical and mental health. It is proven to destroy your connection to the real world. And we all feed into it willingly.

There should be a perfect metaphor for that… Something really bad for you that tricks your brain into making it a habit… Oh yeah, it’s a drug.

On Poison Part 2 – A Review

The brain is a very complex device. In many ways it is also a black box. But there are certain parts of it that are very well defined. Take for example, reward pathways. We know that dopamine, serotonin, and other happy chemicals, all flood the brain when certain criteria is met. Such as learning something new, solving a puzzle, or eating nutrient dense foods.

I’m not the first person to point out that these reward pathways were defined millennia ago. Not even in humans, but in fish who crawled onto land. And if you’re not into evolution, then defined by a God who was making cavemen who didn’t have cellphones and coconut lacroix and reality television.

Since these pathways are basically algorithms, they are easily manipulated. Input to output. Sugar goes in, that’s a high calorie food, we need more of that, dopamine comes out. Corporations have been manipulating neural pathways for profit since the invention of money. Brothels, bakeries, cheese mongers, newspapers, insurance, and more, they all play on parts of your psychology you probably don’t’ even think about.

Fine I’ll explain the cheese monger. Cheese is a salty, high fat and high protein food. But it also reeks. Your brain uses memory to figure out what activity should be rewarded. Memory and smell are linked. Your brain knows that the stink of cheese = high fat and high protein. Slowly but surely, cheese mongers make stinkier and stinkier cheeses to make your brain think that this is even better food. Despite the fact that lactose tolerance isn’t universal, and it is expensive, and it is basically rotten food.

Anyway, back to poison.

Normally, when you’re marketing a product, the biggest problem is scope. We can only make so much cheese. We only have so many people who will buy cheese. The cheese will eventually go bad. But with the internet, you have access to nearly everyone. And time/attention costs next to nothing. In fact, people will sometimes PAY you to give you their attention. Linked In Premium, Twitter Blue, YouTube Premium. Even if you have these subscriptions, you still get ads. They’re just not as obvious.

And then there’s what we’re selling. Happiness is hard to sell online. We can do “feel good stories,” but no one clicks those. So, what does that leave… Disgust, envy, outrage.

People don’t want to pay for negative emotions. Right? So how do you dress it up and make it seem like something they would want to know? Something they would need to know.

The perfect blueprint for this is news. When there is no bad news, newspaper sales have always been at a low. The best years for the paper were wartime. The next best are during presidential races. There was also a huge spike during the trials of OJ Simpson. Everyone wanted to know what was going on.

Controversy sells especially well. Social media is like a newspaper where you can leave your opinion in the comments. And that was good for business.  

Sorry, not the newspaper business. The social media business. See, social media took the news and made it free. No papers or monthly cable subscriptions. Just the internet and your computer/phone. It’s funny, sharing and commenting on the news is what made twitter into Twitter, but the platform cannibalized itself and destroyed many legacy news companies.

Social media adopted the practices of newspapers. Controversial posts got the most attention and thus got the most business. So the algorithm promoted them. And that made people really mad.

There is something satisfying about an online argument. You can be in thousands of them in a month. They tend to be easy to win (because both sides tend to think they won). They generate a lot of good feelings because people will like your post. And also you got to say what you really felt, no worries about being “couth,” you can take your mask off and say what you would probably never say in real life.

And while many of us are probably thinking about the actual nazis we didn’t know were our neighbors, this is true for people on both sides. I grew up in a very republican town, and it felt so good to dunk on my classmates with liberal talking points I probably stole from someone else online. And then it was even nicer to see other people who had similar ideas back me up!

One argument I remember vividly was with this guy who I didn’t know. We got into a serious debate about Mitt Romney in a friend’s comment section. It ended bad too, I corrected his grammar a lot (which is funny seeing as I don’t really edit these blogs), and I called him a lot of names. The next day at school, I saw my friend and he told me that was his brother. Who was 30, had two kids, and owned the comic book shop down the street.  

As a teen, I thought that made the argument all the better. As an adult I think about how sad both of us were. Both of us wasting precious time doing something so meaningless. He was never going to change my mind. I was never going to change his. I couldn’t even vote.

The argument bled into my real life. I told people not to go to that store. My friend stopped talking to me altogether. A couple of other friends had messaged me after, calling me names. It all made me very anxious.

So, part of my community died because of something online. That’s fine. There’s other community. There are all those people who liked my messages. Right? People I didn’t know at all. People I have no actual connections with beyond the fact that I preferred Obama to Romney.

I couldn’t talk to Nick, Shane, Alison, or Sean anymore. Even though I had known some of them for nearly a decade at that point. Even though I sat at the same lunch table. The bridge was burned. And what was I going to do? Tell those other people that we should hang out because they liked my comment about Romney’s lack of a financial plan? Yeah, I don’t think so.

We all drank the poison.

I reread those messages in 2016, when Trump was elected. No one was nice in any of them. We were all trying to bully each other and score points. It helped me understand how we got to that point.

We have burned bridges. We have left people isolated and poisoned. All for no tangible benefit.

On Antidotes – A Review

I’ve been trying to go outside every day. It doesn’t always happen, but I have really been trying. Having the camera is usually a good conversation starter. Everyone has seen a bird they didn’t recognize, and something primal in them wants to know what it is.

When you share space with someone, real space, there is an infinite amount of things to connect with. Trees, grass, and the damn gravel pit. I talk to strangers a lot now. I have learned their names, I have gone to their events, we have discussed their children, my family, their job, my blog, their sorrows, my joys, and more. It feels nice. Usually, I don’t initiate these conversations. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I’m ignored or the conversation is awkward. And I’m working on being okay with that.  

Whenever any conversation veers toward controversy. I try to politely pump the breaks. A phrase I rely on a lot is “ah well, I don’t really know about all that, I try to stay in my lane.” I say that a lot to uber drivers. If the person insists on having the conversation then I try my best to bring it down to earth, this is a character flaw. I also make it a rule to avoid having a strong negative reaction to anything anyone says. I am also working on that.

I am trying to volunteer, but bureaucracy makes that hard. I do what I can to keep in contact with family and friends. I check in with people. I have reminders in my phone to do so. I reply to texts. I try to watch the videos people share (but I do think we should stop sharing so many damn videos). And when I think of someone I text or call them. And I’m not ashamed to admit that I tell people I love them.

These things actually make me feel better.

And that doesn’t mean I shy away from controversy. My mom and I disagree on some stuff, but we have the conversation. And while she might not believe this, I do listen to her and look into the things we disagree about. Hence the comment about fluoride earlier.

I also try to limit myself with things that don’t bring me any joy. Marie Kondo would be proud. It is hard to stop certain behaviors, like watching Shark Tank clips on YouTube, but if I fall into the trap, I do my best to rip myself out of it. But I will definitely admit it is a work in progress.

Maddie doesn’t really like talking about the news. I like to know what’s going on, but I think it is good that we don’t discuss it. Because when we do, it’s not like it gets us anywhere. It just is us being upset a second time at something we probably cannot control.

One of the big things I identified as a source of poison in my life is maintaining purpose. I try very hard to do things that have a purpose. And that purpose can be just “I like this movie so I’m going to watch it,” but it can’t be something like “this is really popular right now, so I have to watch it.” It also can’t be “I have nothing better to do.” There is unfortunately always something better to do.

That also doesn’t mean I have to stop drawing and learn French. But it does mean I have to stop watching videos of people arguing with cops and start writing, drawing, and taking pictures.

I try to fight misery when I can. And I want to do more. But there’s only so much someone can do and remain sane. So when I do feel miserable, I try to find out why and do what I can to fix it. I’m not a paragon of mental health, but I feel very good about how often I try to fight back against whatever demon is pulling me down.

I don’t know if everyone should be doing all this. I don’t know how to fix the world or fix anyone or help anything. All I do know is that I feel a whole lot better by trying to uplift people, including myself. That I can build bridges rather than burn them. And if someone is annoying or problematic, I know it isn’t my job to fix their behavior. But it isn’t my job to tear them down either.

For the people who need a little bit more. Here’s this. The world is bad right now. There are a lot of problems. But there have always been problems. And those problems were never solved overnight, or by one guy. It took a lot of people doing good and tackling problems as they rose up.

If you are worried about twitter, know that only 20% of Americans have a Twitter account and about 75% of those accounts are inactive. And while many policy makers use twitter as a sounding board, that number is decreasing rapidly.

More and more people are participating in town halls and in local government. We just saw a man with a real dream at making a difference become the mayor of New York. Whether you agree with his politics or not, he is not an evil despot.

The country is veering towards populism. This is an ideology meant to emphasize the common people. There is currently a war to define who the “common people” are. Some people are trying to make that box as small as possible. Many others are doing what they can to include everyone (except billionaires).

 The United States has seen several populist uprisings. The revolution was a populist uprising. As was the reformation. Both of these were bloody and came with the advent of new technologies and a hefty dose of war. But, in both instances, the side that prioritized human rights won.

Change is coming, and people are resisting that. But it doesn’t mean that we are going to slip back into the stone age. We have to have hope. We have to stick together. And we need to connect with people and build bridges. We need to fact check and find sources. We need to talk to people. We need to go outside.

And we need to stop drinking poison.

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*First thing I see is a photo of some local birds. Now I got an ad for a soap company. Here’s a Kurt Vonnegut quote. Here’s an ad for camera accessories. Also, there are two ads on the sidebar. A couple of pictures of nature stuff. An ad for backpacks. Video about a video game. Video about a disabled sheep. An ad for winter clothes. A fundraiser for a national park. Ad for winter clothes. Ad for camera. Ad for Facebook marketplace camera. Photo of an ostrich. Ad for purses. Ad for a life coach. Ad for a used suburban. Ad for Christmas decorations. Ad for a Facebook group. Ad for cameras. Ad for glasses cleaners. Ad for a book. Ad for coffee maker. Fundraiser. AI generated Santa photo. Ad for keychain. Drawing of Scottish Highlands. Ad. Ad. Ad.