Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Tabnico into the Vault for an older episode of the show.
Speaker 1: This one originally aired on August six, nineteen, and it
Speaker 1: was called Social Media Is a Bummer. This is where
Speaker 1: we talked about Jarn Lanier's book, which was highly critical
Speaker 1: of social media. That's right, Ten arguments for deleting your
Speaker 1: social media accounts right now. I think it's an excellent
Speaker 1: food for thought as we continue through. Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Work. Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and we're back to a subject that may be familiar
Speaker 1: to you if you've been listening to the show for
Speaker 1: a bit. It's the next battle in the war against
Speaker 1: the Machines. That's right, you know, as we've already got
Speaker 1: us in the show, and I think it's obvious to
Speaker 1: most of our listeners the wonders of interconnectedness that the
Speaker 1: web have have have given us have also unleashed some
Speaker 1: less than satisfying realities. You know, we we worry about
Speaker 1: smartphone addiction and the degree to which the these devices
Speaker 1: and the many apps they have on them have been
Speaker 1: engineered to gain our attention. And then there's been growing
Speaker 1: attention given to the role social media has in in
Speaker 1: you know, playing into you know, corporate and state manipulation
Speaker 1: and endangering democracy, our personal freedom, and our happiness. We've
Speaker 1: we've recorded a few different notable episodes on these topics. Right, So,
Speaker 1: I know you and Christian a while back did an episode.
Speaker 1: Now this was years ago now, so that the research
Speaker 1: has come a long way since then, I think, but
Speaker 1: you did an episode on what the measurable psychological effects
Speaker 1: of social media were, Uh, and there's still I think
Speaker 1: this is still a developing field. Like I notice a
Speaker 1: lot of conflicting findings when I read upon this, Like
Speaker 1: is social media making us more lonely, more depressed? Whatever?
Speaker 1: It seems like the answer to that question is it's complicated, right,
Speaker 1: And and I think we'll discuss a little bit this
Speaker 1: later on too. That you know, it also depends on
Speaker 1: how you're using social media, what your role is, or
Speaker 1: using social media is part of your job, etcetera. Yeah, Uh,
Speaker 1: then we also you and I. Robert did a couple
Speaker 1: of episodes within the past couple of years called the
Speaker 1: Great Eyeball Wars that were primarily about the attention economy,
Speaker 1: about the fact that our our devices, and specifically especially
Speaker 1: like social media platforms on those devices, but other platforms
Speaker 1: also are because they make their money by getting you
Speaker 1: to use them and pay attention through you know, advertiser dollars.
Speaker 1: Like you are the product on these platforms. You're not
Speaker 1: the customer. Uh, and your attention is what is being
Speaker 1: sold to the advertisers. They're addicting us, and they're addicting
Speaker 1: us on purpose pretty much right. Like one of the
Speaker 1: I think the handiest metaphors is that a social media
Speaker 1: app on your smartphone turns your smartphone into a tiny machine. Yes,
Speaker 1: but it's but while a Vegas slot machine is is
Speaker 1: programmed to steal all of your money. Uh, this slot machine,
Speaker 1: this tiny slot machine, is programmed to steal all of
Speaker 1: your time, your time and your attention. Yeah, it wants
Speaker 1: you using it as much as possible. And the numbers
Speaker 1: on this are kind of freaky, Like when when you
Speaker 1: actually measure how much time people spend on their smartphones,
Speaker 1: especially looking at apps like Facebook or you know, other
Speaker 1: social media apps, they don't usually like what they find
Speaker 1: out when those numbers come in, right. And certainly we
Speaker 1: do have tools on a lot of our smartphones now
Speaker 1: to track our screen time and to keep tabs on
Speaker 1: and even set up little barriers to excessive use. But
Speaker 1: as far as I know, like most of that stuff
Speaker 1: is still very voluntary. And then we're not doing this
Speaker 1: the default settings on a phone. Um or certainly when
Speaker 1: you get a new phone, you didn't tend to bring
Speaker 1: over your your sort of legacy settings from the former phone.
Speaker 1: So um, you know, I think there's a there's a
Speaker 1: huge argument to be made that that these companies are
Speaker 1: not really you know, going in head first in the
Speaker 1: battle to reduce your screen time, right. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: also we did a more recent episode called The Doppelganger
Speaker 1: Network where we talked about the jumping off point for
Speaker 1: that was an article that we read by Robert Zapolski,
Speaker 1: the neuro endo chronologist I think at Stanford and he
Speaker 1: uh then he made a comparison between the effects of
Speaker 1: social media use and and digital media more generally, and uh,
Speaker 1: the psychological conditions like cap craw delusion that caused this
Speaker 1: rift between recognition and familiarity in the brain. So it
Speaker 1: creates a kind of a kind of strange, alienated world
Speaker 1: where where normally you'd pair these experiences of cognitive recognition,
Speaker 1: you know, knowing that you recognize something you see, and
Speaker 1: the feeling of familiarity with it, but that is kind
Speaker 1: of torn asunder by the dynamics of social media. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and so, I I don't think you know, the idea,
Speaker 1: this argument that, oh, so the social media is potentially dangerous,
Speaker 1: that it's that it has you know, ill effects. This
Speaker 1: is probably not new. I think everyone's heard somebody argue
Speaker 1: it to some extent, and we've even seen people make
Speaker 1: fun of the argument, like, for instance, one image that
Speaker 1: it frequently makes the round is uh is an old,
Speaker 1: old timey photograph of like a subway car or a
Speaker 1: train full of individuals, everybody reading a newspaper, everybody's face
Speaker 1: hidden in a newspaper, and then using this to make
Speaker 1: fun of the argument that you know, everybody's just plugged
Speaker 1: into their phones and they're not connecting with each other,
Speaker 1: as if to say, well, this was exactly the same thing,
Speaker 1: but it's not. I think it's it's definitely worth driving
Speaker 1: home that the type of uh, psychological involvement that's going
Speaker 1: on with the social media platform on a mobile device
Speaker 1: is entirely different than what you would find by just
Speaker 1: sticking your head into a book or a newspaper. A
Speaker 1: book or a newspaper is not a real time feedback
Speaker 1: to advice. Yeah, I mean, I think one thing that
Speaker 1: that that that kind of like poking fun at this
Speaker 1: argument does reveal is that you can take the argument
Speaker 1: too far and be kind of totalizing about it, because
Speaker 1: it's important to recognize that the reason people use these
Speaker 1: services are because they do provide something that people want.
Speaker 1: You know, people through social media are able to keep
Speaker 1: up with friendships that might have fallen by the wayside otherwise,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe long distance friendships. Uh. You know, these
Speaker 1: these these platforms and these devices do enable all kinds
Speaker 1: of things in people's lives that are valuable and good righting.
Speaker 1: And you can certainly go overboard and kind of a
Speaker 1: luddyite response to it and say, well, the internet is
Speaker 1: bad or technology is bad, uh, And I feel like
Speaker 1: everybody's gonna have varying opinions, Like to one extreme, you
Speaker 1: may be convinced that social media is uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, it's leaning more and more towards the self
Speaker 1: digestion of human civilization. Or you may see nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with social media, though you may say, look, Robert and Joe,
Speaker 1: I know I use my Instagram, I use my Facebook,
Speaker 1: I keep with up with a few friends, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a few celebrities or a few bands or what have you.
Speaker 1: I get the news through it, and that's it. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't, you know, you know, greatly improve or harm
Speaker 1: my psychic experience of reality. Yeah, and if and if
Speaker 1: that's what you believe, our goal is not to convince
Speaker 1: you that, no, you don't understand it's actually ruining your life.
Speaker 1: I mean, you may very well have a perfectly healthy,
Speaker 1: limited relationship with social media, and you may be one
Speaker 1: of the people who's getting more out of it than
Speaker 1: it's getting out of you. But for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: I think we do want to make the case that
Speaker 1: that is not what's going on. Right I would say
Speaker 1: that most of us. Even if you you can say,
Speaker 1: you know, honestly that you have a healthy relationship with
Speaker 1: social media, you can probably not say the same for
Speaker 1: everyone in your circle. There there there's probably somebody or
Speaker 1: several people that the display signs of unhealthy usage. So
Speaker 1: in this episode, you know, we're gonna we're gonna look
Speaker 1: at some arguments against social media. Specifically, we're going to
Speaker 1: be discussing UH an author by the name of Jarren
Speaker 1: Lanier and his two thousand eighteen book Ten Arguments for
Speaker 1: Deleting Your Social Media Accounts right Now. It's a great title.
Speaker 1: It gets right to the point it does, and and
Speaker 1: it is a fabulous little book that Joe and I
Speaker 1: both both read for this episode. It's um it's short,
Speaker 1: It's something on the order of what hundred and forty
Speaker 1: six pages long. It's extremely accessible, Like he did not
Speaker 1: make this a you know, a high high level computer
Speaker 1: science intellectual argument. It is written so that I think
Speaker 1: pretty much anybody could understand it. It's very accessible, it's
Speaker 1: very ground level, and I think it makes a pretty
Speaker 1: compelling case that at least well he his argument is
Speaker 1: that social media in the business model that exists today
Speaker 1: is doing more harm than good, and our best way
Speaker 1: of fighting that harm is to have everybody get off
Speaker 1: of these platforms, because this will force the company is
Speaker 1: involved to actually implement changes, right and and so his
Speaker 1: His argument is not one against technology, and it's not
Speaker 1: even necessarily against one one against um, a certain form
Speaker 1: of social media. It's against a particular business model that
Speaker 1: powers social media. And that business model, I think is
Speaker 1: what he ends up calling the bummer business model. It's
Speaker 1: a business model that is paid for by behavioral modification. Yes,
Speaker 1: bummer be you in any R, which Linear says stands
Speaker 1: for behaviors of users modified and made into an empire
Speaker 1: for rent. It's clever having an acronym because sticks with
Speaker 1: you and uh and yeah, it's clever and it's a
Speaker 1: little bit funny. And and that can be said for
Speaker 1: the entire book, despite being a fairly serious topic with
Speaker 1: some potentially serious ramifications for humanity at large and for
Speaker 1: into the dual um you know, self worth, it is
Speaker 1: a humorous read at times, and it is it is
Speaker 1: fun to read, So I can't recommend it highly enough.
Speaker 1: There's a book you can read on the train and
Speaker 1: the plane, on a toilet. Uh, you know it just
Speaker 1: it makes for a great but important casual read. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we we've talked about maybe getting him on the
Speaker 1: podcast sometime soon, and that would be great to have
Speaker 1: a conversation with him, But today we just wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about maybe a couple of the arguments that he
Speaker 1: brings up in the book and and our thoughts about them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna attempt to regurgitate the entire book because
Speaker 1: the book uh is already already speaks for itself. So
Speaker 1: we'll start though, by just talking about Jarren Lanier himself.
Speaker 1: You might be familiar with him already, perhaps you're not.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you've just read his name and thought it was
Speaker 1: pronounced Jared Lantier, which is how I've been pronouncing in
Speaker 1: my mind. That's how I've said it on the show
Speaker 1: a lot. But anyway, he is a scientist, a musician,
Speaker 1: and a writer. He is a major figure in the
Speaker 1: realm of virtual reality, having founded the VR company VPL
Speaker 1: Research in the nineteen eighties, and while he didn't coin
Speaker 1: the term virtual reality, this is generally attributed to French
Speaker 1: playwright Anton and R. Toad In, he did popularize it.
Speaker 1: He helped create the first commercial VR products and introduced avatars,
Speaker 1: multiperson virtual world experiences, and prototypes of major VR applications
Speaker 1: such as surgical simulation. He was involved in the creation
Speaker 1: of the Nintendo Power Glove. Yeah, now you're playing with
Speaker 1: power which you know, which I have to say, the
Speaker 1: power glove. I never had one as a kid, but
Speaker 1: I saw people with them, I knew people who had them,
Speaker 1: and it it was this this instrument of wonder. I
Speaker 1: don't think it was all that practical as a gaming device,
Speaker 1: but I think it inspired a lot of people. And
Speaker 1: I also love seeing, especially nineteen nineties science fiction where
Speaker 1: they have reused a power glove as part of like
Speaker 1: a cybernetic you know, outfit for somebody. Anyway, he was
Speaker 1: also involved in the with the creation of the headset,
Speaker 1: apparently for the film The lawnmower Man. So you're really
Speaker 1: bringing out the hits here. Yeah, And I think this
Speaker 1: is probably not the stuff that usually gets highlighted about
Speaker 1: his career, but it's this, you know, some of the
Speaker 1: stuff that I think some of our listeners might be
Speaker 1: familiar with. Exactly. I should point out that he's not
Speaker 1: credited on lawnmower Man, but he does get a thanks
Speaker 1: on the far Superior Sci Fi Work Minority Report. Okay,
Speaker 1: uh he But more to the point, though he's an
Speaker 1: author of several books, such as The two thousand six
Speaker 1: Information is an Alienated Experience you are not a gadget
Speaker 1: of Manifesto from two thousand ten, who owns the Future
Speaker 1: from and Dawn of the New Everything from seventeen. I
Speaker 1: tend to think of him kind of as a technology philosopher,
Speaker 1: and I really like a lot of his approach because
Speaker 1: it's got a healthy skepticism about over hyping technology and
Speaker 1: what it can do. And at the same time, he's
Speaker 1: not anti technology. He's clearly somebody who loves digital technology,
Speaker 1: loves computers. You know, he's worked with them his whole career,
Speaker 1: and so he doesn't end up saying, through your smartphone
Speaker 1: in the fire, flush it down the toilet, smash it
Speaker 1: with a hammer. It's not an anti technology message. He
Speaker 1: actually has a very specifically tailored message trying to identify
Speaker 1: exactly what it is about the social media platforms specifically
Speaker 1: as they exist today that's causing problems for us and
Speaker 1: for our society and how could they be changed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: ultimately he is he's an optimist. Like he's he's presenting
Speaker 1: an optimistic view of the future, like certainly highlighting problems,
Speaker 1: but discussing how we can address them, which I love.
Speaker 1: I I feel like I've spent too much of my life, um,
Speaker 1: you know, looking at more pessimistic views of reality and
Speaker 1: dystopian views of reality, and I've gotten to the point
Speaker 1: where those just don't serve me anymore. So I far
Speaker 1: prefer reading an author like uh, like Jerry Lynn here.
Speaker 1: So the booking question, I have to talk about the
Speaker 1: cover of it, because the cover is is very simple,
Speaker 1: you know, just a black and red text on a
Speaker 1: white background and a silhouette of a cat walking off
Speaker 1: the cover of the book. And the cat is a
Speaker 1: central metaphor in the book, right because, as he points out,
Speaker 1: you know, as much as we love dogs, I love dogs,
Speaker 1: you do, you do love dogs, and I love dogs too,
Speaker 1: just as I don't own one. But as much as
Speaker 1: we love dogs, we domesticated the dog. The cat arguably
Speaker 1: domesticated itself. Uh you know, it interacts in our lives
Speaker 1: more on its terms. You you were at great pains
Speaker 1: to attempt to train the cat, as anyone who's ever
Speaker 1: certainly you know, tried to to you know, shoot a
Speaker 1: film about cats can attest to um. So, Lanier argues
Speaker 1: that social media is essentially turning us into well trained dogs,
Speaker 1: but we should really strive to be cats able to
Speaker 1: dictate our involvement in the relationship at hand, to scratch
Speaker 1: the hand that feeds us, if we so wish, to
Speaker 1: sleep wherever we choose, refuse food, walk on all the furniture. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: we should we should want to be cats. We don't
Speaker 1: want to be social media's dog. Yeah. And also, I mean,
Speaker 1: while he's advising people to quit social media, he's making
Speaker 1: an argument and he's not it's not a totalizing argument.
Speaker 1: I mean he realizes that different people are in different circumstances, uh,
Speaker 1: that it's it's not a choice that will work for everybody, right, Like,
Speaker 1: he's very clear on the on the fact that quitting
Speaker 1: social media is a privilege and not everybody is able
Speaker 1: to do it. A lot of people, uh you know,
Speaker 1: own a business or or or part of their job
Speaker 1: entails them using social media. I know some people like that,
Speaker 1: and they're just they're trapped in they're trapped in it,
Speaker 1: like you just can't walk away from it, or you
Speaker 1: might be shackled to it. More socially, like, well, if
Speaker 1: I stop using uh, you know, Facebook, how am I
Speaker 1: gonna connect connect with my friends who all live in
Speaker 1: another city. And I just moved to a place where
Speaker 1: I don't know anybody, Um, you know, they're all these
Speaker 1: arguments to be made, and so he's not. He's not,
Speaker 1: you know, drawing this firm line in the sand and saying,
Speaker 1: you know, the winners over here, users over there, or
Speaker 1: anything of the of the sword. And he's certainly not
Speaker 1: arguing that, you know, we should we should all go
Speaker 1: and make a big dramatic to do about quitting social
Speaker 1: media either because I think I think we all see
Speaker 1: that occasionally on our feet to oh, that's the most
Speaker 1: embarrassing thing when you see somebody post a lot about
Speaker 1: how they're quitting, and then they quit for a week
Speaker 1: and then they're back. Yeah. Yeah. And in fact, I
Speaker 1: actually I shared I shared something about this book on
Speaker 1: my private social media feed, and immediately like somebody was
Speaker 1: like calling me out for having posted about quitting social
Speaker 1: media on social media. But of course I think what's
Speaker 1: wrong with that? I mean, where are we going to
Speaker 1: talk about leaving social media but social media to a
Speaker 1: certain extent um. And and also well, I mean this
Speaker 1: episode where we're discussing his arguments again, you know, we're
Speaker 1: not necessarily saying everybody's got to get off social media.
Speaker 1: But I do think these are some interesting arguments, very
Speaker 1: worth considering. Um, we're discussing these on an episode that
Speaker 1: will be promoted on social media because that is part
Speaker 1: of the distribution business model of this podcast exactly. It's like,
Speaker 1: this is how, you know, one way that we reach listeners,
Speaker 1: and if we don't do this, it won't reach as
Speaker 1: many listeners. So I don't know, how do you how
Speaker 1: do you balance That's like, are you actually doing better
Speaker 1: if you say, well, let's not post the episode on
Speaker 1: social media so fewer people will hear it. Yeah, thus
Speaker 1: is the world? Thus have we made it? But at
Speaker 1: any rate, Linear also ultimately says like, hey, I'm not
Speaker 1: even saying quit social media forever. Um, you know, because
Speaker 1: ultimately he's hope, he's hopeful that social media can be corrected,
Speaker 1: that we can come back to a version of social
Speaker 1: media media that is not harmful to us in so
Speaker 1: many ways. And then also he's saying, like, you know,
Speaker 1: quit for a while and come back. That's the only
Speaker 1: way you'll you'll have any kind of like insight on
Speaker 1: what it's doing to you, Like this will help give
Speaker 1: you the uh, you know, the vantage point by which
Speaker 1: to to understand the interaction between your life and these
Speaker 1: bummer systems. All right, well, maybe we should take a
Speaker 1: quick break and then when we come back we can
Speaker 1: discuss a couple of the arguments from the book and
Speaker 1: our thoughts about them. Than all right, we're back. So again,
Speaker 1: the book that we're discussing is uh Journalinears ten arguments
Speaker 1: for deleting your Social media accounts. Right now, you're probably
Speaker 1: wondering what are those ten arguments. We're not going to
Speaker 1: regurgitate all ten arguments here. If you want to know
Speaker 1: what they are, you should pick up a copy of
Speaker 1: it because without even opening the book, all ten are
Speaker 1: listed on the back right, which is which is prob
Speaker 1: was handy. You know, you can just you can instantly
Speaker 1: see what you're in for. We're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: i think basically four of the arguments, and uh In
Speaker 1: discussing them a bit here for you, yeah, someone more
Speaker 1: depth than others. Now, one thing that we should talk
Speaker 1: about upfront, because it's sort of a foundational argument that
Speaker 1: feeds into all the others, is this point that, in
Speaker 1: Lanear's words, due to social media, you are partially losing
Speaker 1: your free will. Uh So, one of his core arguments
Speaker 1: on which many of the others rest is that social
Speaker 1: media is at heart a mass program of behavior modification
Speaker 1: for rent. That is how these companies make money. So
Speaker 1: if your Facebook, the way that you make money is
Speaker 1: that people pay you to have some kind of influence
Speaker 1: on users of Facebook, and that influence could be a
Speaker 1: very traditional, normal style of advertising, the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that you know that happens everywhere, and most people aren't
Speaker 1: bothered by, right, because it's clear what's happening. You're just
Speaker 1: seeing an ad for a product that somebody thinks you
Speaker 1: might want, and you know, there's the ad and you
Speaker 1: might go by it. That's you know, we're not generally
Speaker 1: very bothered by that. Right. Always reminds me of the
Speaker 1: moment in Futurama where a fry encounters in the future
Speaker 1: and advertisement in his dream. That's a little creepier. We
Speaker 1: find it intrusive. And he says, you know, we didn't
Speaker 1: have that in my time. We just had advertisements, you know,
Speaker 1: all over the place and in the sky and on
Speaker 1: the billboard. I mean, certainly we do even without social media.
Speaker 1: We live in an age of you just ubiquitous advertising. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know that is this is one thing that
Speaker 1: he does sort of attack is the problem that the
Speaker 1: web arose on an advertising pay for model. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: back in the early days of the web, there was
Speaker 1: this idea that everything needed to be free to access.
Speaker 1: You couldn't charge people to get stuff on the web.
Speaker 1: But then how do you pay for producing that stuff.
Speaker 1: Somebody's got to make it, you know that they've got
Speaker 1: to get paid somehow. So what happens, Well, you'd pay
Speaker 1: for it by showing advertising along with the thing, and
Speaker 1: the advertisers would pay for what you're seeing. Right And
Speaker 1: of course, again coming back to podcasting, we're not blind
Speaker 1: to the fact that that's essentially what you have with
Speaker 1: this podcast. This podcast is provided to you for free,
Speaker 1: but you have to put up with advertisements. Right now,
Speaker 1: I don't really mind that from an advertiser, from a
Speaker 1: from a podcast point of view, because when I listen
Speaker 1: to podcasts and when I make a podcast, I generally
Speaker 1: think the advertising that's happening there is fairly straightforward. It's
Speaker 1: pretty clear what's going on. Somebody's pitching you a product.
Speaker 1: I mean, likewise, on television, of course, television start off
Speaker 1: with the same model and he discusses this. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like, here's the signal. Here's some programming, but here
Speaker 1: are also some advertisements. But generally speaking, without getting into
Speaker 1: some of the you know, the trickier forms of television
Speaker 1: advertising and product integration and so forth, you're you're still
Speaker 1: dealing with the situation where it's like I'm watching a show. Okay,
Speaker 1: now I'm watching an ad. Now I'm watching the show again. Right.
Speaker 1: But even when even with other things, you know, like uh,
Speaker 1: sponsored content and stuff like that, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: there's there's a big difference between what's clear and what's sneaky.
Speaker 1: I think generally people tend to be okay with advertising
Speaker 1: when it's clear what's going on. When you know, they're
Speaker 1: told who's paying for what they're seeing, and it's clear
Speaker 1: what the person who's paying for what they're seeing wants
Speaker 1: them to do. Usually it's like buy my product or
Speaker 1: become a member of my service or something like that.
Speaker 1: That that that's the kind of thing that I usually
Speaker 1: feel fine about that. Most people tend to feel fine
Speaker 1: abou out what's going on with social media, According to
Speaker 1: Tullneier's argument is that there is a much sneakier, more subtle,
Speaker 1: and perhaps more sinister thing happening which is that our
Speaker 1: behavior is being modified in ways that are not clear,
Speaker 1: that are not that are not obvious to us, ways
Speaker 1: that we're not aware of, and we oftentimes, in fact,
Speaker 1: most of the time, don't know who's doing it right.
Speaker 1: And I think we all have those moments using a
Speaker 1: product like Facebook where something an advertisement will pop up
Speaker 1: or predict or perhaps a post even made by a
Speaker 1: friend will pop up, and you'll stop for a second
Speaker 1: and wonder, why was that served to me? Why am
Speaker 1: I seeing this? Yeah? What is what have I done?
Speaker 1: What sort of interactions on my part or you know,
Speaker 1: demographic information on my part has led to this being
Speaker 1: put in my face? But there's a good chance that
Speaker 1: it is. It's either serving the like the supply model
Speaker 1: of Facebook, which is trying to keep you engaged on
Speaker 1: the platform for as long as possible, so that that's
Speaker 1: one thing that they just want to keep you on
Speaker 1: there so they can modify your behavior more, gather more
Speaker 1: data about you, show you more ads. Uh, So that's
Speaker 1: one thing they might be just showing you it to
Speaker 1: you because their vast collection of data shows that when
Speaker 1: you see stuff like this, you use Facebook for a
Speaker 1: longer period of time, or you log back on more
Speaker 1: often later in the day. So that might be one thing,
Speaker 1: but the other thing might be that you're seeing that
Speaker 1: thing because somebody has targeted you for some kind of effect.
Speaker 1: They want to generate some kind of effect. And this
Speaker 1: could be like become my customer kind of effect, or
Speaker 1: it could be something else. It could be in effect
Speaker 1: like we want to make people stay home instead of
Speaker 1: go out and vote today. Now at this point, I
Speaker 1: do want to drive home as well. That one thing
Speaker 1: that Lanier is very clear on is that he is
Speaker 1: making no argument that there is like a broom at
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter or wherever where like evil operations go on,
Speaker 1: that there's like a sinister cabal uh in any of
Speaker 1: these organizations that are sitting down and saying what can
Speaker 1: we do to destroy the human soul or anything like that. Right,
Speaker 1: there's not a m wahahaha committee, right there is. Instead,
Speaker 1: there is well, well, I mean, there are decisions being
Speaker 1: made by people about what types of incentives will be
Speaker 1: algorithmically optimized and so so that is something where it's
Speaker 1: not like the humans who operate in these companies don't
Speaker 1: bear responsibility. They do, but they're not they're they're generally
Speaker 1: not trying to ruin the human race. They're they're not
Speaker 1: trying to say, what's the worst thing we can do
Speaker 1: to our users, right, that would that would just be
Speaker 1: a simplification of something that is a lot more complicated,
Speaker 1: and it's taking place not on the scale of even
Speaker 1: of an individual or individuals, but taking place in the
Speaker 1: scale of a corporation. What Linear argues is that bad
Speaker 1: business incentives which prioritize behavior modification are leading to the
Speaker 1: creation of algorithms that sort of automatically commit these these
Speaker 1: behavior your modification schemes, and so behavior modification can be
Speaker 1: linked to traditions and the behaviorist school of psychology, which
Speaker 1: flourished in the twentieth century. We've talked on other episodes
Speaker 1: of the show about like b F. Skinner and behaviorism.
Speaker 1: Behaviorism sometimes gets demonized, and they're definitely really good reasons
Speaker 1: to be historically critical of the behaviorist trend in the
Speaker 1: history of psychology, but it also wasn't entirely wrong. Like behaviorism,
Speaker 1: I think could be credited with trying to make psychology
Speaker 1: a more objective science. But it also you know, a
Speaker 1: common criticism is that it sort of treats the human
Speaker 1: brain like a black box. You know, conditioning goes in,
Speaker 1: behavior comes out, and whatever happens inside just isn't really important.
Speaker 1: But one thing that it did show is that if
Speaker 1: you treat the human brain like this kind of like
Speaker 1: mystery machine where you just kind of like put conditioning
Speaker 1: in and keep calibrating until you get the output behavior
Speaker 1: you want, you can actually change behavior in an extremely
Speaker 1: effective way like that, like you know, be behavioral conditioning
Speaker 1: can be very powerful. And Laniers Linears argument is that
Speaker 1: modern social media is sort of almost a perfect vehicle
Speaker 1: for refining behavioral conditioning because it can collect extremely minute
Speaker 1: data about you, and lots of it because of course
Speaker 1: it has you know, this connection like it it records
Speaker 1: everything you do and all the stuff you do on
Speaker 1: social media. There's actually a lot of things you do
Speaker 1: on social media that they can learn a lot about,
Speaker 1: from your brain states to where you are through location tagging,
Speaker 1: to what you spend money on you know, your linked accounts,
Speaker 1: to the words you use reflecting your moods. Like they can,
Speaker 1: they know a lot about you and about how what
Speaker 1: they show you affects what you do. Right, you know,
Speaker 1: I would be loath perhaps to say that they know
Speaker 1: us better than we know ourselves. But there, but I
Speaker 1: feel like they often, these platforms often know us better
Speaker 1: than we are perhaps prepared to admit to ourselves. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: they know things about you that are different from the
Speaker 1: way you think about yourselves. They know about you from
Speaker 1: a behavioral conditioning standpoint, where they can track in a
Speaker 1: really minute way what conditioning goes in and what behavior
Speaker 1: comes out. We tend not to think of ourselves that way.
Speaker 1: We tend to think of ourselves from the inside out.
Speaker 1: We think about our own mind states. You know, we
Speaker 1: tell a narrative about our behaviors in which everything is
Speaker 1: rationalized to make sense. So it's often we feel kind
Speaker 1: of demeaned when it's suggested that we are vulnerable to
Speaker 1: behavioral conditioning. It's like, no, no, no, I'm not. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like how people think advertising doesn't work on them,
Speaker 1: you know, like, no, I'm not more likely to buy
Speaker 1: a product because I saw a commercial for it, but
Speaker 1: you know you probably are. I mean, we just tend
Speaker 1: to think we're more mentally independent of the effects of
Speaker 1: stimuli that we actually are, or we will will criticize
Speaker 1: and say it doesn't affect us on one platform and
Speaker 1: then on another will celebrate it without naming any names.
Speaker 1: One might use a particularly popular music streaming service and
Speaker 1: you might go, wow, I really love the algorithm on
Speaker 1: this thing. It really knows what I'm into it. Yes, me,
Speaker 1: it keeps giving me musical suggestions that are they're totally
Speaker 1: on point. Yeah, and you need you have to stop
Speaker 1: sometimes like, well, I guess that's a good thing, but
Speaker 1: is it really Yeah. So social media platforms they can
Speaker 1: gather all this data about you, but also they have
Speaker 1: extreme psychological power over you. I mean, especially the big
Speaker 1: one to think about his Facebook just like it's this
Speaker 1: almost perfect machine for maximizing potential and behavior modification. It
Speaker 1: can make you feel and think what it wants with
Speaker 1: astonishing effectiveness just by showing you certain things that it
Speaker 1: has figured out that when it shows these things two
Speaker 1: people like you, you tend to react by behaving a
Speaker 1: certain way. And then of course it can just keep
Speaker 1: calibrating those those efforts more finally, and finally, finally with
Speaker 1: extremely high quality feedback based on the way it tracks
Speaker 1: your behavior and all the ways we mentioned earlier. So
Speaker 1: this this is basic argument, and you can see that
Speaker 1: companies like Facebook are interested in in always getting tighter
Speaker 1: and tighter control of the data and feedback about you
Speaker 1: in these sorts of ways. I was just reading a
Speaker 1: story the other day, uh, in the m I T.
Speaker 1: Tech Review about Facebook being involved in funding research on
Speaker 1: a wearable headband that could supposedly read your thoughts. Now.
Speaker 1: I don't think we should get overly alarmed about like
Speaker 1: this one particular news story, because this kind of technology
Speaker 1: is probably very crude at this point. You know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't tell you a lot today. We're not going to
Speaker 1: go from like zero to black mirror in a year
Speaker 1: on this particular front, right, But I do think the
Speaker 1: fact that Facebook is funding this kind of research should
Speaker 1: tell us something. They want to get deeper, They want
Speaker 1: to go further. They want to get closer and closer
Speaker 1: to your brain to know exactly how you're reacting to
Speaker 1: things in real time all the time. They want they
Speaker 1: want sort of like infinitely precise and finally calibrated data
Speaker 1: about you. And why would they want that. It's because
Speaker 1: it gives them better control over what you do, and
Speaker 1: that control can be rented out to sponsors and again,
Speaker 1: and those sponsors could be fairly straightforward. They could be
Speaker 1: somebody trying to get you to buy their brand of shoes,
Speaker 1: or it could be a government trying to control what
Speaker 1: you do on a certain day, or or control how
Speaker 1: you feel about a political movement. Absolutely, and and that
Speaker 1: certainly they did. The involvement of of of other states
Speaker 1: or operatives acting on the part of on the behalf
Speaker 1: of other states has has certainly been in the news
Speaker 1: a great deal recently. Well, yeah, it's very strange that
Speaker 1: like that. I don't know if people would have predicted
Speaker 1: ten years ago. Maybe they did, and I wasn't aware
Speaker 1: of it that social media would start to become a
Speaker 1: major um statecraft and national security concern. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: well I think we were all probably you know, in
Speaker 1: the in the same boat. You know, for the most
Speaker 1: part when social media started up, it just seemed like
Speaker 1: a thing that was a fun way to connect with
Speaker 1: a few other people that you knew and maybe meet
Speaker 1: some new people. It's cool. Yeah, And it was you know,
Speaker 1: for the most part, you know, it was just you
Speaker 1: and friends and potential new friends on there. And your
Speaker 1: parents weren't on it yet. Major politicians were not on
Speaker 1: it yet. Um, major governments were seemingly not involved yet. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's the I don't want to be overly.
Speaker 1: I don't want to demonize it too much, but I
Speaker 1: mean it's kind of the addiction model, right. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, your first your first dose of this drug
Speaker 1: is free, maybe your first free, uh, several doses you
Speaker 1: get hooked. And then what Linear talks about a big
Speaker 1: issue going on with these companies is that there is
Speaker 1: this problem of network effects, right. Network effects are the
Speaker 1: thing that happens in digital media businesses where people tend
Speaker 1: to get locked into a service. And once people are
Speaker 1: locked into a service, it's very hard for there to
Speaker 1: be an effective competitor and get people to move over there.
Speaker 1: People are already on Facebook. If you tried to start
Speaker 1: a better Facebook today, and people have tried to start
Speaker 1: like nonprofit facebooks, nobody goes over there, right new. I've
Speaker 1: joined those before and it lasts like an afternoon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're already. People are on Facebook because that's where
Speaker 1: their friends are and that's where all that's where everything
Speaker 1: is happening. It's network effects that keep people locked in
Speaker 1: once they're already there, and once everybody's there, you can
Speaker 1: kind of like lock the doors and then start doing
Speaker 1: whatever you want inside, and you can check out any
Speaker 1: time you like, right, but you can never leave you alright,
Speaker 1: So we're skipping and skipping around a bit. But another argument,
Speaker 1: basically the fifth argument that Linear makes, is that social
Speaker 1: media is making what you say meaningless, and the core
Speaker 1: argument here comes down to context. Now, entering into this argument,
Speaker 1: I personally thought about the rather simple example that I'm
Speaker 1: sure many of you are thinking of right now, and
Speaker 1: an ambiguous text message or email has taken out of
Speaker 1: context because there are limitations to what we can typically
Speaker 1: convey in these you know, limited generally short form communication formats. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, an emoji can only do so much to
Speaker 1: provide context to what you're saying. You ever, notice how
Speaker 1: if you listen to a friend of yours talk about something,
Speaker 1: it sounds normal and fine, But if you listen to
Speaker 1: a snippet of a stranger's conversation, they sound like a
Speaker 1: complete moron and it's like embarrassing or or at best,
Speaker 1: like a cryptic alien where you're just like, what what what?
Speaker 1: What was that? I'll never know? But you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? And it's not like strangers happen to be like,
Speaker 1: there's something wrong with people you don't know as opposed
Speaker 1: to people you do know is that when you know somebody,
Speaker 1: you have context based in their personality and your relationship
Speaker 1: with them. What they're saying makes sense to you because
Speaker 1: you know them and you know how they generally think
Speaker 1: about things and all that. If you were if you
Speaker 1: didn't know this person, you just happen to over or
Speaker 1: hear them, is you know, you walk by on the
Speaker 1: sidewalk and they were saying the same thing that would
Speaker 1: normally say that would sound normal to you as part
Speaker 1: of a conversation. You might think like, wow, what that
Speaker 1: What a freak? I know, people probably think the same
Speaker 1: thing about me all the time. Oh, I'm sure people
Speaker 1: think that about I mean I think about this all
Speaker 1: the time, Like I'll be out somewhere having a conversation
Speaker 1: about Highlander to the Quickening, and I'm like, what do
Speaker 1: I sound like? What kind of what kind of idiot
Speaker 1: do I sound like? To somebody who doesn't know me?
Speaker 1: I mean, I probably maybe I sound that bad to
Speaker 1: people who do know me, but no, alright, So but anyway,
Speaker 1: coming back to linear here, he's getting some of this
Speaker 1: applies to his case, but basically he's saying that you know,
Speaker 1: with context or the lack of context. You know, it
Speaker 1: comes down to the lack of individual control over context
Speaker 1: on social media, and he points to two extreme examples
Speaker 1: of this online to sort of hu, you know, better
Speaker 1: illustrate what's happening elsewhere. So, like the two extreme cases
Speaker 1: would be when, um, when you have legit ads popping
Speaker 1: up on say, terrorist recruitment videos on YouTube, which was
Speaker 1: which was a problem at least early on, is that
Speaker 1: you would have a legitimate advertiser and ultimately an illegitimate
Speaker 1: content or an illegitimate user, and those will be matched
Speaker 1: together in the context it would would be you know,
Speaker 1: accidental and terrible. Platforms are juxtaposing content without understanding what
Speaker 1: that content is, and it very often doesn't reflect well
Speaker 1: on any of the content, or certainly on some of it. Right.
Speaker 1: And then the other example he brought up, we're when
Speaker 1: you have images of say women and girls whose whose
Speaker 1: images are are sexualized or incorporated into violent media without
Speaker 1: their consent. Again, that's like a that's that's horrible, and
Speaker 1: it is an extreme example. But he argues that these
Speaker 1: extreme cases are possible because social media in general robs
Speaker 1: us of control over context. When we express ourselves online.
Speaker 1: We have no idea how that expression will be presented
Speaker 1: specifically to anybody else. How often is there some public
Speaker 1: controversy about like a tweet where you know, somebody is
Speaker 1: like somebody's like, hey, I found a tweet by ex celebrity,
Speaker 1: you know, where they said something that looks really bad,
Speaker 1: and then that person defends themselves by saying, but you
Speaker 1: took it out of context. What you really feel about this,
Speaker 1: of course, is going to very highly case by case
Speaker 1: because maybe the context changes the meaning of it, and
Speaker 1: maybe it doesn't, right, But when it's just presented as
Speaker 1: a snippet, that individual doesn't have control of the context.
Speaker 1: Maybe you have control of the context, but but they don't.
Speaker 1: It's similar when and we certainly see this, uh in
Speaker 1: our political cycles as well. You know, something that a
Speaker 1: candidate said or wrote ten years ago is you know,
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, what have you? Uh? Is taken out
Speaker 1: as a snippet and presented often without completely either without
Speaker 1: context or without like complete context or to what they
Speaker 1: were talking about. Uh. And you know, and in some cases,
Speaker 1: I mean, anytime you're quoting somebody, you are you are
Speaker 1: literally taking them out of context. But like, uh, there
Speaker 1: are ways that being taken out of context can be pernicious,
Speaker 1: and then they're I mean, they're totally normal ways to
Speaker 1: do it too. But then again, is when when something
Speaker 1: is taken out of context, is there's kind of implied
Speaker 1: by that statement that context is usually in place. And
Speaker 1: it's like saying, who who left this toy on the
Speaker 1: kitchen floor, Let's put it back where it goes. You
Speaker 1: don't want to live in a reality where the toys
Speaker 1: are always on the kitchen floor, in which context is
Speaker 1: always out of place. And and so that's ultimately what
Speaker 1: he's getting out of social media. I'm gonna going to
Speaker 1: read just a quote from his writings here, quote, we
Speaker 1: have given up our connection to context. Social media mashes
Speaker 1: up meaning whatever you say will be contextualized and given
Speaker 1: meaning by the way algorithms and crowds of fake people
Speaker 1: who are actually out rhythms match it up with what
Speaker 1: other people say. And he continues, speaking through social media
Speaker 1: isn't really speaking at all. Context is applied to what
Speaker 1: you say after you say it for someone else's purposes
Speaker 1: and profit. So essentially we have surrendered context to the
Speaker 1: bummer platform. He's saying, rendering communication quote petty, shallow and predictable,
Speaker 1: and as such, only the extreme voices, the worst of us,
Speaker 1: the loudest, the you know, the most acidic voices in
Speaker 1: our culture are going to be the ones that rise up.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean this is a whole other point
Speaker 1: he makes that I guess we're not going into in depth,
Speaker 1: but I mean he argues that these platforms necessarily promote
Speaker 1: the worst voices because the worst voices tend to drive engagement, right,
Speaker 1: and the platforms want to drive engagement. What gets people
Speaker 1: using the platforms more keeps people glued to Twitter, glued
Speaker 1: to Facebook. It's like whatever, gin's up the most net
Speaker 1: gative emotion, right, and one click word on engagement. One
Speaker 1: thing that he hammers home a number of times in
Speaker 1: the book is that when you hear the word engagement
Speaker 1: used in a social media context, what we're talking about
Speaker 1: is manipulation. So try to think about that next time.
Speaker 1: If you're attending a meeting or reading an article, uh
Speaker 1: sort of like especially a pro social media argument, uh
Speaker 1: you know about social about engagement, Just uh switch it
Speaker 1: out for the word manipulation and see how the taste
Speaker 1: fits you. But called engagement caught manipulation, whatever you like,
Speaker 1: it ends up creating this environment where everybody has to
Speaker 1: play that game in order to be heard, And of
Speaker 1: course that means it changes the way that say, legitimate
Speaker 1: journalistic uh um publications have to play the game. You know,
Speaker 1: you have to lean into even you know, more ridiculous
Speaker 1: headlines for instance, click bad headlines in order to get
Speaker 1: that precious and engagement, and that can have an eroding
Speaker 1: effect on the institutions of journalism and themselves. Oh absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean well that also goes with the just like
Speaker 1: it is the most uh, the most toxic or most
Speaker 1: uh whatever voices gin up the most negative emotion tend
Speaker 1: to be promoted on these platforms because they drive engagement.
Speaker 1: The same could be true of topics. So like you
Speaker 1: might not say that, well, my voice is toxic, but
Speaker 1: like whatever topics get people the most like upset and
Speaker 1: worried and aggravated and angry and all that, those topics
Speaker 1: are going to be favored by algorithms that are trying
Speaker 1: to increase engagement. So they know, you know, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of times, um publishers of online media know
Speaker 1: that there are certain topics that get people really upset,
Speaker 1: and those will be the highest performing articles on our
Speaker 1: videos on social media those days, like think of chemicals
Speaker 1: as engagement, Like which chemicals are most engaging when you
Speaker 1: get them on your skin? You know, I instantly think
Speaker 1: of the ones that are going to sting right, uh
Speaker 1: And suddenly I can't think of anything but those stingy
Speaker 1: places on my skin. Um. So you know again, one
Speaker 1: of the things that he comes back around to too
Speaker 1: is that you know what in this context situation is
Speaker 1: that what you were saying is only valuable or relevant
Speaker 1: insofar as it serves the platform. And again, you were
Speaker 1: not the customer on this platform. You are the product.
Speaker 1: The customers are those uh, those corporations or even state
Speaker 1: to players that have the money to pay into the
Speaker 1: bummer system. Yeah. Now I was glad to see that
Speaker 1: he thinks podcasts have not been ruined yet. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: so there there's a whole section in this uh this
Speaker 1: argument where he goes under discussed podcasts and uh and
Speaker 1: he makes in an argument that podcasts are a rare
Speaker 1: area of our media that are not bummer yet. But
Speaker 1: he does dream up and describe an absolute nightmare scenario
Speaker 1: for the future of podcasts that I hope never comes
Speaker 1: to pass. And while I was reading it. I was
Speaker 1: literally breaking out in sweats. Yeah, because think about what
Speaker 1: we do on the show, you know, stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind. Is full of our personalities and our context,
Speaker 1: and we have the time and we have the space
Speaker 1: to present topics and ideas, to present our takes and
Speaker 1: topics and ideas, and a chance to share our personalities
Speaker 1: with the listener in a continuous episodic manner. And as
Speaker 1: a result, you, the listener, you kind of know us.
Speaker 1: You you know, when when we get something wrong, you
Speaker 1: have the context to understand what's going on generally, you know,
Speaker 1: and what we do on this show is not easily
Speaker 1: reduced to sound bites. That's true. And this has been
Speaker 1: a problem before, right, Yeah, you should trust us on
Speaker 1: this because every now and then, not currently, but it's
Speaker 1: did with a fair amount of regularity, someone will come
Speaker 1: to us and say, we need some sound bites. Yeah,
Speaker 1: give us fifteen second clips of your show to show
Speaker 1: what the show is really about, to show what the show.
Speaker 1: That should be the clip. But no, it's like it's
Speaker 1: impossible to do. When you try to pull out fifteen
Speaker 1: seconds of our show, nothing sounds right, I mean, nothing
Speaker 1: really make sense on its own. That's that short, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're not. We're not a Zinger factory here. We're not
Speaker 1: calculating celebrities or want to be celebrities, and we're not
Speaker 1: actively trying to play the SoundBite game. We're not trying
Speaker 1: to play the bummer game with this show. But to
Speaker 1: clarify all this and really explain what he's talking about, uh,
Speaker 1: Lanear devises a way to quote ruined podcasting. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then he adds, nobody do this. Okay, so somebody's gonna
Speaker 1: do it. I mean, I yeah, I can second see
Speaker 1: it happen. Basically, he describes a sort of podcast aggregator
Speaker 1: app that serves up snippets from podcasts with ads, of course,
Speaker 1: and the resulting situation would be that podcasts would then
Speaker 1: be incentivized to produce the sort of content that lends
Speaker 1: itself to this format, so fiery, you know, extreme attention
Speaker 1: grabbing sound bites the kind. Okay, So imagine clips of
Speaker 1: podcasts that are that are prioritized the same way that
Speaker 1: like tweets or Facebook posts or YouTube videos are prioritized
Speaker 1: by the content recommendation algorithms. So just basically like pulling
Speaker 1: out the most egregious and like negative emotion conjuring moments
Speaker 1: of things. Yeah, and the horrible outside of context. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the horrible thing is that I can well imagine
Speaker 1: the marketing on social aggregator. You know, it would be
Speaker 1: something like, don't have time for all the podcasts in
Speaker 1: your life? Well, now you don't have to let telepod
Speaker 1: pick out the best parts of the shows and topics
Speaker 1: you love and serve it up to you in an
Speaker 1: easy to consume dose of wonder that fits into your
Speaker 1: busy schedule. And I and it sounds kind of convincing,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like, yeah, I'm busy. I don't have
Speaker 1: time for a whole bunch of hour long podcasts. There's
Speaker 1: so many of them. Why not let the algorithm slice
Speaker 1: out just the choice cuts from all my favorite shows
Speaker 1: and give them to me. Friends out there in podcast land.
Speaker 1: If this happens, boycott I. Do not do this. Do
Speaker 1: not unless you're already this type of show that is,
Speaker 1: you know, leaning, because there are shows out there that
Speaker 1: doling themselves well to uh to this sort of thing,
Speaker 1: not necessarily by design, but just by sort of the
Speaker 1: suit that the type of topics are already covering, or
Speaker 1: the individuals involved, the personalities involved. You know, and then
Speaker 1: it's not saying that you know that their villains because
Speaker 1: of it. But I think there are a lot of
Speaker 1: great shows and you know, hopefully ours is on that
Speaker 1: list where yeah, you you you can't cut out these
Speaker 1: little segments and expect the host organism to survive or
Speaker 1: to be able to communicate what it's trying to communicate.
Speaker 1: It's going to be called pod butcher. And if pod
Speaker 1: Butcher came to pass, you know, I can tell you
Speaker 1: that we would not be able to produce the sort
Speaker 1: of show we produced now that you presumably like if
Speaker 1: we had to satisfy such an algorithm, and what you
Speaker 1: like would have even less to do with it, because
Speaker 1: you would have handed your likes and choices over to Bummer,
Speaker 1: just as we, uh you know, would have handed over
Speaker 1: context itself. And the interesting thing is Linear is not
Speaker 1: the only person, or the first really to to recognize
Speaker 1: the death of context in social media. I was looking
Speaker 1: back at an article from twelve and Forbes from Susan Tardonico,
Speaker 1: and she wrote, quote, every relevant metrics shows that we
Speaker 1: are interacting at breakneck speed with frequency through social media,
Speaker 1: but are we really communicating with our communication context stripped away?
Speaker 1: We are now attempting to forge relationships and make decisions
Speaker 1: based on phrases, abbreviations, snippets, emoticons, which may or may
Speaker 1: not be accurate representations of the truth. And we can
Speaker 1: we can actually go back even even further on this
Speaker 1: notion as well. Um on the show. In the past,
Speaker 1: I've discussed the work of futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler. Uh.
Speaker 1: They wrote an important nineteen seventy book titled Future Shock,
Speaker 1: which was also made into a uninformative but also kind
Speaker 1: of more entertaining than informative orson Wells narrated TV show.
Speaker 1: That's also that's wonderful in its own right. But the book,
Speaker 1: uh was pretty great, and they discussed the apparent and
Speaker 1: possible disruptions of the human experience and human society due
Speaker 1: to rapid advances and technology. And I would like everybody
Speaker 1: to consider this quote from Future Shock nineteen seventy again. Quote.
Speaker 1: Rational behavior in particular depends upon a ceaseless flow of
Speaker 1: data from the environment. It depends upon the power of
Speaker 1: the individual to predict, with at least fair success, the
Speaker 1: outcome of his own actions. To do this, he must
Speaker 1: be able to predict how the environment will respond to
Speaker 1: his acts. Sanity itself thus hinges on man's ability to
Speaker 1: predict his immediate personal future on the basis of information
Speaker 1: fed him by the environment and me personally. I would
Speaker 1: extrapolate this to the digital environment that we've grown increasingly
Speaker 1: dependent upon. You know, it's like every day, like multiple
Speaker 1: times a day, over and over again, we're plugging into
Speaker 1: the digital environment and checking out of our physical environment
Speaker 1: as being a main determiner of our behavior of year.
Speaker 1: But it's not an environment that's chiefly mechanically dominated by
Speaker 1: things like you know, everyday Newtonian physics that we can
Speaker 1: predict pretty well. It's more like the main environments that
Speaker 1: we're participating in are like the giant, you know, super
Speaker 1: complex slot machine where you you pull the lever and
Speaker 1: you know, you can pull the lever in a few
Speaker 1: different kinds of ways and you don't know exactly what's
Speaker 1: going to come back out at you. So this is
Speaker 1: this is the digital context, the digital environment. I want
Speaker 1: every want to keep that in mind. Is I continue
Speaker 1: reading this quote from the Tofflers here quote, when the
Speaker 1: individual is plunged into a fast and irregularly changing situation
Speaker 1: or a novelty loaded context. However, his predictive of accuracy plummets.
Speaker 1: He can no longer make the reasonably correct assessments on
Speaker 1: which rational behavior is dependent. To compensate for this, to
Speaker 1: bring his accuracy up to the normal level again, he
Speaker 1: must scoop up and process far more information than before,
Speaker 1: and he must do this it extremely high rates of speed.
Speaker 1: In short, the more rapidly change and novel the environment,
Speaker 1: the more information the individual needs to process in order
Speaker 1: to make effective rational decisions. And of course there are
Speaker 1: limits to our speed. So anyway that the tofflers, I think,
Speaker 1: really strike a chord with our current situation in this passage,
Speaker 1: at least from my standpoint. I mean, sanity itself hinges
Speaker 1: on our ability to predict our immediate personal future on
Speaker 1: the basis of information fed to us by the digital environment.
Speaker 1: And here we are attempting to communicate, act and absorb
Speaker 1: knowledge in a social media environment that makes it impossible
Speaker 1: to control the information fed to us, absorb it all properly,
Speaker 1: and control the context of our own voices. Yeah, all true,
Speaker 1: I think, I mean it's it's kind of scary. I mean,
Speaker 1: to think about the fact that I'm quite sure that nobody.
Speaker 1: There is nobody at Facebook who fully understands all the
Speaker 1: decisions made by the you know, the content recommendation algorithm
Speaker 1: that creates the Facebook feed, right, I mean there. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe they could go maybe they have some way of
Speaker 1: going through if they could look at an individual one
Speaker 1: and say, Okay, here are probably some reasons why you
Speaker 1: were shown this, why you were shown that. But they can't, like,
Speaker 1: they can't predict it all. You know, you can't generate
Speaker 1: one of these feeds just uh, you know, with your
Speaker 1: own brain. Yeah, I mean, and we're we're ultimately, we're
Speaker 1: just continuing to understand what and to what extent, you know,
Speaker 1: the harm is. I was looking around, um at some
Speaker 1: various uh you know, posts and sort of industry thoughts
Speaker 1: about about how social media has been linked to struggles
Speaker 1: with depression and anxiety. Uh. And there are actually some
Speaker 1: serious discussions going on within the journalism field where journalists
Speaker 1: often feel the need to maintain a social media presence
Speaker 1: or are mandated to and are forced to deal with
Speaker 1: the resulting actually, I mean actual trauma and PTSD. Oh man,
Speaker 1: if you're a journalist, especially working in some kinds of fields,
Speaker 1: you are going to be inundated day in and day
Speaker 1: out with with hateful messaging from people who don't like
Speaker 1: whatever you're you're saying or doing in your career. People
Speaker 1: telling you to go kill yourself, people telling you that
Speaker 1: you're a fraud, and you know, and heaven and Heaven
Speaker 1: forbid your your gender, your gender identity, your your your race,
Speaker 1: um or what have you. Uh, you know, happens to
Speaker 1: to you know, put you in the lines of sights
Speaker 1: of you know, particular troll groups on social media totally
Speaker 1: and and I know that there is a kind of
Speaker 1: common reaction, I think, especially from people who don't deal
Speaker 1: with this problem themselves, to say, like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just people, it's just trolling. Just get over it. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just trolling. Like you're probably just failing to imagine
Speaker 1: what it is like to to actually face this kind
Speaker 1: of like hate and abuse all the time. You know,
Speaker 1: we're we're highly social creature. I mean, even if you
Speaker 1: don't actually fear violence against yourself, which you might have
Speaker 1: good reason to, depending on you know, who you are
Speaker 1: and who these people are and what they say. But
Speaker 1: I mean, if anything, should be clear that the digital
Speaker 1: world in the physical world are are not separated by
Speaker 1: an impassable chasm, you know, I mean we online Israel
Speaker 1: life is reel life, and we see violence stemming from
Speaker 1: digital activities. Yeah. But even if you're not in that category,
Speaker 1: dealing with an onslaught of just hate and abuse all
Speaker 1: the time, is it does life ruining? Yeah? And and
Speaker 1: generally we're not trained to deal with it. So a
Speaker 1: lot of the discussions going on in journalism are are
Speaker 1: you know, should we be training people to to cope
Speaker 1: with the flood of negative commentary and effectively sort out
Speaker 1: what should be ignored, what requires attention, and what constitutes
Speaker 1: an actual threat that should be you know, reported to
Speaker 1: authorities and to reiterate. Of course, it's not just journalists
Speaker 1: that deal with this kind of issue, but like journalism
Speaker 1: is one field where a lot of times people have
Speaker 1: to be on these platforms, whether they want to be
Speaker 1: or not, and also by the nature of their work
Speaker 1: just naturally just attract a lot of negative attention. Right
Speaker 1: if if, if someone wants to learn more about this,
Speaker 1: I should point out that Kyle Bessie wrote a great
Speaker 1: post just last month at journalism dot co dot uk
Speaker 1: titled how social media impacts mental health and journalists and
Speaker 1: of course in thinking about all this, you know, comes
Speaker 1: back to the fact that like this is the reality
Speaker 1: we've built for ourselves, you know. I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: through this complex interface of you know, of corporate interests
Speaker 1: and algorithms and and so forth. But still like this
Speaker 1: is the world we've made for ourselves. We've created, we've created,
Speaker 1: you know, through our use of technology, these new pitfalls
Speaker 1: and these new perils to social engagement. All right, we
Speaker 1: need to take another break, but after this we will
Speaker 1: be back with more of our discussion. Alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: So one of Jarren Lanier's arguments from this book ten
Speaker 1: arguments to what is it? How exactly does it go
Speaker 1: for deleting your social media accounts? Right now? Yeah, there
Speaker 1: it is. Um. One of them is that quote social
Speaker 1: media hates your soul? Now, Robert, what are we to
Speaker 1: make of this? So this is this is argument ten.
Speaker 1: So this is the like, the final, all encompassing argument.
Speaker 1: So in a sense, it's almost a little bit unfair
Speaker 1: for me to skip to it because it it hinges
Speaker 1: upon all the arguments that he's made. But it's not
Speaker 1: going to spoil the book, it's not. But to give
Speaker 1: you a test of it. I'm just gonna read the
Speaker 1: second paragraph from the first page of this argument quote
Speaker 1: to review. Your understanding of others has been disrupted because
Speaker 1: you don't know what they've experienced in their feeds, while
Speaker 1: the reverse is also true. The empathy others might offer
Speaker 1: you is challenged because you can't know the context in
Speaker 1: which you'll be understood. You're probably becoming more of an
Speaker 1: but you're also probably sadder. Another pair of Bummer disruptions
Speaker 1: that are mirror images. Your ability to know the world
Speaker 1: to know truth has been degraded, while the world's ability
Speaker 1: to know you has been corrupted. Politics has become unreal
Speaker 1: and terrifying, while economics has become unreal and unsustainable, two
Speaker 1: sides of the same coin. That's pretty bleak, and it's
Speaker 1: hard to imagine just from that paragraph that he is
Speaker 1: ultimately presenting an optimistic message. Though he is. He is, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know he's he's saying though that. Look, Bummer's
Speaker 1: behavioral modification is taking place not only at an individual scale,
Speaker 1: but at a societal scale. In this it's reach is
Speaker 1: more like a religion, and it's and it concerns not
Speaker 1: only the way you live your life online but what
Speaker 1: it means to be a person at all, which again
Speaker 1: may sound a bit extreme and a bet out there,
Speaker 1: but I think he really makes a strong case for this. Uh.
Speaker 1: First of all, coming back to free will, which we
Speaker 1: talked about earlier, free will is central to most religions.
Speaker 1: You're you're hard pressed to find a spiritual model in
Speaker 1: which humans are mere automatons. But under Bummer, he argues,
Speaker 1: free will isn't destroyed, but it is assaulted. It's degraded.
Speaker 1: You have less of it, and certain parties wind up
Speaker 1: with more alongside, you know, their wealth and power that
Speaker 1: they've already accumulated or are accumulating as they take a
Speaker 1: more and more of your free will, you know. And this, actually,
Speaker 1: I think does does go along with I don't know.
Speaker 1: So we've talked before about the coherence of the idea
Speaker 1: of free will on the show, and I'm sure we're
Speaker 1: gonna get a lot of kind of like a materialist
Speaker 1: push back on the idea of free will, saying, hey,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, free will is an incoherent concept. I
Speaker 1: think you could make that argument based on some definitions
Speaker 1: of free will, but in this sense the sense that
Speaker 1: he uses it, I think free will is an important
Speaker 1: thing to consider and is a real concept. Basically, it
Speaker 1: free will means um the feeling that you have control
Speaker 1: over your own behavior by understanding the influences on yourself
Speaker 1: and thinking about them consciously. And you know, you can
Speaker 1: never understand all of the influences on yourself, but there
Speaker 1: are definitely ways in which you can be in a
Speaker 1: system where you you feel like you understand most of
Speaker 1: the inputs that are coming in on you and you
Speaker 1: can process them consciously and your decision making. For is
Speaker 1: a system like like a kind of behavioral modification system
Speaker 1: where you in fact don't know you're being influenced. You
Speaker 1: don't know who's influencing you, and this is all opaque.
Speaker 1: You're just suddenly producing behaviors that feel alien and you
Speaker 1: don't know why you're doing them. Yes. Now, another religion
Speaker 1: based argumently makes uh in this chapter is that Bummer
Speaker 1: ultimately wants you to believe it is the Internet and
Speaker 1: it is the main part of your devices. Uh. But
Speaker 1: but it but it ultimately is separated. You know. He
Speaker 1: says you can have the Internet without social media, and
Speaker 1: he makes a strong argument for that. You know, that's
Speaker 1: ultimately I think his point is that you know, you
Speaker 1: you could have a great Internet just by sort of
Speaker 1: switching everything from the behavior modification pay for a model
Speaker 1: to like a subscription model where you know, like you
Speaker 1: could have something like Facebook, but instead of modifying your
Speaker 1: behavior to pay for it, you just you just pay
Speaker 1: to get access. Right and uh and uh, Lanier argues that,
Speaker 1: you know, in the same way the Protestants rejected papal indulgence,
Speaker 1: is you know, you can you can reject the social
Speaker 1: media but keep the Internet. You can reject the version
Speaker 1: of your faith that is uh that is, you know,
Speaker 1: tiresome or offensive or dangerous, and keep the parts that
Speaker 1: work for you. I mean, I've said that before regarding
Speaker 1: just a religion in general. You know, whatever religion you
Speaker 1: adhere to, uh, I can almost guarantee you there is
Speaker 1: some version of it, uh that is that is ultimately
Speaker 1: more accepting and uh, you know, and more liberal in
Speaker 1: its outlook. Uh you know, whether it's in your immediate
Speaker 1: area or you have to you know, go out to
Speaker 1: find it. As another issue, Uh. He also makes the
Speaker 1: argument that bummer activates pack the pack setting of her mind. Uh,
Speaker 1: and in doing so, it quote resurrects old conflicts that
Speaker 1: had been associated with religion in order to engage people
Speaker 1: as intensely as possible. So basically, social media riles us
Speaker 1: up and causes the kind of like pack mentality and
Speaker 1: tribalism that normally you would have to look to a
Speaker 1: religion to do. Yeah what he This is part of
Speaker 1: an earlier argument in the book, but basically it's part
Speaker 1: of an argument he makes about how, uh, social media
Speaker 1: is making us meaner and and worse by by triggering
Speaker 1: types of thought patterns that are more associated with obsession
Speaker 1: with hierarchies and and in group out group thinking and
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Yeah, and domination mentality, yeah, dominated culture.
Speaker 1: And then he he also points out that Bummer ultimately
Speaker 1: asked you to have faith not in in God or
Speaker 1: God's or a godess, but in the almighty algorithms that
Speaker 1: decide what slice of news, political commentary, fake news, parody,
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory, or just outright hate you see in your feed,
Speaker 1: and that it's you know, entirely anti ENLiGHT enlightenment in
Speaker 1: that regard, and that it makes learning subservient to human
Speaker 1: power hierarchies. Well, yeah, I mean by allowing these algorithms
Speaker 1: to control what you see all day you are in practice,
Speaker 1: whether you know you think about this or not, in practice,
Speaker 1: you're giving your consent to somebody to shape who you
Speaker 1: become as a person. And uh, and that that's a
Speaker 1: lot of power, that's a lot of faith to put
Speaker 1: in some business. He goes on from here to discuss
Speaker 1: another destructive force in human discourse, memes. Um. So this
Speaker 1: is that this is one of these areas where when
Speaker 1: I talk about memes, I feel like often just come
Speaker 1: off like an old person, an old, grumpy person who
Speaker 1: doesn't understand how the kids talk, you know, complaining about memes.
Speaker 1: But no, I I am with you there. Even when
Speaker 1: I see a meme that's funny, and I see him
Speaker 1: all the time, you know, I'm not. I'm not above memes.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, some are really funny and I like them,
Speaker 1: but there's a part of me that always sort of rebels.
Speaker 1: And I think it has to do with what we
Speaker 1: were talking about about context earlier. You know, I worry
Speaker 1: about meme culture degrading the context of original images and
Speaker 1: text in a way that that just constantly batters down
Speaker 1: our defenses and batters down our desire to understand things.
Speaker 1: And in their original meaning. Yeah, he He writes that
Speaker 1: memes may at first, you know, when we first engage
Speaker 1: with them, they might seem to amplify what we're feeling
Speaker 1: or trying to say. And you know, for instance, somebody
Speaker 1: posts a bit of h it's news or thought, and
Speaker 1: you back it up with like, what do you see
Speaker 1: in so many Facebook responses? Or I guess on other
Speaker 1: social media platforms as well, you see like gifts and
Speaker 1: memes that seem to be sort of an amen brother
Speaker 1: kind of an argument or or or some other interaction
Speaker 1: with the content. But but but ultimately, like this, this
Speaker 1: feeling of amplification is an illusion. You're only reinforcing the
Speaker 1: notion that virality is truth. Whatever is the most viral
Speaker 1: is rewarded, and that's a key part of Bummer's design.
Speaker 1: But just because it's viral does not mean it is
Speaker 1: the truth. And uh, which seems like an overstatement of
Speaker 1: the obvious when I say it like that, But but again,
Speaker 1: don't think about you know, think about the way we
Speaker 1: interact with it and the way we use memes. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you go to any fact checking website, just pick
Speaker 1: your favorite, I mean, and pull it a fact or
Speaker 1: whatever and you like, scroll down and you scroll down
Speaker 1: to see you know, like truth ratings by source, what's
Speaker 1: always the number one source of total fabrications. You might
Speaker 1: think of immediately your least favorite politician, But no, it's
Speaker 1: not a person. It's viral image, right, Viral image is
Speaker 1: always the number one source of false facts that are
Speaker 1: spreading around the internet. Why is that, Well, because viral
Speaker 1: image is an extremely powerful method for spreading falsehoods. It
Speaker 1: spreads way easier than somebody going on TV and saying them.
Speaker 1: And here goes on from here to you know, also
Speaker 1: point out that in many of the these bummer companies
Speaker 1: and in some of the key individuals associated with them,
Speaker 1: you know, they're also they also put a lot of
Speaker 1: emphasis on grander ideas of organizing all information, of providing
Speaker 1: communities with purpose of creating AI. And ultimately, he says,
Speaker 1: you know, this is a this is a danger to
Speaker 1: to personhood. You know that there's a spiritual danger uh,
Speaker 1: to us in our sense of personhood when we start,
Speaker 1: you know, putting too much emphasis on these these non
Speaker 1: human models of of thinking and humanity. Uh. You know which, again,
Speaker 1: this is getting into kind of heavy, headier territory than
Speaker 1: most of the book. But I think it's it's an
Speaker 1: interesting case. You know what is how how are these
Speaker 1: powerful corporations thinking about what it is to be human?
Speaker 1: And then how is that changing the definition at least
Speaker 1: like the sort of the spiritual definition and the self
Speaker 1: defining principle of personhood. So again, like this this argument
Speaker 1: in the book, I it does have I think there
Speaker 1: is a possibility that you hear this or even you
Speaker 1: read it and you start, you know, asking yourself, well,
Speaker 1: is that that really the case? Are we're really thinking
Speaker 1: about social media like it's a religion? Is it still?
Speaker 1: Is it? Is it actually uh serving a purpose us
Speaker 1: that is akin to religion? And I think I think
Speaker 1: he makes a strong case. I think that I think
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where you kind of like
Speaker 1: you wake up one day and you realize, oh, I
Speaker 1: have joined the church social media and I've actually I've
Speaker 1: been attending services for years and I didn't quite realize it.
Speaker 1: You know, you know, you tend to think of of
Speaker 1: a religion as you know, as this as a as
Speaker 1: a church or a temple, as these images of God's
Speaker 1: and you don't think of the roles that they play
Speaker 1: in a culture and how even as you know, for
Speaker 1: the most part, and you know in many cultures there
Speaker 1: is a movement away from these organized religions. You know,
Speaker 1: there's this there's this possibility that we are we are
Speaker 1: rebuilding something that operates in much the same way, or
Speaker 1: maybe in just some of the same worst ways, Yeah,
Speaker 1: without without some of the same, without providing some of
Speaker 1: the best. Because I've you know, as I've discussed in
Speaker 1: the show before, you know, I think they're I think
Speaker 1: religion and spirituality, uh that they both have tremendous benefits
Speaker 1: uh to individuals and as certainly to uh uh to
Speaker 1: societies and uh you know, you can get that sense
Speaker 1: of community with a religious organization. You know, they can
Speaker 1: do a great deal of harm if they are you know,
Speaker 1: if they have toxic beliefs wound up into their their fabric,
Speaker 1: or they they promote uh toxic personality dynamics. Sometimes yes, certainly,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, we we would. What we don't want
Speaker 1: to do is certainly to put all the of that
Speaker 1: aside and then rebuild. Yeah, like like you say, a
Speaker 1: new digital religion that is based on most of the
Speaker 1: worst qualities of what came before. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: I find most of this book a pretty compelling message.
Speaker 1: But I do want to emphasize again that it's like
Speaker 1: um it emphasizes a lot of what's negative about the
Speaker 1: current model of social media. But even with these like
Speaker 1: bummer companies, he doesn't demonize. He's not saying, and we're
Speaker 1: not saying that like all the people who work at
Speaker 1: these companies are bad people. We're not even saying that
Speaker 1: like necessarily all the things done by these companies are
Speaker 1: all their products are bad. I mean, like you know,
Speaker 1: Facebook and Google and all these companies have. They provide
Speaker 1: real technologies and real products that do you know, great
Speaker 1: things for people's lives, that make all kinds of things easier.
Speaker 1: They provide enormous wealth and convenience and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So it's not that like everything these companies do is bad.
Speaker 1: I mean that that's not true by any stretch of
Speaker 1: the imagination. It's just that there are certain elements about
Speaker 1: the business model of especially the social media platforms, and
Speaker 1: specifically it's the element that its behavior modification for rent
Speaker 1: that really do need to be reformed. And that's where
Speaker 1: his recommendation comes in. He says, if you want to
Speaker 1: give these companies financial incentive to reform delete your accounts. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the bummer illness is there in social media, and the
Speaker 1: only way to get rid of it, to rid the
Speaker 1: host of that that infection, is to step away from it.
Speaker 1: To have to create this financial incentive for those for
Speaker 1: these corporations to change and and ultimately, yeah, he has
Speaker 1: this positive view, this optimistic view that it can change
Speaker 1: that if we were to do this, if we're all
Speaker 1: to do this, not all at once, but perhaps this
Speaker 1: gradual awakening, uh to the reality, you know, we could
Speaker 1: reach the point where social media can exist in a
Speaker 1: form that is not not demeaning of our personhood, that
Speaker 1: is not modifying our behavior to the benefit of you know,
Speaker 1: you know, unknown corporations or by state or non state players. Yes. There.
Speaker 1: So there are a ton of other arguments he gets
Speaker 1: into in the book that we did not have time
Speaker 1: to address today. Of course, you know, we're not going
Speaker 1: to address everything in the book. If we can get
Speaker 1: Jared Lannier to come on the show sometime, I'd be
Speaker 1: interested in talking about some of the other ones, uh, especially,
Speaker 1: but also I am interested in hearing from listeners who
Speaker 1: who disagree maybe who or you know agree or disagree
Speaker 1: because one thing I recognize is that I think I
Speaker 1: have an emotional predispos position to bias in favor of
Speaker 1: these arguments. Uh, simply because I I feel like in
Speaker 1: my life I have witnessed a lot of negativity growing
Speaker 1: out of social media. I personally, emotionally don't like platforms
Speaker 1: like Facebook and Twitter and and so you know, I
Speaker 1: I've got a predisposition that makes this scene, this all
Speaker 1: seemed good to me. So I'd be interested in hearing,
Speaker 1: you know, the arguments presented to the contrary that that
Speaker 1: would go against my biases that say, no, maybe it's
Speaker 1: not as bad as he's representing. Right. And likewise, if
Speaker 1: anyone out there has quit social media, if you have
Speaker 1: deleted your social media accounts, I'd be interested to hear
Speaker 1: your take on how that went. You know why, you know,
Speaker 1: why did you do it? Uh? Did did you accomplish
Speaker 1: what you hope to accomplish by stepping away? Uh? You know,
Speaker 1: all this is a fair game for discussion. So again,
Speaker 1: the title of the book is Ten Arguments for Deleting
Speaker 1: Your Social Media Accounts right Now by Jared Lanier. That's
Speaker 1: l A in I E. R. It's as of this recording,
Speaker 1: it's currently available in hard back and it's coming out
Speaker 1: in paperback very soon. Yeah. If it's not out by
Speaker 1: the time this episode publishes, it will be coming out soon. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So again, highly recommend this read and would love to
Speaker 1: hear from listeners who read it as well. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: If you want to follow what we do, head on
Speaker 1: over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. And
Speaker 1: if you want to support the show, rate and review
Speaker 1: us wherever you have the power to do so and
Speaker 1: make sure you have subscribed huge thanks to our excellent
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Speaker 1: suggest a topic for the future to follow up on
Speaker 1: any of the prompts we just issued, you can email
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