On social media: How is it to write, and about what? Why?
I think the title quite neatly sums up all of my questions and problems about writing. I'm not talking of writing term papers for school courses, for those questions can be answered simply: one writes by forcing nosebleeds to become decent grades, one writes the relevant answers to the thesis statement and/or question, and finally, one writes for the aforementioned decent grades. Should one get decidedly metaphysical about these questions, one writes to prove that one exists, that one therefore thinks, and that one therefore has something worth writing about - briefly, about his existence.
I'm talking about the writing done through social media - notes and statuses on Facebook, blog entries on blogs everywhere you care to look (obviously including this one), and, by extension, the more "respectable" articles on more respectable media sites. I don't need to be told that the internet (and again by extension social media) is for information, since we have already covered that in the postgraduate class on Castells's social theory. (Since it was a respectable social theory by a respectable social theorist the main lesson missed all the human things and brilliantly stuck to the social scientific things). Barring general information as purpose, the writing done through social media is, arguably, primarily existential: I think one writes simply because one can, and due to the lubrication afforded by social media one indeed can, a thousand times over within an hour. No doubt the virtualization of data lends to this lubrication, but it is not the virtuality that concerns me and my questions; it is the content. Barring tweets as definition of acceptable writing (or even thought), how does one go about writing things regarding one's life, there for all to see within seconds of posting or publishing, with almost or no weight to research or citation given, simply as a message posted: this is how my day went, this is what I had for breakfast and how much I spent for this heinous cup of coffee, this is what I want for Christmas, this is what I dream of, this is what I am thinking now?
My problem with this non-problem (I am aware that it is not a problem for most people and that this problematization immediately makes me be at a disadvantage of having no audience whatsoever), is that underneath all the clickety taps done on a keyboard is the question, "what the hell am I doing this for?" I post descriptions and (edited) pictures of, say, my holiday, like what you will find in the previous post, while being aware that I have to stop whatever it is I am doing while on my holiday to disseminate to the world that this is how my day went, this is what I had for breakfast and how much I spent for this heinous cup of coffee. As though it matters, as though my breakfast and that heinous cup of coffee will make anything bad better, will effect any good change to someone's day or life philosophy, or even to mine.
One spends his days helping out the victims of typhoon Yolanda and takes pictures of himself, posted with the appropriate hashtags, stopping once in a while to get the camera angle right, just so that one can be captured holding relief goods while sweating with kindness and consideration, after which one posts these pictures with an accompanying short essay detailing how their body aches from all their altruism, and that we Filipinos should pray and do good things like relief efforts, and that one is ready to do it again for the next five days, after which the pictures will be of heinous coffee and the day's breakfast.
Or one lists the things that make life better, like pretty things and profound books or travels to broaden the mind, perhaps inadvertently arguing for capitalism and consumerism in the process, as though it would inspire others to be better, or kinder, or stop being assholes towards one another in physical interaction. It might. I don't rightly know. There is a thin line, as Sedaris implies, between an experience underwent for yourself and proof offered for other people. You might have been enriched by your pretty things, but somehow if you tell the world about how good you are at reading and travelling and helping others I would actually ask why I have access to your thoughts in the first place. Or does this have something to do about the sense of self-security of the one reading?
If, however, you list steps or present a full-blown treatise on how to stop being assholes towards other people, it could still be diluted into nothing: one can still take the time to be an asshole and comment "TL;DR" or call you a self-righteous hack three units short of a PhD from a backwater college and detail this in their blog in turn. You can try to be helpful about things and still come out as a twat telling the world how good you are as a person and that people can benefit from whatever it is you're trying to say. Or, again, does this have something to do about the sense of self-security of the one reading?
At the risk of sounding like a self-righteous hack and a hypocrite on top of that (and many other things besides), I have no idea why there are some writing that is fine, while there is some writing that makes me feel like I should not be on social media anymore, for fear that I am not constructed properly for it. It is easy to be a curmudgeon on social media: one cannot thwack you on the head over the internet. It is hard to be one in print, unless you and your editor, your peers, your publisher, and your family share all the same core values. A book, unlike writing on social media, becomes self-contained after checks and counterchecks, spawning reactions to it in other self-contained books or reviews, and properly digesting them takes time. A blog entry five feet long will make your reader have Carpal Tunnel Syndrome halfway though and acquire blindness the rest of the way, and this entry can be countered by either a bigot or a philosophy student, sometimes at once, saying the same things, and you will never know which said what, for you will be too busy figuring out if it was wise to publish the damned thing over the internet in the first place.
It is easy to say what you think regardless of its uselessness, pretentiousness, or just general curmudgeoneity when there is virtually neither space nor time (certainly no checks outside the width and breadth of your own mind) that buffers the time between typing and posting. Perhaps that is my problem: writing over social media makes everything too easy. And for that, it does not require (if you do not) the decency of a pause, of silence, of thought. It does not have the dignity of time (but only) when it talks about something that takes time, like life. That is why writing on social media is existential in the uncomfortable sense: it is fleeting, momentary, with no purchase on principle. A book might be bigoted bollocks, but then it takes time to publish bigoted principles, and time to come up with your own principles. They might be bollocks, but they are bollocks ripened with time. The same could be said, after all, for a few organized religions and a few philosophies.
So it seems that I am concerned, after all, about the virtuality, and not the content, of writing. Perhaps this is really what my problem is: I cannot problematize social media properly without problematizing writing in the process, and, if I were to take this to Derridean lengths, this is always already the situation, merely exacerbated (and not created) by the real virtuality of new media, rather than the simple virtuality of the written word. Or perhaps I merely hate pretentious people, which, given the medium I am using, will inevitably include myself.
I'm talking about the writing done through social media - notes and statuses on Facebook, blog entries on blogs everywhere you care to look (obviously including this one), and, by extension, the more "respectable" articles on more respectable media sites. I don't need to be told that the internet (and again by extension social media) is for information, since we have already covered that in the postgraduate class on Castells's social theory. (Since it was a respectable social theory by a respectable social theorist the main lesson missed all the human things and brilliantly stuck to the social scientific things). Barring general information as purpose, the writing done through social media is, arguably, primarily existential: I think one writes simply because one can, and due to the lubrication afforded by social media one indeed can, a thousand times over within an hour. No doubt the virtualization of data lends to this lubrication, but it is not the virtuality that concerns me and my questions; it is the content. Barring tweets as definition of acceptable writing (or even thought), how does one go about writing things regarding one's life, there for all to see within seconds of posting or publishing, with almost or no weight to research or citation given, simply as a message posted: this is how my day went, this is what I had for breakfast and how much I spent for this heinous cup of coffee, this is what I want for Christmas, this is what I dream of, this is what I am thinking now?
My problem with this non-problem (I am aware that it is not a problem for most people and that this problematization immediately makes me be at a disadvantage of having no audience whatsoever), is that underneath all the clickety taps done on a keyboard is the question, "what the hell am I doing this for?" I post descriptions and (edited) pictures of, say, my holiday, like what you will find in the previous post, while being aware that I have to stop whatever it is I am doing while on my holiday to disseminate to the world that this is how my day went, this is what I had for breakfast and how much I spent for this heinous cup of coffee. As though it matters, as though my breakfast and that heinous cup of coffee will make anything bad better, will effect any good change to someone's day or life philosophy, or even to mine.
One spends his days helping out the victims of typhoon Yolanda and takes pictures of himself, posted with the appropriate hashtags, stopping once in a while to get the camera angle right, just so that one can be captured holding relief goods while sweating with kindness and consideration, after which one posts these pictures with an accompanying short essay detailing how their body aches from all their altruism, and that we Filipinos should pray and do good things like relief efforts, and that one is ready to do it again for the next five days, after which the pictures will be of heinous coffee and the day's breakfast.
Or one lists the things that make life better, like pretty things and profound books or travels to broaden the mind, perhaps inadvertently arguing for capitalism and consumerism in the process, as though it would inspire others to be better, or kinder, or stop being assholes towards one another in physical interaction. It might. I don't rightly know. There is a thin line, as Sedaris implies, between an experience underwent for yourself and proof offered for other people. You might have been enriched by your pretty things, but somehow if you tell the world about how good you are at reading and travelling and helping others I would actually ask why I have access to your thoughts in the first place. Or does this have something to do about the sense of self-security of the one reading?
If, however, you list steps or present a full-blown treatise on how to stop being assholes towards other people, it could still be diluted into nothing: one can still take the time to be an asshole and comment "TL;DR" or call you a self-righteous hack three units short of a PhD from a backwater college and detail this in their blog in turn. You can try to be helpful about things and still come out as a twat telling the world how good you are as a person and that people can benefit from whatever it is you're trying to say. Or, again, does this have something to do about the sense of self-security of the one reading?
At the risk of sounding like a self-righteous hack and a hypocrite on top of that (and many other things besides), I have no idea why there are some writing that is fine, while there is some writing that makes me feel like I should not be on social media anymore, for fear that I am not constructed properly for it. It is easy to be a curmudgeon on social media: one cannot thwack you on the head over the internet. It is hard to be one in print, unless you and your editor, your peers, your publisher, and your family share all the same core values. A book, unlike writing on social media, becomes self-contained after checks and counterchecks, spawning reactions to it in other self-contained books or reviews, and properly digesting them takes time. A blog entry five feet long will make your reader have Carpal Tunnel Syndrome halfway though and acquire blindness the rest of the way, and this entry can be countered by either a bigot or a philosophy student, sometimes at once, saying the same things, and you will never know which said what, for you will be too busy figuring out if it was wise to publish the damned thing over the internet in the first place.
It is easy to say what you think regardless of its uselessness, pretentiousness, or just general curmudgeoneity when there is virtually neither space nor time (certainly no checks outside the width and breadth of your own mind) that buffers the time between typing and posting. Perhaps that is my problem: writing over social media makes everything too easy. And for that, it does not require (if you do not) the decency of a pause, of silence, of thought. It does not have the dignity of time (but only) when it talks about something that takes time, like life. That is why writing on social media is existential in the uncomfortable sense: it is fleeting, momentary, with no purchase on principle. A book might be bigoted bollocks, but then it takes time to publish bigoted principles, and time to come up with your own principles. They might be bollocks, but they are bollocks ripened with time. The same could be said, after all, for a few organized religions and a few philosophies.
So it seems that I am concerned, after all, about the virtuality, and not the content, of writing. Perhaps this is really what my problem is: I cannot problematize social media properly without problematizing writing in the process, and, if I were to take this to Derridean lengths, this is always already the situation, merely exacerbated (and not created) by the real virtuality of new media, rather than the simple virtuality of the written word. Or perhaps I merely hate pretentious people, which, given the medium I am using, will inevitably include myself.
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