I'm nobody, who are you

Facebook is the “high school reunion from Hell”. Twitter is the “hosepipe of hatred”. Instagram is “Twitter for people who can't or won't read”. WhatsApp is the “official disinformation channel”.  These are all descriptions of social media – on social media. And the love-hate relationships that we have with this latest form of self-expression is both bewildering and addictive.

There have been reams written about the nature of our love for social media - the allure of self-presentation, the dopamine rush with every comment or like on a post, and the transformation of our very lives as social media performance.

All that is true - and social media is often depressing, frustrating, invidious. Women tend to face horrendous abuse and threats of rape and mutilation. Political arguments lose all nuance and turn into slugfests and shouting matches. Language is often vile. And the other aspect, that of one’s circle of friends and peers, turns on exclusivity, exotic holidays, the preciousness of precocious children - all leading to FOMO, the fear of missing out - a word that the Oxford Dictionary added way back in 2013.

But.

If you can accept that you will never have a life as interesting as your friends on Instagram or Facebook, that you will never know more than the economist or historian on Twitter, and you’re prepared to stay away from people you interact with on a regular basis in real life while on social media, there is so much scope for learning new things, to be entertained, to be amazed and to be provoked into thought.

It’s how you discover that the late Sultan Qaboos of Oman was a great fan of British light opera and Gilbert and Sullivan - and one of the reasons he led a coup against his father was that his father had stormed into his room and smashed his favourite record (the Pirates of Penzance). It’s finding out that both Gordon Greenidge and Vivian Richards made their test debuts here in this city, in 1974 - and Greenidge became the first West Indian to score a test century on debut while overseas. Or that we use the ‘x’ as the multiplication sign because of the efforts of a clergyman named WIlliam Oughtred, back in 1631. Or that the Marathi broadcaster and novelist Venu Chitale began her career at the BBC in 1940 as secretary to author George Orwell. Or that there is a kind of mollusc called the disco clam which uses a system of flashing lights to protect itself from predators. Its finding pictures of “beauties from Lucknow”, dating back to 1874. It’s finding out that Mary Burchell, an author of more than 110 Mills & Boon romance novels, used the money she made to save Jewish families from the Nazis before World War II.

And there’s subject-focused social media - virtual gatherings of old film fans, antiquarians, bibliophiles, mathematicians, astronomers, nature lovers - whose postings renew interest in things that you had hoped you’d left behind you, which went under the stultifying names of mathematics and biology and physics from your days in school or college; or bring to your attention films you should be seeing or books you should be reading - classics that no longer are on bestseller lists or the box office charts. And when you go from reading about books to reading them, and talking about them, from watching clips to watching a long forgotten classic that still retains its charm, your life is enriched.

Yes, posting a photo of yourself in exotic surroundings, looking as good as you van, artfully enhanced by tints and filters, and seeing the likes pour in can be immensely satisfying. So is making a smart comment about the state of the nation or the world, stimulating a comment chain a hundred posts long. But unless you’re a celebrity, with people waiting to engage with you, hanging on your every image or utterance, this is not going to happen. And when it does, it is usually accompanied by hateful remarks, ad-hominem insults, and general pettiness.

But if you are content with having fifty friends or followers - of which 40 may be bots, but are willing to follow hundreds of people who have interesting things to say, if you’re willing to prune your friends’ lists and following lists regularly and often, social media can be so rewarding. But if you keep trying to make that popular post, that viral video, that great selfie, you’ve just ended up “public, like a frog”, telling your name the livelong June, to an admiring (or otherwise) bog.

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https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/im-nobody-who-are-you/articleshow/73616060.cms

On and Off Facebook

After a layoff of around six months, I got back on Facebook. I think it was a mistake. Within hours of my initial return post, I was back on the page, checking and rechecking who had liked it, who hadn't, who had noticed my absence, who had commented and so on. I mean, I can talk all I want about the interesting stuff friends and colleagues are doing, and all the jokes and memes and political commentary, but ultimately, its all about getting likes and comments on your posts.
Which, when you think of it, is actually kind of sad.
There's a videogame trope called gameplay and story segregation. There's the gameplay - the tactics of combat or platforming, the sequences of keystrokes and button presses that take you from one level to another, and there's the story, the overall narrative. The technical term for this is "ludonarrative dissonance" - meaning that while the story tells one tale, the way you play the game tells another.
The most obvious example would be a lawful good paladin in a roleplaying game who loots everything that isn't nailed down - because, well, loot means better equipment, more money, easier boss fights and so on. So, in essence, while you may be playing an ethical character, the game rewards you for unethical behaviour.
In Facebook, of course, you set the narrative. The role you play is your online self - something which hews - at certain levels - to yourself. The building blocks of your online personality - your political views, your sports and hobbies, the books you read and review on Goodreads, the movie clips and music you post, your attempts at wit, all the rest. There are the vacation snaps, the showcasing of family, photos of gatherings and reunions in boozy pubs and college campuses - thats the story.
The gameplay is the likes you gather, the number of comments on each photo and post, and its not unlikely that at some point, Facebook - or Instagram or Sanpchat - will introduce metrics that measure your social media presence - "You are a 'four star' personality. You have an average of 24 likes and 15 comments on every link you share. You have an average of 67 likes for every photo album. Your most popular memory featured your spouse and children urinating in tandem at the Mannekin Pis on 24th July 2016. Your most popular post tagged Bill Clinton and Ivanka Trump" and so on. And so, in through the Black Mirror we go.  
Being away from Facebook took me away from it all for a while. It wasn't easy. The first few days, almost by reflex, every time I opened my browser, my fingers would work thusly. +D, "fa", and autocomplete would fill in "https://www.facebook.com" and . But then, since my account was deactivated, I would be asked to login, and I would sigh, and then pull back.
But as withdrawals go, it was pretty mild. Maybe it was because my post would be ignored, more often than not. If I was lucky, I'd get a couple of likes and the occasional comment. (That, of course, is a very good reality check for narcissism).
But here's the thing. My life didn't change for the better. It wasn't as if I'd decoupled from the net completely. So I might have missed grieving posts about the passing of Carrie Fisher or Edward Albee or George Michael, or the shocked ones about Trump's election. I must have missed furious debates on demonetisation, and whether or not it was a disastrous bungle that destroyed the economy. And as ever, the arguments about gender and caste, about Jaya and Jallikattu, about storms and steel bridges. I missed the discussions about that Australian Open match, or the Mistry Masala at Tata Sons
All in all, not much, because it's not the events you miss.
There's this piece of faux-profundity that goes "Wherever you go, there you are." But like most trite shite, it's true. Not in the sense of "ooh. Enjoy every moment mindfulness yada yada bullshit", but because there's no escaping from yourself. And staying away from Facebook isn't a journey into the uncharted. It's pretty much the same as staying of Facebook.
Games succeed because of replayability. Replayability is a function of gameplay, however good the story is (except maybe Planescape:Torment).  So, story be damned. I'm back for the gameplay.


PS: A cry for help. Please like this.

Facebook and me

This is my Facebook life.

Minor differences. My life is even suckier than Scott's is in the video. I don't have a significant other or am I in relationship. My job has its dead end days - usually there are six of them every week.
But the video makes me wonder. Most of my friends on Facebook are my age, and they are in the two children, senior position at some company, and expensive vacations stage of life.
On this day, 26th of June, 2014, this is on my Facebook news feed.

1. A post on frogs by a respected naturalist specializing in the little croakers
2. One family photo of a friend in front of the Sydney Opera house at night, captioned "A Night at the Opera"
3. One question from a quiz group a colleague enrolled me in
4. One link from The American Conservative on the "Credibility Fallacy" in American foreign policy
5. One link from the Atlantic titled "Children are taught too much about the importance of achievement and too little about the value of empathy"
6. A post from Alan Moore saying that limited signed copies of his "Show Pieces" box set are available
7. A link to a Kotaku story on bargain games
8. A link to a Wired story on Google's new design language for devices
9. A photo from a college mate's wife of their kids coddling in bed and watching X-Men
10. Another classmate's post of a quote from Camus (""The absurd is lucid reason that sees its limits"), complete with a photo of Titian's Sisyphus
11. A link to a Daily Show video clip
12. A photo of two kids watching Frozen, taken by their father, an old schoolmate
13. A video re-shared by an ex-colleague, showing two women shoplifting
14. An old classmate's wife posts that she is watching a comedian perform at New York's Radio City Music Hall with her husband
15. An old collegemate's selfie, eating doughnuts with his daughter

 So why am I even on this thing?