When I first learned about “Big History,” which was the title that was designated to all of history since the big bang by an incredible professor who had given my 9th grade history class the challenge and privilege of what I consider now a college level course, I learned about the great paradox of agriculture. Basically, the idea is that 10,000 years ago when humanity invented agriculture, for many philosophical and technical reasons alike, it was simultaneously the greatest accomplishment in human history and the worst mistake humanity had ever made. What now allowed humanity to thrive and to excel technologically beyond any previous belief also secured human domination over nature, leading to great advances in quality of human life and longevity at the cost of nature’s well-being, and most likely the natural Earth itself.
So fast forward all 10,000 of those years of human evolution and the dawn of industrialization and capitalism and the rise of focus on individuality and personal gain and yada yada yada, we have social media. The internet was another giant leap forward in human evolution, virtually granting us instantaneous global access and visibility. The pinnacle of the internet right now, is social media. Sites like Twitter and Facebook have allowed users to almost digitize themselves and create an online identity and presence to be searched, shared, and consumed by anyone, anywhere, at any time.
So let’s be clear though, the whole agriculture thing is not an allegory to social media, or the internet even. No, the next great paradox will probably be when we reach singularity or a point where we’ve developed technology that is more advanced than what we’re prepared for, or AI, or whatever crazy sci-fi shit that’s not actually crazy and is closer than we think making it sci-fact shit. But social media and the digitizing of entire personas is part of all that, and it is also a paradox, which can be used for great incredible things, if only we can stop using it for incredibly stupid and self-serving things.
Social media is incredible because for once, there is a worldwide sphere of connectivity that grants not all, but many marginalized voices the ability to come together in solidarity over hashtags and trending topics to have a national or global discussion in attempts to make heard what goes ignored in the mainstream. At its best, social media can unite voices to force an incredibly important issue like the Michael Brown shooting and all of the surrounding events into mainstream visibility when they are going largely ignored in place of “newsworthy” saturation of dead celebrity coverage. Most recently, social media was used to force visibility of a story about the author of the Lemony Snicket books making ignorant, racially charged humor at the National Book Awards, which was ignored largely in the press, showcasing the diversity problem within the world of Books (detailed very nicely here, by Vanessa Willoughby). Groups and voices who have been kept out of mainstream coverage now have the ability to use the combined forces of their online personas and digital presence to make heard what they see fit to be heard, not in exchange for what the mainstream press wants to cover, but as an alternative to mainstream journalism entirely, forcing mainstream journalists to take note and make comment.
The flip side of all of this however, is that so many people have no clue their digital persona can even be used as a tool for visibility and change. So much of social media is an extension of the capitalist emphasis on individuality that instead of uniting or creating significant dialogue, people focus on self-promotion and the illusion of unique identity, where the goal is everyone’s separation from everyone else, leading to a clusterfuck of meaningless selfies and hashtags that in unison show just how frustratingly “same” everyone actually is.
I find it unfortunate that the potential for Facebook and twitter to transcend connectivity into a constant feedback of news and information is squashed underneath the need for quirky commenting and misdirected kneejerk reactions that all create some large scale self-inflation. In order to break the paradox of social media, and for the positive potential of digital personas to be fully realized, eventually the colonized mind of individuals existing within an individualistic capitalist system needs to be torn away. Social media needs to be seen as a place to share stories and breakthroughs and injustices in order for wider populations of people to have access to the most knowledge possible. Sure, there is room for cat videos and memes, but there needs to be an active choice to not allow those to saturate the digital world.
Marginalized voices can come together and force the mainstream to listen, but if the rest of us with the access to and privilege of having an online persona allow for Kim Kardashian’s high end nudes (sent out by people seeking the very visibility and profit that the internet gave them), and selfish interests to gain digital clout over the voiced needs and injustices expressed by those marginalized groups, then the global online community fails in creating unified strength, keeping the marginalized in their margins, and allowing for the web to become just another tool of destruction within the ongoing paradox of technological advancement.
The Pictures Make My Head Hurt 