Social media’s inevitable fade out
Social media is dead. Since it’s my job to be predictive rather than descriptive, I’m advancing what is usually said, that it’s in decline, not that it matters given the damage already done to human relations. And never mind that, it played a remarkable role in killing democracies before our eyes.
We kept having faux climaxes on that. First, Trump was elected, then he was dis-elected, now he’s coming back or something worse. Never say “worst.” History always has something in its pocket. (Note: it’s VR/ virtual reality.)
Twitter was the worst, I once thought. Now it’s irrelevant, its idiocy no longer entertaining. I’m afraid I had a misanthropic fondness for the sensation of disgust but it has vanished. Twitter’s a bore like Facebook, like all social media a magnet for the foolish.
Anti-vaxxers didn’t like a column I wrote recently in which I asked if after this particular pandemic ends, we would find it in ourselves to forgive them. I mentioned the cancer patients unable to get surgery because hospitals were so crowded. We’ve had to redefine medical desperation. Their pain and fear didn’t rate very high. It didn’t rate with people unvaccinated by choice who were furious, as they always are. But not on Twitter.
I had adjusted the filters eventually provided by Twitter at the slowest speed possible as history rattled on. Block filters from non-fully registered Twips, block certain words, use other blocks, and your feed gradually narrows itself to the clever, good-hearted people I favour, obscure art feeds, and information suited to my purposes.
Unwell people no longer have automatic access to me or the mainstream. Thanks to the Star being sold to new, smart owners, we are modernizing. Among other benefits, my emails are better-filtered now.
I don’t have to read hateful, bulging emails. When I tested them I discovered to my horror that I could find no one who even briefly bothered to mention people whose cancer surgery was postponed.
If anti-vaxxers are furious that no one likes them, take a look at your numbers now, people.
The Russian-American novelist Gary Shteyngart just gave a remarkable interview to the Guardian. His most recent novel, nominally about the pandemic, had just been published in Britain, his previous British publisher having turned down “Our Country Friends” citing “COVID fatigue.” It is to laugh.
As the child of two failing superpowers, he said he was in a “maximal historical position.”
“The collapse of humanity is as deathly funny as it is heart-rending … If I’m going to see members of my son’s generation being burned like ants beneath the super-sun, I at least want the flicker of a smile along with my last drawn breath.
“And then, if any of them survive (oh, please God, let it be so), and reconstitute themselves in the last livable parts of Canada or Novaya Zemlya, let our chronicles of the present remind them of both their ancestors’ stupidity and their infrequent but sometimes moving moments of grace.”
Shteyngart had just mentioned the Trump coup, U.S. racist violence, fires, heatwaves and the pandemic. But history had more in its pocket: the Tongan volcano; Beijing’s hostage threats to families of 10,000 Chinese overseas; and more horrors today. Fictionalists can’t keep up.
All industries decline eventually, including democracy, journalism, film and carbon. Some changes are perfectly splendid. If mainstream movies are now sourced from cartoons, fine. We have Netflix. When Netflix fades, we’ll have parties at my house, all three of us.
In the meantime, don’t keep those emails coming. The expense of viperous spirit in a waste of self-obsessed feverish shame, they reach no one.
A minor issue: could journalists stop asking people how they feel? This may be where the rot began. Instead ask them what they think. Then if you are so minded, ask them why.