f0rrest | i am once again an elephant (Reply)

I feel like I’m fucking up right now, so I feel the need to explain myself, maybe not so much to you, but perhaps to myself.

You see, recently I did something I consider to be a very bad thing. I did something I stopped doing over a year ago, something I told myself I would never do again, something I believed to be performative and soul-sucking and possibly the death of humanity as we know it. And that something is, well, I made a new account on the social media platform Mastodon. I rejoined the herd, so to speak.

I am, once again, an elephant.

This may not seem like a very big deal to you, but it’s a very big deal to me. When I tell myself I’m going to do something, or not do something in this case, I like to keep my word. This is especially true when it comes to my vices, of which I have many, and social media, like any bad habit, is most definitely one of those vices. My vices continuously make a hypocrite out of me, causing me no end of psychic dissonance, because when it comes to vice, well, I have a self-control problem. I have a problem keeping my word.

And to prove that I haven’t kept my word, the following are verbatim quotes from yrstruly, pulled from a number of essays and reader email responses.

“Social media does something to our fragile, validation-craving psyches. We cannot get enough of social media, and once we get a taste of the validation it provides, we bend and morph ourselves into whatever form is necessary to continue receiving that validation.”

“... these places are indeed echo chambers brought about by the human need for validation.”

“In short, on social media, we become fake versions of ourselves, all while comparing ourselves to fake versions of other people… It’s a feedback loop of fakeness.”

“Humans need community, real community, and social media is a false community. Our mental health declines because… we continue to believe that social media can replace actual fleshy people, when it obviously can't.”

“We have turned to the miasma (social media) for the very community that the miasma has destroyed, as if the poison is the cure.”

“... if we remove social media, we will become less polarized, because, at present, it’s far too easy to call for violence when we view those we’re targeting as fake, dehumanized avatar people instead of fleshy, real-life people that actually bleed.”

“People were not meant to communicate this way (i.e., social media).”

I could keep going, but I don't want to bore you with all the little details, and the more details I provide, the more figurative egg ends up on my face. The bottom line is, I was very much against social media for a long time. And I still kind of am. Yet here I am, an elephant, back in the herd, in the echo chamber, doing the whole performative song and dance, posting photos of my hip, retro CRT, passages I’ve underlined in paperbacks, and quirky one-liners in all lowercase because, one, I think it looks cool, like I don’t take anything seriously and that’s cool somehow, and two, I’ve convinced myself that social media doesn’t deserve proper grammar. Yet here I am, liking the posts, boosting the posts, compulsively checking the posts, getting those little shots of dopamine with every tap and click.

To quote Trent Reznor of the 7x-platinum industrial goth-rock band Nine Inch Nails, “I was up above it, now I'm down in it.”

So, if I dislike social media so much, why did I return? That’s a great question. First, let's examine those quotes up there, the ones I made a few years ago. Was I full of shit, or was I on to something, or maybe both?

I think this is true to some extent. I don’t think I was entirely off the mark. I think social media is a great source of validation, especially when you get none from the people around you. Perhaps the less validation one receives from those around them, the more one will end up retreating into online spaces. I don’t know. But if you’re anything like me, you probably feel like you don’t belong in the physical space you inhabit, you probably feel like a fucking weirdo. Perhaps, because your values and interests don’t align with those around you, you feel disconnected, alone, different in a bad way, so you’re withdrawn and maybe a little jaded and angry. Maybe you blend in with the crowd, maybe you don’t, but either way you feel like a stranger in a strange land, and you desire to escape, to a world filled with people who understand you.

Social media provides us a way to escape to this world, a way to join a herd of like-minded elephants. On the one hand, this is great, it makes us feel good and perhaps, by fostering a sense that we’re not alone, it can stave off despair, even save a life or two. On the other hand, we become performative, exaggerated versions of ourselves, sometimes flat-out fake versions of ourselves. Because when we receive validation, we lean into the behavior that provides us with that validation, and sometimes that behavior might not be so good, physically or mentally, or both. In the essay that the above quote comes from, I talk about right-wing echo chambers a good bit. I talk about how a withdrawn young man might receive validation from the wrong sort of people, maybe racists or sexists or whatever, and so then that young man might adopt the group’s hateful, extremist views, or at least pretend to, to continue receiving validation from said group. I think this is a common thing that happens. In fact, I’ve watched it happen to people in real time, several times. Like the quote says, I think we often bend and morph ourselves to fit in with the crowd. Maybe this isn’t always a bad thing. But the problem is, some crowds are not worth fitting into, but that’s hard to identify when that not-worth-fitting-into crowd makes you feel good. Another problem, however, and this is where I think I might have been a bit off the mark originally, is that this problem is not unique to social media, this happens in physical spaces as well, all the fucking time. So, perhaps, instead of deriding social media specifically, I should have been critiquing human behavior in general, or providing more guidance on how to think more critically about our shared human need for validation and where it might lead us.

All that being said, it does seem much, much easier to fall into the wrong crowd on social media than in the physical world. Social media disconnects us from reality, making it easy for us to flippantly adopt or espouse extreme views, whereas, in the physical realm, you run the risk of ostracization or literally getting punched in the face. I think this is self-evident just by browsing any online space for more than five minutes. People all over the world are calling for violence, based on political views, religious views, or whatever. There is barely any empathy anymore. Violent rhetoric seems far more common now than it did, say, 20 or 30 years ago. I don’t think it was like this back in the late ‘90s or early 2000s, when I was growing up. I’ve had the privilege of growing up in two different worlds, one before the internet, and one after the internet, and the after-internet world seems far more intolerant than the before-internet one, at least in my experience, which is ironic because, today, even though we’re obsessed with enforcing inclusive language and whatnot, we are more insular, echo-chambered, and hesitant to engage with those we don’t agree with than ever before. Perhaps, in our herd quest for online community, we have lost the ability to think critically?

So yes, I do think social media is dangerous, but only if you’re not able to think critically about yourself and the world around you. And this is where I may have erred in my previous writing. Perhaps I was not thinking critically myself. Instead of low-key shaming people for using social media, I should have been encouraging more critical thinking. The good news is that my writing, at least over the past year, does that in spades, at least I think it does. And perhaps, now that I’m back on Mastodon, I can share my views with more people. Maybe that will help the world in some way. Or maybe I’m just being a narcissist. Who knows.

Anyway. I think that last point, about returning to Mastodon to share my views with more people, is a nice segue into the “why” behind why I returned to Mastodon, so let's examine that a bit.

Spoiler alert, the following might reveal that I am, in fact, just a huge narcissist. This is something I’ve always suspected about myself. The silver lining here, however, is that at least I’m aware of it, at least on some level.

The idea to return to Mastodon came when my friend and I restarted our old gaming blog. Back when we were actively publishing, we would post our work on Mastodon, and it would get some traction there. In fact, I imagine most of our incredibly small reader base came from Mastodon. And some of the people I’ve met through Mastodon are some of the coolest people I’ve ever met in my life, honestly. So, when we decided to start publishing together again, I thought, “Hey, maybe we should post our stuff on Mastodon, like we used to, you know, so people will actually read it?”

Now, just to be clear, I don't need an audience to write. If I did, I probably wouldn’t be writing anymore, because I barely have an audience now. I mean, I’m lucky if one or two people read my long-form stuff. In fact, most of it goes entirely unread. I have the backend data to prove it. But again, I don’t need an audience to write. I’m not just saying that, either. I enjoy writing for a number of reasons that, if you've been following my writing or even this journal, which you probably haven’t, you already know. So, to repeat, I don’t necessarily need an audience to write. But, like most things when it comes to human psychology and life in general, things are never so black and white, everything is always complicated. Because, if I’m being honest, there is certainly a part of me that does like having an audience. There is a part of me that likes it when people read and praise my stuff. From a young age, I have had a desire to become a celebrity. I’ve written about this desire many times. In high school, I wanted to be a David Bowie-like pop star. Maybe my parents didn't give me enough attention when I was younger or something, who knows. But I’m willing to admit that this desire for celebrity is certainly an aspect of my personality, one that I don't particularly care for, but it’s an aspect for sure. And I don’t care for this desire because I know, if I were a Zen master or something, these desires for audience and praise would be purged entirely, or at least not indulged, because, like any desire, they come from a place of ego, insecurity, and longing. Every moment I seek praise, I am thinking of myself without praise. I am happier, in general, when I am not seeking praise from others. I know this to be true because, rarely, in those brief moments of Now Now clarity, when I’m momentarily enlightened, I don’t care about praise, because I know all the praise I would ever need is right here, inside of me. Plus, I know from experience that if you base self-worth solely on praise from others, you are bound for disappointment, envy, and resentment. Peace comes from within, not from compliments and five-star reviews. But nevertheless, these desires for audience and praise are part of me. They are like a Devil Gene. I recognize them, and I treat them as a vice. And, like we already covered, when it comes to vice, I have a problem with self-control, with keeping my word.

So that’s one reason I’m an elephant now, I’m indulging in a vice. And this vice, when indulged, manifests as me advertising my work and trying to appear like a cool and interesting person to people I barely even know online. In a sense, I am marketing, treating myself as a sort of product, a product being given away for free, but a product nonetheless. This makes me feel gross on some level. Human beings ought not be products. Yet here I am, treating myself as if I’m some sort of product, even though I know better. Go figure.

However, and this could very well just be the vice talking, I imagine other writers and artists have a similar desire for audience and praise. I imagine this is a very human thing. We are social creatures, after all. We like being surrounded by people who like us and make us feel good. So, when I was going through the whole dissonant “I know I probably shouldn’t return to Mastodon just to post my stuff and get praise, but I kind of want to?” routine, the last clause of the first sentence of this paragraph kept running through my head on repeat, being used as a counterpoint. “It's OK, you're only human, everyone else does it, why not you?” And eventually, I broke my word. I caved. I became an elephant, once again.

But, if you want to know the truth, that’s not the only reason I caved. It’s really not. In fact, if that were the only reason, I probably wouldn’t have returned to Mastodon. Like most things in life, things are not so black and white, everything is complicated. There was another reason, something deeper, something that, when compounded with my desire for audience, prompted me to return.

And that was, well, I missed you.