Digital minimalism makes a distinction between connection and conversation that is used to determine what tech tools to use, and how to use them.
Newport borrows this idea from another text–his book is basically the synthesis of a half dozen others he cites plus his reactions to them. I should go dig it up for you but I’m lazy and I want to get in and out of this post fast, for obvious reasons; just be aware, that Digital Minimalism isn’t a Newport invention; it is an amalgam of six other books, plus Newport’s last book, with an extra dollop of opprobrium directed at the tech giants for behaving like tobacco companies thrown on top.
Oh, and his case studies, garnered through his platform, a self selected group of folks he puts through a few experiments, and some other successful people who have shared their stories.
Anyway, social media likes, shares, follows, are connections.
Conversations are one on one, phone, video conference, or in person, with the last being best, the first the worst. The high-bandwidth, real time communication between individuals is supposedly the source of human empathy, the learned component, the training ground, with a few studies mentioned. Conversation is what we crave. What we really need.
Connection, is a poke, nudge, wink, smile, heart, like, follow, mass email, one to many posting, a tweet, whatever.
Connections are okay, but when they displace conversation? Yeah. It’s the corn syrup idea I mentioned in a previous post.
I can’t remember if I’ve said this yet or not, but again, here goes, but the act of doing a one-to-many conversation yourself, spewing something into the world, to a lot of people, and getting feedback, actually feels good and in social media friendly studies seems to be a Good Thing,.
The problem is the one-to-many from the other side; imbibing a ton of the one-to-many posts, reading a ton of other people sharing or venting or bragging? That is NOT correlated to happiness.
This causes FOMO, this is a feeling of inadequacy, the sense that others are having more fun than you, leading more fulfilling or meaningful lives. This is a kind of vicarious living that isn’t really being alive. It used to be you could only get so much of this stuff, a columnist or two or ten. A celebrity life column, People magazine.
Twenty million oversharing quirky quasi columnists of every possible political and social and racial and sexual make-up?
That’s a firehouse of corn syrup. That’s an endless IV drip of comforting noise that leaves you empty and depleted.
This is the the thing I take away today. Sure, I could get a few hundred folks engaging with my social media content. They’d enjoy it. But maybe they have better things to do. If I want them to read books? Leave them alone. Even if they don’t read my books. If all of us writers did this? I’d get more readers too.
You’ll see big name folks who basically post in their feeds and react only to the stuff in their feeds. They don’t have to shop around for interaction. Social media is a bottomless pit of folks chatting them up. With a button that ejects the assholes.
The only way this damages the big name is she is distracted from work; she’s not getting FOMO, she doesn’t feel invalidated, her life is a source of endless fascination and conversation, her work, her opinions. The toxicity is vastly reduced.
The downside?
I am thinking of a beloved author I know who writes, conservatively, 2-3k of social media, Facebook–a day. It is exquisite. It feels _copyedited_. This writer grew up on typewriters. The text is clean, the voice is perfect, effortless, the prose is interesting, the viewpoint is engaging and intelligent, and the topics are topical, up to the second reactions to the news of the world.
Readers have been awaiting the next book in one of the writer’s series since the early 90s.
Converting the social media output into fiction would produce the book in two months.
Let’s say there’s a big research component. Four months? Six?
Anyway. I love this guy. His life and his work is his own, and I have no right to complain. I bring him up as the example, of someone getting as much as they possibly can out of social media… and the perhaps unintended consequence of this enjoyable diversion.
And the time it eats. The words it devours. The eyeballs it catches.
The life that rushes by.
