A friend and I were lamenting the effects of social media, so we started a little challenge to cut out all use of it for July. For me, the big hurdle was Reddit, but I've expanded the scope a bit to include anything that's algorithmically driven. Site and app blockers have been downloaded and installed to great effect.
Except for the Android news feed. If you swipe to the left of the home screen, you get a selection of recommended stories. It's never been a huge draw for me, but I like having one tiny little window open to the rest of the world. On the plus side, it doesn't have infinite scrolling, so once I get to the end I know it's time to put it away.
Some time this week I stole a quick glance at this feed and was greeted with the headline, "Interstellar 2 TRAILER starring Cillian Murphey". The thumnail featured the actor in a space helmet. I immediately wrote it off as clickbait/content slop and went about my day without even opening the link.
The problem is that Interstellar is one of my favourite movies. So it got me wondering that, just maybe, I should check to see what's going on, just in case. Determined not to give that initial fake trailer a click, I plugged "interstellar 2" into Google. The top row featured a series of recommended YouTube results: Interstellar 2, starring Matthew McConaughey! Interstellar 2, starring Cillian Murphey! Interstellar 2, starring George Clooney! And several more, each with a different leading man. Below were a bunch of enticing articles that clearly lacked any real news.
Okay, that's a dead end. But the other problem is that Christopher Nolan is one of my favourite directors (slowly being replaced by Denis Villeneuve, but that's another post). I haven't head anything about him since Oppenheimer, so, maybe I should check to see if anything is announced. I changed my search to "christopher nolan new film." The title of first result proclaimed, "Christopher Nolan's Newest Film Could be His Most Exciting Yet!" Okay, I know that modern SEO dictates that actual details are to be left out of the title to encourage clickthroughs. I'll bite.
The article had a paragraph-by-paragraph breakdown (with that remote stink of AI) of the director's filmography, summarizing each title in chronological order. Once you scroll down through Nolan's history, down, right to the bottom of the article in the last paragraph, it posits, "Some think Nolan should be tapped for the next James Bond movie. It could really be one of his most exciting movies yet!"
wat
I did all that searching and scrolling to find out nothing. Well, maybe I learned that his next project (probably) hasn't been announced yet, by process of elimination after wading through useless results only meant to capitalize on my clicks rather than answer my query. It was in that moment that I realized, holy shit, the internet really is turning into garbage. A perfect storm of AI, SEO abuse, enshitification, content slop, and all those other fabulous trends.
Excuse me a moment while I don some suspenders, let my glasses rest precariously on the edge of my nose, and teeter back and forth in a rocking chair. You see, back in my day, the internet was kind of an amazing thing. It was clunky, sure. But it was driven by people sharing their passions via message boards, horrible GeoCities sites, and an army of generic blogs (like this one). People made stuff and went through hoops to get it online just for the sake of the love of their hobby. They just wanted to share what they cared about and find other people that did too. It was beautiful, if naive.
I divide the internet into two parts. One is for infrastructure: connecting banks, delivering weather data, allowing your smart plugs to co-ordinate, and integrating giant networks around the world. Boring if not functional, it's what most of society silently runs on in the background, and can never be unwoven. The second half of the internet is the "front end"; websites and apps and social media that your average user interacts with daily.
Many moons ago, before the word 'meme' made the transition to digital, there was a song called "The Internet is For Porn". I first saw set to Star Wars footage, but this World of Warcraft example is the earliest I could find, circa 2006. Basically, the premise is all in the title, but set to music. Many yuks were had, because "porn" was a dirty word and it was fun to say it out loud. So edgy.
Now my perceptions have changed. I think that a modern interpretation would be titled, "The Internet is for Bullshit", especially when it comes to that second, public-facing side of the internet.
Social media is full of people pretending to be successful in order to be influencers. Search results are full of garbage vying for your clicks. Sites are constructed for ads before users. Content doesn't matter so much as content marketing. Yes, my friends, we've evolved past an internet merely for monetization to being geared for maximum profit. We seemed to have optimized humanity right out of the equation. We've gone from using the internet to connect people to using the internet to part those same people from their wallets.
Sure, a lot of that great, useful, uncorrupted content is out there, but it's either slowly disappearing or is being drowned out by the vast waves of other stuff. And this other stuff, which seems to be dictating the way information is stored and transmitted, is primarily comprised of varying shades of bullshit. Some of it outright lies, most of it reworked for sensationalism, all of it made to maximize the dopamine drip-feed our little lizard brains crave.
I feel like we're watching a great library rot from the inside out. And when I approach the front door I need to steel myself with the mantra, "It's all just bullshit," before stepping in. It stinks in there, but some nuggets of wisdom can still be had once sifted out from the mountains of garbage.
I'm frustrated that this is what we value now, and sad to see something that was once so pure become commodified. Maybe that's a bit over dramatic and a roaring example of nostalgia bias, but I think the sentiment holds some truth.
One thing I do know is that I'll be extending my social media/algorithm cleanse through to the end of August; the further I get from Reddit, the easier it becomes. I'm not sure what other benefits there are, but perhaps they'll take a bit longer to become obvious. I could very well keep this going indefinitely.
Which kinda sucks, because I just got a new phone and smart watch and I've barely been using them. And if/when Christopher Nolan does release a real trailer for his next real film, please let me know.
-Cril
I wanna publish 'zines
And rage against machines
I wanna pierce my tongue
It doesn't hurt, it feels fine
The trivial sublime
I'd like to turn off time
And kill my mind
You kill my mind, mind
Paranoia, paranoia
Everybody's coming to get me
Just say you never met me
I'm running underground with the moles, digging holes
Hear the voices in my head
I swear to God it sounds like they're snoring
But if you're bored, then you're boring
The agony and the irony, they're killing me
I'm not sick but I'm not well
And I'm so hot 'cause I'm in Hell
I'm not sick but I'm not well
And it's a sin to live this well
Harvey Danger - Flagpole Sitta
