Showing posts with label Cal Newport. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cal Newport. Show all posts

Friday, August 18, 2023

Social Media Trap or Marcella Goes Off the Deep End

"I wanna be where the readers are.
I want to see them reading.
Carrying around those -what do you call them? Oh. Right. - BOOKS.
Out in the sun. Or in the shade.
On the beach or in a cafe.
Read in a bar.
Wish I could be a Tik Tok star."

My apologies to The Little Mermaid.

Social media is hailed as The Way to sell books. You need to know Facebook ads, Amazon ads, Tik Tok, YouTube, Instagram, the rotting corpse that was once Twitter. . . It gets overwhelming fast. Publishers push authors to do all the things! Yet experienced indie author Kristine Kathryn Rusch likes to remind authors that the best advertisement for your current book is your next book. Cal Newport argues that your best, most creative work  comes from flow state and that flow is achieved best in deep work - those times and places where the external world goes away and you descend into deep brainwave activity wherein you lose track of time and are absorbed in your material. This state is predicated on not being interrupted, not having your attention fractured by anyone or anything. He argues that readers shouldn't necessarily have access to you. You have a job. Writing.

I suppose if you compartmentalize extremely well, you could make an argument for engaging in deep work for a few hours each day and then indulging in a little social media promotion. Fair enough. I'm having to think a little harder about that because I don't compartmentalize well. Maybe not at all. It doesn't help that earlier this week, I heard someone mention that cell phones are black mirrors. This rocked me. 

If you aren't familiar, black mirrors are scrying mirrors used in ritual and divination. They are powerful tools and most of us familiar with them keep them carefully wrapped and hidden away from casual glances. This is because a part of you travels when you scry. Part of you goes bye-bye. It's one thing to do that intentionally and for a purpose and then to shut down the mirror after and to reclaim every part of you that went traveling. 

Black mirrors drain energy. It's not malicious. It's just part of the work done with them. They don't have intent, but their utility is the emptiness that draws practitioners out of their human shell to journey for answers to a question or for a vision of something. Used consciously and safeguarded appropriately, they're harmless and helpful. 

If cell phones are black mirrors, they are black mirrors that are used utterly unconsciously. They aren't warded or guarded. We stare into them without regard for where we go when we do. Just try to get the attention of someone absorbed in their phone. Where do we go when we stare in that black mirror? Where does our energy go? I'm not saying that cell phone are traps devised by the Fae. I am saying that if the Fae wanted to build irresistible traps for mortals to fall into, they could have done worse than to have invented cell phones.

Social media, cell phones not withstanding, isn't evil. There are plenty of benefits: engaging with people you enjoy but maybe have never met in real life, finding new-to-you info and books and music, in a world still constrained by pathogens, social media can be a glimpse into a larger, more diverse world. We should absolutely enjoy and contribute to those things. But if we're going to social media *just* to sell books rather than build relationships we enjoy, we'll do more harm than good.

So before you stare into that black mirror in your hand, think long and hard about what you want to get out of it so you know exactly what and how much to put into it.

Friday, August 9, 2019

Keeping Up with Social Media

On any given week, you can run across videos or blog posts or Twitter threads by someone laying out the dangers of social media (without any hint of irony over the fact that they're using social media to make their argument). Whether is someone like Cal Newport with Deep Work pointing out that our brains need empty tracts of time in which to ruminate and to think, or some guru du jour pointing out that social media is stealing your most creative self by filling you full of algorithm-curated images and ideas designed to keep you scrolling for more.

It may be true that social media can have a negative impact on our mental health and it seems to feed FOMO - fear of missing out. But in a world were technology is designed to solve problems (albeit problems you maybe didn't know you had) social media, appropriately handled, has its uses.

1. Connection - technology has given me the power to have friends in places I have never been and where I am likely to never get to go. Yet we swap stories, recipes, and care about what's happening in one another's lives.
2. Tribe - social media brought me to my tribes - the people whose priorities and concerns match my own. Social media allows me access to those families that would otherwise be denied. Those of you young enough to have never lived in a world without internet, let me say it's damned alienating. Social media is a gift that gives you back some small measure of validation by hooking you up with other people who relate to your lived experience. Granted. We're seeing the down side of that as social media platforms count the cost of giving White Nationalists safe places to radicalize. It's also giving voice to the resistance and to calls for political action.
3. Conversation - at it's best, social media gives us a few moments out of every day to engage in conversations that have the power to change our view of the world or of ourselves.

So how to keep up?

First, decide if it matters to you. Are you indulging in FOMO? Or do you genuinely have an unmet need that technology might be able to fill? Make certain to count the cost of privacy loss as you're evaluating. Be aware that you're nothing but a data point to be bought, sold, and tracked. Your political leanings are absolutely inferred whether you banish all political content or not. Factor that into your decisions.
Second, listen to kids, especially teenagers and twenty-somethings. Keep your ears open in the coffee shops. You'll hear what apps and platforms people are using. Then search on 'em. Want to know how to master something? Search YouTube. I swear to you there are How-To videos on THE most arcane subjects.
Third, ask questions of social media. Search for the demographics of the places you hang out. Know that Facebook caters to an older crowd. Twitter is slightly younger. Quora seems to have a good mix of ages and knowledge bases. But once you know that, you can ask what new stuff is getting used - are teens still on WhatsApp? Or have they moved on? You'll get answers from their parents, and from the teens themselves.
Four, check out the technology blogsites. Most of them write mostly about computer science and robotics, but you will still find articles about new social media platforms, usually with solid run downs of the pros and cons of each. Sometimes they even include demographics.

As always. Keep in mind that you use social media. Don't let it use you.