Disagree to agree 😤

Mar 14, 2021

I’ve been thinking a lot about my relationship with technology.

When The Social Dilemma came out in 2020, I was surprised at how people talked about it like a groundbreaking documentary. People were shocked at how creepily (/illegally) Facebook and Google monetize our time and attention, surveil us, on and on. This did not seem like news to me?

It was no surprise to me, however, that those conversations were depoliticized. The Social Dilemma did not frame this problem in terms of the material stakes, but individual ones: anxiety, depression, mental health, blah blah blah. This is important, of course, but it’s also a neoliberal way of looking at the problem.

Neoliberalism puts responsibility for structural problems on individuals in a “radical abstraction of self from social and material context.” This is very convenient for industries and people hoping you won’t notice their exploitation of you and public resources. 100 companies are responsible for 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions—but instead of challenging the global economic system that produces this horrifying statistic, you should bring a reusable mug to Starbucks! 🌟

Once upon a time, I wrote a proposal to win an RFP from the American Petroleum Institute. API wanted sponsored content about how “energy” (which is what lobbyists call oil) moves through global supply chains. As with all branded content on the web, my employer would meet campaign KPIs through paid social distribution.

Let me draw this out: we, the publisher, would pay Facebook to drive traffic to an article we were paid to write for Big Oil. The more we paid Facebook for social impressions, the more we could happily report to API that “their” “content” “resonated” and “performed well.” Nothing will jade you quicker than paying Big Tech to pump oil propaganda to Davos bros and TED Talkers. Just sayin'.

Jaded folks like me like to embrace the absurd. That’s why I tried to download Yo—a social app that mocks social media. Or at least it would if it wasn’t defunct, which in a way feels like its own kind of performance art? Yo reduces social media to “yo.” Literally. That’s all you can say and share. No, really. You can only send people “yo” back and forth until you die!

I came across this app as I was reading about communicative capitalism. This is Jodi Dean’s idea that networked technologies are not just profoundly exploitive, but antithetical to the democratic ideals they claim to engender.

My time spent working in the meeting place of journalism and digital advertising confirmed a premise of Jodi Dean’s theory: “You” are not the product in social media. “You” are not the commodity. Circulation generates value for advertisers. What you have to say doesn’t matter.

The message is simply part of a circulating data stream. Its particular content is irrelevant. Who sent it is irrelevant. Who receives it is irrelevant. That it need be responded to is irrelevant. The only thing that is relevant is circulation, the addition to the pool. Any particular contribution remains secondary to the fact of circulation. (via)

Digital advertising is built on the assumption that there are predictable, useful patterns of behavior to circulation. But evidence does not support this. As we share and communicate across these technologies, we simply perform free labor—producing commodity data for tech giants. Goliath is wearing a helmet and selling the stones we throw.

When the White House acknowledged the massive worldwide demonstrations of February 15, 2003, Bush simply reiterated the fact that a message was out there, circulating—the protestors had the right to express their opinions. He didn’t actually respond to their message. He didn’t treat the words and actions of the protestors as sending a message to him to which he was in some sense obligated to respond. Rather, he acknowledged that there existed views different from his own. There were his views and there were other views; all had the right to exist, to be expressed—but that in no way meant, or so Bush made it seem, that these views were involved with each other. (via)

Between 400,000 and 500,000 protesters gathered to oppose the invasion of Iraq in New York City on Feb. 15, 2003. — On February13, 2003, 6-10 million people around the world protested the imminent war with Iraq. At the time, social movement researchers described it as "the largest protest event in human history.”

Technology certainly feels democratic, but they tend to absolve state actors of engaging in good faith. Politicians can hunker down and ride out discontent because the circulation is on their side. It is impossible for organizers to fight the unrelenting force of 24-hour news and social media.

Those anti-war demonstrations—and BLM, Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring—did not happen because social media mobilized people (although it helped). At their core, these movements are not even about ideals like “freedom” or “justice.” They are class struggles.

After a weekend in which protesters in the United States, Europe and much of the rest of the world urged giving diplomacy more time or ruling out war altogether, Mr. Bush said he welcomed the right of people in democracies to express their opinions.
''Size of protest—it's like deciding, well, I'm going to decide policy based upon a focus group,'' Mr. Bush said. ''Evidently, some of the world don't view Saddam Hussein as a risk to peace. I respectfully disagree.'' (via)

“You have the right to express your opinions.” “I respectfully disagree.”

Power in polite society hides behind clichés. What better way to diminish the stakes, occlude morality, and placate righteous anger than to say “That’s the great thing about America. Everyone can express their opinion.” Oh gee, thanks. I’m glad I can express my opinion that you shouldn’t separate families and put children in cages.

Even if the technologies we use to express ourselves didn’t exploit our time and labor and privacy, I think we valorize expression in a way that can be dangerous. Expression is important to democracy, but not democracy itself. Communicative capitalism breeds circulation so vast and incessant that I think it’s natural to just want to check out. To crave clichés and positivity and harmony because damn, turns out a lot of people are mad. If you’ll allow me my tinfoil hat, I think that’s the point.

I’m wary of this impulse. I’m wary of how we justify harmony in a deeply unjust society. To me, “agree to disagree” always feels less like harmony and more like a pat on the head.

“No!” I always want to fire back. “I disagree to agree!”

The only way I’ve ever moved forward is by disagreeing without compulsively trying to make people feel better about it. I’m sure people question the utility of my combative yammering online. To which I say: it’s trauma, dummies.

But in my more vulnerable moments, sometimes I think the dummies have a point. And I guess the smarties too, because Jodi Dean might say the same thing. What have been the fruits of my exploited online labor? I still don’t have the priesthood (lol). Rosie Card continues to sell temple dresses that gay people can’t wear. And when President Nelson dies, Elder Oaks will assume his post as guard of the Mormon panopticon.

Religion did not liberate me and neither will technology. I don’t even really know what liberation looks like—only that I feel more of it now than I did before. I really loved something my friend Courtney wrote the other day, which is that writing and fighting and fucking up online never changed much of anything, but it did change me. That’s not for nothing, right?

For a long time, I gave away my spiritual power to the Mormon Church. And in my leaving, I gave my creative, expressive power to technology, searching for meaning and community. What would it look like to move the force of myself to a place I control?

I know the answer because I’ve done it before. It would look like art.

When I wrestle with the things that have exploited who I am, I reclaim my gifts, like a nesting meadowlark with little twigs in her beak, and bunches of grass, and cottonwood fluff, and all the different parts of me they tried to take away.

Gemini Mind 💫

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Gemini Mind 💫

Disagree to agree 😤

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