Yelling into the void

Social media is an empty consumerist hellscape. Meanwhile, our connection muscles atrophy.

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For 12 years, I’ve hosted an annual Mid Winter Christmas party. I turn my lounge into a huge dining room, cover plastic trestle tables with white table-cloths, halve the cost-per-use of my Christmas tree and bring people together in the middle of the winter social slump.

To coordinate the guest list, I use a Facebook event. This year, when I went to set it up, I didn’t know my password. To manage RSVPs, I login from my phone, where the app has my password saved. I have no idea how to get in from my desktop browser.

My friends tell me I’m not alone. While articles about social media addiction still proliferate, I wonder how true this is for people of my age and stage. Social media has all but left my routine. I check Instagram occasionally, but never scroll. I watch ‘stories’ of my favourite feminist accounts - Cheek Media, Sommer Tothill, Clementine Ford - for a few minutes, before a targeted ad provokes a swift exit.

My teenagers still imbibe, but rarely to connect with their peers. TikTok is their platform of choice, where they flip from one short performance to another - morning routines, ASMR, makeup tutorials. YouTube on steroids.

I’m active on LinkedIn for work, where I have a love/hate relationship with the idea of ‘creating content.’ Some days, it feels great; others, a shallow transactional drain.

None of these platforms resemble their original form, where people shared updates about their lives and maintained a digital Rolodex of friends and family. Instead, it’s all “recommendation media” - sponsored ads and content suggested by algorithms.

After two decades of networking online, and a global pandemic with a brief flurry of Friend Zooms, followed by silence, I’m wondering what’s become of our social connection muscles. Working from home and posting content are the new norm, replacing lunchroom chats and casual drop-ins. After two decades of learned helplessness, it’s hard not to wonder if the descent of social media into the capitalist hellscape has left a generation somewhat untethered.

There’s signs of it in my world, where organising “catchups” with friends around work and family takes a flurry of text messages, calendar co-ordination, repeated rainchecks and apologies, and take place almost exclusively in hospitality venues. I’m aware this could be privileged Wellington yuppie behaviour, but it leaves me asking questions.

This void, if it exists, will surely be filled soon enough. Capitalism’s good like that. A start-up is probably securing funding as we speak, promising to revolutionise connection, bring people back together, and then sell them things they never knew they needed.

In the meantime, my real-world connection muscles are weaker.

Online, I’m at a cross-roads. On LinkedIn, I belong to an army of ‘creators’ yelling information into a void, getting progressively controversial or clickbait-y to get attention, praying desperately for the algorithm gods to favour our posts. In this environment, engagement can feel hollow, like a trick.

Yet for every person who contributes $8 of their hard-won monthly income here on Substack, my heart swells. I get more joy from a single paid subscriber than I’ve felt from securing a client contract in years. Substack feels good, for now. I get to write long-form content, and people actively choose whether they want to read it. It’s a world targeted ads have yet to get their hooks in.

But for how long, before we exhaust the idealism and have to play a different game?

I don’t know. But I suspect we won’t have to wait long to find out.

Insert inspirational call to action here.

Til next week,

A

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