*gives a low whistle in Worked In Social Media For Too Long*
I think you're right about... everything here. Especially the things about liberal democracy that need to be repeated at times. And it's very astute to recognize the relative stability of Zuckerberg's leadership and family. I disagree with him about a lot, but I also doubt he's the cartoonish villain he's been painted as.
Ohhhh that's interesting! I didn't know you worked in SM. I am interested in anything you are happy to publicly disclose about where/what/when. My stint in it was just an astonishing eye-opener.
Thank you - and yes I think Sorkin is v unfair to Zuck, and not because I'm any sort of fan of the latter. I think *because* I worked in SM for so long I firmly believe users have to take some flipping responsibility for what they do there (including me, who does not always behave perfectly online). And yes there are absolutely things about the algos that incentivise crappy behaviour, but that was also true of the printing press I suspect. I certainly don't think FB is any worse than Twitter in terms of its deliberate incentivisation of behaviours. The difference is FB's scale versus Twitter's high-salience user group - they've both been both brilliant and destructive in different ways. But in the end humans have to not behave like jerks, and that's the difficult bit because we often do.
Tobias has read somewhere that Sorkin is writing a script about January 6 and that he's using it to have another pop at Facebook which makes me quail slightly.
Yeah, I was at Tumblr doing support from 2011-2019. Wild times.
I think both things are true. I mean, moving from a chronological timeline to an algorithmic one (like all the social media companies eventually did) represents the major corruption of the social media space. This change drove most of what we hate about modern social media, and crushes so much of the *true* serendipity we all enjoyed way back when. Not only that, but I think it does manipulate habits and behaviors in a really insidious way so that we end up creating little outrage factories that we find it impossible to look away from. All because the incentive has been to increase time spent staring / tapping / pausing, not to, you know, surface good-quality content.
And on the other hand, yes, people need to resurrect their agency around all things tech. Not just with accountability with how they behave in that space, but with self-control for how or whether they use it. One thing I don’t get about most of the discourse around social media is that it feels like people are waiting. Waiting for big tech companies to fix these problems, waiting for the government to regulate these problems, etc. etc. And yes, maybe some of those things should happen. But if we see something’s having a net negative effect on us, we don’t have to wait for someone else to tell us it’s okay to ditch it! We can reduce or stop using this stuff any darn time we want to. We can go ahead, right now, and take responsibility as individuals, as families, whatever. There are many, many other things in the world that are “permissible but not beneficial”—in other words, legal but not something that’s good to engage in.
But if we face the fact that nobody is coming into our rooms at 6am and physically forcing us to perform the daily abyss gaze rituals instead of getting up and showering in a timely fashion, we'll have to do hard things. And our culture is allergic to doing hard things.
I could say a lot more. I actually don't know anything at all about Aaron Sorkin and had no real idea who it was, even if the name was familiar, before this article. But I did have a strong response to The Social Network in exactly the same way you did. Haha thank you for letting me rant a bit.
Huh that's really interesting. (Let us know if you'd be interested in writing about it! I think we're even at the stage where we could offer a small fee, although it would be more figurative than substantial ;-)) I'd kind of forgotten about everyone ditching the chronological timeline but you're right, that was significant. There was something about the serendipity and variety of it that was more human. (My experience was at Mumsnet which is a big forum in the UK, and its front page has always been just a long list of threads that have been posted on most recently - although even there you now get sponsored content right at the top.) It's like the way the 'quote tweet' got instantly abused on Twitter, despite that really not being the engineers' intent.
Oh yeah, I remember you writing about working at Mumsnet now that you mention it. I'd probably be interested in writing something! (...she chirps, nervously.) You can get in touch with me at https://tessdixon.com/contact.
I have loved pretty much everything I’ve ever watched that Aaron Sorkin has written (including Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip). I find the intensity of the mile a minute dialogue thrilling and I enjoy the fact that you are forced to pay attention. I’ve never analysed his writing beyond that so this was a really interesting read. What you described at the start of this article might actually be my perfect paid bonus feature! Well played 👏🏼
Ha, excellent! I found it really interesting to try to work out how he does it. I must admit I only watched maybe half of the first series of ‘Studio 60’ so maybe I will be forced to reassess when we get to that.
The BONO OF SCREENWRITING. Yes 🤣🤣🤣 Consider my appetite for the paywalled watchalong content well and truly whetted! And I am indeed one of those people who finds the dialogue in The West Wing 🫨🫨🫨
Great piece. I now want to research that film. I’ve tried a couple of times to watch The Wedt Wing, which people rave about, but find it too syrupy. Does it start to get good in the second season?
Thanks Kerstin. The West Wing is probably Sorkin at his most syrupy, at least in parts. It’s been a while since I watched Season 1 from the beginning. My memory of it is that it takes a while to set up the characters and the dynamic, and there’s a major character in S1 (Mandy) who doesn’t really work. When I rewatch I tend to go from probably the middle of S1 onwards?
I remember liking the first episode - from memory you see everyone except ‘him’ and all the characters refer to him but (another of Sorkin’s gaps/payoffs) Bartlet only appears right at the end. I feel like there was a lot of that ‘I serve at the pleasure of the President’ stuff right at the beginning, which I did find slightly irksome. But I could be misremembering all this…
*gives a low whistle in Worked In Social Media For Too Long*
I think you're right about... everything here. Especially the things about liberal democracy that need to be repeated at times. And it's very astute to recognize the relative stability of Zuckerberg's leadership and family. I disagree with him about a lot, but I also doubt he's the cartoonish villain he's been painted as.
Ohhhh that's interesting! I didn't know you worked in SM. I am interested in anything you are happy to publicly disclose about where/what/when. My stint in it was just an astonishing eye-opener.
Thank you - and yes I think Sorkin is v unfair to Zuck, and not because I'm any sort of fan of the latter. I think *because* I worked in SM for so long I firmly believe users have to take some flipping responsibility for what they do there (including me, who does not always behave perfectly online). And yes there are absolutely things about the algos that incentivise crappy behaviour, but that was also true of the printing press I suspect. I certainly don't think FB is any worse than Twitter in terms of its deliberate incentivisation of behaviours. The difference is FB's scale versus Twitter's high-salience user group - they've both been both brilliant and destructive in different ways. But in the end humans have to not behave like jerks, and that's the difficult bit because we often do.
Tobias has read somewhere that Sorkin is writing a script about January 6 and that he's using it to have another pop at Facebook which makes me quail slightly.
Yeah, I was at Tumblr doing support from 2011-2019. Wild times.
I think both things are true. I mean, moving from a chronological timeline to an algorithmic one (like all the social media companies eventually did) represents the major corruption of the social media space. This change drove most of what we hate about modern social media, and crushes so much of the *true* serendipity we all enjoyed way back when. Not only that, but I think it does manipulate habits and behaviors in a really insidious way so that we end up creating little outrage factories that we find it impossible to look away from. All because the incentive has been to increase time spent staring / tapping / pausing, not to, you know, surface good-quality content.
And on the other hand, yes, people need to resurrect their agency around all things tech. Not just with accountability with how they behave in that space, but with self-control for how or whether they use it. One thing I don’t get about most of the discourse around social media is that it feels like people are waiting. Waiting for big tech companies to fix these problems, waiting for the government to regulate these problems, etc. etc. And yes, maybe some of those things should happen. But if we see something’s having a net negative effect on us, we don’t have to wait for someone else to tell us it’s okay to ditch it! We can reduce or stop using this stuff any darn time we want to. We can go ahead, right now, and take responsibility as individuals, as families, whatever. There are many, many other things in the world that are “permissible but not beneficial”—in other words, legal but not something that’s good to engage in.
But if we face the fact that nobody is coming into our rooms at 6am and physically forcing us to perform the daily abyss gaze rituals instead of getting up and showering in a timely fashion, we'll have to do hard things. And our culture is allergic to doing hard things.
I could say a lot more. I actually don't know anything at all about Aaron Sorkin and had no real idea who it was, even if the name was familiar, before this article. But I did have a strong response to The Social Network in exactly the same way you did. Haha thank you for letting me rant a bit.
Huh that's really interesting. (Let us know if you'd be interested in writing about it! I think we're even at the stage where we could offer a small fee, although it would be more figurative than substantial ;-)) I'd kind of forgotten about everyone ditching the chronological timeline but you're right, that was significant. There was something about the serendipity and variety of it that was more human. (My experience was at Mumsnet which is a big forum in the UK, and its front page has always been just a long list of threads that have been posted on most recently - although even there you now get sponsored content right at the top.) It's like the way the 'quote tweet' got instantly abused on Twitter, despite that really not being the engineers' intent.
Oh yeah, I remember you writing about working at Mumsnet now that you mention it. I'd probably be interested in writing something! (...she chirps, nervously.) You can get in touch with me at https://tessdixon.com/contact.
I have loved pretty much everything I’ve ever watched that Aaron Sorkin has written (including Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip). I find the intensity of the mile a minute dialogue thrilling and I enjoy the fact that you are forced to pay attention. I’ve never analysed his writing beyond that so this was a really interesting read. What you described at the start of this article might actually be my perfect paid bonus feature! Well played 👏🏼
Ha, excellent! I found it really interesting to try to work out how he does it. I must admit I only watched maybe half of the first series of ‘Studio 60’ so maybe I will be forced to reassess when we get to that.
The BONO OF SCREENWRITING. Yes 🤣🤣🤣 Consider my appetite for the paywalled watchalong content well and truly whetted! And I am indeed one of those people who finds the dialogue in The West Wing 🫨🫨🫨
I was extremely pleased with myself when that analogy occurred to me
Rightly so! 😎 (👈🏼 Bono)
Great piece. I now want to research that film. I’ve tried a couple of times to watch The Wedt Wing, which people rave about, but find it too syrupy. Does it start to get good in the second season?
Thanks Kerstin. The West Wing is probably Sorkin at his most syrupy, at least in parts. It’s been a while since I watched Season 1 from the beginning. My memory of it is that it takes a while to set up the characters and the dynamic, and there’s a major character in S1 (Mandy) who doesn’t really work. When I rewatch I tend to go from probably the middle of S1 onwards?
I loved The West Wing from the get-go! I don’t even remember who Mandy is.
I remember liking the first episode - from memory you see everyone except ‘him’ and all the characters refer to him but (another of Sorkin’s gaps/payoffs) Bartlet only appears right at the end. I feel like there was a lot of that ‘I serve at the pleasure of the President’ stuff right at the beginning, which I did find slightly irksome. But I could be misremembering all this…
It’s a long time since I’ve watched it too tbf. I guess I might run a more critical eye over it these days.
This will be the true nerd value of the watchalong when we get to it 🥸
Cannot wait!