I didn’t understand yet in middle school, but in the years that followed I began to think of my online presence as a shadow self. Those aware of it could see it, and I could see theirs—the reflection of their avatars and icons and away messages, the tone of their instant-message chats or L.J. posts. But, for other people who were not so online, it was still invisible, insignificant. I’ve been thinking a lot about this early version of my online self lately as I’ve been writing about latter-day digital culture and taking stock of just how much the landscape has changed.

By Lisa Bubert 

I’m on a mission to become human again. Not through good deeds, being in nature, or communing with the universe, etc., — no — for me the single most humane thing I felt that I could do was to get off of social media.

Deleting accounts seemed a simple, concrete action to take, but I found it anything but. I’m a freelance writer, reliant on Twitter for pitch calls, as well as the all-important Discourse of the Day. While Instagram’s main purpose appears to be to make me feel terrible, the stories remain helpful for getting eyes on my writing. While Facebook operates as my Rolodex of family and friends, my community bulletin board — increasingly, the only way to learn who’s still alive and who’s dead.

This is known as “social lock-in,” where social networks monopolize our experiences and make it impossible to live our lives outside of the purview of the platform. It’s also a feature of surveillance capitalism, a term coined by Shoshana Zuboff to showcase how capitalism no longer simply controls our purchasing power but manipulates our human behavior at scale. Every search query, every post liked, even the amount of time your eyes spend looking at a specific image on your screen is tracked, quantified, and mined to learn more about you, the decisions you make, and why. That information can then be used against you — to sell you more products, to make you more susceptible to suggestions, to know things about you before you even know them yourself. Thanks to social media, capitalism doesn’t just require cornering the market on household products; powerful, unknown players can now corner the market on democracy for the right price.

As scary as surveillance capitalism sounds, for me, the true fear resides in my slow loss of privacy, and with it my sense of sanctuary.

I’m a librarian — a notoriously privacy-obsessed profession. Librarians have always believed that it is your inalienable right to learn whatever it is you want without fear of anyone looking over your shoulder. We were some of the first to cry foul over seemingly small encroachments on digital privacy, such as individual search queries.

We like to believe that our own personal searches, such as “best exercises to improve back posture,” are small fry — too insignificant to matter. After all, we have nothing to hide. But we must look at the big picture, much the same way that surveillance capitalist companies, like Google, do. Our personal decisions about privacy are hardly private — they have always been a public affair. The more we allow tech and social media companies to chip away at our personal privacy, the more they can commercialize our privacy at scale. Everything, even our most interior sense of self, is for sale.

According to Jaron Lanier, computer scientist, futurist, and frequent tech critic, deleting our social media accounts is “the most finely targeted way to resist the insanity of our times” — and it’s the only way to regain our humanity in an increasingly inhumane world.

Here’s some inspiration on going from Extremely Online to Extremely Offline.

You Are Now Remotely Controlled (Shoshana Zuboff, The New York Times, January 2020)

No one understands the importance of privacy as a public affair better than Shoshana Zuboff. Zuboff is the one person who has been repeatedly able to clock the tech economy and call it for what it is, before the rest of us even know what we’ve signed up for. Every time we agree to the mass of terms and conditions of a new digital service with personalization (read: data mining) at its core, we’ve agreed to what Zuboff calls “surveillance capitalism.” Any time I sit down to read a piece by Shoshana Zuboff, I can expect it to be engrossing, brilliant, and frankly disturbing — and this piece (which is essentially a Cliff notes version of her banger of a book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,) takes no prisoners.

The lesson is that privacy is public — it is a collective good that is logically and morally inseparable from the values of human autonomy and self-determination upon which privacy depends and without which a democratic society is unimaginable.

…In the competition for scope, surveillance capitalists want your home and what you say and do within its walls. They want your car, your medical conditions, and the shows you stream; your location as well as all the streets and buildings in your path and all the behavior of all the people in your city. They want your voice and what you eat and what you buy; your children’s play time and their schooling; your brain waves and your bloodstream. Nothing is exempt.

The Conscience of Silicon Valley (Zach Baron, GQ, August 2020)

I love a good profile. Especially one on a person as strange, enigmatic, and offbeat as Jaron Lanier — the so-called “father of virtual reality,” and according to this piece, “the owner of the world’s largest flute.” Lanier wrote one of my favorite books, Ten Arguments to Delete Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, a slim little volume that contains just 10 chapters — 10 arguments — and reads like a Buddhist manual written by the dreadlocked Berkeley hippie with a pan flute that Lanier is.

In reading Baron’s profile of him, I am reminded of my own inner child. Lanier, a futurist by nature, is one of the more curious people I’ve come upon, his mind seemingly unadulterated by outside influence — which is why I love this profile showing the weird, wily human he is.

(Lanier) seemed to live somewhere off ahead of us, by the horizon. Now here the rest of us were too.

But all that was only part of the reason I had sought out Lanier, I told him. What I really hoped to do, I said, was to talk about the future and how to live in it. This year feels like a crossroads; I do not need to explain what I mean by this. We are on the precipice of ruin or revolution or both. We are sick of looking at social media, but social media is also maybe driving the most significant and necessary social movement of my entire life. I want to destroy my computer, through which I now work and “have drinks” and stare at blurry simulations of my parents sometimes; I want to kneel down and pray to it like a god. I want someone—I want Jaron Lanier—to tell me where we’re going, and whether it’s going to be okay when we get there.

Lanier just nodded. All right, then.

It’s Not Your Fault You’re a Jerk on Twitter (Katherine Cross, Wired, February 2020)

There are a lot of jerks on Twitter. I like this article because it doesn’t just look at the damaging effects of internet pile-ons propelled by tweet after tweet, it looks specifically at the effects of what Cross calls the “third order” of harassment, i.e., the Discourse.

You know the Discourse. Usually a subtweet about a new argument of the day. A commentary if you will. You have a Twitter account. A thing has happened. You comment on it to signal which side of the Discourse divide you’re on. It’s not a pile-on; it’s just a statement about the situation. But that subtweet, which usually doesn’t directly involve the target of the Discourse, and which may even be supportive of the target, only allows the harassment to continue and grow. Commentary provides longevity, and longevity extends the harmful episode, regardless of what is being said. Twitter’s design allows users to dissociate from the very real human harm they are inevitably causing just by being active on the platform.

The attacks directed at an individual are a metacommunicative shorthand—“I hate Neon Yang” isn’t about Yang, it’s about a suite of ideas that they discursively represent; you can’t @ an idea on Twitter, only a person… This is why even the numerous attempts at “constructive” callouts or criticism in the helicopter story saga, directed at both the original story and Neon Yang in later months, merely added to the pain and fury. The sheer weight and volume of so many people bearing down on an individual all at once becomes powerfully destructive, even if many of those people are being “nice.”

Welcome to Airspace (Kyle Chayka, The Verge, August 2016)

In order to write well, or to create any kind of art that cuts through the persistent noise of human experience, you have to first participate in that experience. There has to be diversity in the aesthetic around you. But the pandemic year left us looking for an aesthetic in an increasingly isolated, and online, world. I scroll through Instagram despite the fact that all the photos are increasingly similar. The algorithm has zeroed in on the aesthetic it thinks I like and serves me photo after photo of the same thing to keep my eyes glued, my time monetized for someone else. By this point, I can’t even tell the difference between what I like and what I’m being fed.

Of all the things I can’t stand about an Extremely Online life, the theft of a diverse and surprising aesthetic burns me the most. (Other than our lives becoming simple data points for someone else’s commodification.) No matter where I go, everything looks the same. This is why I love this article about the increasing “frictionlessness” of the various aesthetics popularized at large — open concept kitchens, industrial design, Edison bulbs over every table — and how the curation of a single aesthetic, specifically by AirBnb, has made it possible to travel from city to city, even internationally, without noticing a difference.

We could call this strange geography created by technology “AirSpace.” It’s the realm of coffee shops, bars, startup offices, and co-live / work spaces that share the same hallmarks everywhere you go: a profusion of symbols of comfort and quality, at least to a certain connoisseurial mindset. Minimalist furniture. Craft beer and avocado toast. Reclaimed wood. Industrial lighting. Cortados. Fast internet. The homogeneity of these spaces means that traveling between them is frictionless, a value that Silicon Valley prizes and cultural influencers like Schwarzmann take advantage of. Changing places can be as painless as reloading a website. You might not even realize you’re not where you started.

Escape the Echo Chamber (C Thi Nguyen, Aeon, April 2018)

To me, social media increasingly feels like a cult. It doesn’t matter which platform I’m on; people exhibit the same linear thought necessary for cult indoctrination, regardless of topic. It doesn’t matter what I think about a topic; the Discourse has already been decided for me, for all of us. Now, virality, not facts, equals truth. Questioning out loud has become increasingly difficult. As Nguyen notes in this essay, two things are needed for cult thinking to bloom — epistemic bubbles combined with echo chambers — and social media has it in spades. So yeah, we’re in a cult. Time to call our dads.

In epistemic bubbles, other voices are not heard; in echo chambers, other voices are actively undermined. The way to break an echo chamber is not to wave “the facts” in the faces of its members. It is to attack the echo chamber at its root and repair that broken trust.

Editor: Carolyn Wells 

This week, we’re sharing stories from Paul Kiel & Justin Elliot, Andy Greenberg, Mary Heglar, Katherine Miller, and Kyle Chayka.

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1. Inside TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans From Filing Their Taxes for Free

Paul Kiel, Justin Elliott | ProPublica | October 17, 2019 | 27 minutes (6,848 words)

“Under the terms of an agreement with the federal government, Intuit and other commercial tax prep companies promised to provide free online filing to tens of millions of lower-income taxpayers. In exchange, the IRS pledged not to create a government-run system. Since Free File’s launch, Intuit has done everything it could to limit the program’s reach while making sure the government stuck to its end of the deal.”

2. The Untold Story of the 2018 Olympics Cyberattack, the Most Deceptive Hack in History

Andy Greenberg | Wired | October 17, 2019 | 32 minutes (8,126 words)

As the opening ceremonies of the 2018 winter olympics began in Pyeongchang, a cyberattack targeted the games’ digital infrastructure, jeopardizing WIFI connections, event tickets, and even the official Olympics app, packed full of information on event schedules, maps, and hotel reservations. Andy Greenberg examines who was behind the attack and why they wanted to publicly embarrass South Korea.

3. After the Storm

Mary Heglar | Guernica Magazine | October 22, 2019 | 9 minutes (2,400 words)

As Mary Heglar remembers Hurricane Katrina — which hit the day after the 50th anniversary of the murder of Emmett Till — she considers how racism and climate change are inextricably linked.

4. The 2010s Have Broken Our Sense of Time

Katherine Miller | BuzzFeed | October 24, 2019 | 15 minutes (3,875 words)

A watch that tells time? How quaint! We don’t need watches any more; we have algorithms now.

5. My Own Private Iceland

Kyle Chayka | Vox | October 21, 2019 | 26 minutes (6,733 words)

When an island nation of 300,000 residents receives more than two million tourists a year, radical change is inevitable — but is it all negative?

From Dubrovnik to Tulum, 21st-century tourists cycle through destinations with brutal speed, descending en masse on one supposedly-undiscovered city or beach town after another. At Vox, Kyle Chayka reflects on the perils of overtourism while traveling around Iceland, where he goes on a Game of Thrones bus tour, takes a dip in the entirely human-made Blue Lagoon, and watches the northern lights… in an IMAX theater. Rather than inspire nostalgia for a time when authentic travel experiences were still possible (the 16th century, maybe?), the trip leads him to acceptance. We can never live like locals; our “wanderlust” is shaped almost entirely by algorithms and market forces; and maybe that’s just fine — or at least better than playing a never-ending game of authenticity one-upmanship.

In the face of overtourism, I want to make an argument for the inauthentic. Not just the spots flooded with tourists but the simulations and the fictions, the ways that the world of tourism supersedes reality and becomes its own space. It is made up of the digital northern lights on an 8K movie screen, the manmade turquoise geothermal baths, and the computer renderings of high-budget television shows overlaid on the earth. I don’t regret any of these activities; in fact, the less authentic an experience was supposed to be in Iceland, the more fun I had and the more aware I was of the consequences of 21st-century travel.

This is not to discount the charm of hiking an empty mountain or the very real damage that tourists cause, disrupting lives and often intensifying local inequality. But maybe by reclaiming these experiences, or destigmatizing them, we can also begin regaining our agency over the rampant commodification of places and people. We can travel to see what exists instead of wishing for some mythical untouched state, the dream of a place prepared perfectly for visitors and yet empty of them. Instead of trying to “live like a local,” as Airbnb commands, we can just be tourists. When a destination is deemed dead might be the best time to go there, as the most accurate reflection of our impure world.

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Marie Kondo wants us to live surrounded by items that spark joy. Instant Hotel and Stay Here want us to turn our living spaces into personality-free, Instagram-ready tableaux that command maximum rates on Airbnb. And in The New Republic, Kyle Chayka wants us to think about what these makeover shows really say about life in a late capitalist gigtopia.

Unlike, say, HGTV’s Fixer Upper in which we see reinvented structures, there isn’t much of a satisfying reveal at the climax of these episodes. Clothes have been folded, kitchen appliances aligned, and books jettisoned, causing consternation among literary watchers. (Kondo gives a lesson relevant to the fake news era: “Books are the reflection of our thoughts and values, so by tidying books it will show you what kind of information is important to you at this moment.”) The subjects are generally enthused at their new, joy-sparked lives, but it is a minimalist process of refinement rather than renovation. Progress is abstract, which is one reason the episodes could have been half as long.

The commandment to think carefully about what you own isn’t so radical, after all. “Sparking joy” still relies on material goods to form the basis of an identity: Each object must feel like it is an ineffable part of you, as if your old T-shirts emitted a Benjaminian aura. It’s not about taking up meditation or therapy; Kondo is advocating for something as close to perfect consumption as possible. The idea that things don’t matter is anathema to KonMari.

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This week, we’re sharing stories from Rachel Monroe, Jianan Qian, Rene Ebersole, Adi Robertson, and Kyle Chayka.

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1. The Delay

Rachel Monroe | Esquire | April 18, 2018 | 21 minutes (5,373 words)

After two siblings got kidnapped on the Navajo reservation, jurisdictional issues and a structural breakdown of the Amber Alert system slowed the search. Trying to protect Indigenous children on tribal lands requires increased police training and federal funding, but funding often means compromising some tribal sovereignity.

2. The Moon Is Beautiful Tonight: On East Asian Narratives

Jianan Qian | The Millions | April 17, 2018 | 14 minutes (3,578 words)

Using Junichiro Tanizaki’s The Key, Jianan Qian examines the differences between how stories are structured and celebrated in Western and East Asian cultures.

3. Inside the Black Market Hummingbird Love Charm Trade

Rene Ebersole | National Geographic | April 18, 2018 | 20 minutes (5,154 words)

“Catch a hummingbird. Kill it. Wrap it in underwear, cover it with honey—and sell it to arouse passion in a lover.” On the booming black market for dead hummingbirds to be made into Latin love charms called chuparosas.

4. The $100 Laptop That Was Going to Change the World—Then It All Went Wrong

Adi Robertson | The Verge | April 16, 2018 | 21 minutes (5,300 words)

One Laptop Per Child was the vision of MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte, who unveiled the small, green, affordable hand-cranked laptop in 2005. The marketing touted a laptop that would cost $100—except Negroponte quickly learned that creating that was impossible.

5. Style is an Algorithm

Kyle Chayka | Racked | April 17, 2018 | 24 minutes (6,025 words)

No one is original anymore, not even you.

Once upon a time, you bought a blue sweater because some fashion editors in a tastefully modern conference room decided blue was in for spring; now, you buy a blue sweater because your Echo Look scored blue more highly than green for you. What happens to taste when machines become the tastemakers? At Racked, Kyle Chayka meditates on style, algorithms, and our generic yet lullingly unobjectionable future.

Now YouTube tells me which videos to watch, Netflix serves me TV shows, Amazon suggests clothes to wear, and Spotify delivers music to listen to. If content doesn’t exist to match my desires, the companies work to cultivate it. The problem is that I don’t identify as much with these choices as what I once pirated, discovered, or dug up. When I look at my Spotify Discover playlists, I wonder how many other people got the exact same lists or which artists paid for their placement. I feel nostalgic for the days of undifferentiated .rar files loading slowly in green progress bars. There was friction. It all meant something.

To be fair, this content consumption was also extremely unethical. And it’s not like I don’t like Netflix shows or Spotify playlists. Like cigarettes or McDonald’s, they were designed for me to like them, so of course I like them. It’s just that I don’t always like that I like them.

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