The Chaos Machine Chapter #12

4. I chose to circle back to one of my pieces I made for the second reading reflection and recreate it, hopefully with an even stronger message. Just feeling all consumed by social media and phones. It truly does feel like there is no control in our lives anymore, and I want to make an effort to change that.

Sorry, Dr. Jae, this is a long one. I had a lot on my mind with this.

Really, I had no idea what social media and algorithms in digital spaces were doing, uprooting whole communities, using moral emotional language to keep people online, but also becoming primary triggers to incite violence in entire countries, and being a root in the persecution and genocide of muslim peoples in Myanmar. Fisher provided more than enough examples and backed research that social media is dangerous, and yet I use it more?????????? I have been thinking about this all semester. Why am I aware of this yet unable to stop myself? I guess I have gotten much better at pulling myself away.

After learning how social media evolved from Substack, Reddit, and Facebook, our lives online are now dictated by algorithms. I don't know if I believe there is much choice anymore in what we are shown in our own feeds. And the same goes for Spotify. Other streaming platforms differ, but if you use Spotify and really rely on weekly mixes and similar playlists, you don't have your own taste. At least for people in my generation and younger. We never experienced truly finding music ourselves. It is just shoved in our face. And if it's in front of us long enough, eventually we decide we like it. But social media is different. We see our friends, and we know what is curated for us to see. Even the friends we see are curated, too. Do any of us actually have 300+ friends? Half of the people we actually know we followed for some social networking purpose, and I would bet money on that.

I don't believe I have control over what I get to see. Even if I unfollow someone because all my best friends follow them, I will still be recommended to follow them, and they will keep popping up in my feed. Now more than ever, I notice my Instagram feed is mostly people I don't follow, and it is the algorithm pushing me to buy a product or follow a brand or a person associated with it. So I know for a fact I do not get a choice anymore.

I find this all so odd. I knew about 50% of what Fisher discussed in the book before reading it. I was aware of the russian accounts utilizing the algorithms and incel culture online to influence certain groups of people as a ploy to widen the divide between citizens of the US. I was previously aware that movements such as anti-vax and MAGA were being pursued online by accounts from other countries to create more popularity for those topics online and influence people in the US to find reasons to mistrust the government and even more anyone with left-leaning ideals. I thought I knew it all, and I really had been putting caps on how much I used it. I was always uncomfortable with people in my life seeing what I'm up to day to day, because why should my friend across the country know what I ate for lunch? Yet I found myself using it more than ever. I used to post once a semester, maybe, and I would have my friends go through my camera roll to help me pick what to post. I think I started using my social media more because over the past year, I have been creating more than ever, and was told I need to share what I do with my friends and extended family.