What is the Nature of Social Media?

Ever since the Barrack Obama era we’ve been immersed in Social Media.  Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram – these sites aren’t simply the online distractions they once were, they’ve become the staging ground where all social, cultural, and political behaviour occurs.  The bulk of online activity is filtered through their paradigm, and yet we have no idea what this paradigm is.  On the surface they sell themselves as simple and straightforward services: chat with friends on Facebook, read the headlines on Twitter, show off your videos on YouTube, and create a photo-album on Instagram.  But if that’s all that they are, why are their users becoming so vicious?  As Marshall McLuhan said “The medium is the message,” and we’ve been blindly using this medium without understanding it, or what sort of overriding message it conveys.

Let us start by considering the sort of personality which winds up creating a social media platform in the first place.  In my video “Charisma for Introverts” I described the four temperaments, and related them to the personality traits which are recognized by modern psychology.  You start with a simple Cartesian grid, with extroversion/introversion along one axis, and people-focussed/process-focussed along the other, and in each corner you have a dominant humour.  The extroverted/people-focussed is the sanguine; the introverted/people-focussed is the melancholic; the extroverted/process-focussed is the choleric; and the introverted/process-focussed is the phlegmatic.  It is in this last category, the phlegmatic, that we find our stereotypical programmer.  The sort of person who wants to work on systems of logical control.  They aren’t interested in what is being controlled – only that it flows according to their commands.

In another video (sadly lost to YouTube censorship) I equated these personality types to the Cluster B personality disorders:

• Cholerics become Psychopaths
• Sanguines becomes Narcissists
• Melancholics become Borderlines
• Phelgmatics become Histrionics

In their healthy state, phlegmatics are a pleasure to be around.  Not only because they take care of the things that bore the rest of us (they love being the ‘sound guy’ who makes the band sound great, or the researcher who turns data into information) but, as Fr. Ripperger describes, they have a profoundly pleasant temperament.  But when it comes to Silicon Valley, we’re not dealing with sound minds.  The sort of people who populate its upper echelons are power hungry; and whenever a temperament devolves into sin, it starts manifesting the traits of its related Cluster B disorder.

As a brief contrast, consider Tom Anderson from MySpace.  In 2009 he sold the platform to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., and by last report he’s been using this wealth to focus on his photography hobby.  He isn’t trying to control others with his wealth; all he wants to control is his camera’s lens.

As for those who stick around, the ‘high jingo’ of Social Media will weed out all but the most power hungry.  Not all of them will be as public as Mark Zuckerberg, mind you – the person in charge of YouTube is probably not Sheryl Sandberg, she’s just the CEO, not the author of the ‘algorithm’ – but given that their positions denotes a Phlegmatic, and their lust for power denotes evil, we can trust that each and every person who’s controlling social media is a Histrionic.

So what is a Histrionic?  While the Narcissist and the Psychopath are easy to spot because they’re in your face (the Narcissist is leading a cult (Hollywood), while the Psychopath is manipulating everything and everyone for no reason (Wall street)) the Borderline and the Histrionic are less obvious.  The Borderline – desperate for attention, but unable to explain themselves – provokes others into attacking them.  Meanwhile, the Histrionic – desperate to have a meaningful role in organizing things – drives everybody around them insane.

The quintessential Histrionic is the poor, beleaguered mother who works so hard to hold together her dysfunctional family.  All around her is chaos, while she’s the eye of the storm.  Start to look more closely, however, and you’ll start to notice something.  The reason the brothers aren’t speaking to each other is because she’d been whispering to both of them, telling Peter that Paul is secretly upset with him, and vice versa.  The daughter is furious with the father because the Histrionic mother – with sotto voce, and regret in her eyes – mentioned how disappointed her husband is with the daughter’s choice of boyfriend.  The Histrionic sows the seeds of discord so that they can be the ones to fix it.

So what is social media?  It’s a Histrionic’s playground.

Social Media shoves everybody into one place.  It dissolves all the barriers, and forces everyone to see everyone else naked.  Liberals have Conservative opinions shoved in their faces, and vice versa.  The sort of talk that belongs in the locker room or the beauty parlour is shouted at full volume, for all to hear.  Harmless, off colour jokes are archived for eternity, so that they can always cause offense – just like that long-forgotten fight you had with your sibling ten years ago, which the Histrionic mother just happened to mention at dinner, and now the two of you are yelling at each other all over again.

Everybody has been noticing the censorship going on, but they fail to understand why things are being censored.  They think it’s because of the Progressive Agenda – as if the Progressive Agenda were a list of rational goals, and you’re being censored because your facts undermine their narrative.  It’s far worse than that.  The censorship isn’t happening to achieve an agenda – the agenda is the censorship itself!

The Histrionic mother doesn’t have an agenda for the family – no, I don’t care the she just read the latest Oprah book on intergenerational dynamics – the whole point of things is the disruption, so that she can find emotional affect in being the only person holding things together.  Similarly, the reason Social Media drives extremism in opinion, and vitriolic arguments between intractable political divides, isn’t because it favours one side over the other; it’s because its designers find affect in imposing arbitrary Terms of Service regimes.

It’s already widely understood that Social Media is designed to be as addictive as possible.  They employ all of the skinner-box techniques that Las Vegas has perfected to draw out one more second of attention – one more click on a provocative link.  But why are they looking for your attention?  Most people think it’s or the sake of revenue, despite most firms failing to show any type of profit.  Once you realize that profit has nothing to do with it – that it’s all about power and control – only then do things start to make sense.

The worst thing about having a Histrionic in your family is that it turns you and everyone else into worse people.  The constant needling tempts your worse instincts – wrath when you argue with your brother, pride over not speaking with your father, vanity that your uncle has worse finances than you, envy over how easy your cousin has it.  To create the whirlwind, the Histrionic goes out of their way to appeal to your worst nature; to constantly share the sort of gossip that will tempt you where you’re weakest, and then encourage you in your overreaction.

That is the nature of Social Media.  It’s designed to bring out your worst behaviours so that you require censorship and monitoring.  And as with all Cluster Bs, the only way to win is not to play.

Don’t post the provocative, insulting tweet – the one that you just know will piss off that person you disagree with.

Don’t post that picture of yourself showing off to make others jealous – particularly that guy who said you’d never make it.

Don’t try and one-up a stranger in argument, for the sake of ‘proving’ that you’re right, and belittling your intellectual inferiors.

In essence; approach Social Media with virtue and patience, the same way you would a Thanksgiving dinner with estranged family members.  Remember that it’s designed to make you argue, and if you give in you’re playing right into Zuckerberg’s hands.  And when other people argue with you – it’s not really them speaking, they’re just shouting the words of their Histrionic controller.

Above all, set the standard of behaviour that’s befitting of a human being.  If you’re going to participate in social media, realize that you’re going to be tempted.  Stick to your values, and stand up for the sort of behaviour a man ought to exhibit.  Be professional.  Be polite.  Be stoic.  Refuse to fall into their dysfunctional trap.