[2000 words | 7 minutes ]
I spend a lot of time wondering what it would look like if Facebook were rooted in the science of relationships and positive psychology instead of capitalism and the science of addiction.
What if it were not built out of a Harvard white man’s rolodex of weak ties?
What if it were not evolved from a jilted college boy’s hot-or-not revenge scheme?:
Logging on to his blog, he created an entry titled “Harvard Face Mash: The Process.” His plan was as simple as it was vindictive: create a site called Facemash.com, hack into Harvard’s directory, download photographs of his classmates and post them online next to photos of farm animals to rate who was more desirable.
He began like any other hurt schoolboy. “Jessica A— is a bitch,” he wrote. “I need to think of something to take my mind off her. I need to think of something to occupy my mind. Easy enough, now I just need an idea.
If “a "face book" is a student directory featuring photos and basic information,” one way to queer it would be to include less basic information, to make it more of a LittleBlackBook.
I feel like what I wan to know about my social network and what Facebook can tell me are only occasionally overlapping things. I want to know:
How do I best contact you?
Email, here, text, phone call?
When should I reach out? When should I not? Should I reach out at all?
Are you responsive if so? Do you log in often?
I don’t need you to be available right now, but it would be nice to know if you’re ignoring me, busy, or as sporadic at communication as I am.
Can technology help us combat the fundamental attribution error? Or does it create new modes of misunderstanding?
How well do we know each other? What can I know of you given that? What should I know of you for our relationship to thrive?
You shouldn’t have to share any of your contact information with me, but will you? What level of trust will it indicate?
I think it’s a reasonable boundary to only allow close friends to know one’s phone number, or for only trusted friends to know when you’re on vacation, never the prospective burglars on the outer rings of your social group.
Humans don’t practice privacy as a public/private binary, but social media has yet to grasp that fact. The closest they come is to distinguish unidirectional relationships from mutual ones, and “friends” from “friends of friends.”
What are your three signs? Or your love languages? Or your MBTI? Maybe even your StrengthsFinder? Or enneagram? Which personality rubrics do you prefer, if any?
But this, again, is something for which I care more or less depending on nature of our relationship. For most people, I will not be reviewing your conflict style to think out how to apologize to you or reviewing your communication style before checking in after a worryingly cryptic post of yours.
But I want to take character notes! Why is there no place in social media to note what you have learned of others that you wish not to forget, like their dietary restrictions, anniversary dates, left-handedness, or love of gecko-themed memorabilia?
What roles are you looking to fill in your support network? Do you only have space in your life for activity buddies? For career colleagues? Or do you have the space in your life for more close friends?
If our hobbies line up then, then are we near each other? Which of your favorite concerts are playing when? What exercises are you joining where? How can we solidify this relationship through action?
Were you, like me, subject to a peripatetic childhood? Are you therefore willing to build deeper adult bonds than most may need?
Or do you have childhood friends who will always come first? Will I always be relegated to an outer peripheral ring in your social network?
Do you have a “back home” to return to? Do you want reminders of back home?
Why does Facebook assume we most want to connect with those we have already known? Does it exist in a world where the past holds no trauma? Why does it carelessly recommend those I don’t ever want to speak to again?
Do we not all contain multiple selves? Is the idea of flattening every tie into a “friend,” no matter how strong the relationship, not also repellant to you? Pretending all relationships are flat doesn’t make it true, any more than pretending that all Americans are middle class establishes it as a more equal nation.
Why is the algorithm a black box of unknowns? An inscrutable god that creators pray to? Why can’t we tweak the weights in algorithmic considerations? I want to see my closest friends’ latest post regardless of how recent they posts!
The answers to many of these questions can only be suggested by social media, I know, inferred by the viewer. We can’t have too much of the wrong kind of vulnerability. But still, how do we connect those who want deep ties with each other? Lord knows they need more than an algorithm that detect suicidal language. I suppose that other apps have tried, and yet...
Do you actually even like me as a person?
I wish social networks observed who engaged with the greatest percentage of your posts and whose posts you engage with most often, in order to foster ties of reciprocity. I think this every time I am shown the people the platform deems important rather than the people most important to me.
In a perfect world, the algorithm would also detect hatewatchers, antifans, stalkers, bullies, and other dangerous interactions to limit their engagement.
Can I safely ask you any of this? Can you safely tell me any of this?
It might be dangerous for a platform to observe your log-in times and response habits, and to mark you responsive/unresponsive or some yellow light status between the two. It might be dangerous for an app to know when someone is likely isolated and vulnerable, or especially bleeding-heart and idealistic.
Why do we live in a world where the most convenient technologies are subverted and used against us? Why must capitalism destroy utopia from the inside before it is even built?
People rightly laughed when Facebook moved into the matchmaking space, but that’s because it never did even a passable job of matchmaking platonic connections. It’s strange that APIs only let you sign in more easily while collecting your friend data and personal data, how APIs allow Facebook to remain an inviolate hub for personal information instead of a mutual give-and-take of plugins, add-ons, extensions.
Its word analysis is wielded to pinpoint the perfect ads to show us all, but could be used to identify which friends you should deepen your relationships with. Rather than directing us to look at the popular, biggest, or most engaging/enraging things; algorithms could identify which things match your values, mood, wishes, or needs.
In short, they should put more work into making curation easy, responsive, and decentralized.
(My hot take is that all popularity is a form of centralization, however.)
Rather than the whiplash of seeing newborn announcements, police assault videos, global crises in headline, and metaironic memes with a mayfly lifespan all colliding into each other; maybe Grammarly-style tone detectors could suggest post categorizations that people could either accept or insert their own. Those categories could be used to filter the timeline: I may want only to see pet photos today, but tomorrow I may review which of my queer friends in crisis are holding GoFundMes. If I’m well enough the day after, I will review everyone’s achievements and life updates with only compersion without envy.
Actually, profiles should be more like dashboards.
Maybe it’s the data fiend in me, but I would like social media profiles to be like recipe cards indicating how one wants to be known. I want to add reminders and notes on the back of the card: this person’s birthday is soon and they like vinyl records. They’re vegetarian and we’re going out to eat soon. Roller skating is one of their hobbies and there’s an online sale that may interest them. I want to be able to see how and why we know each other at a glance. I want an interactive directory, a living gratitude list (with the assumption I am glad we met).
In contrast, updates create the expectation that we be constantly logged on to keep up with others, lest flickers of important news be drowned out by an unfiltered flood of amalgamated thoughts.
I avoid social media because I don’t want to drown in ephemera with variable significance.
I use social media because I want to understand those I’ve begun to know.
I want to give them homes in my extended mind and find commonalities that allow us all to grow.
Is it too much to want to know who to turn to?
I know my biases as a neurotic gay leftist are clear in my desires for a social network. When I how I want a social media user face to look and function, I think of something like a pod map:
I also think of the “building a support system” worksheets my therapist had me fill out. They looked a bit like the pod map above but also asked questions like this:
When I realized they had come from a workbook on recovery, I was offended at first—my ability to build and maintain relationships is similar to someone recovering from drug abuse?
But when I thought deeper and connected it to the “loneliness epidemic” here in the US and other nations, I concluded that people in recovery may have to do explicitly what all of us do implicitly. They need to be intentional about building and rebuilding relationships to minimize relapse, and we can all learn from their openness on how to foster relationships that foster our wellbeing.
At this point, I feel no shame about sharing an experience in common with people in recovery. It means I’m not alone. As a wise therapist once sung, Honey, you’re not special cause you’re sad.
Because my eMarxist behind resents social media for showing me the most popular posts over the most relevant ones, TikTok was able to reel me in quickly. It does better at balancing the two and knows that centralized, total-platform popularity is different from popularity-within-a-niche. Young-pretty-people-dancing is assumed to be the bulk of TikTok, but the app has no hesitancy over showing me people with disfigurement so long as they have insights to share.
That said, I do not use TikTok to meet others, network, and/or deepen ties. I refuse to post on the app. I can’t say if it portends a future of hypercustomization in social media technology, and whether said customization will succeed in connecting people in such a way that their social support networks are adequately filled. I don’t know if microtrends help fight loneliness, or if we are mistaking capitalism for identity once again.
Maybe we are moving away from social media driven by the Pareto principle and that would be good! I want us all to create according to our ability and to receive support according to our needs. I want more friends willing to go to concerts at least as much as I want to network my way into a new job.
And more than I want to peer across pixels into the staged life of an fairycore influencer, I want those queer friends in crisis to get their fundraising goals met.