Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
I feel like in the last 5-10 years i’ve seen a shift in how time and attention are spent. Distractions are everywhere, especially in our phones that are almost always within reach. Distractions take time. Distractions draw our attention. But what about when we aren’t distracted?
When phones with on demand social media, streaming movies and series, and time sucking games or scrolling are not what we are doing, what then? Are we being efficient? Are we dedicating time to the right things, the things we say are the priorities in our life? And when we do spend this time, are we doing so with our full attention?
That’s the key question: when I’m giving of my time, am I also giving of my full attention?
What, and more importantly who, deserves your full attention?
I am fascinated by the US Congress hearings about banning TikTok. This speaks of how political issues are today. I don’t know enough about TikTok’s measures to ensure privacy of information but listening to the CEO, it sounds like they are doing what needs to be done and that is as much or more than Meta/Facebook.
Then there is the banning of books, and of drag Queen shows, that are both politically and religiously motivated. Meanwhile, some of the language of the book bans make the Bible a book that could be banned. As well, people protesting the drag show ban are bringing up current statistics of sexual abuse cases including many from the clergy and none from drag queens.
Each of these concerns are based on trying to block influence. These are concerns that come from fear, and lack of knowledge. They are about addressing politically and socially charged concerns and magnifying the fear of ‘outside’ influence.
Fear used to be battled with information, know more about the actual threat, and understand the enemy. Now information isn’t enough. The data is always interpreted and skewed so much that there really isn’t an opportunity to address the fear in a meaningful way. So instead ban, block, and legislate, not because it’s the best thing to do, but because it’s easy to implement.
It’s humerus to me that the approach of government is to limit the freedoms of citizens in the name of protecting them. But the same government that is protecting its citizens in these ways doesn’t increase health care or gun safety… two major concerns that affect the wellbeing of many US citizens.
Is it just me that doesn’t understand how politics can be so driven to address the concerns of a few? In the end I’m left wondering, ‘Who benefits?’ I’m not guessing it’s the typical citizen. No, there are political agendas at stake that have very little to do with people, and a lot more to do with money and/or politics.
The big question is, who has the political clout to address these concerns? Banning books, drag shows, social media apps, and although not mentioned yet, abortions… I ask again, ‘Who benefits?’ Because that seems to matter much more than the actual concerns.
In the satirical mockumentaryThis is Spinal Tap there is a hilarious scene where the guitarist explains that their very special amps are louder and better because unlike all other amps that have a maximum setting of 10, these go to 11.
While I find this funny, I have noticed a troubling trend recently where issues that are minor in concern are elevated beyond what they should be. In other words, a problem that should be a 3/10 or even 5/10 concern gets addressed as if it’s an 11/10.
This is most obvious on social media. In the past few months I’ve seen silly issues like getting the wrong order at a fast food restaurant, or a dispute over a parking space, or neighbours not being neighbourly, all leading to confrontations that far exceed what should have been appropriate for the level of concern. Now, I recognize that in some cases the concerns are legitimate and deserving of escalating, for example if the issue is related to hate crimes, racism, or bigotry, so strictly speaking, I’m talking about minor issues that get exaggerated into issues far bigger than necessary.
This is something I’ve noticed which has significantly increased since the pandemic. The ramifications are that every little issue or concern becomes a big concern. This is harmful in a couple ways. First of all, the stress of making things bigger than they are is hard on everyone… especially for the person that made the mistake who might want to make things better. This is almost impossible online where people are relentlessly attacked for their mistake. A small issue becomes a mountain of concern that can’t be traversed. It could include personal attacks, such as death threats, which are far worse than the original transgression.
Secondly, when the response is the same whether it’s a person making a bad decision on their worst day or a bigoted jerk intentionally being hurtful, the idea that both of these are attacked with equal vitriol waters down the response to the truly awful act. Vigilante justice handed out without discrimination makes the response more about harming than helping the situation.
Not every issue is an 11/10. When issues are that concerning, they deserve being handled as such. But in many, many cases a small issue deserves a small response, and escalating the issue as if it’s far bigger than it is only makes the whole situation worse. Worse not just for the transgressor, but for the person who feels harmed. We need nuance when dealing with concerns. We also need to consider the impact of negative responses.
Here are two examples:
1. A well known Tiktok food critic disagrees with another food critic and while he does this respectfully, his (so called) fans proceed to attack the other food critic with negative comments and also give the restaurant hundreds of negative reviews, even though they never visited the place themselves.
2. A teacher tried to do a do a culturally based art project and a parent didn’t find it appropriate. The parent reacts on social media and the post goes viral with millions of views. The next day the parent addresses the concerns with the teacher, who was not only apologetic, but as the parent suggests in a follow up video, the teacher was gracious, thoughtful, and open for feedback. However this update did not go viral and only a few thousand people watched it, unlike millions who saw the upset rant.
It’s one thing when these negative responses are online, and still another when they are in person. Everything doesn’t need to be an 11/10. Save those for the kinds of things that deserve a serious response. And, address smaller issues in less public ways with more opportunity for an appropriate response that isn’t elevated and likely to cause harm as much as bring about a solution.
A 3/10 issue isn’t going to be resolved because it’s treated like an 11/10, and is far more likely to have negative consequences if it is elevated to that level.
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Somewhat Related: Last May I wrote a post about how when asking someone to rank something on a scale of 1-10, tell them, “You can’t pick 7“.
Whenever I see people get on diets or start jumping into crazy workout schedules I think about how long they will last? Is this a lifestyle change or a temporary change? And often the ones that are temporary are focused on unrealistic targets that they are very unlikely to get to.
Good habits, optimizing small patterns of behaviour, and living a good life without ridiculous sacrifices or hours upon hours of relentless dedication. Not 3 hour a day workouts, but at least 45 minutes five days a week. Not broccoli and chicken every day, but being thoughtful about junk food and making smart choices.
Not unachievable targets, but realistic goals over long periods of time where you’ve maintained good habits for eating, sleeping, and working out. Fit for life, not looking fit for my holiday bathing suit. Healthy living, not perfect diets and workouts. Because when the bar is set too high, when you believe the fitness magazines that tell you how to get a 6-pack in 6 weeks, you are not seeing thé tremendous sacrifices those abs require. We need to set a realistic destination, then enjoy the journey.
It’s apparent in schools, it’s apparent in the workforce… there are students and young adults who are disengaged with societal norms and constructs around school and work. They are questioning why they need to conform? Why they need to participate? There is a dissatisfaction with complying with expectations that schools is necessary, or that a ‘9-5’ job is somehow meaningful.
Some will buck the norm, find innovative alternatives, and create their own niches in the world. Others, many others, will struggle, wallow in unhappiness, and fight mental health demons that will leave them feeling defeated, or riddled with anxiety, or fully disengaged with a world they feel they don’t fit in. Some will escape this, some will find pharmaceutical ways to reduce or enhance their disconnect. Some of these will be doctor prescribed, others will be legally or illegally self-prescribed.
The fully immersive worlds of addictive, time-sucking on-demand television series, first-person online games, and glamorous, ‘living my best life’, ‘you will never be as happy as me’ illusions on social media certainly don’t help. Neither does unlimited access to porn, violence, and anti-Karen social justice warriors dishing out revenge and hate in the name of justice. The choices are fully immersed, unhappily jealous, or infuriatingly angry… and disengaged with the world. Real life is not as interesting, and not as engaging as experiences that our technological tools can provide. School is hard, a full day at work is boring, and it’s easier to disengage than participate.
The question is, will this disengaged group find their way? Or will they find themselves in their 30’s living in their parent’s basements or subsisting on minimal income, working only enough to survive, and never enough to thrive?
School and work can’t compete with the sheer entertainment value this group gets from disengaging, so what’s the path forward? We can’t make them buy in if they refuse, and we can’t let school-aged students wallow in a school-less escapes from an engaged and full life. I don’t have any solutions, but I have genuine concerns for a growing number of disengaged young adults who seem dissatisfied with living in a world they don’t feel they can participate meaningfully in.
What does the future hold for those who disengage by choice?
I think in an era of fake news and deepfakes, we are going to see a resurgence and refocus on web page branding. When you can’t even trust a video, much less a news article, the source of your information will become even more important.
I was on Twitter recently, after the tragic earthquake in Turkey and Syria, when I came across a video of what was claimed to be a nuclear reactor explosion in Turkey. The hashtags suggested that it was a video from the recent crisis, but with a little digging I discovered that it was an explosion many years ago and nowhere near Turkey as was suggested. The video had tens of thousands of views, likes, and retweets. I didn’t take the video at face value, but many others did. I reported the tweet, but doubt that it was removed before it was shared many more times.
Although I wasn’t fooled this time, I have been fooled before and I will be fooled again. That said, part of my ‘bullshit detector’ is paying attention to the source. Recently I saw a hard-to-believe article online by a major news station… except that the page was designed to look like the major news station but had a completely different web address. The article was fake. What drew my attention to it being fake was that it seemed more like an advertisement than a news article. Otherwise I probably would have been fooled. As soon as I was suspicious, the first thing I did was ask myself if this really was the news organization I thought it was? I went into my browser history and looked for the website this morning to take a screenshot of the article, and I found this:
The website is down… which is good, but again I wonder how many people it fooled? It was a website surprisingly high up in a google search just a few days ago, and so I clicked thinking it would be legitimate.
When looking for information from controversial people or topics, it’s going to get harder and harder to know if the source of the information is reliable. One sure fire way to be certain is to look at the website. In some cases even if the source is legitimate, you might still have to question the accuracy of the source, and use a tool like MEDIA BIAS/FACT Check to see what kind of bias the site tends to hold. But you will build a repertoire of reliable sites and go to them first.
More and more the web domain will be the ultimate litmus test that will help you determine if a claim or a quote (delivered in written, audio, or even video format) is legitimate. Because fake news and deepfakes will become more convincing, more authentic looking, and more prevalent… and that trend has already started.
This is the world we now live in. Almost everything we do is public by default, private by choice. But even then we can’t guarantee our privacy. Share something, anything online privately and it’s only as private as the least privacy-minded person.
Send a photo to just your closest friends, but one friend finds it funny and passes it on.
Send an email to a few people to try to resolve a private problem, but one recipient decides to forward it beyond the group… or worse yet, shares it on a public forum because they disagree with how you are dealing with the situation privately.
Send a direct message to someone rather than having it in your public timeline, and they respond by sharing your message on their public timeline, along with their response.
Privacy is hard to do in a world where so much is easily made public. It’s hard to do when the default is public. This speaks to how important it is to act as if anything you share is public. Because while we might make the choice to be private, we are only one part of the sharing equation. Private by choice means keeping something just to yourself, and not saying/sharing it with anyone or on any social media platform.
All communication is public by default. Privacy is an illusion that can be broken at any time.
When I lived in China, I had a hard time communicating on any social media. I connected to this blog using Posterous, which let me post easily from an App on my phone, before WordPress had an App. When Posterous went defunct all the images I posted through their App were not saved on WordPress and so those images were lost. So I have old posts like this, where I only have a dead link where a photo used to be:
This isn’t the only social media company that has gone defunct, taking the history of my work with it. I loved using the Ning Network communites like Classroom 2.0, I had a student project with over a 100,000 visits on Wikispaces, this video had close to 100,000 views on BlipTV, and I had great conversations archived on coComment. My original blog was on ELGG, where I had a great community of bloggers to learn from, then it switched to Eduspaces which was less friendly and forced me to do the smart thing and self-host on DavidTruss.com. Delicious, Diigo, and Scribed were communities but now they’ve changed and are just ‘places’ that I used to visit and use. And there are plenty of other tools that have come and gone and when they are gone, so is a record of everything I did in those spaces.
I’ve lost too many great conversations and archives of data because of social media services either transforming to something different, suddenly requiring fees that are beyond what I’m willing to pay, or just going defunct… and with so much happening to Twitter right now, I just figured I’d request my data and store it myself for safe keeping. If anything happens to Twitter, I want a record of what I did in this social media space. I’m not predicting that Twitter will go the way of the dodo bird, but I’m just not confident it will look the same at the end of 2023, now that it is privately owned and operated. I want a backup of my data… just in case.
Social media has changed. Whether it’s Instagram or Facebook Reels, Youtube Shorts, or TikTok’s ‘For You’ page, we no longer follow people, we follow viral videos. Content trumps people. Trends and clicks determine our feed, not who we know; who we choose to follow. And for things we share, our followers are less likely to see this and more likely to Like and Share something from people we don’t know.
Algorithms, not our online community, determine what we see, what we relate to, and what consumes our attention. I’m in Spain and now every one in four TikTok videos on my page are in Spanish, I’ve seen a mom of a young child sharing what her life is like after moving from America to Spain twice now. Not because I follow her, but because the TikTok algorithm thinks this is what I want to see.
What does this mean for us? Social media influencers will be less influential… probably a good thing. But this will also mean we are more distracted and less connected. How this changes the landscape of our digital lives is likely to be an overall negative in the short term, and ‘to be determined’ in the long term. Time will tell.
But I don’t share my results publicly. I have two places that I share results like today’s…
On a family WhatsApp chat with my mom, sisters, daughters and nieces, and on a text message with a couple good friends in Toronto. What I don’t do is share my results on social media. There’s nothing wrong with choosing to do so, it’s just that I share in the context of other people wanting to see my results rather than a blanket share with anyone in connected to on my socials. That’s my choice.
It’s a fun thing to do, and I normally do it just before writing this daily blog post in the morning. I find it an enjoyable way to get my brain going in the morning.
Here are my stats, with a false solved-in-one solution.
The reason for the false solved-in-one is that before I started my routine of regularly doing Wordle my daughter was stuck on one and showed me what she had up to the point. I said, “I think I know the answer”, to which she replied, “Don’t tell me.” So, I went to the Wordle for the first time and punched in my guess, solving it in one try. I did not know Wordle tracked your progress without an account and so my first ever try now shows up as a 1 without the context of me working off of my daughter’s 3 or 4 attempts on the same word. I have had 3 or 4 fails, 2 of which were in a single week.
When I first saw Wordle I only saw the solutions shared and thought it was a silly game, but I’ve grown to really enjoy doing them, and I love that it creates conversations and connections with two groups I otherwise wouldn’t connect with as frequently. So while you won’t see me sharing my results on social media, I have become a dedicated fan of this word game.
