Its Time to Rethink Social Media: A Case For Reform.

I hate social media as a forum, company, and outlet.  Explained:

The Dichotomy 

Social media has completely changed the dynamics of social interaction and how people view themselves within the scope of the universe. Its common knowledge today that many parents in America (in particular) raise their children with the mentality that they are special, and by special I mean abstracted from the notion of purely being valuable and loved in and of themselves. Everyone is a winner, everyone deserves a trophy, hell in most high schools majority of students make the high honor role. Tough love is not something practiced by most families; you work as hard as you can but its fine simply because you tried your best. Some people either have it by nature of existing (many pro athletes, actors, models, scientists, etc.), or they have the talent but also put in thousands of hours to rise to where they sit today (entrepreneurs, politicians, other athletes). So clearly there is an asymmetric relationship between success and "effort". Some people simply start on a flatter curve and need a smaller marginal return in order to reach a conventional definition of success, such is life.

In the past, people didn't internalize this asymmetric relationship. Besides movements to provide fundamental rights, people were told for the most part that effort, and lots of it, could carry even the simplest of men to success. Some of those men realized they were special, others realized they weren't .. and the asymmetric relationship became an afterthought. Today people ultimately come to the same conclusion, but social media compounds the nature of human beings to feel a strong emotional connection to that desire to remain special, different. Teenage girls today have the highest reported rates of depression of any point in history. In total 20% of teenagers experience depression prior to turning 21 and only 30% of these cases are even diagnosed. (http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2010/03/04/why-are-so-many-teens-depressed/)Teenagers are mentally unstable by nature of wide oscillation in hormone output. Moreover, teenage years are plagued by a carryover of the optimism that is instilled in youth. The world is in fact your oyster and everything you ever dreamed of should be yours for the taking, and that makes failure all the more stressful. 

So where does social media fall into this equation?

(1) Social media builds off the desire of every person to be that special talent that their parents and society once told them they could be. The ego becomes the primary subject of all interaction through media.

(2) Building off (1), social media exposes people to elements of success and failure in others lives that they wouldn't have access to naturally. This comes directly at odds with the desire prefaced in (1). If so and so is doing x and is happy, why am I not doing x as well? 

(3) Because social media exists forever, (2) is continuously compounded over time. As time passes and so and so continues to love life because of x,y,z achievements, the same person who still has nothing continuously reaffirms (2) while still desiring (1). The end result is major depression. 

(4) On the inverse, the person who has achieved x,y,z either begins to think of him or herself as superior which consequently stunts normal functional relationships, and only furthers the narcissist ego trip that initially existed, or they are actually (3) as well because they compare to another person who has done x,y,z,a,b,c. 

Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms play into our inherent desires to be somebody but then consequently provide us with a quantification of how much of somebody we are. You are measured by your number of friends, followers, your pictures, how many people "like" your posts etc, etc. The end result of this process is inherently self destructive, and I contend that in many cases it can lead to violence against others as well. 

The Company.

As a company social media is also extremely exploitative. 

(1) As you may recall, Facebook recently announced unilaterally that it had the right to sell knowledge of your actions to outside vendors. Instagram similarly announced that it could give two shits about your privacy and would sell and display pictures of your or your friends without their consent.

(2) After their IPO Facebook plummeted from a high of $42 to $17 by the time earnings season rolled around. While many average citizens bought into FB thinking they were supporting the company of the new generation, its founder and many other principal investors took advantage of the opportunity to cash out millions of shares totaling in billions of dollars. They then let the ship sink. Smart investors who jumped the gun were in large part unable to short FB because brokers set extremely large margins on the positions (I believe FB would have had to drop by 70% of principal to make money on a $1mm short position). 

The Future.

So what can be done about this problem? I suggest that everyone completely cut off from Facebook, Twitter, and other forms of social media after moving on from situations in which it aids in communication. I would argue that FB serves a purpose in college because it allows for easy communication between people who may not have each others phone numbers, and does so in a prompter fashion than email. After graduation, I plan to either completely delete my FB or cut down my friends list to the 100 or fewer people I care most about staying in touch with. 

How can social media improve as an outlet?

(1) Separate photos, status updates, and communication services. The interconnection of these services makes social media extremely intimate -- but in the undesirable sense highlighted above.

(2) Make limits on the number of characters that can be written in any given status update. Also make posts visible by group rather than by "friend" or "follower". This will make sure only certain people have access to any given information at any point in time.

The Disclaimer.

This may seem like an extremely hypocritical statement to many readers, especially when a social media mechanism (Facebook) is my primary means of sharing my writing. That being said, if more people read actual print media (books, newspapers, journals), perhaps the proliferation of blogs and other forms would be kept moot. I do think that FB could serve a great purpose to society if it wasn't (a) a corporation and (b) people approached it as a means of sharing ideas rather than sharing their lives. In such a case, people could definitely learn a lot about the world and generate valuable discourse. I mean when was the last time in history billions of people were all connected so closely despite geographic and socioeconomic disparity. 

"With great power comes great responsibility"  -- Spider Man's uncle referring to Mark Zuckerberg 

Lebron James Should Be Your Role Model Too

If you know me at all, you know that my favorite athlete hands down is Lebron James. Before I get into a diatribe about why he should be in your favorites too, let me explain some general aspects underlying his very  human struggle (something everyone reading should empathize with).

Happiness as a theory, to me, is predicated upon finding the reasonable ground between expectations and actuality. People who generally find actuality better than expectations are very happy (they are the minority). People who find expectations better than actuality are generally rather sad (again a minority). Most people find themselves in the middle, they generally live life to their expectations save for a few circumstances where they over or under perform. Moreover, society ascribes expectations to people based on its view of actuality. E.g. I would expect a Wharton student with a 4.0 GPA to work at a +$100,000 job merely because he ranked at the top of the class. Expectations would have to be modified to fit reality.

The rarest scenario that can be imagined is twofold; a individual who's actuality is so high or low that expectations set by himself and society prevent him from achieving happiness because they either suggest that he would merely be average (at which pt he would only be like everyone else) or godlike (achieving standards that are beyond human comprehension) in order to meet them. This is the story of Lebron James, an athlete of such incredible physical tools that nothing less than 7 championships would satisfy the moniker of "King James" I know a lot of people who use Lebron's talent against him. "Fuck that guy he is arrogant and didnt earn his skills", "he lacks the clutch gene", "he had to join with two superstars to win a ring", "he is robin to wade's batman". The problem with these statements is that they all rely on expectations which have been misapplied over time. Let me counter with the human perspective:

Lebron was built up by the same people who took him down when it was convenient. They labeled him the next big thing starting at age 14 and placed him on the cover of SI with the title "Chosen One". They gave him marketing deals and made him all the craze on 24 hour pointless sports radio/television. When he failed they talked about his failures to generate viewership. When he failed in 2011, they decided to spend an entire summer laughing at him and questioning if he ever deserved any of there original praise to begin with.

This isn't too different from humanity in general, and we each see it in our day to day lives. People are inherently self-interested and will do what it takes to satisfy themselves prior to ever helping another. The sports media rode his bandwagon when it would make them cool, and jumped off as soon as he fell off. What separates Lebron from the rest of the superstar athlete community is that he asks to be called out and berated by society because he genuinely cares about the expectations laid out for him. Unlike Kobe or MJ, Lebron will never blame a teammate for costing his team a win, he will instead put the burden on himself to make the team that much better and put the teammate in a position to win. Lebron will never take a last minute shot if he see that a proven shooter is left open on the floor. And no matter the circumstances, Lebron will always back his coaches decisions without trade drama etc. It took years of disrespect from the organization and coaches to get Lebron to leave the sports city he built to go to Miami. Even after arriving in Miami, Lebron refused to be labeled as a player of higher importance than his good friend Dwyane Wade despite the obvious spread in ability.

Lebron is the nice guy of the sports world; he makes himself a "doormat" because he cares about his fans, his family, and his reputation. Actions speak louder than words. After inking his first Nike deal, Lebron chose to hire his former high school basketball friends to act as his management team (remember the commercial... "should I stop listening to my friends, but they're my friends"). Despite the accusations laid out against his mom of an affair with a teammate on the Cavaliers, Lebron only blamed himself for the 08 playoff defeat and never pushed his mom out of his life. Lastly, Lebron married his high school sweetheart and decided to stay active in his children's lives, something his own father never did.

We tend to admire superstar athletes who are in actuality assholes because they don't give a shit. Guys like Kobe Bryant,Tom Brady, and Michael Jordan don't care about the people in their lives, or what anyone thinks of them. These guys have never faced failure even when they should have (recall Kobe's putrid 4-24 shooting in game 7 of the '09 final, which was saved by Pau Gasol and Ron Artest). In Jordan's case he was a gambling addict who many people who knew him said was heavily into alcohol and drugs and constantly having extra-marital affairs. Many people have noted that the only thing that drove Michael was the will to be better than everyone else on an intrinsic level, not to live up to any extant standard. But at the end of the day, people like winners, and these aspects are largely forgotten.

Now Lebron is a winner. Its refreshing to see an athlete of high character as well as talent claim what he has worked hard for his entire life. The difference here is that because Lebron cares and set up exaggerated standards for himself, we cant even use his talent as an excuse to say that he lacks work ethic. Actuality finally matches expectations(as unrealistic as they seem), and its nice to know that a person can place pressure on himself and rise from the darkest of places to win back the throne. As a fan, rest assured there is no other player in sports today who cares as much about the expectations laid out for him. Everyone has faced a similar fire whether you believe it or not. Now we can all standby and see if he can conquer MJ's shadow in a similar light.

Different Values Lead to Different Truths; An Election Commentary

So its been a couple of day's since the Presidential/Senate/Congressional election and both sides seem to be in an uproar. The left (AKA at least 60% of my classmates) are enthusiastic and grateful that the nation cares to embrace an evolving notion of rights; be it for women, gays, or even the casual weed smoker. The right, has for the most part accepted defeat graciously, I say "most part" because even Fox News couldn't stop Karl Rove from questioning the actual tally on air. Both sides have plenty to say about their peers, be it that the right is racist and challenges the fundamental rights of people based on a pro-corporate tier one bias or that the left is composed of foolish simpletons who like rights and getting handouts at the expense of those who actually work. Now both arguments are predicated upon vast over generalizations of very complex institutional arguments, despite what either group may retort. I think that at heart most people know this to be true i.e. social institutions and long standing debates regarding policy have led to a chicken and egg sort of chase to find truth.

That being said, my problem with this election was that it conclusively proved to me, as an American, that Americans in vast majority view politics as a clash of values rather than as a clash of ideas. The concept of objectively seeking meaning has been lost in a frenzy of facebook posts, tweets, and TV shows. Objectively seeking meaning is not easy. You do not simply wake up one day and decide that welfare is bad because it discourages work, or that Roe vs. Wade was an incorrect decision because a fetus is equivalent of a child. Rather, meaning requires a careful analysis of the facts, of the related externalities, and consequently the impact of actually holding the belief on society. Majority of people understand the first two, but the third condition serves as the litmus test for meaning. We can consider on the basis of a few questions:

1. What do you believe and are you comfortable holding those beliefs when surrounded by the opposition (e.g. would you hold the same beliefs if you were richer, or poorer, or the other sex etc.?)
2. If put under pressure, would you still hold the same beliefs (e.g. killing one innocent person to save the lives of many innocent people, or evaluating each person as inherently valuable).
3. How did you come up with your belief (who and what influenced you)?

Now, this is where truth is squandered. People tend to conflate what they believe to be true with what is actually true. I'm not going to go through the minutia, but there exist a variety of statistically significant biases pertaining to how people attribute their beliefs. These biases range widely, but I think the two most appropriate election related biases are:

1. The halo bias - physical appearance denotes positive or negative attributes. E.g. this pretty girl is so sweet.
2. fundamental attribution error - overvaluing dispositional qualities as explanations for behavior in others while taking a situational approach with yourself. E.g. Sally fell over a rock and is she is clumsy. I fell on the same rock and it only happened because of the rock.

So what we have left over is a variety of  extremely socially influenced and contextual beliefs (values) mixed with inherent flaws in human nature (I'll call this the jumble). The end result is an election that does not appeal to truth seeking, but rather tries to empathize with values as closely as possible with as many people as possible. So now we have two caricatures that have built up a reputation and story to appeal to people despite what their policies would actually mean for the electorate.

Barack Obama: a sincere and charismatic leader from humble origins who champions the rights of the underprivileged in a hope to move America forward. He is a community organizer at heart who empathizes with the people and makes it his personal objective to better this country.

Mitt Romney: a self-made business man from your stereotypical American family. Has the CEO look and plans to manage the country as he would a PE portfolio; via cuts on spending and taxes for the upper class who are the backbone of the economy. Believes most importantly in the ideal of freedom and as such has plans to expand the military budget.

Both of these individuals appeal to different people with different jumbles. However, it is worth noting that nothing about either description elucidates an outcome of any variety, nor does it gauge intent. What the hell does being sincere have to do with policy making? Why should America be run like a corporation? And lastly are these guys really what we think they are?

An election based on ideas would force candidates to answer such questions -- and to some extent I do think that this election was an improvement. Yet, the disagreement I see between my peers, the left and the right, is not based on the same questions. Party alignment, wealth alignment, alignment with one or two personal issues (at exclusion of the general electorate) etc. is a recipe for a continuation of lost discourse and political failures. Though pure separation is all but impossible, it is important we consider these factors before stepping into the booth and pressing buttons which impact the future of the world. Truth testing seems to be an art lost in the ruse of "values".