The Portland Head Light in Maine
Photo by Dan Mall on Unsplash
I used to be a twitter addict.
I started using it because it was relevant for my work, and it was helpful in that sense, but I quickly submerged myself into the other currents of the “discourse.” I started following media and culture posters, writers, sports accounts, and famous people unrelated to my professional requirements. I soon was checking it when I woke up, at intervals of unhealthy frequency throughout the day, and lying in bed at night. I became, for better or for worse, far more informed on matters of public debate, commentary, and the yoke on the neck of all internet discussion, politics. It was nice to have information fed to me.
So I went looking for a narrow band of professional, stock-market related news, and I ended up with a weird addiction to a flow of information that was far broader, messier, and more contingent than I bargained for. I found both information that was an utter distraction as well as the kindling for genuine and lasting interest. Twitter has an element of deliberate juxtaposition to it: a “main character” (more often a topic/debate/issue) somehow reaches critical mass, and people react. One eventually finds something like a perspective they agree with, and this is very rewarding. At the same time, without twitter, I never would have cared, even superficially, about the political opinions of Stephen King. I never would’ve even known about like, 5 different “types” of guy, about whom of course I developed strong opinions.
In other words, I was experiencing virality from the perspective of an information consumer.
I wasted a great deal of time thinking about what I now know doesn’t matter; instrumentally and intrinsically, to myself or my goals or even the satisfaction of my idle curiosity. My attention was directed by forces which eroded my agency in seeking information, I became less self-directed and more subject to the whims of impersonal algorithms. I experienced the internet as an atomized and anonymous consumer rather than as anything resembling a person.
However, virality has plenty of upside as well. It makes it easier to map the landscape of the internet, in identifying people and issues that recur. It helps one find experts on a given topic and sort them into mental baskets. It will provide both genuinely helpful information and silly titillation. And this is from the consumer side only: I’d have to imagine having created a viral essay or a tweet or a picture would be exciting and remunerative.
Erik Hoel wrote of this type of experience as “a realm governed by an always active group-mind focus of attention that sweeps, lighthouse-like, from subject to subject, and poor soul to poor soul.” I like this analogy of a lighthouse because, while terrifying, ominous, and evocative of Sauron, lighthouses are (or were at one time) actually very useful. They help ships navigate coastal waters in the dark, and I’ve written before that being online sometimes feels like being in a very small vessel on a very large and very dark sea.
Now that I’m off twitter, it is easy to miss the lighthouse. Any sense of following “the conversation” or being informed about hot-button issues is lost. I have no idea what people are mad about, or happy about, or what anyone’s “take” is. If I want written information, I have to go looking for it, which is generally rewarding. If I find what I’m looking for, I’ll generally return. Perhaps its useful to think of this as my own provision of light, as if I’m carrying my own little flashlight around and can illuminate what’s immediately before me.
And while I much prefer my flashlight to the lighthouse, the lighthouse at least provided a kind of social proof of ideas. When something goes viral, both the idea and the poster/writer/blogger enjoy validation as being worth discussing and thinking about. This type of signal seems like it would be invaluable in generating traffic and views. Being able to reliably “plug in” to the topic of the day makes sense for accumulating eyeballs. These topics can obviously range from the clearly significant to the really ridiculous. I’m grateful to have been on twitter in February 2020 because I knew about COVID before I otherwise would have. But some (most?) viral things don’t deserve social proof. Maybe I’m just being too earnest and haughty, but even if it’s viral, it’s probably not worth thinking about most celebrity gossip, for example.
Some things should and do reach escape velocity. If you’ve been online in nearly any context over the past week, you’ve seen lots of Israel-Palestine commentary. When certain topics shine brightly, sometimes this comes from countless individual flashlights rather than a great algorithmic dictator in the sky. This is an important method for identifying what’s going on in the world and which issues have, and deserve, a greater degree of universal human concern. So both cataclysmic horror and glorious achievement tend to break through, and we can glimpse what matters to us and each other. Last week it was Taylor Swift and a football player, though.
But without the lighthouse, I’m kind of refusing to do the “plugging into the signal” thing. Like anyone pretentious enough to have a blog, I like to think I’m more interested in spending my time thinking and writing at my own direction. And a big theme of my perspectives on healthy internet use, what I would like to see as “norms” propagated to others, is that directed search is preferable to suggested content. Iterated over time, scrolling TikTok is probably less healthy than looking up a recipe.
This raises a question though. Namely: what do I search for? If I’m going to remove my mouth from the firehose of information, what is worth spending time thinking about? I’m talking here about things that aren’t instrumental. Looking up directions or local restaurants or the name of that book is instrumental. Reading about the Israel conflict, while clearly relevant to the material world, is not instrumental: I’m not going to be able to address it or meaningfully contribute to its resolution. But maybe its worth thinking about for its own sake, or to be an informed global citizen, or to better refine my views on political morality and when war is justified.
I was reading yesterday about a guy who thinks he could be a better writer than Shakespeare. People have strong opinions about this, naturally. In that piece he mentions that part of Shakespeare’s appeal and status as a canonical English master is the generative aspect of his work: he has inspired a great many future writers, poets, and playwrights. I’d argue that he’s equally precipitated an even greater quantity of material in analysis, education, reference, and other cultural artifacts.
I bring this up because in being discussed by others - as a point of reference, a benchmark, or an (even imperfect) ideal - Shakespeare reifies his status as worth discussing. Writing about him, as I’m doing now, and as the author above did, recreates the conditions that make him worth writing about. It gives me a common touchstone with other users of the English language, a standard by which I can evaluate other poetry or plays, and a distinct feature on the landscape of English literature. Arguing about whether it’s a good landmark or not simply builds its edifice up higher.
So in choosing what to think about, or what to focus on, it’s going to be relatively impossible to avoid the existing conversation. Even if I’m completely original (lol) and make some daring conclusions on some topic, once I put it out into the world, my claims can only be evaluated against what has come before. It order to understand or even apprehend them, they somehow need to be ordered, sorted, related, theorized, or “situated". That’s why when I tried to read Infinite Jest and didn’t get it at all, a throwaway comment by a smarter and better-read person instantly made it much more understandable: “It’s a postmodern book about entertainment.” I didn’t finish it, but I’m still writing about it here! I mention it because you’ve probably heard of it, and maybe also think of it as long and difficult to read.
Philosophy people sometimes complain about this, and I agree it’s annoying when someone says If only you’d read Schleiermacher’s treatise on dogs and cats, you’d get my point! It’s almost as bad as someone telling you to educate yourself or just do the work to be better. And of course we can’t expect to have read everything or share even a majority of a cultural world in common. But comparing arguments, or art, or thoughts against others is one way to entrench them into the fabric of culture, and to make them worth talking about further.
In other words, even though the lighthouse is terrifying, and no one is operating it, its function has always existed in the army of individual flashlights (torches?) that reliably settle upon the same destinations. Common points of departure for discussion and thought often become as much for a reason, but equally can be very stupid and time-wasting. But the fact that they are common is enough to merit their continued use, because we can share in localizing them and use them to understand our environment and each other. Me dismissing the Swift-Kelce romance and endorsing Israel-Palestine as legitimate, for instance, marks me off as a certain “type” of guy about whom you can develop strong opinions.
Many people argue that writing is necessary for thinking, or that it refines or evidences it. I think that’s probably correct; writing something down forces you to clarify your thoughts into understandable language which follows predictable rules. It makes you order them so you can create a cohesive argument or narrative, and generally streamlines the great jumble of emotion and reason which we carry around all the time. An equally critical function of writing, however, is its ability to be shared. Perhaps even more critical, the first writing was probably for communication rather than reflection or pure creativity. That we can send letters, leave notes, or post on blogs facilitates the process I’m trying to describe above. And the seascape I’m referring to is largely the result of people writing stuff down.
So what’s worth thinking about? Anything identifiable. Whatever is illuminated is just the starting point. I’m not trying to discourage novel ideas or innovation or new forms and practices. I’m arguing that the starting point is just that, a starting point. That I wasted, and waste, my precious and limited time occupied passively stuffing my brain with frivoloities is a result more from the passive part and less the frivolities.
Hark Triton, hark! Bellow, bid our father the Sea King rise from the depths full foul in his fury! Black waves teeming with salt foam to smother this young mouth with pungent slime, to choke ye, engorging your organs til' ye turn blue and bloated with bilge and brine and can scream no more - only when he, crowned in cockle shells with slitherin' tentacle tail and steaming beard take up his fell be-finned arm, his coral-tine trident screeches banshee-like in the tempest and plunges right through yer gullet, bursting ye - a bulging bladder no more, but a blasted bloody film now and nothing for the harpies and the souls of dead sailors to peck and claw and feed upon only to be lapped up and swallowed by the infinite waters of the Dread Emperor himself - forgotten to any man, to any time, forgotten to any god or devil, forgotten even to the sea, for any stuff for part of Winslow, even any scantling of your soul is Winslow no more, but is now itself the sea!