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PART II

FRIENDSHIP AND COST OF

CONNECTION

NINE

FRIENDSHIP AND COST OF CONNECTION

Let us revisit false premise number one: Social Media is built to help you stay connected with friends and family. But why do you need help staying connected to friends and family? This is a valid question to ask yourself before jumping to the immediate response. You are probably thinking, “But what if they do not live nearby?”

I find it fascinating how protective the mind can be over our social platforms, showing what an extension of ourselves they really are. We only protect what we deem to belong to ourselves. What if I told you Social Media was a bait-and-switch strategy that was always intended to be a business model of attention? Like any good addiction they start you off with a freebie – a tester. You like it at first, in fact, you love it – it has all these amazing vibes and feelings to it. But then the longer you use it, the less you use it and the more it uses you. Think of Instagram, first it had the end-user experience of an online single scroll memory roll – it was presented as a utility, not a Social Media platform. Next it made its first transition to position itself to be based on an attention model that secures advertising dollars.

Step 1: Make the user the creator – all the users think it is to their benefit – it is their space for them

Step 2: Encourage everyone to create – reward them when they do – enters the heart – the validation feedback loop begins 

Step 3: The more content is liked – show it to more people – encourage more people to make content like that content

Step 4: Get everyone making content to fit what Instagram wants

Step 5: Sell advertising space 

Step 6: Profit off the creators’ art

Ta-da! It was really a smart business model.

The system is designed to have you create what it wants to see created – what has value to advertisers. It is training and conditioning creators to create what earns the most dollars. Second, it is an evergreen sales machine that never needs to be fed by the actual people profiting – absolutely genius. How do they know what content is going to be worth the most dollars? Its value is measured in attention. The more attention given the more that content is categorized in the algorithm as “winning content,” thus pushing that type of content more – and the loop of what sells is created. Fascinating, isn't it? Consider what that does to the self, when one is no longer creating for them, but for the algorithm. This adds to the fragmentation between self and the digital clone.

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