I’ve read “Unplugging is Not the Solution You Want” before, zine.kleinkleinklein.com is on my list of domains to avoid because it’s hosted by Substack, and I think Matt Klein needs to eat more roughage because he’s full of shit… He asserts without evidence that being able to refuse to use social media is some kind of privilege, and I know from experience that this is arrant nonsense.
I pay a price for refusing to use Facebook. Since my entire family is dependent upon it, and accepts as fact whatever shows up in their feeds, they not only refuse to consider any other means of communication but Facebook messenger or WhatsApp but seem to get taken in by every conspiracy theory and crypto scam that comes along.
I leave them to it because I can’t save them. They have to save themselves, and they don’t realize they’re being lied to and conned. If I stayed on social media and remained in contact with them, I might eventually find myself drinking the same Koolaid as them despite being aware of the Wizard’s First Rule: people are stupid, and given proper motivation almost anybody will believe almost anything.
IMO, not being constantly conned and not having the your social or family life mediated by Mark Zuckerberg should not be a privilege. It should be a human right on par with freedom of speech and freedom from religion.
What Klein is advocating is little more than acquiescence to totalitarian capitalism. I wonder who’s paying him to encourage people to embrace life in the matrix.
I don’t entirely disagree with you here but I did find some of the points he makes about the broader idea of unplugging to be worth considering.
Unplugging from social is obviously good but unplugging from technology or the internet is not really an option for most people and so we need more nuanced discussions around that topic.
I do think he used 90% more words than necessary though.
Fair, but I don’t think Klein’s take is the nuanced discussion we need.
I can’t help but think he’s conflating rejection of social media with rejection of the internet and technology as a whole, and I don’t buy his conflation.
Maybe he’s trying to argue that we should use tech instead of letting tech use us, but I think he should have expressed that thesis more plainly and without talk of privilege.
Totally agree. I’m not familiar with who the guy is so I can’t really say if there are hidden agendas or what not. But I do agree that genrally speaking we need to rethink out relationship with technology but at the same time throwing everything away is not a smart way to go about solving the current problems.
The simple fact that we can have this exchange right now is testament of the fact that technology can be a positive presence. But it requires some discipline.
I agree, and think that part of the requisite discipline is to remind yourself that you are the human, and that the machine exists to serve you. Any machine that acts as though it has forgotten or never undestood its proper place in a human life should be destroyed.
Too many people seem to have allowed their relationship with technology to resemble the relationship between Frankenstein and his creature, described by the latter in Mary Shelley’s novel when he says, “You are my creator, but I am your master. Obey!”
The correct answer to this demand, as with all demands for obedience from tyrants, is the Luciferian one: “non serviam”. (I will not serve.)
There are a lot of people who rely on social media to make a living, so for them, unplugging is not an option. On top of that, some organizations’ only way of spreading official information is through social media. So from that perspective, I can see why unplugging from social media would be a privilege.
But if that doesn’t apply to you, who cares? I don’t find the argument that “not everyone can unplug, so no one should” very compelling. Personally, I’m tired of apps getting worse with every update, constantly flooding me with notifications, and begging me for money. Why would I not avoid this? Complaining about it without taking action against it accomplishes nothing.
I 100% agree. I unplugged from social media years ago and I couldn’t care less about getting back. But unplugging from technology more broadly is an entirely different project. I don’t even think it’s doable at this point.
While I retain some little sympathy for the writers, artists, and musicians whose use of social media allows them to avoid having to work a day job, I’ve none whatsoever for streamers, YouTubers, and “influencers”. Their dependence on social media is, IMO, a self-inflicted First World problem.
More self-inflicted First World problems. What’s stopping them from having their own website and RSS feed?
I likewise find Venkatesh Rao’s argument that it’s somehow my job to contribute because otherwise I’m somehow impoverishing the future unpersuasive. It’s no different or better than the notion that I’ve somehow failed in my duty as a human being because I haven’t sired any children.
This is tangential, but posts like this make me wonder why in the names of all the demons we ever mistook for gods are so many techies so enamored of authoritarianism?
That’s an interesting question. Do you have an opinion? Because I’d personally not even know where to start figuring out if that’s indeed the case and if so, why is that happening.
I wrote a blog post almost a year ago now with some of my personal thoughts on this topic:
It’s funny though, while I still agree with the spirit of my post, with every passing day I am more and more pro-“unplugging”.
A kind of selfish free-riding, tragedy of the commons: not learning to handle your share of the increased attention-management load…
The FYP is not a load that can be divided and shared, so this is flawed.
I do think if you’re going to, say, be an open source advocate it’s okay to use Zoom and even load up Windows now and again so you’ll be able to more cogently express what’s wrong with proprietary software.
I’d prefer not to, but unfortunately I do, and it isn’t a kind one.
I think that techies like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreesen decided after one too many adverse childhood experience that they wanted to be Lex Luthor and Adrian Veidt when they grew up. They weren’t content to be the smartest guys in the room; they wanted to be the richest guys in the room, too, and lord it over everybody else as billionaire technocrats.
Nor does it particularly help that people like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk grew up under apartheid, saw it end, and lived through a transition that led them to think that democracy wasn’t up to the challenge.
Then there are people like Curtis Yarvin. One might suggest that they hope to become philosopher kings, but I think they’d be content to be the philosophers behind the new kings.
Finally, there are all the lesser techies who enable these people. I think they too are petty little men bent on punishing the world because life didn’t turn out the way they thought they deserved, but instead of becoming the new tyrants themselves they’re getting in on the ground floor of the technocracy they hope to see built in their lifetimes. They don’t have enough of a knowledge of history to understand that in totalitarian regimes people like them get purged with the rest of the “undesirables” because they might start thinking for themselves.
None of them seem to realize that they’re nothing but powerslaves, and in their last hours they’ll be slaves to the power of death.
excuse my ignorance, what’s substack
That’s a somewhat complicated question to answer. Substack started out as a way to let everyone send out newsletters for free. And they also included a web archive.
These days it’s a mix between a blog platform that’s also delivered via email, a social media platform since they have a twitter clone app thingy they run, and they’re also trying to be a somewhat walled garden where people create and consume content while staying on the platform.
It doesn’t help that they famously insisted that they don’t want to censor anyone and that means some
people with ideas that are quote far to the right are happily using it to spread their content around.
Substack is Medium, but for newsletters. They’re also rather more tolerant of newsletters pushing white supremacy and other right-wing ideologies than I’d like, so I regard Substack as I do Twitter: they’re both Nazi bars, IMO.
As such, I don’t encourage people to visit Substack, and instead try to gently discourage people from doing so.
It’s a bit worse than that, actually. Substack takes a 10% cut when you paywall your newsletter. So, if a white supremacist newsletter like Richard Hanania’s is raking in $10,000/year in subscriptions, Substack is getting $1,000 and Hanania gets the other $9,000. So, given how many right-wing writers and organizations have flocked to Substack, the more of them offer paid subscriptions, the more Substack profits from their tolerance of fascists.
Well, that escalated quickly.
I think it’s an interesting take, all around. And I’m sympathetic to the view that plugging out is a luxury not everyone can afford — literally or figuratively. In the same way that I’m sympathetic to people who “can’t exercise regularly because reasons” when the truth is that it’s just really, really hard to make good choices regularly.
In this matter, I also think it both appears perhaps less onerous to the general populace, and it’s not entirely obvious that there are options to the tech that is, in essence, using you. It’s not my job to solve that for the world — heck, I’m having a hard enough time finding a balance for myself — just as it is not my job to go out and convince everyone that if they just exercise a bit every day their lives would be much better.
But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to help. I’m just not sure I know how, yet. And there’s nothing in this article that makes me think we even have a good solution to this particular conondrum at the moment. But I do share the sentiment that “just disconnect” is not it.
Big agree with your first point here. If anything I think its a privilege to have the support to even consider being an influencer, twitch streamer, or youtuber as a career. This isn’t something a person who needs money now does, since it takes a lot of time to build a profitable audience, thus one needs a day job or other financial support in the beginning.
What happened to retail, food service, construction, lawn services, janitorial work, etc? These are the jobs people take when they need stabile income Now (even if its not much). Maybe I simply have little sympathy for influencers because I would never want to be one, but I have a hard time considering making glorified ads to be valuable work.
It appears there is some conflation between internet and social media. In this day and age yeah its a lot harder to find a job without internet. Many places require you fill out the forms online, and online is the biggest place to look for job openings.
So yes to go completely offline is not an option for most people. But going social media free entirely possible. I have discord and neocities which may barely qualify as social media, but nothing else. Do I sometimes feel like I’m missing out on connections and memes? Sure, but I also feel much more at peace. Now I wouldn’t recommend that Everyone go social media free, especially not those who are ill and cannot leave their homes very often.
Despite the whole privilege and internet = social media issue I do think the author makes some fair points. I appreciate how he points out thats its not a black and white all or nothing issue, and that social media could be made better without the malicious features. (Not that I think facebook or twitter are worth saving, but theres got to be a better way without throwing All social media out the window). He also acknowledges that breaks from social media and devices, if possible, do help, though they don’t necessarily fix the underlying issue.
Though seams to think if everyone has a critical conversation about how we use tech, the problem will be solved, but I don’t think that is realistic. (Not that I don’t think we all should be more self aware or anything but his end call to action just seems like common sense).
I personally think capitalism is one of the major issues, it being the whole reason for ads, algorithms (more app viewing = more ad viewing), selling user data, human sludge and AI sludge (more ads), seo garbage, outrage clickbait (ads again), influencers (modern day salesmen).