social media – This is Kip. See Kip Blog.

Who likes flowers?

They’re nice, they’re colorful, and they smell really good. There’s often lots of BEES.

animal bee bloom blooming — Which is a good or a bad thing depending on your viewpoint of bees. (Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com)

And it’s a beautiful site to see a rainbow of flowers growing in someone’s backyard or in the countryside.

But who likes weeds? They’re hard to get rid of, they can ruin other plants, they’re usually not very good looking, and sometimes they can even hurt you if you touch or step on them the wrong way.

That’s why people often have gardens. To grow the pretty and useful plants they want and keep out the bad ones. Its nature, domesticated, and a beautiful yard can be the pride of the neighborhood.

But what happens to the weeds that are left neglected? They often run rampant through the countryside or woods, spread across the ground and choking out the flowers and other plants that just want to grow and engage in the amazing process of

spongebob-photosynthesis — (Source: Spongebob Television. Artist Rendering by: Angela Natividad)

You might wonder what any of this has to do with the internet or communications, and maybe I’m going metaphor crazy, but take the image I just describe, and instead of a garden, think about Facebook or Twitter. The internet is the land and the people are the plants.

This all relates to the topic of the “digital divide”, a fancy term for those who have access to technology, and those that don’t. There’s been a lot of talk of how the digital divide segregates people on the internet. More and more digital assets are being put behind paywalls and memberships. Virtual gated communities or private digital gardens are emerging; and as much as many don’t want to admit it, the age of the free internet seems to be slowly dying, and now that people have realized there’s money to be had online, companies and businesses are eager to commercialize it.

Amazon Prime, Spotify Premium, Hulu, Netflix, Crunchyroll, Reddit Gold, PlayStation Plus, Xbox Gold. Everything has a membership and a cost these days.

Free is becoming “freemium”, if not premium, and everything is becoming pay-to-play.

In my mind, one of the best examples of the digital divide and an internet freemium economy is within the world of video games. More and more people are being separated between loot boxes and customization items. Those who can afford to purchase custom skins and weapons treat those who can’t afford it differently. Some games are even allowing you to purchase in-game progress instead of earning it through battle.

Companies are teaching people that the easiest and fastest way to overcome a problem or obstacle is to throw money at it.

If you can afford it, great, welcome to the new digital utopia. Your own personal private garden curated of all the flowers you want and all the weeds you don’t.

But what if you can’t?

A culture is rising of the internet “poor”. Those who can’t access or utilize the internet’s best because they either can’t afford it or can’t understand it. As popular social media platforms are becoming more and more discerning of what’s allowed on their platform, more and more people on the disadvantaged side of the digital divide are falling to the wayside. Alongside those virtual private gardens are digital plots of dirt.

Many people criticize social media platforms as a contributor to this problem. But is social media really the bad guy? (aside from all the privacy and data selling concerns…)
Many people bring up the issue of freedom of speech when it comes to social media.

“Why can’t I say what I want, when I want to?” “What about my cabbages!” “What right does [insert website here] have to control my content?”

These are fair questions, but a lot of people seem to forget that it’s not their personal garden or playground. Those platforms are responsible for what people say and do on them. Social media isn’t a private garden, it’s a community garden; they own the land and we just plant what we want. But as owners of the land, they can set rules and boundaries as to what’s allowed to grow and what’s not.

But while their business model is letting people choose what they want to grow (or communicate), we’re all very quick to pick up our internet pitchforks and torches whenever someone else says or grows something that we don’t like.

“How could you let this person say these things?” “How come you’re not shutting down this page? Who eats Brussels sprouts?! Don’t you SEE what they’re putting out there?!”

When you get these two extremely polarizing sides shouting at a platform, the platform is going to do what’s best for its business. So what happens to those individuals who say things that others don’t like and get forced off those mainstream platforms?

They make their own platform or community garden and grow whatever they want. Brussels sprouts, eggplant, mushrooms, you name it.

These days, anyone can create a social platform, or a website, or a blog to talk about whatever they want to talk about. They’re more than welcome to. They won’t have the polish, or support, or capabilities that larger platforms like Facebook and Twitter do, but they’ll have less restrictions and be beholden to less as well. The internet allows everybody to grow their audience and message, radicals and moderates alike. All you have to do is a pick a plot of digital land and start planting.

Because we have so many community gardens with their own rules on what you can and can’t grow, the social rejects from pretty mainstream platforms are forced to create their own platforms, or congregate in areas where they’re less controlled or more accepted. And that’s how you end up with a barren plot of dirt or an overgrown garden of weeds. What choice do these individuals have other than to group together with like-minded outcasts?

Social radicalism is all over the internet, just like in real life. But unlike real life, it’s seems a lot more socially acceptable/visible to stuff it all in one dark corner. And when you have these concentrated pockets of radicalism or socially unaccepted viewpoints across the internet, it looks a lot worse than when they’re diluted in the general digital space. It’s hard to spot a thorn in a field of flowers.

A lot of people talk a lot about how “the internet” is allowing these places to exist and how “the internet” creates these negative effects.

But the internet is just a tool, it’s just the dirt that we grow on. What we grow there is our own decision. We are creating our own Frankenstein’s monster. When we perpetuate a culture of “the internet can be what I want, when I want”, a lot of people will stuff the things they “don’t want” into the closet and try to forget about it. They’ll put a fence up and say that it’s not their problem. But we have to take some share of the blame for the rise of these radical eggplant growing internet gardeners.

They're like spongy and flavorless. Ick. — Seriously, I think they’re gross. (Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not excusing radical social behavior or saying that it’s acceptable by any means (although I’m not a huge fan of eggplant). But I’d feel wrong if I said that we don’t contribute to part of the problem. There is no cyber police force to monitor all of the internet and what happens on it. The FCC and China can try, but the internet transcends national law and regional culture.

As I may have mentioned in earlier posts, the internet is a platform and a hub, it’s a launching point for everyone, both the “crazy” and the “sane”. It’s up to us as citizens of the internet to monitor it and moderate it ourselves. And when we choose not to deal with the radical and choose to build walls and fences around undesirable behavior, all we’re doing is emboldening the problem and letting it grow and grow until it spills over our walls in a much worse than it originally stated.

You know what’s worse than misinformation or hateful thoughts? Misinformation and hateful thoughts that have been fermenting in a vacuum. When those thoughts are ignored rather than addressed, they work in a vicious circle. And those thoughts become cemented in people’s minds and those minds become harder to change. If you pull the head off of a weed, it’ll continue to grow until you treat the “root” of the problem.

For as long as the internet remains as nebulous and unregulated as it is (and as it should stay), there will always be communities of radicals out there. With how easy it is for everyone to have their own platform, people will continue to work to find ways to foster their message and recruit people to their cause. It may not be through Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, and it may be on something less well known, like Gab or WordPress or even a private subreddit, but it will happen.

There’s nothing wrong with growth, and sometimes unregulated growth can be a good thing. But there’s a difference between a field of weeds and a well-tended garden. And all the free land up for grabs out there will continue to allow for all kinds of things to grow:

Good and Bad alike.

Likes, shares, retweets, karma, points, subscriptions, pins

There are a lot of different ways to quantify internet success and popularity. Every time I think of the internet and how our culture quantifies popularity, I think of one of my favorite casual watching shows, “Whose line is it anyways?”

Every episode, Drew Carrey would open the show with the tagline,

“Welcome to the show where everything’s made up and the points don’t matter.”

That show was really fun and entertaining to me, and I think their concept is part of the draw of social media. Almost everything (or almost everything) is made up and none of the points matter. So mentally, there’s no consequence. It’s a risk-free trial to the good life.

Yet, we place a lot of value on those internet points, and why shouldn’t we? Everybody wants to be part of the cool kid group, wants to be included. And what better way to be included than by doing nothing but laying in bed at 3 pm, flicking your thumb across your phone?

Social media is fun, everyone’s on it, and it’s easy. It’s so easy to get involved that it’s slowly and seamlessly embedded itself and evolved into an essential part of our everyday personal and professional lives.

Almost everybody likes to be in the know. And when you can engage in social media and be part of this conversation across cultures, genders, ages and geographic divides, you feel cool (from a tech achievement, it is cool). You feel like you’re at the popular table at your high school cafeteria. For some, that’s the norm, for others, it’s a dream come true. Social media is a true social equalizer, and that statement alone is intoxicating to some.

Have you ever dreamed about having superpowers? Maybe even the power to stop time?To go back and fix mistakes, change what you said to your crush that one time, review what you want to say before you say it? Social media has the ability to let you do a lot of that.

It’s life, filtered and screened, and gives people the chance to put their best foot forward (or worst, depending on who you follow). Social media in some senses, has evolved into a competition of “who is the best at public relations”, and fake internet points is how we see who is winning.

But for every chance it gives people to put their best food forward and filter themselves, that buffer also absolves people of some of the personal responsibility that comes with social interaction on a more sinister side. And as much as everyone loves to show off the best parts of their lives, everybody also loves drama, and being able to judge on the less desirable aspects of society.

It’s undeniable that a large part of social media’s growth is being able to sit in the digital crowd-stands and eat popcorn while they watch their second-cousin duke it out with their extremist aunt about whose dog is cutest on Facebook. Negativity and drama can (and do) run rampant on social media, some people even make a profit on selling it and marketing it. Facebook has even expanded their comment reactions from simple “likes” to sad and angry faces. Reddit has entire sub-reddits dedicated to things like calling people out on bullshit, or examples of internet justice.

And because anyone can watch like an anonymous voyeur (but not in a creepy way), people are much less likely to stop it. I could go on a rant and go deeper down the rabbit hole of cyber-bullying, but that’s a topic for another time.

My point here is this:

Social media is just as popular for it’s negative aspects as it is for it’s positive aspects. And because people aren’t trading physical blows, it’s easy to to hide from the confrontation of an unpopular opinion or statement.

And what’s one way to promote these positive and negative experiences than by “smashing that like button”? Or “upvoting something to the front page” or “retweeting” it?

As made up as fake internet points are; when people put value in it, businesses put value in it. Imagined currency becomes real currency and social gatherings become social marketplaces.

With digital convergence comes cultural convergence; businesses and marketplaces are always trying to find ways to inject their values and their products into our everyday interactions.

And why shouldn’t they? It’s smart, it’s quick and it’s effective. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing either.

Social media has become the next platform of social interaction.

It’s become the modern equivalent of walking around your neighborhood; and just like businesses put up flyers and billboards, companies put pop-up and video ads into your newsfeeds. Everyone on social media is trying to “buy” your attention, and the method of payment is your click of a button on whatever quantifiable action the site encourages.

Those fake numbers are what people use to tell you:

“HEY…THIS is worth your time.”

Gone are the days of simple AIM, Yahoo or ICQ chats between friends and strangers. To a certain extent, we no longer want that. Social media has grown to become something much more than just a way for people to connect with each other.

It’s become a gathering place. It’s become the local tavern for our digital lives, letting us meet up with friends and strangers alike to take one of the many paths into the internet dungeon for a chance to collect some of that sweet, sweet internet treasure.

It’s made us the judges of our own worlds, and the worlds of others, letting us raise and lower the best informal PR people around us to great heights or deep lows.

That’s a lot power for any one person. And what would Uncle Ben think of that?