Keeping a Close Watch: Self and Social Media
In Michael Harris’ book, The End of Absence, the prologue tells the story of a Malaysian girl named Linda. Harris tells us that Linda and her family lived in a settlement deep in the tropical forests of eastern Malaysia. In the family’s stilt seated and bamboo-floored home sat a small box that contained within it a black and white television powered by a car battery. It was this very television that exposed Linda to Sesame Street. While Linda could not understand much of what was said or even going on, she did come to realize that she needed to escape her rural village and head for a metropolis. And she did.
At 18, Linda ran away from home and moved to the city of Sabah, a small Malaysian metropolis with 2,000 inhabitants. She would find a job at the local KFC and would save enough money to build a mobile phone, which she treasured because it was really her first taste of the modern world. She would then leave KFC to work at the far classier Little Italy restaurant. Since the restaurant was always packed with tourists, Linda could practice her English. After a short while, she would meet Canadian backpacker, Nate. They would begin a relationship and Linda would eventually move to Vancouver. Harris concludes his prologue with the following:
A few years and many miles later, Linda would return to Malaysia. Now she was a soon-to-be Canadian, lugging a laptop to her mother’s home. She patched into the Internet through a shaky dial-up connection and managed to introduce her mother to the wonder that is Google. “This can show you everything,” she told her mother. Videos of celebrities flashed across the laptop’s screen. “Here, I’ll show you where I live in Canada.” A few taps later, the laptop’s screen was displaying a map of the world and Linda proceeded to zoom into Canada, into British Columbia, into Vancouver, into the city’s east side, and finally into the block where she lived with Nate. “There,” she said, to her mother, pointing. “That’s where I live. That’s my home.” Her mother didn’t understand at first, and Linda continued to wave at the screen. “This can show you everything,” “It can show me everything?” Her mother asked, now leaning in, full of wonder. “Everything. What do you want to see?” The answer came through tears: “Show me my mother in the afterlife.”
Pin drop silence.
What the aforementioned story reveals is that, despite how beneficial and remarkable these cultural goods are, technology and media are in essence an ethereal treasure. In other words, they are fool’s gold. At one point in his book, Harris discernibly reminds us that, “Every revolution in communication technology—from papyrus to the printing press to Twitter—is as much an opportunity to be drawn away from something as it is to be drawn toward something.” He continues, “As we embrace a technology’s gifts, we usually fail to consider what they ask from us in return—the subtle, hardly noticeable payments we make in exchange for their marvelous service.”
Social media has done precisely that, caused us to forget, consciously or unconsciously, the payments we have made to its various platforms in exchange for their services. In my opinion, we have paid plenty. It is not difficult to see why this is true for most social media users–instant connection to anyone you follow or friend, the boost in self-esteem it affords to those who have the most followers and friends, the ability it affords for self-expression, the list could go on.
Underneath this veneer is the startling truth that when we take into account all the things social media affords, they all fall under the rubric of self-absorption. Social media is about the self, and the customization of self. It provides us with the ability to customize and put forward the self we want to publicly display and has been the catalyst for this self-customization movement, . This movement, if it can be deemed as such, pervades nearly every aspect of our material life, to the point that the market and the self have become one.
Consider Paul Roberts, author of The Impulse Society, on this point:
In North America and the United Kingdom, and to lesser degrees in Europe and Japan, it is now completely normal to demand a personally customized life. We fine-tune our moods with pharmaceuticals and classic rock. Craft our meals around our allergies and ideologies. Customize our bodies with cross training, with ink and metal, with surgery and wearable technologies. We can choose a vehicle to express our hipness or hostility. We can move to a neighborhood that matches our social values, find a news outlet that mirrors our politics, create a social network that “likes” everything we say or post. With each transaction and upgrade, each choice and click, life moves closer to us, and the world becomes our world.
In our self-focus, we forget we were made to live for something infinitely larger than ourselves. We forget God. We forget that for God to love us, he must give us what is best for us and what is best for us is God. We suppress that truth in willful blindness and self-absorption. We are truly incurvatus in se.
Paul Roberts is helpful to us again:
In a society driven by the hunt for yield and the churn of the treadmill and the incessant search for the perfect, personalized satisfactions, we’re rarely invited to even consider a reality beyond the short-term and self-regarding. To ask whether we might step beyond that reality—to ask who we are if not for others, and if not now, when?—is to defy the logic of the marketplace and to insist instead on a different, older set of values. It is to recognize that individual freedom and power are only truly realized when they operate in the service of something larger.
Despite writing and reasoning from a secular standpoint, it is difficult to argue with Roberts’ conclusion. Social media has fooled us into thinking we are significantly socially richer than past generations, when the signs indicate that we are actually socially bankrupt.
Stay connected for the conclusion next week.
At 18, Linda ran away from home and moved to the city of Sabah, a small Malaysian metropolis with 2,000 inhabitants. She would find a job at the local KFC and would save enough money to build a mobile phone, which she treasured because it was really her first taste of the modern world. She would then leave KFC to work at the far classier Little Italy restaurant. Since the restaurant was always packed with tourists, Linda could practice her English. After a short while, she would meet Canadian backpacker, Nate. They would begin a relationship and Linda would eventually move to Vancouver. Harris concludes his prologue with the following:
A few years and many miles later, Linda would return to Malaysia. Now she was a soon-to-be Canadian, lugging a laptop to her mother’s home. She patched into the Internet through a shaky dial-up connection and managed to introduce her mother to the wonder that is Google. “This can show you everything,” she told her mother. Videos of celebrities flashed across the laptop’s screen. “Here, I’ll show you where I live in Canada.” A few taps later, the laptop’s screen was displaying a map of the world and Linda proceeded to zoom into Canada, into British Columbia, into Vancouver, into the city’s east side, and finally into the block where she lived with Nate. “There,” she said, to her mother, pointing. “That’s where I live. That’s my home.” Her mother didn’t understand at first, and Linda continued to wave at the screen. “This can show you everything,” “It can show me everything?” Her mother asked, now leaning in, full of wonder. “Everything. What do you want to see?” The answer came through tears: “Show me my mother in the afterlife.”
Pin drop silence.
What the aforementioned story reveals is that, despite how beneficial and remarkable these cultural goods are, technology and media are in essence an ethereal treasure. In other words, they are fool’s gold. At one point in his book, Harris discernibly reminds us that, “Every revolution in communication technology—from papyrus to the printing press to Twitter—is as much an opportunity to be drawn away from something as it is to be drawn toward something.” He continues, “As we embrace a technology’s gifts, we usually fail to consider what they ask from us in return—the subtle, hardly noticeable payments we make in exchange for their marvelous service.”
Social media has done precisely that, caused us to forget, consciously or unconsciously, the payments we have made to its various platforms in exchange for their services. In my opinion, we have paid plenty. It is not difficult to see why this is true for most social media users–instant connection to anyone you follow or friend, the boost in self-esteem it affords to those who have the most followers and friends, the ability it affords for self-expression, the list could go on.
Underneath this veneer is the startling truth that when we take into account all the things social media affords, they all fall under the rubric of self-absorption. Social media is about the self, and the customization of self. It provides us with the ability to customize and put forward the self we want to publicly display and has been the catalyst for this self-customization movement, . This movement, if it can be deemed as such, pervades nearly every aspect of our material life, to the point that the market and the self have become one.
Consider Paul Roberts, author of The Impulse Society, on this point:
In North America and the United Kingdom, and to lesser degrees in Europe and Japan, it is now completely normal to demand a personally customized life. We fine-tune our moods with pharmaceuticals and classic rock. Craft our meals around our allergies and ideologies. Customize our bodies with cross training, with ink and metal, with surgery and wearable technologies. We can choose a vehicle to express our hipness or hostility. We can move to a neighborhood that matches our social values, find a news outlet that mirrors our politics, create a social network that “likes” everything we say or post. With each transaction and upgrade, each choice and click, life moves closer to us, and the world becomes our world.
In our self-focus, we forget we were made to live for something infinitely larger than ourselves. We forget God. We forget that for God to love us, he must give us what is best for us and what is best for us is God. We suppress that truth in willful blindness and self-absorption. We are truly incurvatus in se.
Paul Roberts is helpful to us again:
In a society driven by the hunt for yield and the churn of the treadmill and the incessant search for the perfect, personalized satisfactions, we’re rarely invited to even consider a reality beyond the short-term and self-regarding. To ask whether we might step beyond that reality—to ask who we are if not for others, and if not now, when?—is to defy the logic of the marketplace and to insist instead on a different, older set of values. It is to recognize that individual freedom and power are only truly realized when they operate in the service of something larger.
Despite writing and reasoning from a secular standpoint, it is difficult to argue with Roberts’ conclusion. Social media has fooled us into thinking we are significantly socially richer than past generations, when the signs indicate that we are actually socially bankrupt.
Stay connected for the conclusion next week.
Rev. Mike Hernandez serves as the senior pastor of Crossroads Presbyterian Church. He is a graduate of Trinity International University (B.A.), Knox Theological Seminary (M.Div.), and is currently pursuing a Doctor of Ministry (D.Min.) at Reformed Theological Seminary Orlando.
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