December 6, 2019

|

Life 🧍 | Permanently Moved 🔊 | Social Media 💉

S2E36

Listing some bits and bobs, and catching up on a few things as my brain is fried.

Links:
Blowing Filter Bubbles https://runesoup.com/2019/11/blowing-filter-bubbles-world-without-sin/

—
Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded in one hour by @thejaymo

Website: https://www.thejaymo.net/
Podcast: http://permanentlymoved.online
Zine: http://startselectreset.com

Show Supporter 📻

£5 MONTHLY 👏

Quarterly zine; my gift to you ✉️

Subscribe 🔊

Wherever you get your podcasts

A bit of a fragmentary Episode this week I’m afraid. My brain is fried, here’s some thoughts i got down inside the hour.

1.  I wanted to say a big thank you to my friend Andrew Dana Hudson for guest hosting the last episode of Permanently Moved whilst i was in Manchester with Eve. It was a great, and I was really intrigued by the arm raising exercise, I’d like to participate in one as part of a group some time next year I think. 

2.  I’d also like to say a big thank you to everyone that shared and contacted me about Episode 1934. The show I did outside on the sea wall about depression and language. It seemed to strike a chord with people. One note I received was on the format of that episode. The way I fused the A B structure of the show together. The first being a description of the sea and the waves, and then talking about depression and needing better words for our experiences. I agree that it could only have worked in audio as the atmosphere of the waves held it all together. I think im getting better at making this podcast. Slowly slowly. I’ve made 65 episodes so far and I’m learning something new every week.

I think if that episode was to ever find its way into my zine start select reset, I’d need to put quite a bit of effort into the layout of the text and how it’s presented.  

3. In other news, I forgot to mention back in early November that I have completely rebuilt my website at thejaymo.net and have ported my blog archives back to 2012 into it as well. I blog at least once a week in a week notes format. And occasionally post and write other things on there too. Probably more of that next year in addition to the weeknotes posts. Anyway go subscribe via rss if you want. It’s important to build out and curate your own feeds. 

4. You are probably be aware that the most important election for a generation is currently underway in the UK. I’m working all night of the results, so there may or may not be an episode next week friday. If there isn’t I’ll make it on the Saturday. 

I’ve been manning an extremely left wing twitter account with about 100,000 followers for the last little bit. It’s been a real insight into ebs and flows of twitter. A platform that I thought I knew pretty well. But what I’ve realised is when you get to that level of visibility or gravity as a node in the network the toxicity of that space as an online network becomes even more obvious. Whilst I do think talentless communist fan page is a great put down I also think social media managers of all kinds should get danger pay. I can’t I’ve begin to imagine what it’s like to simply be a woman or marginalised voice on a social platform. Some of the shit that gets tweeted at large accounts and the volume of it is just depressing.

Having been on the receiving end of right wing abuse all week the experience has raised a few questions in my mind about filter bubbles and what to do about them.

Gordon white wrote the other week over on runsoup.com that

Filter bubbles are when you exist in a (mostly digital) ecosystem where only ‘news’ that you agree with or already believe is true manages to reach you.

This is only half of what constitutes a filter bubble.

The other half -and I mean half- of what reaches you is the worst possible examples of opinions you do not agree with. Gun laws, climate change, freedoms of speech. Wherever you land on them, you will only see the worst examples of the opposite opinion.

It’s that other half, what’s on the outside of the filter bubble that algorithmic feeds have got so good at inserting into your own reality to boost engagement and warp reality.

Having had this tweet deck experience I’m even more interested in how individuals, friends and acquaintances navigate their network visibility personally now than I was before. 

As you will know if you have been listening to this for a while navigating online platforms, being against waldenponding, FOBO or the Fear Of Being Ordinary, against news or infotainment are all topics I collected together in my zine your attention is sovereign.

I think it would be interesting to speak to people and find out how other people are trying to navigate this new reality. Social media theorizing has kind of dropped off and become far more academic in its presentation. 

And the corrective is as ever one of the reasons why i think there should be a return to blogging. More longer considered view points less hot takes.

I know someone that’s too famous to work at starbucks but not famous enough to support themselves through the network. They told me once that it feels like they haul all half a million youtube subscribers into a job interview with them and it’s a massive elephant in the room, they don’t see why they should have to bring up what they do in their personal lives in the interview, or some how quote unquote warn a future employer or whatever. I agree with them. You shouldn’t have to. 

5. I have a long list of ideas that i’d like to work and get done next year creatively. I really need to sit down, reflect and decide what and where my priorities are, as this year has been all over the place. I think I’ll do an end of year review and a look ahead in two weeks time and then take a little break ready for episode 20 – 01 next year.

Peace