I’m watching
The Social Dilemma.
I'm on my treadmill.
I'm squeezing in my
pre-work morning’s walk.
I’m strolling and scrolling
now, so that I can handle
being immobile, desk-side
for nine to ten hours.
I’m twenty minutes
into the film
and I feel like
the interview subjects
feel familiar.
Déjà vu.
And then I realize...
I must have watched this
with my husband,
six years ago upon release.
And I have no memory of it.
Because I likely watched
the movie while scrolling.
I failed to convert my experience
into crystallized memory.
And now this time,
while walking and watching,
I realize I am also scrolling.
I had felt virtuous,
trying to keep up
with all the reels
that NASA is dropping.
But here I am again,
entangled in the system.
The very one of which
the documentary warns us.
We are the product.
We are the experiment.
We are the ones caught
in the vice,
while having a vice.
It's so....meta.
And as we know, but
don't really know-know:
Social media
was designed for this.
And I've gotten better, really.
I barely go to Facebook.
I don't provide content
on Instagram.
I've become leery
of sharing faces.
I avoid disclosing my
locations in real-time.
I haven't seen Twitter
since it was a bluebird, chirping.
I never had a TikTok.
I've not even one post go viral.
But it's so easy
to slip back into its clutches.
Into the brain-rewarding
comfort and thrill
of instant entertainment.
And I am self-aware enough
to admit that it stings,
on the rare times I do post.
Because I see zero engagement.
I sense my content is buried
by a punishing algorithm
that has already calculated
and culled me from the feed.
I have tried, iteratively,
to break free.
And now I'm on some
sort of shadow-shunning list,
proof both that my limits
are effective — and that,
embarrassingly, I still care.
Leveraging algorithms
and AI
in the pursuit of
Good.
This is what we need to crack.
As we automate our work
and smooth out our networks
and cultivate, curate our socials,
we need to seek a common truth.
We need to opt out
of the ceaseless manipulations,
the imperceptible changing of
our behaviors and sentiments.
But first, look at your account.
I forwarded you
the most mind-blowing video
of NASA Integrity's April 10th
Splashdown at 10x speed.
You're gonna love it!
