The FOMO of having deactivated Twitter
So why did I still have to hear about that influencer and her cake?
It has been three weeks since I deleted my Twitter account. I remain to have mixed feelings about whether this is the right thing for me. I did not have a lot of followers there, but I shut off one platform where I could promote my writing. Or try to be funny. Or make new friends. (One of the things I appreciate during my 2000s blogging days is having met people I’m still friends with up to this day, regardless if some remain virtual.) Or get a feel of what young people are up to these days, although Tiktok—not even Instagram, and certainly not Twitter—is the place for that. (Should I be on Tiktok?)
Anyway. The FOMO is real. I’ve been seeing IG stories that go over my head simply because there’s a reference that I’m missing. The true test for me was during Miss Universe last Sunday. (I know it’s dated and problematic, but the gowns! and costumes!—Germany was my favorite—plus the campiness of “the interview,” where women explain in all seriousness global politics in under 15 seconds.) The Philippines, who I was so sure was going to win the whole thing, did not make the first cut for the first time in 12 years, and I had no outlet to express my shock or plug into the commiserations and memes that articulate the moment. Thankfully, over at Instagram, a post from @90skabaklaan, an account that captures the period’s Pinoy zeitgeist from an LGBT+ perspective, addressed the shutout and it had me laughing from the fourth slide onwards.
But even without Twitter, I managed to (still) get wind of the online uproar over an influencer who smeared icing on the forehead of a waiter holding her birthday cake. Someone forwarded me a parody, which I did not understand until I started learning about the reference on news sites, and then later, hearing it being discussed on TV (in which the anchor morosely described it as a slow-news day). I found the actual incident banal, or at the very least, lacking the full picture, but there’s a lot of charged history with the influencer and her family, which I suspect added fuel to the fire. I wondered if the rage is contained within Twitter and Facebook, so I checked her YouTube stats within the past week when the incident took place.
Losing 100,000 subscribers is a lot but relative to her 13-million-plus base, it’s only a 0.75-percent decrease, barely a smidge. (I could not be further bothered to look into her Twitter or Facebook stats). My stance, whenever there’s an online personality who earns the public ire whether deservedly or undeservedly, is that politicians have done worse, and yet, we keep voting them into office. It’s enough proof, at least from a local context, that all this rage amounts to just that: an excess of emotion that does not translate into action, especially for things that do matter. And I’ve far long accepted that the country’s collective moral compass—the superior one as far as this democracy is concerned—is different from my values.
But back to my point: this is a type of “news” I don’t have concern for, and yet, even without Twitter and Facebook, it still managed to find its way to my screen (and writing, and unfortunately, my consciousness). The FOMO is more pronounced for the monolithic culture—for example, soon, there will be the Oscars—real-time local and global conversations prompted by current events I care about. I also miss out on the cultural artifacts (artifacts! really, just memes, lol) that arise from the discourse, and which I’ve only recently recognized is a love language among my friends. Unfortunately, there is a lot of noise that comes along with that. If I were to return to Twitter, it would be easy for me to fall back on the safety net that filtering provides (by following select users, going private, or blocking certain users, words, or terms), but it’s not much easier to curb my Pandoran tendencies. (It’s also worth noting that much of pop culture is now tinged with politics and any opinion, i.e., tweet, is susceptible to contrarian arguments or overly read/misinterpreted subtexts, generating the long threads and outrage.) The peace of mind offered by an echo chamber built through careful filtering is just a click away from being obliterated by any one of Twitter’s cause célèbre. And as I’ve discovered, even my bubble—shaped well outside of Twitter—was easily punctured by a trending topic that smeared its way into the national conversation.
In a previous newsletter, I talked about my dissatisfaction with Maria Ressa’s answer to the question of what we, as individuals, can do to counter disinformation on social media. (Her answer then: “In the short term, it is just us. It is hand-to-hand combat.”) Admittedly, this was an unfair judgment on my part: she wrote an entire book about it which I have yet to read. (Fully Booked is now accepting restock orders.) In another interview with Amanpour and Company posted on December 8, she adds to this with, “stop being a user or consumer and being a citizen” (15:56), which, of course, is not a wrong answer, but it does further raise doubt as to what “hand-to-hand combat” means in the context of being a citizen online. (I guess what I want to hear her say, the answer that would satisfy me, is that individual efforts to counter disinformation on social media are futile.)
Here’s an excellent follow-up courtesy of an episode on The Problem with Jon Stewart Podcast. One takeaway for me is that much like climate change, the international community, democratic institutions, and governments will have to institutionalize guardrails to protect us from the harmful effects of social media. No “paper straws” or “reusable bags” can make up for the colossal impact that tech companies and nefarious governments, in their capitalism and disinformation operations, have on our quality of life. Another interesting subject that was brought up is that while we have yet to lay the ethical rules for social media, there’s already an imminent battle awaiting an entirely new frontier: generative AI, which entered the mainstream conversation through ChatGPT. It’s worth the one hour.