My process for all the paisley armchair pictures. I sometimes forgot to save iterations regularly, so theyâre a bit uneven (especially the blue one).
I like everything. Or at least I did, for 48 hours. Literally everything Facebook sent my way, I likedâ-even if I hated it.
Itâs so funny that I stumbled upon this article this morning, because I woke up irrationally livid at Facebook anyway. Why? Because for a while now, I feel like FB has been closing me in a box, and unless I play by their rules, I am losing access to the people who want to be reached by me. Â
I have almost a million followers on FB. But I reach a very small percentage of people with every post on average. And this isnât by my fansâ choice. Not a day goes by when I donât see comments like, âHey why am I not getting your updates anymore?â Iâm helpless to explain exactly why, but I have a good inkling.
In order to scale with the number of people we collect on our accounts, FB has had to implement technology to filter our feeds. Because theyâve learned that âsocialâ media is just that, and we canât just dump people when we get bored with them or want to move on in life. So the FB algorithm filters my content based on how many likes people make on the things I share. (Because closing people into interest pockets makes it easier to make money on them, I get it.)
So how do I, as an individual, fight this type of âdowngradingâ of certain types of content I share? Well, I could cater to the algorithm more. I could do this by sharing things I know will be popular!
Easiest way to do that? Share pictures of my face, my body and things based on my appearance.Â
This sucks.
Yes, I guess this is human nature to give feedback on our appearances, thatâs why weâre swimming in a world of selfies. But because our new virtual statuses are built on this type of feedback, it is training us to output things that will be popular, and that, in turn, tells women that achieving high statuses online means sharing things about their looks. To the detriment of anything else. Or else get buried and excised from the people around you. In a sense, weâre hostage to the algorithm.
Who thinks this is a good thing?!
And I think this is more than just about my own online engagement, itâs about FB specifically. I see way less of this on other platforms, this filtering of âeverything but the most reinforcedâ content. FB is training people to feed the algorithmic machine with things that will please the most mainstream. Reinforcing the median taste level. I think this methodology is marginalizing people who think out of the box, closing them in enclaves of people who only like exactly what they like. Trapping us in our own echo chambers of reinforcement, where weâre not influencing or being influenced by opposing thoughts. And in addition, weâre being tricked into believing that our small worlds are much bigger than they really are in the grand scheme of things.
Neither of these things is helping anyoneâs reality.
I donât think itâs healthy. Or good for us as a society. I think the internet is an amazing place, where you can connect with people who are like you, and be accepted when you donât feel accepted in real life, but the drive to make money and clean up the platform to scale properly is not helping us, itâs taking the good things about what the internet can do to the opposite extreme.Â
Donât look for my account to share more selfies than usual, or pictures of me in cute outfits. Thatâs not my style. Look for me to share the exact same stuff I always do.
Unfortunately, you might have to go way out of your way to look at all.Â
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