A Few Points About How We Use Social Media

1.     Tagging people, similar to “like” buttons and notifications, create social validation loops. When you tag someone into your post, you are asking them to validate what you said. You are not simply giving them information. When you “like” a Facebook post, you are letting others know where your values lie, and this creates additional validation.

2.     One physiological response to reading posts on Facebook or twitter is to create a flood of dopamine. This can become a kind of addiction, wherein you keep posting to get more and more clicks and “likes’ in order to get that bit of a rush when someone else likes what you posted.

3.     A filter bubble is “a state of intellectual isolation that can result from personalized searches when a website algorithm selectively guesses what information a user would like to see based on information about the user, such as location, past click behavior and search history.” The AI that is part of each social media site builds a filter bubble around you by sending you more content like that you have shown has engaged you. In other words, it sends you more of what you already agree with and with what you like.

4.     Over time, you cannot escape a filter bubble. And most people do not try; they enjoy living in that bubble. They do not see dissident voices; nothing upsets their equilibrium or their already entrenched beliefs. They live in isolation. And most people would categorically deny that they live in a filter bubble but would certain accuse others that hold different beliefs of doing so.

5.     Sensational headlines draw more clicks than informational ones do. I saw one the other say that said that Neil Armstrong said that the moon landing was built on a fraud. Given that there are still people who believe we never landed on the moon, the headline seemed to indicate there was something to that belief. In fact, the article as about him felling that his feelings about part of the landing were “fraudulent.”

6.     Creating outrage leads to more clicks. Every social media site in the known universe knows this and does everything it can to ramp up emotion in order to get you to visit. You are then kept in a constant state of tension and angst.

7.     We want others to always see us in a positive light. As a result, we seek attention via “likes” in groups from family and friends. We post comments and pictures designed to make us look in our best light and we get that rush from people liking things when we do. At the same time, the news feeds around us surround us with like-minded people, so it becomes homogenous, and this is then reinforced by a shared sense of group outrage.

8.     Anonymity then removes all social stigma from posting. People go to war against any threat to their filter bubble. This is seen as an existential threat, one that has to be destroyed. Expertise is disregarded over voices from the tribe. I have seen this far too often in chiropractic Facebook groups.

9.     Finally user control over anything in their social media world is an illusion.

Facebook is Not Your Friend, Part 1

You feel a faint buzz in your pocket and so you take out your phone. It informs you that you have several new likes and messages on Facebook. What do you do?

If you are like the vast majority of people you open your phone, go to Facebook and read your new messages and see who liked what you posted. You do so without thinking that this is exactly what Facebook wants you to do. It has built an entire business empire around manipulating your attention in ways you barely understand. It uses algorithms that are designed not to keep you informed, but to keep you engaged on the platform. This means ramping up your dopamine levels by regularly leading you to posts that anger you. They know that you will find it harder to step away, that you will ultimately involve yourself with groups of like-minded people in what is known as a filter bubble where you will rarely see anything alternative to what you already believe, where dissident voices do not occur and where conspiracy theories can germinate.

In my opinion, Facebook is now a worldwide problem. Bad actors have found ways to use Facebook to foster strife and division, and almost certainly had a significant impact on the 2016 elections. Facebook has, in my opinion, done little enough to prevent further manipulation. And this has impacted my profession, where tribalism is now rife, where groups exist that are closed to anyone not already in agreement with the group ethos. What we see in chiropractic is but a microcosm of what is happening on a global scale. I will explore this in my next few posts.

Random Political Thoughts

1.     I am bemused by all the people shocked by the news that Mitch McConnell will allow a Supreme Court nominee to be moved forward before the 2020 elections, something he would not allow with Merrick Garland before the last election, when President Obama was still in office. Do people not understand that the Republican Party only plays power politics, uses whatever tool exists to advance their agenda and has thoroughly gamed the system? C’mon now! Is anyone surprised that Lindsay Graham is saying things that are a 180-degree turn from what he said in the past? All politics is local and immediate. Whatever gets the job done, including lying and cheating.

2.     So, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is no longer allowed to use terms such as “evidence-based” or “science-based” in any report they author.

3.     No matter how bad it is and how you cannot conceive of it getting any worse, it always does.

4.     Mueller has basically told you that he saw obstruction of justice. Now, Congress has to act. It won’t.

5.     Newspapers are complicit in our current political situation. The NYT just wrote about Hope Hicks’ “existential crisis” in deciding whether to honor a subpoena. She is a private citizen. She cannot avoid it or she will be breaking the law. There is no choice involved. Oh, and they also used a glamour shot for the article. It took more than a day and thousands of tweets before the Times changed the headline.

6.     With regard to Mueller again, watch the headlines from different newspapers. They are tailored to the audience. For example, the far-right Washington Examiner has this lead: “Mueller inadvertently confirms William Barr didn’t misrepresent his report.” OTOH, the Independent has this: “Mueller just told the world Trump is a criminal. Now Congress must impeach him.” They write for different audiences and in doing so lose sight of truth in order to score points and influence public opinion. This is why one reason why people cannot trust the news.

7.     Forbes magazine just asked if America was ready for a woman to be president. It apparently forgot Hillary Clinton won the popular vote.

8.     We live in strange times. I am 66 now and could not have ever come close to predicting we would be where we are now. Nearly every major governmental agency is run by people without qualifications to handle the job. Diplomacy has been blown up. Anger and thunder all that matters. Decency out the door. Even inside my family, people have treated others with contempt and vitriol over politics, to the point where I have no intention of ever speaking to those people again until and unless they apologize for the comments they directed at, for example, my wife. How did this happen?

A Celebration of (A Too Brief) Life

This past weekend I was in Willowbrook, IL near Chicago to be present at the dedication of an insect garden created in honor of my granddaughter Beatrix. The Indian Prairie Public Library was one of the few places Bea ever visited during her brief, 13-month life. My son and daughter-in-law worked with the library, which to their family is a home away from home, to fashion an appropriate tribute and memorial for Beatrix, and making an insect garden is their way of demonstrating the cycle of life.

Beatrix Reid Lawrence, along with her identical twin sister, were born on September 5 of 2017 after an emergency C-section. The babies had experienced a relatively rare intra-uterine condition known as twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. Effectively, though there is only a single placenta, one baby acted as a donor of blood to the other baby. Thus, one baby fails to develop properly since it has less blood supply, while the other may experience a variety of problems related to the excess inflow of blood. To be safe with both babies, doctors decided to deliver the babies early. We are talking 3 months early, that is: 26 weeks, 4 days. At birth, Alexis Rose Lawrence weighed 1’6oz while Beatrix Reid Lawrence weighed 1’10oz. Two babies totaling 3 pounds. If you have never seen micro-premature babies, you literally have no idea how tiny they are. Their footprint was the size of a quarter; their diaper smaller in size than a $1 bill.

Beatrix and Alexis spent more than 100 days in the NICU. Gail and I went to visit as often as we could, which was nowhere near often enough. My son has written previously about his first visits to the NICU, and I note that it was overwhelming- tiny babies with warning signals and bells going off left and right, not understanding what any of it meant. That first visit to meet the babies was powerful and frightening- they were so small. And Alexis had heart surgery when she was only 8 days old, to repair a patent ductus arteriosus. Who does surgery on a baby with a heart the size of a walnut? She had another surgery at around 3 months as well. Meanwhile Bea was having problems with her lungs, and remained on bottled oxygen far longer than Alexis.

Alexis went home after about 107 days in NICU and Bea followed her a few days later- on Christmas eve, to be exact. I recall that as being the best present ever. But Bea still had to use bottled oxygen, an experience my son has written elegantly and powerfully about elsewhere. After her release, she did have to visit the ER a couple of times for respiratory problems, but those times were apparently not critically serious. However shortly after her first birthday- where she and her sister tasted solid food for the first time- she came down with a respiratory infection so serious that doctors in the ER and PICU immediately intubated her. Her lungs, never fully developed, could not handle the infections she had.

She never came off the respirator.

The month Beatrix spent on life support was so hard. We did not initially understand how serious her condition was, and we had hope that she would improve. Indeed, she did, at times. But for every rally there was a relapse and her condition kept worsening. We would come and stay and then leave when she seemed stable, and then come in again as she fell back.

She could not fight off the infection and the secondary infections that followed. She died on October 19 of 2018. The entire family was there, though only Noah and Megan were with her during those final moments. We sang her “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and kissed her goodbye. I am tearing right now just remembering this. Her ashes were buried on the grounds of the Episcopal church founded by my daughter-in-law’s grandparents. She is buried near the grandmother she never met, the only 2 people buried on the church grounds.

It hurts. And however much it hurts me, how much more so for mom and dad. I do not want to make this about me.

But I profess to moments of real existential angst. Bea was there and then she was not. Where did she go? How do we not forget her? Times goes on, memories fade. The church is in Illinois and I am in Dallas. I bought a bracelet that I wear every day, and I made myself have “muscle memory” of Bea whenever I put it on every morning. I wake every day thinking of her. This is not an exaggeration.

This is why this insect garden, Bea’s Garden, is so meaningful to me. Bea will never be forgotten. It is close to my kids’ home, we can visit, we can see other children enjoy it, know that the community knows it is there- so many people came to the dedication!

No News is Good News

Another change that occurred during the time my granddaughter was in the hospital was that I also stopped watching the news. The news is addictive, and sadly in the United States it consists mainly of echo chambers that provide those who want news with the news they want to hear. And of course, the decision as to what counts as news is one fraught with privilege and manipulation. Why, for example, is there so little attention paid on the news to the policy positions of Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris, while so much attention is paid to Pete Buttiegieg and his ability to speak several languages? I ask this as a person who will support whomever the democrats nominate and find the positions of all 3 worthy. My point is, that is a decision made by someone in a newsroom.

We know that newspapers are under threat. They see a decline in print subscribers but not a concomitant rise in online subscribers, since it is so easy to find free content online. Thus, they are forced to create reasons for you to visit their websites- the use of clickbait, for example. They now end most stories with questions such as “Do you agree with his position? Click here to tell us what you think.” Every article has a thousand comments that no one reads. I believe that Trump was elected in part, as part of a perfect storm of events, because the news could not stay away from his actions and needed to report on each and every one of them- thus, amplifying his appeal. They did this while spending inordinate amounts of time on a created issue with Hilary Clinton about emails (an issue that did not seem to matter as much as when it was done by Jared Kushner). The New York Times lost my respect as a result, and even the Washington Post has shown terrible judgment. And this is before we ever consider the cancer of Fox News. I had to find a way to get Fox off my news feeds in google news, because no matter what was happening, Fox would spin it in a Bizarro Superman way. This is how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become so prominent; Fox sees a threat in her directness so has used every event involving her to (1) attack her by twisting what she said, and (2) drawing people to the Fox website through use of an attractive 29-year-old woman unafraid of taking a position.

The problem is deeper than this. I am also trying to find out how I can keep any news article involving the Kardashians off my news feeds, for those few times I visit. Who cares what this talentless group of people do? Yes, I know- their 55 million or however many followers (twitter, etc.) do. But I don’t and I don’t want that stupidity cluttering up more meaningful information. It takes up space and is a diversion. Which is what it is meant to be, so that we pay less attention to what really matters. Where did the idea of being an “influencer” come from?

There is so much more to say, and over time I am sure I will.

Welcome Back, My Friends!

Back in October of 2018 I left Facebook for good. There were two reasons: (1) The first was simply that it had become a professional battleground, with a group of so-called evidence-based chiropractors arguing with everyone who held ideas and beliefs different from the ones they held. These should normally have been my allies, but I found myself increasingly at odds with many members because of how they interpreted literature, used information and attacked those with whom they disagreed. In fact, I had been treated worse by some of the members of this group than I ever had with individuals with whom I have profound disagreements. Their moral righteousness and unyielding rectitude were tiring in the extreme; there was always a justification for anything they said or did. In fact, they are simply a fandom, allowing only those people who already agree with them to post and cutting off dissident voices, to the point of requiring what amounts of a loyalty oath to simply post on the group page. (2) The loss of my granddaughter was a profound loss, whose impact will never lessen. At the time that Beatrix was on life support, I went through all the stages of grief that Kubler-Ross identifies. One is bargaining. In this, my emotional side warred with my intellectual side and I felt that if I could just think good thoughts and avoid negativity it would somehow help Bea. This is not rational, and I would not change it for the world. After that loss, I simply felt that the increasing negativity of Facebook contributed nothing to the world and I would do my part to stop adding any additional negativity to the world. This is outside all the issues that FB already faces with data privacy, information sharing and so on. I do not miss it.

I maintained my twitter account. Twitter is not a whole lot better but I can control whose feeds I get- a small number of friends and celebrities and comic-book artists I like, and I rarely post comments myself. But I still need an outlet for my ideas and thoughts. So, I am resurrecting this blog to use it as a personal means of writing about those things that matter to me.

Please consider this an introduction to my writing. Looking forward to sharing my thoughts!

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