We've Lost the Plot
January 30, 2023 2:22 PM Subscribe
We Are Already in the Metaverse (Megan Garber for The Atlantic)
I'm 90% sure the link should read "metaverse" not "multiverse" based on the article? Which is actually a really good article.
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:43 PM on January 30, 2023
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:43 PM on January 30, 2023
Thanks for the archive link. I never know which service is going to work for which website anymore.
So, an early quibble with the article is its conflation about 1/4 of the way through with an online community and online entertainment. In this one paragraph:
Where does this conflation come from? From the author seemingly thinking that everything that takes place online is "an amusement" instead of something else, like maybe real interpersonal interactions.
I'm going to keep reading, but I feel like they're going to keep making this same confusion across this entire article, confusing interacting with real people with making choices from streaming services and poking at a video game.
posted by hippybear at 2:47 PM on January 30, 2023 [16 favorites]
So, an early quibble with the article is its conflation about 1/4 of the way through with an online community and online entertainment. In this one paragraph:
I’ve inhabited Twitter in that way too—just as I’ve inhabited Instagram and Hulu and Netflix. I don’t want to question the value of entertainment itself—that would be foolish and, in my case, deeply hypocritical. But I do want to question the hold that all of the immersive amusement is gaining over my life, and maybe yours.they conflate Twitter, Instagram, Hulu, and Netflix. Two (if not more) of these things are not like the others. I don't think people build up years long friendships on Hulu or Netflix. Maybe they do in Instagram (I'm not a member, I don't know how the social structure there works), but they definitely do on Twitter.
Where does this conflation come from? From the author seemingly thinking that everything that takes place online is "an amusement" instead of something else, like maybe real interpersonal interactions.
I'm going to keep reading, but I feel like they're going to keep making this same confusion across this entire article, confusing interacting with real people with making choices from streaming services and poking at a video game.
posted by hippybear at 2:47 PM on January 30, 2023 [16 favorites]
By the mid-20th century, the historian Warren Susman argued, a great shift was taking place. American values had traditionally emphasized a collection of qualities we might shorthand as “character”: honesty, diligence, an abiding sense of duty. The rise of mass media changed those terms, Susman wrote. In the media-savvy and consumption-oriented society that Americans were building, people came to value—and therefore demand—what Susman called “personality”: charm, likability, the talent to entertain. “The social role demanded of all in the new Culture of Personality was that of a performer,” Susman wrote. “Every American was to become a performing self.”This is very apparent when you compare Rod Steiger's portrayal of an awkward, lonely man in Paddy Chayefsky's 1953 teleplay Marty and Ernest Borgnine's portrayal of the same man in the major motion picture of the same name by the same author two years later. Steiger plays a character; Borgnine has a personality.
posted by infinitewindow at 2:50 PM on January 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
I used my last free article on that one, and it was worth it. The story of making the delivery people dance was downright icky.
It occurs to me that our immersion in entertainment explains why so many people are so nonchalant about AI taking over so many tasks; if our life is meant to be spent consuming entertainment, AI clearly frees us up to be more prolific consumers.
All this explains why my trendy little soul has deactivated a number of social media sites and gotten rid of most of my streaming services. I haven't watched TV in three days.
Neil Postman had it right.
posted by Peach at 3:16 PM on January 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
It occurs to me that our immersion in entertainment explains why so many people are so nonchalant about AI taking over so many tasks; if our life is meant to be spent consuming entertainment, AI clearly frees us up to be more prolific consumers.
All this explains why my trendy little soul has deactivated a number of social media sites and gotten rid of most of my streaming services. I haven't watched TV in three days.
Neil Postman had it right.
posted by Peach at 3:16 PM on January 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
Dwell in this environment long enough, and it becomes difficult to process the facts of the world through anything except entertainment.
This seems like a cop-out to me. This entire article is just hand-wringing over how much entertainment we're exposed to, and probably would have read the same in the 19th century about women reading *gasp* novels!
In my daily dealings with actual humans very very few of them are slaves to media, but very few of them work in media like Megan Garber.
I have a millenial daughter, who probably consumes enough media to be on the verges of metaverse-mania (tm), but she's grounded by her 4 year old daughter and by being an elementary school teacher -- she's able to process the world through critical thinking.
I have a gen-z son who consumes way less media, but I don't get the sense that his worldview, still in its infancy, is blurred by a lens of media oversaturation.
Winter is long. Days are short and we need stimuli to make it through. We've always sought to entertain ourselves, but now, through the miracle of the metaverse, we're not a monoculture. Sure, there are easy fixes out there like tweets and tiktoks, and suckers born every minute to gobble them up, but those suckers would have been gobbling something somewhere anyway. For the rest of us entertainment is not a herald of the end of days, just the thing we do between the things we're doing.
posted by OHenryPacey at 3:39 PM on January 30, 2023 [19 favorites]
This seems like a cop-out to me. This entire article is just hand-wringing over how much entertainment we're exposed to, and probably would have read the same in the 19th century about women reading *gasp* novels!
In my daily dealings with actual humans very very few of them are slaves to media, but very few of them work in media like Megan Garber.
I have a millenial daughter, who probably consumes enough media to be on the verges of metaverse-mania (tm), but she's grounded by her 4 year old daughter and by being an elementary school teacher -- she's able to process the world through critical thinking.
I have a gen-z son who consumes way less media, but I don't get the sense that his worldview, still in its infancy, is blurred by a lens of media oversaturation.
Winter is long. Days are short and we need stimuli to make it through. We've always sought to entertain ourselves, but now, through the miracle of the metaverse, we're not a monoculture. Sure, there are easy fixes out there like tweets and tiktoks, and suckers born every minute to gobble them up, but those suckers would have been gobbling something somewhere anyway. For the rest of us entertainment is not a herald of the end of days, just the thing we do between the things we're doing.
posted by OHenryPacey at 3:39 PM on January 30, 2023 [19 favorites]
I don't think people build up years long friendships on Hulu or Netflix.
This seems to greatly discount my years-long parasocial relationship with Steve Harrington's hair.
posted by kaibutsu at 4:05 PM on January 30, 2023 [10 favorites]
This seems to greatly discount my years-long parasocial relationship with Steve Harrington's hair.
posted by kaibutsu at 4:05 PM on January 30, 2023 [10 favorites]
I didn't make it far into the article, I got distracted deploring myself and hoping that the algorithm would give me a little temporary notoriety. But those who'd swap a essential dignity for a little temporary notoriety deserve neither.
posted by k3ninho at 4:10 PM on January 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by k3ninho at 4:10 PM on January 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
I don’t want to question the value of entertainment itself—that would be foolish and, in my case, deeply hypocritical.
Is being hypocritical a requirement for changing one's beliefs ?
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 4:15 PM on January 30, 2023
Is being hypocritical a requirement for changing one's beliefs ?
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 4:15 PM on January 30, 2023
A wonderful piece. Smooth, no LOOK effete, dap-drawn irony nor satircal who-ha it's thesis evident in the singular example of the shift in Dr. Smith's personality from season one to season three.
little shout-out to teegeack
posted by clavdivs at 4:50 PM on January 30, 2023
little shout-out to teegeack
posted by clavdivs at 4:50 PM on January 30, 2023
Arendt concluded that the ideal subjects of such [totalitarian] rule are not the committed believers in the cause. They are instead the people who come to believe in everything and nothing at all: people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction no longer exists.An oversimplified way of contrasting 1984 and Brave New World is that in the first, the populace is ruled by a state that bends reality and in the second, the state acts without limit because the population is too distracted to care. This author seems to imply we're getting the worst of both worlds: constant entertainment that blurs the boundaries of reality so we can no longer tell the difference, favoring whoever funds the most entertaining version of history.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 4:52 PM on January 30, 2023 [5 favorites]
I wonder how much of the fictionalisation of real-life events in TV/movies are more attempts to capture the emotional truth of the situation, even if the sequence of events is not exact.
A few years ago I made a stage show all about my love of and history with stage magic. One of my stories is about an encounter my grandfather, a Customs official, had with eminent South Asian magician P. C. Sorcar. In the actual encounter, my grandfather challenged Sorcar to do a magic trick for him to pass Customs, but Sorcar magically revealed that all the customs stamps and paperwork had already been approved.
Now, custom stamps and forms of pre-Liberation East Pakistan don't exactly translate well on stage, let alone as a magic trick (and I don't even know how they would look like anyway). But people understand passports, and there's already an established magic trick involving books with colour changing pages, so transforming it to a magic passport was pretty easy.
So in my version of the story, P. C. Sorcar bamboozled my grandfather by making passport stamps magically appear, and it serves as a lead in to a bigger story about my/my family/Sorcar's history with war, immigration, and visa shenanigans. It's not the literal chronological truth, but it's much more true at heart than just a strict reenactment of the event.
posted by creatrixtiara at 4:53 PM on January 30, 2023 [14 favorites]
A few years ago I made a stage show all about my love of and history with stage magic. One of my stories is about an encounter my grandfather, a Customs official, had with eminent South Asian magician P. C. Sorcar. In the actual encounter, my grandfather challenged Sorcar to do a magic trick for him to pass Customs, but Sorcar magically revealed that all the customs stamps and paperwork had already been approved.
Now, custom stamps and forms of pre-Liberation East Pakistan don't exactly translate well on stage, let alone as a magic trick (and I don't even know how they would look like anyway). But people understand passports, and there's already an established magic trick involving books with colour changing pages, so transforming it to a magic passport was pretty easy.
So in my version of the story, P. C. Sorcar bamboozled my grandfather by making passport stamps magically appear, and it serves as a lead in to a bigger story about my/my family/Sorcar's history with war, immigration, and visa shenanigans. It's not the literal chronological truth, but it's much more true at heart than just a strict reenactment of the event.
posted by creatrixtiara at 4:53 PM on January 30, 2023 [14 favorites]
I think the article mentioned inside the post, about the banality of evil, is a much better article. Media and charisma have always been used to gain power and control. Friends, Romans, countrymen... But I feel like the actual article only kinds of gestures at the problem of media being used knowingly and blatantly for profit and power and spreading hate. I don't think it's that media blurs our powers of reality observation, I think it's that some people tear down anything they can instead of building a better world.
posted by Jacen at 4:53 PM on January 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Jacen at 4:53 PM on January 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
This seems like a cop-out to me.
I'm sure you're familiar with the CSI Effect, where jurors come in with the expectation that forensics is able to directly solve crimes like they do on CSI, and both prosecutors with normal forensic evidence (i.e. inconclusive on its own) and defendants have to try and disabuse the jury of that notion.
There is also the example of the orange president, whose administrative experience seemed to rest on the fact that he'd played a successful boss on TV. This also applies to Ukrainian president Zelensky, who also played a president on TV before being elected, and proved as shoddy an administrator as you'd expect. (Hell of a wartime president, though.)
posted by Merus at 5:19 PM on January 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm sure you're familiar with the CSI Effect, where jurors come in with the expectation that forensics is able to directly solve crimes like they do on CSI, and both prosecutors with normal forensic evidence (i.e. inconclusive on its own) and defendants have to try and disabuse the jury of that notion.
There is also the example of the orange president, whose administrative experience seemed to rest on the fact that he'd played a successful boss on TV. This also applies to Ukrainian president Zelensky, who also played a president on TV before being elected, and proved as shoddy an administrator as you'd expect. (Hell of a wartime president, though.)
posted by Merus at 5:19 PM on January 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
This is just like television, only you can see much further"
-Chance the Gardner.
posted by clavdivs at 6:12 PM on January 30, 2023 [8 favorites]
-Chance the Gardner.
posted by clavdivs at 6:12 PM on January 30, 2023 [8 favorites]
In the metaverse, the promise goes, we will finally be able to do what science fiction foretold: live within our illusions.
If I’m not mistaken, many religions and schools of philosophy are convinced we’re all doing that anyway.
We’re just getting recursive.
posted by skyscraper at 6:35 PM on January 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
If I’m not mistaken, many religions and schools of philosophy are convinced we’re all doing that anyway.
We’re just getting recursive.
posted by skyscraper at 6:35 PM on January 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
We have gradually accommodated ourselves to the idea that if an event doesn’t become a limited series or a movie, it hasn’t happened. When news breaks, we shrug. We’ll wait for the miniseries.
I think that "we" means "people who watch a ton of tv intensely." Otherwise it's a wild stretch for a lot of folks, as OHenryPacey says.
Otherwise, the article reminds me of Videodrome, back in 1983: "television is reality, and reality is less than television."
posted by doctornemo at 8:25 PM on January 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
I think that "we" means "people who watch a ton of tv intensely." Otherwise it's a wild stretch for a lot of folks, as OHenryPacey says.
Otherwise, the article reminds me of Videodrome, back in 1983: "television is reality, and reality is less than television."
posted by doctornemo at 8:25 PM on January 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
The main points were valid, but I have to annoyingly quibble about the central metaphor. For all the problems with the Metaverse as Zuckerberg envisions it, misleading people is not really one of them. Early on, the writer states that the problem is media that you choose is becoming media that you inhabit, but the concept of a virtual reality world doesn't deny choice, and the media examples given are not relevant examples of immersion. Presumably you could go to a virtual world you want, or else a corner of it of your choosing.
The article then goes into the expected issues with social media allowing people to live like false things are true, which is certainly the case. But while we live in an age where this problem is uniquely relevant, truthfully, it's not really anything new, it's just a problem is scale, of great lies that people willfully believe, and false authority vouching for them. But the powerful have always told themselves comforting things about those who aren't wealthy, to convince themselves that their power is justified, and so have the middle class to separate themselves from the working class and poor. I'm sure virtual reality could make that worse in the same way that Facebook does, but I don't see how it's necessarily inevitable just by nature of being virtual reality.
I guess I'm saying I would have picked a different theme to organize the essay, although it might not provide as punchy a headline?
posted by JHarris at 8:39 PM on January 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
The article then goes into the expected issues with social media allowing people to live like false things are true, which is certainly the case. But while we live in an age where this problem is uniquely relevant, truthfully, it's not really anything new, it's just a problem is scale, of great lies that people willfully believe, and false authority vouching for them. But the powerful have always told themselves comforting things about those who aren't wealthy, to convince themselves that their power is justified, and so have the middle class to separate themselves from the working class and poor. I'm sure virtual reality could make that worse in the same way that Facebook does, but I don't see how it's necessarily inevitable just by nature of being virtual reality.
I guess I'm saying I would have picked a different theme to organize the essay, although it might not provide as punchy a headline?
posted by JHarris at 8:39 PM on January 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
In case you have any dignity left after driving around next to a bottle of your own piss all day, dance at the command of this disembodied voice or get a bad review.
But - there is actually a precedent for this. In olden times sending a text message was possible but complicated. You'd go to the telegram office, give them your tweet, then someone at the destination would physically deliver the telegram to their door. This process didn't encourage frivolity. The expense of it all demanded brevity, you pay per letter. You may receive a telegram that simply says MARTHA IS DEAD.
Suppose it's someone's birthday and you want to send them a message. You could actually hire a singing telegram! Yes, an old-timey quartet of singers would go to their door and sing MARTHA IS DEAD.
You had to pay a premium for this though. Performers aren't cheap. You should pay extra if you want a little dance. You want Elvis or Obama, or Socks the Sad Clown to deliver your parcel? Pay extra for it.
I think it should be a thing again. What fun! If someone sent me a singing telegram they would have my heart forever. But don't do this to Amazon drivers.
posted by adept256 at 9:48 PM on January 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
But - there is actually a precedent for this. In olden times sending a text message was possible but complicated. You'd go to the telegram office, give them your tweet, then someone at the destination would physically deliver the telegram to their door. This process didn't encourage frivolity. The expense of it all demanded brevity, you pay per letter. You may receive a telegram that simply says MARTHA IS DEAD.
Suppose it's someone's birthday and you want to send them a message. You could actually hire a singing telegram! Yes, an old-timey quartet of singers would go to their door and sing MARTHA IS DEAD.
You had to pay a premium for this though. Performers aren't cheap. You should pay extra if you want a little dance. You want Elvis or Obama, or Socks the Sad Clown to deliver your parcel? Pay extra for it.
I think it should be a thing again. What fun! If someone sent me a singing telegram they would have my heart forever. But don't do this to Amazon drivers.
posted by adept256 at 9:48 PM on January 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
Perhaps similarly, I share many of the author's preoccupations and am alarmed by many of the same social phenomenon but... I don't really agree with the arguments in this peice. Harassing people with facial disfigurements for example is a terrible but time honored tradition from long before TikTok. The news in the age before infotainment or partisan comedy talk show 'news' was perhaps less factual or at least much narrower in it's scope and more obfuscating in it's ideology than it is now. Nevertheless, I appreciated many of the points made. Thanks for linking.
posted by latkes at 9:48 PM on January 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by latkes at 9:48 PM on January 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think the conflation of Twitter, Instagram, Netfix, Hulu, etc. is understandable in the larger context of each ultimately becoming a kind of universe that we inhabit, even if some are more just entertainment than others. I do have a couple of other minor objections though. I don't think Jon Stewart, et al really blurred the line between news and entertainment that much; most audiences did know the difference and the irony was that these comedy shows often did a better job explaining what was going on than the corporatized, dumbed down, both sides fake neutrality actual news. They may have started a trend though. I also don't agree that TV created such a sudden split between character and personality; that has always been so but, yes, more now.
That being said, it's still a great link and makes a compelling, and terrifying, case of not only where we really are but also where we could be going.
posted by blue shadows at 10:43 PM on January 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
That being said, it's still a great link and makes a compelling, and terrifying, case of not only where we really are but also where we could be going.
posted by blue shadows at 10:43 PM on January 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
Singing telegrams deliver directly to your doorstep the kind of mortification that usually requires tipping at a Coldstone.
posted by snuffleupagus at 3:52 AM on January 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by snuffleupagus at 3:52 AM on January 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
At this point, my metaverse is Star Trek Voyager, Urusei Yatsura, DeviantART, texting my bestie, and my four dogs.
[ force field ]
posted by Chronorin at 4:16 AM on January 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
[ force field ]
posted by Chronorin at 4:16 AM on January 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
While there are a lot of good popints in the article, I dislike:
1) The journalistic use of "we" as if whatever subset of behaviors they're observing was universal.
2) The idea that there used to be a golden age where people valued "Character". Sure, as long as it was white, rich, male, straight, cis character.
posted by signal at 5:54 AM on January 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
1) The journalistic use of "we" as if whatever subset of behaviors they're observing was universal.
2) The idea that there used to be a golden age where people valued "Character". Sure, as long as it was white, rich, male, straight, cis character.
posted by signal at 5:54 AM on January 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
Also, does the author really dislike documentaries, or just focuses on tv nonfiction they abhor?
posted by doctornemo at 7:28 AM on January 31, 2023
posted by doctornemo at 7:28 AM on January 31, 2023
There is also the example of the orange president, whose administrative experience seemed to rest on the fact that he'd played a successful boss on TV.
Not really, he just had lots of name recognition, which is an extremely important factor in running for president. And it's not like he was even the first to ride the heels of showbiz, not even close. Being famous is an easy shortcut to being a legislator.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:00 AM on January 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
Not really, he just had lots of name recognition, which is an extremely important factor in running for president. And it's not like he was even the first to ride the heels of showbiz, not even close. Being famous is an easy shortcut to being a legislator.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:00 AM on January 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
Being famous is an easy shortcut to being everything from a reality television star to a "genius" tech billionaire.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 9:01 AM on January 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by RonButNotStupid at 9:01 AM on January 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
> hippybear: "So, an early quibble with the article is its conflation about 1/4 of the way through with an online community and online entertainment."
It used to be that the rule of thumb on any website was that the vast majority of hits are from lurkers, people who don't interact with the site in any way except viewing (e.g.: no posts, no comments, no likes, no shares, nothing). While it's certainly possible to use Twitter in a more social, conversation-oriented way, I do not find it at all unusual that someone's experience with Twitter is as mainly unidirectional, like a one-way broadcast. A quick browse of this particular author's Twitter account gives me the impression that she was using it sort of like the old Google Reader, mostly retweeting other people's articles and some occasional "Thank You" replies to mentions.
posted by mhum at 1:59 PM on January 31, 2023
It used to be that the rule of thumb on any website was that the vast majority of hits are from lurkers, people who don't interact with the site in any way except viewing (e.g.: no posts, no comments, no likes, no shares, nothing). While it's certainly possible to use Twitter in a more social, conversation-oriented way, I do not find it at all unusual that someone's experience with Twitter is as mainly unidirectional, like a one-way broadcast. A quick browse of this particular author's Twitter account gives me the impression that she was using it sort of like the old Google Reader, mostly retweeting other people's articles and some occasional "Thank You" replies to mentions.
posted by mhum at 1:59 PM on January 31, 2023
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posted by hippybear at 2:31 PM on January 30, 2023 [2 favorites]