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Social media generates uniformity. Whereas scrolling by social media feeds, it typically appears like the entire world is following a specific pattern, particularly when a sentiment is duplicated by a number of unbiased posts. On my YouTube feed, for instance, everyone seems to be transferring to New York. On Sidechat, everybody cherished the HUDS Diwali dinner. Different area of interest digital communities vary from Alabama Rush TikTok to tradition round particular Twitch streamers.
Though we every inhabit a definite digital area — in any case, they’re individually curated and tailor-made by an algorithm — these areas overlap surprisingly typically. It is because advice algorithms and virality promote homogeneity by offering restricted alternative. When Spotify makes personalised playlists, it’s actually an algorithm selecting the music, which regularly comes right down to particular, exploitable metrics like rhythm and even the artist’s gender. Artists know {that a} music must carry out effectively on Tiktok to explode, so as we speak’s Billboard hits more and more sound the identical. In flip, hit songs last more and attain extra folks as a result of thousands and thousands of listeners depend on algorithmic suggestions every day. On this data-driven cycle, no matter captures consumer consideration wins, creating what some call a “streaming monoculture”.
Past producing a broad monoculture, social media additionally has a deeper perform of collectivizing area of interest communities by regarding interior ideas. Personally, I like aesthetic, slice-of-life TikToks with reflections about residing mindfully as a younger grownup. Watching these movies feels as if I’m listening to a detailed pal communicate, however in actuality, many have tens or lots of of hundreds of views. These seemingly deep, private reflections turn out to be widespread concepts within the collective consciousness, so even our deepest ideologies are influenced and homogenized. This collectivizing perform allows a substitute for the pure sphere of household and area people that’s versatile, trendy, and hyperconnected. On this new social world, people select social communities that perceive them and are now not restricted by a area people consensus.
That is how traits like “that woman” turn out to be a whole self-sustaining tenet of well-liked tradition. (For those who’re unfamiliar, “that girl” includes a productive, wholesome life-style of waking up at 5 or 6 a.m., going to the fitness center and making an oat milk latte earlier than beginning your workday, and so forth.) Every thought looks like a relatable life-style or opinion, however the pattern has attracted thousands and thousands of individuals: 16-year-olds striving for it, smaller creators imitating it, and types advertising to it.
For people who don’t dwell round others striving for this life-style, the limitation of bodily group is eliminated. On their smartphone, every individual can entry others with comparable ideas, emotions, targets, and struggles, and it’s out of the blue doable to pursue a really particular life-style that drastically differs from their current atmosphere by drawing from the consolation of a digital group. Social media can create communities out of those separate pockets of like-minded folks, overcoming the pluralistic ignorance that leads folks to disregard the truth that others like them exist. As soon as somebody enters a subculture, the digital content material in the end shapes their bodily world, and it turns into a tangible side of life by repeated publicity to social media.
In itself, shared concepts and digital subcommunities aren’t evil. They arguably accomplish the precise goal of social media by connecting like-minded folks worldwide over shared pursuits to supportive communities and related assets. On the similar time, nevertheless, they’re making a pervasive monoculture in well-liked tradition and our interior ideas and attitudes. For a society that claims to worth depth and variety of thought, algorithms and social media received’t lead us there.
Even on a person stage, homogeneity of thought is in the end dangerous to our sense of connection. Algorithms function solely on recognition and knowledge, which implies directing customers in the direction of comparable others. There’s no incentive for a advice algorithm to offer you a short-term problem or discomfort that ultimately pays off in a long-term perspective shift, and algorithms don’t optimize for that type of gratification. In the end, we as passive customers are harmed if we’re unable to attach with completely different folks within the offline world. As curators of our personal social communities within the hyper-connected world, we bear duty for supplementing on-line connection to comparable folks with difficult, in-person connection to our native communities. In any other case, we danger dropping community-based connection altogether.
Most individuals on public transit or in public areas have a look at their telephones when encountering others. Even at Harvard, the norm is social segregation and forming like-minded pals by golf equipment and sports activities, which is a pure reflection of human psychology to group collectively. Nonetheless, if we’ve got a need to construct deeper communal connections previous the algorithm-created monoculture, we’ve got to alter our passive method to an lively one.
Recently, I’ve been stunned by the quantity of unpredictable, stunning interactions I can have with strangers and folks I usually wouldn’t speak to. Typically, a barista or a vacationer on the T has so much to share. Throughout these interactions, I discover that they’re not full strangers — they inhabit the identical world I do, they like the identical sports activities groups and climbing trails, they’ve opinions on cities that I’ve at all times wished to go to as a result of they’ve lived there for years. There’s so much to study from the world on the market.
Elizabeth S. Ling ’23 is a Laptop Science concentrator in Eliot Home. Her column, “Alone Collectively,” normally seems on alternating Fridays.
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