Links (Week of Nov 17)
Welcome to my weekly link-dump, a place where I plan on dropping links to interesting things I ran into during the week, alongside some of my thoughts and some overarching themes.
An addiction to 'cultural relevance'
Let's start first in what is perhaps an unexpected place, a quote I found while watching the video fomo for new games needs to stop by streamer and YouTuber Josh Strife Hayes.
...because unfortunately, video games have become this thing that we don't necessarily play as much anymore, instead we experience their cultural relevance, through specific touchstones online, whether it is reviewers, whether its rage baiters, whether it is angry people, whether its YouTubers, Twitch streamers, and all that kind of stuff. Sometimes video games, the enjoyment we get from them is not even from playing the game, it is from seeing the drama that exists around the game.
I find this observation insightful, but perhaps too narrow. It's not just video games, but most media. I'm convinced that today we are absolutely drowning in content and information demanding our attention, and we reach for cultural relevance as a lifeline in our random grasping for something, anything, to help us find meaning in this infinite sea.
This reminds me of a newly discovered bad habit of mine. When I find articles on news aggregation sites like Reddit, Hacker News, even some blogs or YouTube videos, I'll often jump directly to the comments section without looking at more than the headline of the content itself. This is an unconscious action, a groove my mind has slowly over time carved out in seeking the most engaging content, whatever the cost. The comments section is where the rage-inducing, bad-faith arguments live. Or where the diatribes that confirm my biases live. Its where flame wars are fought, and where drama unfolds. I need to see it.
I suspect the very same habit is in control when I feel compelled to open apps like Bluesky, Mastodon, or (god forbid) X during random interstitial moments of my life. These apps are a never-ending scroll of people commenting on, well, gestures at everything. It is the comments section of the ambient experience of humanity, a para-text for anything and everything.
Twitter threads in the 1500s
Lately I've been pretty fascinated by the rise of the printing press, a technology whose impact I think has many parallels to that of today's social media. I'm currently working through the book The Gutenberg Parenthesis authored by Jeff Jarvis.
One of the earliest high-impact figures to leverage the printing press was Martin Luther, the critical populist figure behind the Protestant Reformation. Luther used the printing press to distribute pamphlets of essays attacking the Catholic church, usually written in the German vernacular rather than the Church's stuffy Latin.
Luther’s words spread fast and far, making his writing, his voice, and his theology impossible to control for the institution he challenged. “The Reformation might have been stifled and suppressed had it not been for its powerful ally, the German pamphlet,” wrote Louise Holborn, noting the impact in turn on print. “For mass sale, quality had to be sacrificed to quantity. Printing changed from an art satisfying in itself to a vehicle to convey ideas and material.”
Luther built a large following through the distribution of his pamphlets via the printing press. In fact, one could argue that Luther was one of the earliest "social media influencers", or perhaps "content creators" of the printing press revolution (in fact, Hank Green touches on this in his recent video Populism, Media Revolutions, and Our Terrible Moment).
Perhaps Luther's pamphlets can be seen as long-form "tweets". Even the financial incentives were similar -- much like the social media platforms of today, the printers made a killing by selling Luther's pamphlets, meanwhile little of this money went to Luther himself.
The press didn't just enable a one-to-many conversation. As Jeff Jarvis writes:
Tetzel responded to Luther with 106 theses in Latin, in print; students in Wittenberg burned 800 copies when they entered town. Luther responded in turn, in print, with his Sermon on Indulgence and Grace, a succinct statement in only twenty paragraphs. ... Tetzel responded with his Rebuttal, in which he quoted all of Luther’s points, verbatim.
Look at Tetzel literally quote-tweeting Luther in order to provide his rebuttal to the general public!
Luther responded again and Tetzel responded once more, each in German, each in print. In print, they conversed
Tetzel and Luther used the printing press to debate, and the public read this exchange voraciously. An ancient twitter thread between two high-profile influencers in the 1500s!
Anyway, getting serious again. The reason I'm looking at the time of the printing press, and perhaps other media revolutions, is so I can better understand what is going on today. How is social media affecting our collective discourse? How is it affecting our access to useful information that helps us as a society undergo collective problem solving? Some answers to these questions might be found in other historic media revolutions. We'll see, I've got a long way to go.