"Friction" considered useful

07:42 Friday, 23 January 2026
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Words: 858

Loren Stephens also commented on the toxic nature of "social" media.

During my period of unwelcome wakefulness last night, I thought a bit about life before "social" media, and thought I'd expand a bit on what I meant about "a broadcast technology with instantaneous reach and symmetric bandwidth."

These twitter-like platforms, with their users who include highly connected nodes, do represent a form of "broadcast" media. If you've managed to say something provocative, or otherwise stimulating, it gets shared and you can't control who shares it. If it reaches a highly-connected node, it risks going "viral." Sometimes this is thrilling. Other times it's terrifying. I have no idea which experience predominates, but it seems as though everyone longs for "virality," a thought that spreads like a contagion.

Before the advent of social media, there were no broadcast-scale technologies available to everyone. Maybe the most the average person could hope for would be a 'zine. Or maybe a good chain letter. Oh, the evil that would befall he who broke the chain!

So when someone wrote something especially provocative in the editorial page of the local paper, let's say for the sake of argument that 100K people received it. Maybe 20K read the piece. Maybe 2K thought it was outrageous at some level. Of those 2K how many made the effort to get a piece of paper, a pen, an envelope and postage stamp, and sent a reply to the editor of the paper? 200? 100? 50? 10? Beats me, I don't know.

And of those replies, how many got published in the "letters to the editor"? One? Two? And of the original text of the reply, how much was unedited by the editor?

Maybe the author of the original piece that prompted the response got to see all those replies. I don't know how that worked. But they didn't appear in their home. They received them at work, if they received them at all. Maybe some of them included death threats.

When did the replies appear? Instantaneously? No. Days later. Maybe weeks. Months in the case of monthly magazines.

Once the letter was printed, how many people read it? How many clipped it for their "personal knowledge management," or to assemble "the receipts"? Chances are the whole thing was forgotten within a couple of days.

All of that was a consequence of the limited resources of a dead-tree broadcast technology. There were similar processes for over-the-air broadcast technologies, with perhaps higher barriers or tighter constraints.

But we democratized media. Anyone can be a journalist, a broadcaster, an editor. Anyone can search for, and save (forever), provocative things uttered online by anyone. It is never forgotten.

This democratization of the "power" of technology was supposed to be a good thing. How's that working out?

I'm too lazy to check, but I wonder if the incidence of police-involved killings has decreased since the advent of the "smart" phone and social media? Call me cynical, but I rather think not. I would compare it with a similar period after the video of the Rodney King beating. Are there parallels?

I think we can thank smart phones for the widespread introduction of body-worn cameras, when they're turned on anyway. Has that reduced the incidence of police-involved shootings? I don't know, but I'd say that's a second-order effect of the smart phone that can be considered a "positive."

"Social" media was born with the BBSs in the 80s. I don't know, but I suspect that's where the term "flame war" originated.

We removed the friction to respond to something instantly, even at 300 baud at $.05 per minute. It introduced the relative anonymity of online handles, and a the notion that a "person" was little more little than the manifestation of words on a screen. All the "social" cues we'd learned and embodied over millennia were missing, and our id was unleashed. (Should make some pop-culture reference to Forbidden Planet here.)

I've argued for some time that we need to establish some form of "public health" system for "online communities," and I use the word "community" advisedly. We have hygiene standards for public places. They have bathrooms, bathrooms have handwashing facilities. We used to require vaccinations for highly communicable diseases. We have ways of transporting, treating and disposing of human waste. They're imperfect, but they're a world a way from the days of dumping your chamber pot into the street, which is the experience we have today with "social media," and everyone dumping their shit into the "public square online."

A branch of mental health that focuses on "social hygiene," how to get along with other people in a world where the place you encounter the most people is this disembodied experience of being terminally "online."

But that's not likely in my lifetime. And I think civilization has begun its decent and we won't be making any "improvements" anymore. It'll be mostly inadequate efforts at "damage control."

"Know thyself." We invented a technology with zero knowledge or insight into how people would behave with it.

We're learning, but it's much too late.

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