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I was listening to an interview with the creators of Black Mirror on Note to Self, and Charlie Brooker said something (around minute 19:45 if you want to click over and listen for about two minutes) that I’ve been turning around in my head for days.

He created a documentary about video games, and he was counting down the most influential video games.

We put Twitter at number one, and people got really annoyed.  Twitter isn’t a game!  Don’t be an idiot!  Well, it is, actually.  It’s a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, in which you play a character based on yourself, but who isn’t yourself, in order to gather followers and points effectively and influence.  That’s what it is.  We’re all playing a role-playing game.  That’s what social media is.

He points out that it’s also a communication tool, but putting these addictive little goals like retweets into the mix or showing your follower count also makes it a game.  Communication tools usually aren’t something you can “win” or “lose.”  But, clearly, some people are “winning” at Twitter, at least as counted by the mainstream.

I am myself on Twitter, but only part of myself.  I don’t say everything on Twitter, only things I think are worth putting up on Twitter.  Which means that — by default — you’re getting a curated version of myself.  You can certainly use Twitter without writing anything on the site or having anyone follow you, but the mainstream use of Twitter does have more in common with role-playing games than a communication tool like a pamphlet.

How many pamphlets come with a number floating over it telling you how many people have picked it up?  You can’t count how many times people have passed along a pamphlet, and you’re not influenced to take one due to seeing that number.  It is strictly a communication tool, and either you want the information or you don’t.

Twitter, on the other hand, has a lot of numbers floating around that guide your hand to click follow, too.

What do you think?  Is Twitter a game?

Last week’s Now I Know linked to an old story (well, Internet old — it’s from 2009) about Wired’s Evan Ratliff trying to disappear, and setting up a contest to see how difficult it would be to start a new life in the digital age.  He writes:

The idea for the contest started with a series of questions, foremost among them: How hard is it to vanish in the digital age? Long fascinated by stories of faked deaths, sudden disappearances, and cat-and-mouse games between investigators and fugitives, I signed on to write a story for Wired about people who’ve tried to end one life and start another. People fret about privacy, but what are the consequences of giving it all up, I wondered. What can investigators glean from all the digital fingerprints we leave behind? You can be anybody you want online, sure, but can you reinvent yourself in real life?

He tries to remove anything “trackable” such as cell phones, credit cards, or toll transponders and see if he can start over without anyone knowing where he is in the world.  (Remember, this was years ago before we got even more trackable.)

An online community of amateur sleuths springs up trying to find out every last speck of information about Evan Ratliff.  In compiling this information, they work to pinpoint possible routes he could have taken when he went on the run or places where he may have slipped up — digitally or in-person — and reveal his whereabouts.

I’m not going to ruin the ending — you’ll have to read the whole article or skip to the end to discover if he succeeds. (It’s worth reading the whole article, I promise.)  And it’s not exactly the same as what would happen if the average person tried to disappear and there wasn’t a bounty on their head encouraging everyone to look for them.

It’s more an interesting exercise in considering all the ways you are being tracked as you move through your day, knowing that the ways have only grown since he tried this in 2009.  On one hand, it’s a little bit comforting thinking that you are pinpointed.  Noticed.  Your existence confirmed.  On the other hand, it’s a little bit discomforting thinking that you are pinpointed.  Noticed.  Your existence tracked and analyzed, usually to sell you a product.

Probably the most interesting article I read all week, and one that I missed when it was written back in 2009.  Thanks, Now I Know!

On a day celebrating winning the right to form a new country, I want to talk about failing.

I think it’s fair to say that no one sets out to fail, and therefore no one finds it particularly easy to fail.  When you have dedicated time and effort and emotional energy toward a project, no one wants to hit a gatekeeper — actual (like an employer saying you’re not right for the job) or intangible (like [cough] an embryo refusing to burrow in deep).

It’s also fair to say that some people are better at rolling with the punches.  They switch to Plan B and are equally happy with the new path.  Or they close the door on an idea and don’t look back.  They take a day or two to cry, and then let it go.  Or they double down and continue to bang against the same gate, assuming that at some point it will open with enough sustained force.

The New York Times recently covered an initiative at Smith College called Failing Well.  People are speaking openly about their most spectacular fails, even projecting them on campus screens, and in doing so, are trying to get people more comfortable with the idea that they won’t always see their best efforts rewarded; their best ideas embraced.

The New York Times writes,

“What we’re trying to teach is that failure is not a bug of learning, it’s the feature,” said Rachel Simmons, a leadership development specialist in Smith’s Wurtele Center for Work and Life and a kind of unofficial “failure czar” on campus. “It’s not something that should be locked out of the learning experience. For many of our students — those who have had to be almost perfect to get accepted into a school like Smith — failure can be an unfamiliar experience. So when it happens, it can be crippling.”

When they talk about crippling failure, they’re not talking about people failing classes or getting rejected from graduate school.  They’re talking about the small failures of everyday life: failed relationships and club rejections and disliked room assignments.  I guess the school’s belief (and they’re not the only college participating in resilience training) is that if students can’t roll with the small stuff, how will they roll with the large stuff?

But maybe the answer is that there is no way to prepare yourself for the large stuff.  That you can only prepare yourself for the small stuff and then muddle through the large stuff when it comes your way.  I’m just thinking about infertility; nothing could have prepared me for getting through that with grace.

To expect a person to get through it with grace is too much pressure.  Now I’m not only dealing with the failure itself but being a failure at failing?  So, yes, I think resilience is wonderful.  Being able to problem solve and dream up Plan Bs is wonderful.  Accepting that you need to get through the suck and that things will hopefully be different in the future is wonderful.  But expectations beyond that feel too heavy because they feel tied to personality.  Some people embrace change and others run from it screaming.  All of that has to be taken into account, too.

Anyway, I thought the initiative was interesting as was the coverage of it and the questions asked in the article.  What are your thoughts?

I read about something interesting in a recent Clover newsletter, but I haven’t been able to find this information anywhere else online.  So I’m turning to you, Instagram users, to tell me if it’s true, and everyone else to ask what you think.

So Clover states about Instagram:

The platform—which is no stranger to hate speech—created a tool that uses AI to flag abuse. It’ll remove mean comments without notifying the trolls themselves (so the content will still show on their feed, but nobody else’s). The goal is to “foster kind, inclusive communities.”

I am a very inactive Instagram user. I have never posted a picture, and I only follow my niece, sister, and sister-in-law.  (You never miss a post if you only follow three people!)  So I’ve never seen hate comments on Instagram.  Everywhere else on the Internet, yes, but I’m on Instagram infrequently and have never received a comment since I have posted zero images.

So… is this true?  Clover makes it sound like flagging abuse (or AI flagging abuse) will stop the comment from showing up in anyone else’s feed, but the troll will have no idea.  They’ll think their comments are still hanging around, but no one will actually be seeing them.

And if it is true… I don’t know.  I mean, I could see this helpful in the case of certain individuals who are purposefully trying to press buttons.  But in the case of people who say one bone-headed thing?  How will they learn what not to say if no one actually calls them on it?  Plus, it sounds like a really cowardly way of dealing with hate speech.  Clover is stating that Instagram is going to pretend the content is still up but SURPRISE it’s actually not posted anywhere but the troll’s feed?

And, moreover, what may be a horrible comment to one person may not be a horrible comment to someone else.  There is a big difference between Clover’s “mean comment” and actual hate speech or threats (direct or indirect).  Someone could leave a comment on this post stating, “this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever read!” (And I’m sure someone will now do that because I’ve written that example.)  That is a mean comment.  According to Clover, if someone left a comment like that on Instagram, I could flag it (or an AI could flag it) and no one would be able to see it except the person who left the comment.  And the person would never know and would be ten times more likely to do it again in the future.

Not really sure how I feel about this feature if it exists, or if Clover got it totally wrong.

You know that fable type in which the animal is trying to figure out their purpose in the community and by the end of the story, they’ve learned that their purpose is not X, Y, or Z.  Their purpose is W, and now that they know that, they’re at peace because they’ve found their place in life.

(And usually this involves a job like being the fiddle player for all the other mice, and no one wonders how mice have gotten their hands on a mini fiddle to find this out.)

I think my purpose is to always be there.  There is defined by however you know me.  So if you know me through this blog, my role is to always write this blog.  If you know me through my workplace, my role is to keep doing my job there.  If you know me through our coding club, my role is to keep attending the coding club.

I am terrible at so many things, but I am excellent at sticking around.  I do everything I do for a long period of time.

*******

I’ve heard this a lot throughout my life.  People go and when they come back, they comment, “Oh!  You’re still here.”

For instance, I was a camp counselor at the same camp year after year after year.  People would be my camper.  They would leave.  They would return years later as a counselor and say, “Oh!  You’re still here.”

I hear that with the blog a lot.  A person participates in the community, writing and reading blogs.  They stop writing and reading for a few years.  Something moves them to return to writing their blog, and they poke around to see if people they know are still writing because the blogging landscape looks so different.  They find me and state, “Oh!  You’re still here.”

I was thinking about this because variations of that comment came up a few times on the 11th blogoversary post.  It seems like such a low bar to clear: Show up.  Keep doing the thing you’re doing.  Don’t change.

But reading those comments changed my mind about my steadfastness.  Maybe my purpose is to just show up.  To be a constant.  To still be doing something, an anchor in an ever-changing world.

It’s not a bad role.  At least, it’s not worse than a mouse with a fiddle.

Do you change a lot, or are you usually doing the same thing in the same place year after year after year?