Paying the Price for Pleasure (Day 15)

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, all pleasure machines for the masses of the twentieth century. Reading the first chapter of Anti-social media by Siva Vaidhyanathan puts things in perspective for what it truly means to be online and what could come of it in due time. Broken down into comparisons to games like Candy Crush and chips to cupcakes in a given scenario the use of media today is turned on its head. In a sense through the important study of images on social media like the hotornot.com trend to the rise in Instagram over Hipstamatic, the pleasure of being online can be shown in a different light. I think the best way to sum up this dangerous system of time consumption for commerce in attention can be described on page 68 where Siva Vaidhyanathan describes the reasoning behind images shared on Instagram and Facebook,


 “ The experience of posting images to Facebook and Instagram is habit forming. “People often desire approval, or at least acknowledgment, from their peers. Clicking “like” on a photo says, “I’m thinking about you.” A comment could indicate even deeper attention. The commerce in attention—a sort of “gift economy” of time and energy—is powerful and valuable. Like a gambling machine, rewards (likes and comments) are intermittent and unpredictable. A photo posted to Instagram could garner dozens of responses, while the same one posted on Facebook could generate none. The algorithms that determine which photos pop up on whose feeds in both services are opaque and unpredictable—just like the algorithms that fix the cards in video poker or fruit on a fruit machine" (68).


 This so called “gift economy of time and energy” is the pleasure system that merits caution in the use of these media platforms. A great example is the 50 passengers found on the plane playing Candy Crush showing no real emotion but the constant effort and time the entire flight matching different colored candies together for hours on end showing the dangers of posting to this new media form not just with images but with any post. Driven by the system of likes and comments it can be unpredictable almost like gambling but with connections you make online and the content you put out there for them to look at. Keep pulling the lever to the game and you just might go for broke, taking away your life, your friends, your family. All your relationships to others outside of the ones on social media are at stake with this trend in media. “Social stickiness” is the game media platforms are playing today, the more you put in it does not necessarily mean your going to get the same out of it. That is why I would like to introduce the new studies and research being done on this new phenomenon of determining social media as a pleasure machine. This idea is no different than any other pleasure we seek in society, every one of them coming with negative outcomes especially with addiction. We need to tread carefully as we continue the use of images and other posts on social media because it can eventually hurt us in the long run. I think the best way to argue the importance of this pleasure machine we use constantly today is finding parallels in other areas of life where people try to find pleasure. A good example would be the use of coffee; a large majority of people uses this everyday, some even not able to start their day without it. As with any pleasure system there are setbacks just like with coffee, although most of the time you only get really bad headaches after not consuming coffee for a day or two, the affects of the pleasure system on social media can have lasting effects. I know it sounds crazy but hear me out media has become so popular and used it is like any other thing that we find pleasure in and that is put time and effort into it sometimes a little too much time. One could say you could lose touch with the world around you in a sense. Parallels have been drawn to this pleasure on social media as being the new opiate for the masses of today’s youth and society as a whole. An article by Noah Smith with some data on the matter as well as a few good points gives a good direction for the argument I am trying to make on the subject matter of social media being a pleasure machine and with any pleasure machine there is addiction which if not controlled and treated properly can become an large scale issue/epidemic especially one where nobody even knows they are addicted. Here is the page so that you can do some digging yourself into the article as well as the data and theories surrounding the idea of social media addiction.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-04/social-media-use-bears-similarities-to-drug-addiction

 Through the data one can understand the parallels between the two from the anxiety from nonuse to the decrease in real life social participation and academic achievement to the constant daily use of media it is hard not to see this pleasure machine as addicting. If given enough research like any other addiction whether that be from drug use to other pleasure machines this problem can be caught before it gets out of hand. Hopefully by sharing this parallel to drug addiction, the viewers of this blog post will proceed with caution and help others not fall into the trap of the new pleasure of the twentieth century social media.