Death of the private self: how 15 years of Facebook changed the human condition | Hacker News Reader

Death of the private self: how 15 years of Facebook changed the human condition

theguardian.com

39 pointsrapnie16 comments

One of the things that annoys me most about modern journalism is the use of "we" and "our" as if everyone in the population does the thing or has the experience that is being described. So I find it somehow ironic that a journalist is grieving the loss of private selves when he doesn't even recognize an individual self.

The "we" being used aims to articulate that a particular trend is visible in society in general; it does not include everyone, and it may not even include the reader. This kind of phrasing in the most general sense is sometimes necessary to firstly avoid looking patronizing and secondly to show that the author considers themselves so humble as to be part of the group under analysis. The trend may be at least partly inherited from critical theory.

How ever it's justified, it's a style choice. It can just as easily be replaced with a sentence or two that provides some actual statistical context like the percentage of users from various demographic groups. That would serve to increase my engagement rather than having the opposite effect of making me want to stop reading. But maybe it's just me.

I still don't get it at all. As someone who has had a facebook account since like 2009ish? I'm of the right age-cohort to be hooked into my phone like the groups these people are referring to. But in the 10 years I've had a facebook account, I rarely ever used it except as a way to message people really. I don't understand how anyone could look at a newsfeed and find good content there. Even in the 'good era' of facebook before all these ads it was still a bunch of trash I didn't want to look at.

I can't image how anyone would want to look at their phone scrolling through this kind of garbage for any extended period.

Here's an interesting read for you: http://glusman.blogspot.com/2010/02/malcovich-bias-over-year...

Are there anywhere you can get Malkovich Bias scores to see just how out of the ordinary your web use habits are?

>I don't understand how anyone could look at a newsfeed and find good content there.

Uh, "this kind of garbage" is the stuff your friends posted, right? You don't understand how anyone could have friends that post good stuff? I was going to suggest to you find friends that post better stuff on FB, but on second thoughts i can think of more worthwhile goals. :-)

I hardly ever read my newsfeed these days either, just chat & message, but I do have friends who post good stuff, e.g. angry political stuff fighting for justice and against corruption in Australia, India, Latin America, Philippines etc. And am in some groups that post good stuff! (Yes it's true hehe)

I do get garbage too, yes - usually I unfollow or defriend if necessary.

Zuckerberg said it himself in 2010: "The Age of Privacy Is Over" [1]

[1] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/external/readwri...

But he didn't mean it for himself, because he of course doesn't want to be a victim of this "new world" that he made up to legitimize his little evil empire.

What I love about this whole wave of social media overdosing is that during the hangover people might "look in the mirror" and try to re-find their private, inner self. I see a reversion from extrinsic focus to intrinsic focus which is going to lead to an explosion of creativity across the world and can give us back our messy, fun internet.

Love this optimistic outlook!

Pretty soon I'm going to be so irked that I may have to write an article "Death of the Individual: How Countless Pseudo-spiritual Personal Essays on Transcending Social Platforms Reaffirms the Utter Banality of the Human Psyche"

Better idea: Change your name to Wallace F. Davidson, write this same article but in novel form, publish it under the title "Infinite Mess", become best-selling author, send me a check for $200,000 when you become a millionaire.

The private self is a rather recent invention. Human beings have lived communally ever since the original forager tribes. That means the whole family sleeping in a single room, and then getting up in the morning to go out and collectively hunt or gather, and then coming back and sitting around in the camp talking and engaging in other activities. With farming you are still doing things as a family. With both foraging and agricultural societies, anything important that happened in a person's life would be known to everyone else, and original thoughts contrary to the cultural consensus were virtually unknown.

More recently in the modern era, thanks in part to Greek philosophy, city living, and the printing press, the idea developed of a private self that needed to be protected against the culture and society.

Now with social media we have gone back to the public self, but unfortunately it is in various ways much more dysfunctional than the original communal self was.

I never signed up for an account...* writing on the wall for this was clear from the get-go, it's only in the last 18 months that the sit has started hitting the fan in the media. Took a long time.

Though FB creates "ghost" accounts for users who never formally registered...

I wonder if some of last quarter's profit is being poured in producing op-ed pieces to attempt to slow the traffic bleed... My son and his buddies call them fagedbook and instagramma.

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