Learning To Let Go

My first thought was to share it with a group of my best mates on Telegram. But it’s 6:30 and I know if I do so, they’ll wake and greet the morning with my acrid response to a terrible morning of horrible media coverage. So I don’t.

My mind takes me to finding the best alternative. Clearly it won’t be Twitter because Prince Harry is not the name of the hill I intend to die on, so Facebook makes perfect sense. As a private network my groans will likely get between five and fifty reactions and two and six sets of comments from friends, who are less likely to call me a traitor and tell me to hang myself or leave the country than the average person on Twitter currently engaged in the conversation.

“What’s on your mind, Michael?”

I start to turn my thoughts into words, as I type Facebook changes from the large font to small.

Then I stop.

Before all this, I’d taken my daily morning scroll through a broad selection of media titles to see what the big topics of the day are, which angles are the most engaging, and how the attention jigsaw pieces together at that moment.

This morning was all about the new Prince Harry interview. While British tabloids were each running upwards of a dozen articles on Harry, coverage in the international press was more focussed on the flame of democracy spluttering in the wind overnight in Brazil, as fascists stormed their congress attempting to overthrow the week old government, in scenes not too distant from Jan 6th in the US.

Also this morning has come news that the British government are phasing out the energy bill support, as the prices are due to increase another 20%. This comes hand in hand with projections that the average household will end 2023 about £2,100 worse off than it’s starting the year. In fact, forecasts show disposable income is set to fall a further 7% in 2024 and it could be 2028 before it returns to levels comparable to before the pandemic.

Focussing on Harry’s interview in light of immediate troubles at home and abroad feels like passengers on a sinking Titanic stopping to read a seven page formal complaint that the soup was a little salty that evening, as armed fascists storm the bridge declaring the iceberg was fake news.

I’ve stopped typing on Facebook because I’ve become acutely aware I’m about to cross over from an objective observer into a full on participant in the outrage industrial complex.

My post would do nothing more than further the conversation to fresh eyes, making them dwell longer on the story and Facebook itself, registering it as an engaging topic to my friends, increasingly the likelihood of them receiving further similar miserable content in future.

My moment of contempt would make everyone’s mornings a little worse, and Meta a little richer.

A dozen likes and couple of comments in return feels a poor payoff.

When I was a chatroom moderator, almost twenty years ago now, I used to have the following Nietzsche quote beneath my monitor:

Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you

I know it’s a cliché, but it reminded me to never take any of the hits personally, to remain pragmatic and to get the job done.

I’d taken the quote and lesson from a friend who worked reviewing reported content on behalf of a photo hosting platform. I’ve seen some serious shit in my time, including bomb threats and a podophile quoting my IP address back at me after I cut them off mid-conversation with a child. However it was nothing compared to what my friend saw as he sat for eight hours a day reviewing twenty or thirty images a minute of the worst of humanity.

I click the little X in the top right hand corner of the post and it’s gone. The first posts in my feed reappeared beneath it. My screen is filled by a meme posted yesterday by a wonderful woman I’ve known for maybe fifteen years and has worked in wardrobe, props and as a tech in Vegas shows for most of that time. I laugh aloud.

Social media is what we make of it. We decide what we do with our attention and time online.

Algorithms will always show us what’s most likely to keep us engaged and present on their platforms for the longest, and in turn publishers are going to pen and print as many articles as possible that are going to get the best organic and viral reach, maximising clicks and the number of impressions on the Subway adverts surrounding those stories on their own websites. Evolutionary and social psychology predicts the most successful stories will be negative, and the data from social platforms confirms that to be correct.

You don’t have to let it dictate your mood, actions or how you invest your time though. I know it can feel incredibly hard to do nothing in the face of injustice and stupidity, but we have to learn to let go.

There’s a common belief that magicians can’t watch magic, because they see all the wires and can predict the prestige. If you speak to a couple, you’ll find that’s BS though. In a similar way, just because we work in marketing, PR, social media or some other community or communications role, doesn’t mean we’re impervious to the glamour of the media and strong emotional responses content seeks to provoke.

In a world of royal experts, sometimes it’s fine just to be a slutty rake. Maybe even preferable.

Maybe you should print that off and stick it beneath your monitor?