The Social Dilemma Employs All the Tools It Criticises
Just watched The Social Dilemma. Yes, very aware of the irony of posting about this online. I’m a vat of contradictions, sue me.
Some loose thoughts:
1. Yes, yes, fascinating, important, some amazing quotes, essential themes.
But also:
2. For a film talking about the manipulation of technology it does employ an awful lot of cheesy cinematic devices — it all felt very nineties to me, from the awkward computer animation, the score that appeared to have been composed by a rudimental algorithm fed with the words “ominous” and “atmospheric”, oh and the homeshopping channel level of acting.
3. The talking heads look oddly similar. We mostly see eloquent American dudes who worked for — then eventually became conscientious objectors at — the big tech firms (including that destroyer of democracy: Pinterest). What they say is fascinating, but I agree with a biting article by Maria Farrell (“the prodigal techbro”). In it, she writes how the people who never sold their souls to begin with, namely the activists fighting at the fringes for years against all this stuff, are barely heard. Meanwhile, all the world’s attention goes to what Farrell calls the “prodigal techbros”, who first benefited from the big tech world, then made a U-turn. Not that this perspective isn’t valid, it’s just that it’s also dominates in this documentary. In this way, The Social Dilemma remains stuck in its own solipsistic tech-bubble, biting its own tail.
4. For a documentary attempting to make us aware of the way social media polarises, it is a very one-sided narrative that has all the nuance of an awkwardly made political campaign ad. I get that the aim is to jolt people awake. But the examples provided do not show how the insidiousness of it all truly works in all its subtlety. Viewers are beaten into submission with the words we’ve all been primed to fear: social media = addiction, drugs, cortex-thingies (sorry, ask a neuroscientist), we’re all puppets. Drugs are baaaad. Even small kids know that phones are addictive. And yet, the how of these more nuanced machinations is barely explored, even if this is what we truly need to know.
5. Watching The Social Dilemma feels like being repeatedly squashed by an anvil (or a 1950s computer). A truly tasteless segment shows dead Rohingya to illustrate the far-reaching effects of political manipulation on facebook. It does not explain how the genocide came about or what role social media played here exactly. Just: here’s some dead children. Here’s facebook. See? Awful. OK — did you secrete your adrenalin? (that’s ok, this documentary is about how we should not manipulate dopamine, a different fluid / transmitter thingy (again, ask a neuroscientist)) Great. Now let’s go back to where we all should be! Namely: our all-American family.
The horrendous things happening in that country (what was its name again. Doesn’t matter.) appear to just serve as a warning, like a photo of blackened lungs on a cigarette package. Whom we should really care about are the fictional family, especially their son (full of promise and potential, with the eyes of a poet in the throes of typhoid fever) who cannot stop looking at his phone. This phone is filled with three Vincent Kartheisers all conspiring to keep him glued to his device forever so he dies of starvation.
We are also meant to bask in the halo of his conscience-of-the-family-and-the-nation sister Cass (like her mythical namesake Cassandra, Cass’ vital warnings are ignored a lot more easily than facebook notifications). Cass consistently wears the beatific expression of a mediaeval saint or a model in a Jehova’s Witness flyer. Her retro realness befits the only fictional character in The Social Dilemma not addicted to their phone.
6. Causality and correlation are interchangeable: we see a phenomenon, e.g. increasing suicide rates in young girls, and the influence of social media is proven simply by pointing at the dates: Look! A spike in suicides in 2011 — that’s when lots of people started using facebook! Facebook kills young girls! The documentary is filled with these kinds of things — this is not to say that the causality isn’t there, it’s just that the connections are presented by sheer emotional force and vague graphs rather than clear, scientific evidence. A ploy not that different from the conspiracy videos this documentary is so critical of.
So… should you watch The Social Dilemma? Of course you should. Because I just wrote this post and my hypothalamus (correct?) is now waiting to produce serotonin (right?) and it won’t start secreting until you comment on my post and clap until your virtual hands hurt. Don’t be responsible for my downfall, you hold the strings to my marionette arms & soul.
