This. Hit. So. Hard. You ladies have done such a good job of astutely observing and then distilling the zeitgeist. I’m adding a couple of links to Substack pieces by the Progressivists that I think are pretty relevant to the topic. It’s time to throttle the outrage, stop feeding into and reacting to the algorithm, and begin the difficult but necessary work of engaging in our communities.
I've been thinking of this SO MUCH, not least because I am a lefty in a VERY red state, and because I work from home... the "real world" seems harder to access lately.
Genuinely really appreciated this whole podcast, friends! My only concern regarding social media, et al, is that it genuinely is a critical space for disabled people. A lot of the offline spaces able-bodied people gather to make change are not accessible for a variety of disabled people. I don’t have a good answer, but it’s important that we are thinking and talking about making sure we include disability activists in our collective activism. We’re not free until ALL OF US are free.
A related question I have is: where does exiting social media en masse leave us in terms of acquiring actual information we might need for like, survival?? For example, I'm chronically ill and immunocompromised and I get all of my reliable Covid (and other public health info) updates from TikTok and Twitter, because US public health officials essentially abandoned the dissemination of accurate and reliable public health info....an issue that's only going to get worse with this new admin. Sadly this includes many, many doctors and healthcare professionals, as well, many of whom pose a barrier of entry via cost, anyway. I'm looking for genuine ideas here, not trying to play devils advocate! I would *love* to delete my Twitter account.
this is obviously a much bigger conversation but: tldr i don't think the internet in general is a waste of time, and there are SO many groups and uses of social media that will remain valuable even as it continues to degrade. so if you can't leave the house, then yes, of course, the internet will continue to be a huge resource for you. as for a mass exit: the world is big enough for different people to have different roles. I have people i deeply admire who do all their work on social media, and people i deeply admire who wouldn't touch social media with a ten foot pole. So i doubt that *all* smart and credible people will leave social media, and i certainly don't think that's the goal! I think the point is that it is *essential* for those who can organize in the outside world to do so, because that is the only way to fight for everyone (including those who cannot organize in the outside world). hope that makes sense!
I think what I’m hearing is that intentional community might be the key. Irl activists being in community folks who have different levels of entry and skills. Bridges and open minds.
Yes! In the past 5 years, the social media I’ve spent the most time on is where I’ve created community. Usually in discord, or in discords that I found from TikTok creators.
Another banger of an episode and as always, I learned so much and have never thought about these issues quite in this way.
I majored in history in college and love reading and learning about the history of almost anything through books, museums, film, etc. One major point that several of my professors drove home is to consider who is authoring or narrating and shaping the historical accounts you're consuming, and how do their interests impact the angle. Not a novel idea by any means, but it's always in my mind as I consume these different mediums. The conclusion of this episode brought that point front and center for me around what stories and voices are even accessible to Americans and what are the motives of the people restricting who and what we have access to. How is their power and control threatened by hearing the experiences and opinions of others outside the U.S.? It feels like stories from friends who grew up in extremely religious Christian communities where they were discouraged from traveling or questioning anything because they were told it could open them up to evils, or something of the sort, but really, it was just a way of continuing to exert religious control.
Your discussion on Rednote was fascinating as well when thinking about that being the first opportunity most people in the US have had a chance to hear from directly from people in China. I think this underscores the importance of recording and sharing first-hand accounts from people, experiences, and events, and interpersonal connection. So often, what we hear has been run through some type of propaganda machine. It makes me think how do we as a society have the openness to actually believe others' experiences and not just think that this is what XYZ person/institution warned me about? It makes me want Amanda Montell to do an episode on Sounds Like a Cult about America because I'm left wondering, is America just a big cult??
omg PLEASE CAN WE PETITION FOR THIS???! @amanda montell if you’re reading: i want to be listening! 💖
on the subject of cults & grand illusions - i once heard USA described as “a third world country wearing a gucci belt” and IT CHANGED ME FOREVER. *i know we’re beyond using ‘third world’ references, but the sentiment remains… coming from australia (which is no “scandinavia”), it is genuinely stressful to imagine what it would be like to live with the woeful healthcare system in USA… that ambulance commentary on red note hit just the same. wild wealth disparity is ruining the planet, and it’s fkn heartbreaking! i appreciated the antidote suggested by this article: https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/on-having-a-maximum-wealth?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
The Rednote discussion was such an eye opener! A friend's son lives there with his wife and children, and he called to check on her in the US. That was the first time I thought, "Oh, maybe we're not getting accurate information."
I really appreciate the observation about why TikTok worked vs everything else. I really did feel like I learned so much on TikTok and while it wasn't free of abrasive interactions, the ratio was much more positive than negative. I've posted a few comments on BlueSky and was called a fascist within the 1st few days.
Could not agree more with the conclusions drawn at the end of the ep. I dumped FB and IG with the ban — and then TikTik as soon it became part of that monolith as well. The revolution won’t be televised… But the division of people who are more like minded than not will definitely be state sponsored.
I really WANT to get rid of Insta and FB, but they are genuinely ways that I keep up with some people I really care about, who are a part of good work. So I will probably stay but keep complaining lol.
Well done episode! It really hit home you talking how Americans and Chinese citizens were have open dialog on Red Note. I lived in China for 9 months and found it to be an amazingly place, with amazing technology, public transit, people etc . People need to get out more and start thinking more critically about what we’ve been told our whole life, that America is superior. It is not. Thanks for the great conversation. I am looking forward to hearing more each week. :)
Ah thank you! I’d love to hear more about your experience living in China if you’re open to it- there’s so much separation between our countries so your kind of story is SO valuable
Of course! I went with my sister and cousins to teach English after college (didn’t want to use my public health degree ). Absolutely hated teaching young kids lol but it was a great experience and we had a fun time. Feel free to ask me anything if you’re ever curious about the experience of living in Guangzhou.
i took notes on this and posted it along with all your references to my Digital Rhetoric class forum. we’ve been discussing algs, app migration, and these weird men, and eventually we’re going to move into a little bit of ai as well. this is my professor’s overall description of the course:
“To what extent is your FYP actually “for you”? Why does mis/disinformation spread so easily on Facebook? What is “data trauma”? How do YouTube’s recommendation algorithms encourage extremism? Meta reported a 2023 Q4 revenue of $40 some-odd billion dollars—what’s the financial model? And why is it…us?
In this course, we will turn to the study of rhetoric to make sense of the simultaneously messy and generative world of social media as it intersects with technology and digital media. Digital rhetoric opens up provocative questions about the intersections between human and machine, habit and intention, interface and mediation, individual agency and communal agency, as well as ongoing fluctuations in trust, memory, literacies, and sociality.
Rhetoric is fundamentally a political art and lens; we will therefore work toward addressing urgent digital problems, such as mediated misogyny, digital surveillance, algorithmic bias, and so on. We will engage current rhetorical studies, media studies, and technology studies scholarship to interrogate how digitality impacts communication and relating—how, that is, we attempt to nudge others (and are nudged by platformization in turn), develop communities, seek information, and continue to get worked over by media just as much as we ourselves work over media. We will extend ancient Greek concepts to explore emergent rhetorics: what does ethos entail in a culture of memes? What can phronesis reveal about the function of hashtags? Why might hexis be a productive in-road into the circulation of deepfakes? We will engage a variety of creative and critical texts, such as guerrilla theorist and curator Neema Githere Siphone’s “Data Healing Workbook,” a film like Spike Jonze’s Her, and Jennifer Egan’s serialized Twitter short story “Black Box.”
This course will undertake a range of brief multimedia projects that require thinking critically about digital rhetorics—assignments such as imitating the style of a genre and analyzing a trend. Ultimately, we will consider whether the internet is ‘broken’ (dead? Brain-rotted?), exploring potential responses to such inquiry questions as, ‘How is public culture both represented and created by digitality?’ and ‘Is data healing possible?’”
YES! i’m graduating from VCU in May with a bachelor’s in political science, and this class was one that interested me looking on the bulletin last semester for registration. it was a special “topics” course (professors literally create these classes at VCU based on their research focuses) that didn’t have a description listed so i kind of went into it blindly, but the professor, Dr. Caddie Alford, has been so incredible, and her focus in her research currently that she’s going to speak about in April at the Southern States Communication association is how Elon&co keep fucking everything up. her book is “Entitled Opinions: Doxa After Digitality”
Katie worked for Zuck 😆 Okay, we need a subscriber segment on how your relationship developed to this point, even having just met in person recently! I love hearing the new little tidbits we all learn about each of you.
As someone who grew up in a small business family and always leaned right, the past 8 years have been wild for me to deconstruct alot of what I believed to be true. I started following you for the trad wife content and have been happily learning ever since. After the election I went to dinner with a new friend who shares alot of new ideas with me. She now wants to put together a Loud Angry Womens Dinner Group. I am so for it. This really drives home how important it is. I have very few people I can talk about this with, I live in very maga leaning areas. I work in very maga leaning areas. I realized posting political rants, or even trying to present the truth online always back fires for me. I do try to sneak real facts in, in actual face to face interactions. Podcasts like this help me with facts to use. Thank you for that.
Re: the TikTok algorithm being scary accurate. Does that mean I should worry about my husband’s intelligence because his For You page has some of the dumbest shit I've ever seen? Including but not limited to videos with a split screen because it's for those with the attention span of a gnat? Seriously worried.
My husband’s fyp is also brain-dead (random crime/law shows from the mid 2000s and pawn stars clips + people playing steel guitar)—I don’t think they are dumb, they’re just some of the last people using the internet for fun/entertainment lol 🥲
Thank you so much for this and for all your other episodes, I think this time specifically, it was really amazing hearing the breakdown of the Israel Palestine war coverage from your perspective. I’m from Israel, and hearing about the war from American social media creators, and then also experiencing it, felt super confusing. Listening to an explanation WHY made so much sense.
Really, really fascinating discussion, and I think the bottom line takeaway of getting connected to community in real life rather than online is a good one.
I hadn’t really considered the way the average American (like, not a weirdo, MAGA-pilled, prepper) falls prey to U.S. propaganda and the difficulty we might have accessing certain info because of suppression and because of algorithms. I think that’s super important for me to ruminate on further next few days and really interrogate what information I’m being fed, what I find when I seek information, etc.
For me, I also want to be careful about painting too rosy of a picture about life in China. When TikTok was melting down and creators were posting about what platforms they were moving towards, Jamelle Bouie posted about how he would not be moving to RedNote because he would not sign up for an app that was plainly Chinese propaganda. Basically, we should not be trading one type of government propaganda for another. So while the insights into the differences between China and the U.S. are illuminating, I do think it’s important to always keep in mind that it’s always possible we’re simply hearing government propaganda that has been synthesized and then parroted to us.
Bottom line: be skeptical of fucking everything online that cannot be verified with your own eyes, and spend more time in the real world.
I'm curious what you mean when you say (or i guess when you echo someone else's sentiments) that the app is "plainly chinese propaganda" - would love your thoughts if you're willing to elaborate!
FWIW- as far as I understand, RedNote is similar to TikTok in that it is owned by a private Chinese company, and therefore does have a number of legal obligations to the Chinese government (like they would have to turn over data to the govt if requested, and probably are required to censor certain topics that the CCP doesn't like, like taiwan etc). But I'm not exactly sure how RedNote would be offering more propaganda than TikTok, unless the assumption here is that interacting directly with Chinese citizens is, in itself, a form of propaganda for China. See what I mean?
Not sure where in this string to put this comment, but I downloaded RedNote and then skimmed the Terms of Service and Privacy Statement and realized that by using the app, I was giving them way more permission to track me, access almost everything on my phone, photos etc, wifi networks, etc. than was worth using the app. Quickly deleted it. I appreciate your re-telling of what happened with it; I'm skeptical that anyone is reading the ToS and PS on any of these apps, but I do wonder what people are giving up by agreeing just to use the app (for all apps).
Love all your podcast episodes, but really loved this one. Gave me so much to think about and reaffirmed my decision to dump FB/IG. Quickly dumped Twitter the day Musk bought it. Not sure why I've hung onto FB (the groups!), and IG I've been on since it started and had one of the initial invitations to join it so my history there is long which makes it feel so.hard. to quit it. Hate Zuckerberg though and def don't want to support anything he's doing, most especially now. So I'm slowly archiving and downloading my content and moving towards leaving. I get so much of my news on IG so will need to figure that aspect out. I'm on Bluesky now and happy to see that many people that I follow have migrated there, but not everyone is (you, Katie, other people whose content I appreciate...).
So first of all, I misremembered the video a bit (not at all shocking that my smooth ass brain concocted a different story), and it’s actually Bouie’s *comment* on his video that states “no, I’m not joining that app I’d rather maintain some distance between me and a direct organ of a foreign state.” (Link to the video here: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8Fwe6jA/) And I think I’d take his sentiments a step further and say that perhaps I’d be better off removed from ALL social media, which more and more appears to be used as a direct organ of the American state.
I feel slightly different from Bouie regarding RedNote being a tool of the Chinese government. When quickly reading up on the app before downloading, it seemed that there are topics that are not allowed in the app (presumably by the Chinese government). Videos on Free Hong Kong or the persecution of the Uyghurs can’t be found, for instance (though I did not search for those topics myself and am only getting this info from U.S. media). For me, it’s not just that the Chinese government has a hand in what is allowed on the app, but I do suspect that those posting on the app could just as easily have fallen prey to the propaganda of their own government the way Americans have fallen victim to our own. And that we’ll basically be trading one type of government propaganda for another.
Also, a last thought, China is not North Korea (and Bouie actually has a later video about how he suspects people are conflating the two when they talk about not having access to information about what life is like in China https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8FwjYqH/). I know people from China. I have friends who travel there frequently for business. I have friends who travel there for pleasure. It is not inaccessible to us. So I think I want to be careful subscribing to the theory that there’s a conspiracy to keep us from knowing things about each other that I can only find out via an app run by the government of a country that IS a geopolitical adversary at this time.
Wait, last last thought: I wonder if part of the surprise over elements of life being great in China might come down to plain old homegrown racism. We can conceive of white Europeans having it better than us, but there are also Asians who might be happier?! BUT HOW?!?! 🥴🫠🙃
It’s tricky — it feels more vital than ever to have connection with both our communities at home and the world at large, but it’s so hard to trust the platforms that allow us to connect with anyone anywhere.
I appreciate the interrogation! I think it’s so important to think critically about what we’re consuming both passively and purposefully and I definitely don’t examine it enough. I feel like I could spend days discussing this stuff!!
ok i just watched both of his videos and some thoughts incoming:
- i generally really like and admire him and appreciated his thoughts
- i still find it a bit odd that he refuses to be on an app that he perceives as "a direct propaganda organ of a foreign state" and that he has no problem being on tiktok? im sure he has some sort of distinction he feels comfortable making, but its going to have to be a hella nuanced one to keep that needle fully threaded!
- i get and understand his point about people "not reading" and about people technically being able to go to China, but also like: yeah, lol, duh? like to me that is not the subtext but the actual text here! of course an elite class of people travel to china/know about chinese culture/are educated on how china is good and bad in real life, but that elite class is not an accurate sample demographic of our country at all! And yes, reading is cheap, get a library card etc, but let's be completely honest with ourselves and acknowledge that asking the average american to do a random self-imposed book report on china is... a failed errand lol, we are lucky if people can make it to the end of an emily henry book at this point in american history. it just feels a bit like a purity test to me, especially coming from someone who is probably predisposed to research and reading in a way that most americans are not. (i'm sensitive about this because i am also predisposed to those things, and im not interested in making other people feel bad for having less time or inclination to do that, for a wide number of reasons)
- also i guess im going to show my own bias/personal frustrations here but like: this man speaks like a man who works for the nytimes. the whole video is designed as a slap-on-the-snoot for people "not knowing things," not "reading enough," not being "curious" enough, etc. very college-coded, very hillary-clinton-calling-people-deplorables coded.
-LASTLY (bless anyone who made it this far): american news and social media networks are, at this point in history, quite literally overrun with misinformation and bad faith takes, so for bouie to kind of tongue-in-cheek be like "no one is lying to you, you're just lazy" is to me a wildly insincere analysis of the media landscape most americans live in. Like you don't have to call it a state-led, big bad boogeyman conspiracy to acknowledge that the average american is literally waterboarded with misinformation whenever they go online, so its weird to me that he takes the approach of kind of shading that concept as being not the case? it is totally the case?
-I appreciate your compassionate stance on people’s lack of inclination for reading and research because it is a stance I wish I had. Instead, I have spent A LOT of time since the election being unbelievably frustrated at the lack of intellectual curiosity and discernment from large swaths of Americans. And it’s not even, “why don’t you read more?” Because if you can sit through an hour of some bullshit incel YouTuber or THREE hours of Joe Rogan, then how about you take an hour to listen to Ezra Klein or Trevor Noah? Take three hours to listen to an audiobook on folks who were sucked into QAnon. I’ve been really frustrated at the way we let ourselves off the hook for our incuriosity. I know that isn’t compassionate or productive, but when you hear enough bad faith arguments or justifications clearly rooted in blatant lies from people you know in real life, it’s really hard to maintain compassion. Like, I am no one special but I’ve managed to figure out how hear something/read something, interrogate it, and verify it with widely trusted sources. Why can’t my cousin with the same (or better!) resources, support, and education as me do the same?
- yes, Bouie’s stance on rednote versus TikTok feels ultimately hypocritical. I wonder if he has justified the distinction in any of his videos. I’d have to look.
- my bias: I do not feel the same strong rage against the NYT as many for a variety of ultimately boring reasons (although ask me how I feel after any given episode of The Daily). So Bouie’s stance of “no one is lying to you” doesn’t rankle me quite as much. If my dumb ass can turn the radio dial to NPR, then so can anyone. But I definitely get where you are coming from with your perspective and you’re right that we ARE faced with a firehouse of misinformation every time we get online if we’re not careful.
- my liberal snobbery (and Bouie’s as well) is not helpful. Intellectually I know that. No one likes the teachers pet. But I am an oldest daughter, advanced learner, workaholic, Capricorn — these snobby characteristics are DEEPLY ROOTED and being worked out in therapy 😅.
I really resonated with where you landed on social media. I’m not helping anyone or doing any good scrolling on social media. I took my family to our local Ethical Society today and it was so refreshing to see a community that resonates with my ideals. I can’t wait for next week and to join. I’ve also signed up to volunteer with the PTO. I’m committed to 2025 being a year for books, movies, and in-person connections. I’m really only still on Facebook for my local Buy Nothing group anyway.
Great episode, Caro and Katie! I’d definitely be interested in connecting IRL with other listeners in my area!
This. Hit. So. Hard. You ladies have done such a good job of astutely observing and then distilling the zeitgeist. I’m adding a couple of links to Substack pieces by the Progressivists that I think are pretty relevant to the topic. It’s time to throttle the outrage, stop feeding into and reacting to the algorithm, and begin the difficult but necessary work of engaging in our communities.
https://open.substack.com/pub/theprogressivists/p/see-no-evil-hear-no-evil-speak-no?r=4jqyjq&utm_medium=ios
https://open.substack.com/pub/theprogressivists/p/the-revolution-will-not-be-in-your?r=4jqyjq&utm_medium=ios
THANK YOU for these articles!
I've been thinking of this SO MUCH, not least because I am a lefty in a VERY red state, and because I work from home... the "real world" seems harder to access lately.
“We have freedom of speech, but not freedom of choice” HOLY SHIT
she really blew my mind with that one
This whole episode. I was with you the whole way.
that HIT
Genuinely really appreciated this whole podcast, friends! My only concern regarding social media, et al, is that it genuinely is a critical space for disabled people. A lot of the offline spaces able-bodied people gather to make change are not accessible for a variety of disabled people. I don’t have a good answer, but it’s important that we are thinking and talking about making sure we include disability activists in our collective activism. We’re not free until ALL OF US are free.
A related question I have is: where does exiting social media en masse leave us in terms of acquiring actual information we might need for like, survival?? For example, I'm chronically ill and immunocompromised and I get all of my reliable Covid (and other public health info) updates from TikTok and Twitter, because US public health officials essentially abandoned the dissemination of accurate and reliable public health info....an issue that's only going to get worse with this new admin. Sadly this includes many, many doctors and healthcare professionals, as well, many of whom pose a barrier of entry via cost, anyway. I'm looking for genuine ideas here, not trying to play devils advocate! I would *love* to delete my Twitter account.
this is obviously a much bigger conversation but: tldr i don't think the internet in general is a waste of time, and there are SO many groups and uses of social media that will remain valuable even as it continues to degrade. so if you can't leave the house, then yes, of course, the internet will continue to be a huge resource for you. as for a mass exit: the world is big enough for different people to have different roles. I have people i deeply admire who do all their work on social media, and people i deeply admire who wouldn't touch social media with a ten foot pole. So i doubt that *all* smart and credible people will leave social media, and i certainly don't think that's the goal! I think the point is that it is *essential* for those who can organize in the outside world to do so, because that is the only way to fight for everyone (including those who cannot organize in the outside world). hope that makes sense!
I think what I’m hearing is that intentional community might be the key. Irl activists being in community folks who have different levels of entry and skills. Bridges and open minds.
Yes! In the past 5 years, the social media I’ve spent the most time on is where I’ve created community. Usually in discord, or in discords that I found from TikTok creators.
Another banger of an episode and as always, I learned so much and have never thought about these issues quite in this way.
I majored in history in college and love reading and learning about the history of almost anything through books, museums, film, etc. One major point that several of my professors drove home is to consider who is authoring or narrating and shaping the historical accounts you're consuming, and how do their interests impact the angle. Not a novel idea by any means, but it's always in my mind as I consume these different mediums. The conclusion of this episode brought that point front and center for me around what stories and voices are even accessible to Americans and what are the motives of the people restricting who and what we have access to. How is their power and control threatened by hearing the experiences and opinions of others outside the U.S.? It feels like stories from friends who grew up in extremely religious Christian communities where they were discouraged from traveling or questioning anything because they were told it could open them up to evils, or something of the sort, but really, it was just a way of continuing to exert religious control.
Your discussion on Rednote was fascinating as well when thinking about that being the first opportunity most people in the US have had a chance to hear from directly from people in China. I think this underscores the importance of recording and sharing first-hand accounts from people, experiences, and events, and interpersonal connection. So often, what we hear has been run through some type of propaganda machine. It makes me think how do we as a society have the openness to actually believe others' experiences and not just think that this is what XYZ person/institution warned me about? It makes me want Amanda Montell to do an episode on Sounds Like a Cult about America because I'm left wondering, is America just a big cult??
omg the idea of a Sounds Like a Cult episode about America i am GAGGED
omg PLEASE CAN WE PETITION FOR THIS???! @amanda montell if you’re reading: i want to be listening! 💖
on the subject of cults & grand illusions - i once heard USA described as “a third world country wearing a gucci belt” and IT CHANGED ME FOREVER. *i know we’re beyond using ‘third world’ references, but the sentiment remains… coming from australia (which is no “scandinavia”), it is genuinely stressful to imagine what it would be like to live with the woeful healthcare system in USA… that ambulance commentary on red note hit just the same. wild wealth disparity is ruining the planet, and it’s fkn heartbreaking! i appreciated the antidote suggested by this article: https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/on-having-a-maximum-wealth?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
The Rednote discussion was such an eye opener! A friend's son lives there with his wife and children, and he called to check on her in the US. That was the first time I thought, "Oh, maybe we're not getting accurate information."
I really appreciate the observation about why TikTok worked vs everything else. I really did feel like I learned so much on TikTok and while it wasn't free of abrasive interactions, the ratio was much more positive than negative. I've posted a few comments on BlueSky and was called a fascist within the 1st few days.
Yeah it’s super fascinating to unpack
Could not agree more with the conclusions drawn at the end of the ep. I dumped FB and IG with the ban — and then TikTik as soon it became part of that monolith as well. The revolution won’t be televised… But the division of people who are more like minded than not will definitely be state sponsored.
I really WANT to get rid of Insta and FB, but they are genuinely ways that I keep up with some people I really care about, who are a part of good work. So I will probably stay but keep complaining lol.
Well done episode! It really hit home you talking how Americans and Chinese citizens were have open dialog on Red Note. I lived in China for 9 months and found it to be an amazingly place, with amazing technology, public transit, people etc . People need to get out more and start thinking more critically about what we’ve been told our whole life, that America is superior. It is not. Thanks for the great conversation. I am looking forward to hearing more each week. :)
Ah thank you! I’d love to hear more about your experience living in China if you’re open to it- there’s so much separation between our countries so your kind of story is SO valuable
Of course! I went with my sister and cousins to teach English after college (didn’t want to use my public health degree ). Absolutely hated teaching young kids lol but it was a great experience and we had a fun time. Feel free to ask me anything if you’re ever curious about the experience of living in Guangzhou.
i took notes on this and posted it along with all your references to my Digital Rhetoric class forum. we’ve been discussing algs, app migration, and these weird men, and eventually we’re going to move into a little bit of ai as well. this is my professor’s overall description of the course:
“To what extent is your FYP actually “for you”? Why does mis/disinformation spread so easily on Facebook? What is “data trauma”? How do YouTube’s recommendation algorithms encourage extremism? Meta reported a 2023 Q4 revenue of $40 some-odd billion dollars—what’s the financial model? And why is it…us?
In this course, we will turn to the study of rhetoric to make sense of the simultaneously messy and generative world of social media as it intersects with technology and digital media. Digital rhetoric opens up provocative questions about the intersections between human and machine, habit and intention, interface and mediation, individual agency and communal agency, as well as ongoing fluctuations in trust, memory, literacies, and sociality.
Rhetoric is fundamentally a political art and lens; we will therefore work toward addressing urgent digital problems, such as mediated misogyny, digital surveillance, algorithmic bias, and so on. We will engage current rhetorical studies, media studies, and technology studies scholarship to interrogate how digitality impacts communication and relating—how, that is, we attempt to nudge others (and are nudged by platformization in turn), develop communities, seek information, and continue to get worked over by media just as much as we ourselves work over media. We will extend ancient Greek concepts to explore emergent rhetorics: what does ethos entail in a culture of memes? What can phronesis reveal about the function of hashtags? Why might hexis be a productive in-road into the circulation of deepfakes? We will engage a variety of creative and critical texts, such as guerrilla theorist and curator Neema Githere Siphone’s “Data Healing Workbook,” a film like Spike Jonze’s Her, and Jennifer Egan’s serialized Twitter short story “Black Box.”
This course will undertake a range of brief multimedia projects that require thinking critically about digital rhetorics—assignments such as imitating the style of a genre and analyzing a trend. Ultimately, we will consider whether the internet is ‘broken’ (dead? Brain-rotted?), exploring potential responses to such inquiry questions as, ‘How is public culture both represented and created by digitality?’ and ‘Is data healing possible?’”
wait this is INCREDIBLE. are you in college? this is a college course you're taking?
YES! i’m graduating from VCU in May with a bachelor’s in political science, and this class was one that interested me looking on the bulletin last semester for registration. it was a special “topics” course (professors literally create these classes at VCU based on their research focuses) that didn’t have a description listed so i kind of went into it blindly, but the professor, Dr. Caddie Alford, has been so incredible, and her focus in her research currently that she’s going to speak about in April at the Southern States Communication association is how Elon&co keep fucking everything up. her book is “Entitled Opinions: Doxa After Digitality”
wow i am so, so thrilled that you all are studying this
Katie worked for Zuck 😆 Okay, we need a subscriber segment on how your relationship developed to this point, even having just met in person recently! I love hearing the new little tidbits we all learn about each of you.
As someone who grew up in a small business family and always leaned right, the past 8 years have been wild for me to deconstruct alot of what I believed to be true. I started following you for the trad wife content and have been happily learning ever since. After the election I went to dinner with a new friend who shares alot of new ideas with me. She now wants to put together a Loud Angry Womens Dinner Group. I am so for it. This really drives home how important it is. I have very few people I can talk about this with, I live in very maga leaning areas. I work in very maga leaning areas. I realized posting political rants, or even trying to present the truth online always back fires for me. I do try to sneak real facts in, in actual face to face interactions. Podcasts like this help me with facts to use. Thank you for that.
It’s a privilege and an honor to deconstruct alongside you, Dinah ❤️
Re: the TikTok algorithm being scary accurate. Does that mean I should worry about my husband’s intelligence because his For You page has some of the dumbest shit I've ever seen? Including but not limited to videos with a split screen because it's for those with the attention span of a gnat? Seriously worried.
My husband’s fyp is also brain-dead (random crime/law shows from the mid 2000s and pawn stars clips + people playing steel guitar)—I don’t think they are dumb, they’re just some of the last people using the internet for fun/entertainment lol 🥲
Thank you so much for this and for all your other episodes, I think this time specifically, it was really amazing hearing the breakdown of the Israel Palestine war coverage from your perspective. I’m from Israel, and hearing about the war from American social media creators, and then also experiencing it, felt super confusing. Listening to an explanation WHY made so much sense.
Really, really fascinating discussion, and I think the bottom line takeaway of getting connected to community in real life rather than online is a good one.
I hadn’t really considered the way the average American (like, not a weirdo, MAGA-pilled, prepper) falls prey to U.S. propaganda and the difficulty we might have accessing certain info because of suppression and because of algorithms. I think that’s super important for me to ruminate on further next few days and really interrogate what information I’m being fed, what I find when I seek information, etc.
For me, I also want to be careful about painting too rosy of a picture about life in China. When TikTok was melting down and creators were posting about what platforms they were moving towards, Jamelle Bouie posted about how he would not be moving to RedNote because he would not sign up for an app that was plainly Chinese propaganda. Basically, we should not be trading one type of government propaganda for another. So while the insights into the differences between China and the U.S. are illuminating, I do think it’s important to always keep in mind that it’s always possible we’re simply hearing government propaganda that has been synthesized and then parroted to us.
Bottom line: be skeptical of fucking everything online that cannot be verified with your own eyes, and spend more time in the real world.
Oh, and fuck our government.
I'm curious what you mean when you say (or i guess when you echo someone else's sentiments) that the app is "plainly chinese propaganda" - would love your thoughts if you're willing to elaborate!
FWIW- as far as I understand, RedNote is similar to TikTok in that it is owned by a private Chinese company, and therefore does have a number of legal obligations to the Chinese government (like they would have to turn over data to the govt if requested, and probably are required to censor certain topics that the CCP doesn't like, like taiwan etc). But I'm not exactly sure how RedNote would be offering more propaganda than TikTok, unless the assumption here is that interacting directly with Chinese citizens is, in itself, a form of propaganda for China. See what I mean?
Not sure where in this string to put this comment, but I downloaded RedNote and then skimmed the Terms of Service and Privacy Statement and realized that by using the app, I was giving them way more permission to track me, access almost everything on my phone, photos etc, wifi networks, etc. than was worth using the app. Quickly deleted it. I appreciate your re-telling of what happened with it; I'm skeptical that anyone is reading the ToS and PS on any of these apps, but I do wonder what people are giving up by agreeing just to use the app (for all apps).
Love all your podcast episodes, but really loved this one. Gave me so much to think about and reaffirmed my decision to dump FB/IG. Quickly dumped Twitter the day Musk bought it. Not sure why I've hung onto FB (the groups!), and IG I've been on since it started and had one of the initial invitations to join it so my history there is long which makes it feel so.hard. to quit it. Hate Zuckerberg though and def don't want to support anything he's doing, most especially now. So I'm slowly archiving and downloading my content and moving towards leaving. I get so much of my news on IG so will need to figure that aspect out. I'm on Bluesky now and happy to see that many people that I follow have migrated there, but not everyone is (you, Katie, other people whose content I appreciate...).
So first of all, I misremembered the video a bit (not at all shocking that my smooth ass brain concocted a different story), and it’s actually Bouie’s *comment* on his video that states “no, I’m not joining that app I’d rather maintain some distance between me and a direct organ of a foreign state.” (Link to the video here: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8Fwe6jA/) And I think I’d take his sentiments a step further and say that perhaps I’d be better off removed from ALL social media, which more and more appears to be used as a direct organ of the American state.
I feel slightly different from Bouie regarding RedNote being a tool of the Chinese government. When quickly reading up on the app before downloading, it seemed that there are topics that are not allowed in the app (presumably by the Chinese government). Videos on Free Hong Kong or the persecution of the Uyghurs can’t be found, for instance (though I did not search for those topics myself and am only getting this info from U.S. media). For me, it’s not just that the Chinese government has a hand in what is allowed on the app, but I do suspect that those posting on the app could just as easily have fallen prey to the propaganda of their own government the way Americans have fallen victim to our own. And that we’ll basically be trading one type of government propaganda for another.
Also, a last thought, China is not North Korea (and Bouie actually has a later video about how he suspects people are conflating the two when they talk about not having access to information about what life is like in China https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8FwjYqH/). I know people from China. I have friends who travel there frequently for business. I have friends who travel there for pleasure. It is not inaccessible to us. So I think I want to be careful subscribing to the theory that there’s a conspiracy to keep us from knowing things about each other that I can only find out via an app run by the government of a country that IS a geopolitical adversary at this time.
Wait, last last thought: I wonder if part of the surprise over elements of life being great in China might come down to plain old homegrown racism. We can conceive of white Europeans having it better than us, but there are also Asians who might be happier?! BUT HOW?!?! 🥴🫠🙃
It’s tricky — it feels more vital than ever to have connection with both our communities at home and the world at large, but it’s so hard to trust the platforms that allow us to connect with anyone anywhere.
appreciate the elaboration!
I appreciate the interrogation! I think it’s so important to think critically about what we’re consuming both passively and purposefully and I definitely don’t examine it enough. I feel like I could spend days discussing this stuff!!
ok i just watched both of his videos and some thoughts incoming:
- i generally really like and admire him and appreciated his thoughts
- i still find it a bit odd that he refuses to be on an app that he perceives as "a direct propaganda organ of a foreign state" and that he has no problem being on tiktok? im sure he has some sort of distinction he feels comfortable making, but its going to have to be a hella nuanced one to keep that needle fully threaded!
- i get and understand his point about people "not reading" and about people technically being able to go to China, but also like: yeah, lol, duh? like to me that is not the subtext but the actual text here! of course an elite class of people travel to china/know about chinese culture/are educated on how china is good and bad in real life, but that elite class is not an accurate sample demographic of our country at all! And yes, reading is cheap, get a library card etc, but let's be completely honest with ourselves and acknowledge that asking the average american to do a random self-imposed book report on china is... a failed errand lol, we are lucky if people can make it to the end of an emily henry book at this point in american history. it just feels a bit like a purity test to me, especially coming from someone who is probably predisposed to research and reading in a way that most americans are not. (i'm sensitive about this because i am also predisposed to those things, and im not interested in making other people feel bad for having less time or inclination to do that, for a wide number of reasons)
- also i guess im going to show my own bias/personal frustrations here but like: this man speaks like a man who works for the nytimes. the whole video is designed as a slap-on-the-snoot for people "not knowing things," not "reading enough," not being "curious" enough, etc. very college-coded, very hillary-clinton-calling-people-deplorables coded.
-LASTLY (bless anyone who made it this far): american news and social media networks are, at this point in history, quite literally overrun with misinformation and bad faith takes, so for bouie to kind of tongue-in-cheek be like "no one is lying to you, you're just lazy" is to me a wildly insincere analysis of the media landscape most americans live in. Like you don't have to call it a state-led, big bad boogeyman conspiracy to acknowledge that the average american is literally waterboarded with misinformation whenever they go online, so its weird to me that he takes the approach of kind of shading that concept as being not the case? it is totally the case?
anyways v fascinating and a lot to chew on, ty!!
OF COURSE I read the whole comment!
-I appreciate your compassionate stance on people’s lack of inclination for reading and research because it is a stance I wish I had. Instead, I have spent A LOT of time since the election being unbelievably frustrated at the lack of intellectual curiosity and discernment from large swaths of Americans. And it’s not even, “why don’t you read more?” Because if you can sit through an hour of some bullshit incel YouTuber or THREE hours of Joe Rogan, then how about you take an hour to listen to Ezra Klein or Trevor Noah? Take three hours to listen to an audiobook on folks who were sucked into QAnon. I’ve been really frustrated at the way we let ourselves off the hook for our incuriosity. I know that isn’t compassionate or productive, but when you hear enough bad faith arguments or justifications clearly rooted in blatant lies from people you know in real life, it’s really hard to maintain compassion. Like, I am no one special but I’ve managed to figure out how hear something/read something, interrogate it, and verify it with widely trusted sources. Why can’t my cousin with the same (or better!) resources, support, and education as me do the same?
- yes, Bouie’s stance on rednote versus TikTok feels ultimately hypocritical. I wonder if he has justified the distinction in any of his videos. I’d have to look.
- my bias: I do not feel the same strong rage against the NYT as many for a variety of ultimately boring reasons (although ask me how I feel after any given episode of The Daily). So Bouie’s stance of “no one is lying to you” doesn’t rankle me quite as much. If my dumb ass can turn the radio dial to NPR, then so can anyone. But I definitely get where you are coming from with your perspective and you’re right that we ARE faced with a firehouse of misinformation every time we get online if we’re not careful.
- my liberal snobbery (and Bouie’s as well) is not helpful. Intellectually I know that. No one likes the teachers pet. But I am an oldest daughter, advanced learner, workaholic, Capricorn — these snobby characteristics are DEEPLY ROOTED and being worked out in therapy 😅.
I really resonated with where you landed on social media. I’m not helping anyone or doing any good scrolling on social media. I took my family to our local Ethical Society today and it was so refreshing to see a community that resonates with my ideals. I can’t wait for next week and to join. I’ve also signed up to volunteer with the PTO. I’m committed to 2025 being a year for books, movies, and in-person connections. I’m really only still on Facebook for my local Buy Nothing group anyway.
This is such a thorough and enlightening look at social media and the US… incredible reporting!