100% agree with you about social media. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m as prone to going off on a dopamine binge as much as anyone, and it certainly doesn’t bring out the best in me.
3am is no time when you want to see inside anybody’s brain.
Here’s hoping in ten years we’ll all look back on social media and wonder what we were all thinking. Kind of like the 1970s CB radio fad.
Laid sounds kinda like a sitcom version of It Follows. Hmmm. I did like It Follows and you also were right about (as well as the only person to steer me towards) Hacks.
As the goateed Spock says at the end of Mirror, Mirror: “I shall consider it.”
I am nearly positive they weren't thinking about it that deeply. But they also don't tip their hand as to what may be going on in the show, either, so at least the suspense is still there if you get hooked.
Your are almost certainly correct. When The Truman Show came out, Paul Park had a similarly-premised story show up in F&SF a little over a year prior. It certainly *looked* suspicious but there's no way stealing the idea and getting the movie produced in that period of time was physically possible. The Ellison piece is one of growing unease and looming horror. I can't imagine anyone reading it and thinking, "You know what this needs to be? A fum Millennial sex comedy!"
On the social media front, that’s why I pretty much shut them all down at the beginning of the year. Facebook has been nothing but a morass for the last seven or eight years: I played the game when I still had the gallery, but I also realized that so many of the people I met via social media, going back to LiveJournal, were people I realized I couldn’t stand. Dumping all of that has done more for my mental health than anything other than cutting off my biological family 15 years ago, and if it means I can’t get a book deal because I have an insufficient number of sycophants that STILL won’t buy the book when it’s available, but who will nag the shit out of me about free copies, then fuck ‘em.
I can't push back on any of that. I think I got most of what I was going to get out of Social Media by, what? 2014? 2015? Yeah, I've seen a lot of horrible people who were on Twitter now clumping up on Blue Sky, and I'm just waiting for the first scolding comment in my feed before I flip that table and ragequit.
Adrian Simmons described the bullying online as "counting coup," because, he said, "they aren't good enough warriors to collect scalps." Best metaphor for that phenomenon I've ever seen.
The only plus I’ll give to BlueSky is that I met and befriended a slew of scientists, researchers, and science writers on Twitter during lockdown, and I’ve renewed connections with them on BlueSky. However, I know that my experience is atypical, and I give nobody grief for leaving, especially the literary side. As for TikTok, it reminds me of Brooklyn during the hipster invasion: a wave of uninteresting and supremely boring people so desperate for attention that they’d do ANYTHING to fill the holes inside them, and eventually will or die trying.
Another great column this week!
Thanks for that.
100% agree with you about social media. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m as prone to going off on a dopamine binge as much as anyone, and it certainly doesn’t bring out the best in me.
3am is no time when you want to see inside anybody’s brain.
Here’s hoping in ten years we’ll all look back on social media and wonder what we were all thinking. Kind of like the 1970s CB radio fad.
Laid sounds kinda like a sitcom version of It Follows. Hmmm. I did like It Follows and you also were right about (as well as the only person to steer me towards) Hacks.
As the goateed Spock says at the end of Mirror, Mirror: “I shall consider it.”
I love the idea that we will one day look back on this and go “What were we thinking?!”
Based on prior recommendations, I think you will like Laid. Especially with the light commitment.
Interesting. Laid sounds like a kinder, gentler version of Ellison's "All the Birds Come Home to Roost" in reverse.
I am nearly positive they weren't thinking about it that deeply. But they also don't tip their hand as to what may be going on in the show, either, so at least the suspense is still there if you get hooked.
Your are almost certainly correct. When The Truman Show came out, Paul Park had a similarly-premised story show up in F&SF a little over a year prior. It certainly *looked* suspicious but there's no way stealing the idea and getting the movie produced in that period of time was physically possible. The Ellison piece is one of growing unease and looming horror. I can't imagine anyone reading it and thinking, "You know what this needs to be? A fum Millennial sex comedy!"
On the social media front, that’s why I pretty much shut them all down at the beginning of the year. Facebook has been nothing but a morass for the last seven or eight years: I played the game when I still had the gallery, but I also realized that so many of the people I met via social media, going back to LiveJournal, were people I realized I couldn’t stand. Dumping all of that has done more for my mental health than anything other than cutting off my biological family 15 years ago, and if it means I can’t get a book deal because I have an insufficient number of sycophants that STILL won’t buy the book when it’s available, but who will nag the shit out of me about free copies, then fuck ‘em.
I can't push back on any of that. I think I got most of what I was going to get out of Social Media by, what? 2014? 2015? Yeah, I've seen a lot of horrible people who were on Twitter now clumping up on Blue Sky, and I'm just waiting for the first scolding comment in my feed before I flip that table and ragequit.
Adrian Simmons described the bullying online as "counting coup," because, he said, "they aren't good enough warriors to collect scalps." Best metaphor for that phenomenon I've ever seen.
The only plus I’ll give to BlueSky is that I met and befriended a slew of scientists, researchers, and science writers on Twitter during lockdown, and I’ve renewed connections with them on BlueSky. However, I know that my experience is atypical, and I give nobody grief for leaving, especially the literary side. As for TikTok, it reminds me of Brooklyn during the hipster invasion: a wave of uninteresting and supremely boring people so desperate for attention that they’d do ANYTHING to fill the holes inside them, and eventually will or die trying.