{I make use of links to Wikipedia articles in these essays. This is an attempt to present a 'less-biased' perspective on the terms I am using since I have not taken the time to reference the *MANY* sources of these thoughts or submit my thoughts to 'peer' review. In a way, I trust those individuals who are willing to publish and maintain Wikipedia articles more than any individual academic or supposed 'expert'. However, at the same time I don't claim to agree with or support the perspectives contained in Wikipedia articles either. Am I lazy? Maybe. I prefer to express myself than to say what I believe the 'right and proper' (ie. Western) way. I feel there simply is not practical efficacy in that sort of rigor, nor is there solid, justifiable consistency of perspective within this particular topic to merit such rigor.}
I am not a scholar. I am not an academic. My undergraduate education was in Computer Science [slash] what was in 2006 called 'New Media' [slash] Systems. I was taught computer programming, web development, audio and video production, design, photography, and how to take something real and turn it into an organized, digitally represented system. I was learning the circle of key technologies that have converged into the Web culture we experience today *as* they were converging (2006-2010). This makes me feel strangely responsible to my community, to everyone out there, to explain my perspective on contemporary use of media, computer technology, and systems theory as applied to social media architecture. I am not a sociologist or anthropologist, though my passions pull me into those worlds of theory as well. Social media has called on the social sciences to critique and explain its affect on individual and collective psychology and I am answering that call insofar as my understanding of the technical, design, and systemic architectural pieces of the puzzle informs the social aspects.
In 2017, I spent three weeks in a Digital Media graduate program. I quickly decided this was not the right course. I have been active in local DIY organization and exhibition since 2011 and saw graduate school as a possible route to continue an education toward building meaningful, humanistic, creative culture from the local level up. What I determined is that contemporary academic conversations are not yet calling for deep cultural resistance to the hegemony of what I call Mass Social Media practices and participation. I did not feel as though my knowledge would be best utilized in the relative bubble of academic idea-sharing and digital project development. I would rather share my ideas with my community directly and begin practical resistance toward, paired with conceptual unpacking of, contemporary media practices. Local DIY culture seems to me to be the logical seedbed for this resistance.
As a formal construct, DIY is only a few decades old finding its origin in grassroots organization of artists, activists, and community participants in the 70’s and 80’s. As an attitude, DIY represents the willingness to take responsibility for ones participation in a given cultural system. Ironically, cyberculture, the seedbed of New Media theory and Web culture was, in many ways, an outcropping of DIY culture (more on this to come). Thus, there has developed an entanglement between Web culture and the traditional DIY ethos that persists into the sphere of contemporary Mass Social Media. We are led to believe that individuals or oganizations building followings are ‘doing-it-themselves’ and that, thus, their message is unbiased. Yet, the system upon which their message is contingent is a for-profit data mining corporation. Is social media a culture factory in which we are put to work generating cultural content to be refined into movements and trends? This reveals the possibility that traditional notions of DIY need to be amended to account for the role that Mass Social Media has grown to play. Perhaps our society needs a more effective, more radical, practice than the ubiquitous DIY we perceive today. Has the DIY spirit been adopted and subverted to economically profitable ends by clever uses of digital technology at the hands of corporate interests? Is the palpable despair, confusion and frustration I see in myself and my culture connected? These are the questions I ask myself and the motivators behind this project.
This site represents my attempt to move the practical operations of digital DIY culture from the sphere of Mass Social Media hegemony to a collectivist, and humanist digital sphere. Formally, it is nothing more than a calendar of upcoming events in the Harrisburg, PA area with information collected from my friends who organize events. I hope to slowly develop it into something that fits the specific practical, emotional, individual, and cultural needs of DIY participation on as large a scale as seems feasibly possible. To render practical dependence of DIY culture upon platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter a thing of the past seems a fantastic goal, but it is my ultimate goal.
Mass Social Media is a term I have coined to describe the networked Web equivalent of traditional Mass Media. It's beginnings lie in Web 2.0, New Media concepts and the birth of now-hegemonic platforms: Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Instagram. This is a corporate, for-profit form of Social Media that is imposed from the top down due to its overwhelming rate of adoption and the technical superiority of its design and maintenance. Mass Social Media effectively *is* Social Media in the same way that CBS and NBC, *were* television in the 50's. The interesting reality is that media convergence, or the tendency for all forms of pre-digital media to digitize and be aggregated on the Web, dictates that Mass Media become subject to the design of Mass Social Media architecture, that is, how information is displayed, prioritized, and prepared for consumption. MSM is now the dominant media power in our culture for most people under 30 with radio, television, film, print, physical products and services etc existing simply as streams of Content within it. This is visible in the "surprising" role that independent web media and aggregation services such as Facebook played in the 2016 presidential election.
Distrust for traditional Mass Media is indicative of the climate of media convergence. The nature of pre-internet media meant that powerful individuals could easily control the content that was distributed. These are television networks, newspapers, magazines, publishers, record labels, film studios, etc. With the advent of the Web, individuals and small independent organizations have been given the power to distribute information and build followings in and unprecedented way. At face value this seems like a boon for free thought. However, the sheer quantity of information available on the Web has created a market for for filtering and aggregation services. Thus, the irony becomes that many individuals believe they are consuming organic, unbiased content even as they self-censor the content that they consume. Terms like 'fake news' become viable, because reality via media becomes self-constructed at the encouragement of aggregation systems and independent media outlets. This is curation at its worst, and amounts to self-censorship facilitated by data mining corporations in exchange for a record of said censorship and consumption habits. It is innocent in ways that traditional media violated, yet violating in a manner that traditional media was and is not capable of. A healthy distrust of MSM becomes necessary to protect ourselves and our culture from its effects. A belief that the *way* we use the Internet to form our opinions and values matters, becomes viable, even essential, to mental and cultural health. Fifty years ago, it was dangerous to consume and believe "as we were told". Today, it seems to be dangerous to consume and believe "as we please".
A helpful way to picture the shift from traditional mass media to mass social media is to imagine the difference between living *with* media and living *in* media. In the traditional media context we lived surrounded by books, magazines, televisions, record albums, videocassettes, software on disks, etc. These were interfaced with as objects and shaped our perspectives to the extent that we absorbed and identified with their messages. To me, the critical shift lies in the construction of individual, persistent digital identity or ‘web presence’ paired with the adoption of the smartphone as an extension of our individual consciousness. While you could easily argue that we are still living *with* our smartphones and *with* the body of data we identify and interface with on mass social media, it is undeniable that the line between social-media-reality (a form of virtual-reality) and our own inner perception of *actual* reality has been blurred if not eliminated by social media and smartphones.
Is living *in* media healthy? Is it humanistic? Who is profiting from from this supposedly “inevitable” shift in consciousness? Suffice it to say, the choices we make with regard to our use of technology have profound impacts on our thoughts, perceptions, identity, and, thus, the impact that we make with our lives. And, luckily for us, contemporary use of these technologies is *not* inevitable, and more easily subvert-able than many realize.
Turn off Notifications: Think of events on social media as things you *choose* to see or know about. Notifications take away our power and consent to information in exchange for convenience and distraction.
Unfollow Everything: Choose when you access content from a particular stream. You may find that many of the content streams you have been passively absorbing are truly of no value to you other than distraction. If you choose to access something rather than passively consuming it, you may feel more powerful and responsible.
Don't take it Personally: Quit believing the lie that you *are* what you post, that you *are* the photos of yourself, that you *are* your profile, that anyone is getting to truly know you via your content. It’s a mind game. Social media can simply be a tool, or it can be a prison of a stage. You don’t have to perform for anyone. Keeping your face off the Internet is the easiest way to encourage this distinction in your mind.
Post Nonsense: Imagine posting total gibberish, a picture of nothing, an excerpt from a random website and just leaving it there alongside everything else you post, forever. If the thought terrifies you, you can be pretty sure you’re in the trap. It DOES NOT MATTER what you post. This is a great way to desensitize you to the head game and works doubly to shock others away from the illusion that SM is real.
Cancel Your Data Plan: Again, choosing when you enter a space with Internet access and whether or not you will access the Internet will empower you and save you money.
Get a Desktop: Having a desktop computer or laptop is great. It lets you decide when and where you want to do computer shit. I’ve found that I can actually accomplish work and organize things on a “normal” computer whereas a smartphone favors convenience at the cost of disorganization and distraction.
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