Tag Archives: elon musk

The future of mindless scrolling…

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I recently bit the bullet and signed up with Mastodon. I’m not saying it finally happened because Elon Musk went through the convolutions of trying to rebrand Twitter overnight and he’s increasingly using the platform as a mouthpiece for Russian propaganda, but it’s absolutely a contributing factor.

I’ll freely admit that I have gotten spoiled by Twitter’s ability to aggregate most of the information that I want – especially in the breaking national and international news and pop culture categories. Whether that ends up being enough of a reason to stick around remains to be seen. 

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that my screwing around trying to set up my account on Mastodon didn’t raise (or reinforce) other, larger questions about my consumption of social media. I wonder if there’s much actual value beyond self-advertising and self-aggrandizement to compulsively flicking from Facebook to Twitter to Instagram to Threads to Mastodon – especially as the social media universe further fragments. I wonder if perhaps it’s time to descope my online presence rather than continue to add to it. Of course I’ve been wondering about that for a long while.

It’s a question of value added. Am I getting more out of these platforms than I’m sinking into their upkeep and maintenance. With a little honest self-reflection, the answer to that question is probably no. They’re all burning up time that I could likely reallocate to some higher purpose.

I’m not going to launch into a screed about mindfulness or any of that nonsense. There are times when pure, mindless scrolling is precisely what’s called for… but maybe it would be for the better for me if it were happening just a little less frequently. Whether I’ll do anything about that or just let inertia carry me along, though, remains to be seen.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. AFGE Local 1904. Here we are 27 weeks past the “end of max telework” and the union, such as it is, still hasn’t come through on delivering the new and improved telework agreement. So, we’re still grinding along with only two days a week like pre-COVID barbarians… as if 30 months of operating nearly exclusively through telework didn’t prove that working from home works. All this is ongoing while hearing stories of other organizations tucked in next door that are offering their people four or five day a week work from home options. It’s truly a delight working for the sick man of the enterprise. I’m sure someone could make the case that there’s enough blame to go around, but since the updated and perfectly acceptable policy for supervisors was published 27 weeks ago, I’m going to continue to go ahead and put every bit of blame on Local 1904 for failing to deliver for their members (and those of us who they “represent” against our will) and for continuing to stand in the way like some bloody great, utterly misguided roadblock. No one’s interest is served by their continued intransigence. The elected “leaders” of AFGE Local 1904 should be embarrassed and ashamed of themselves.

2. Mandatory training. We have a laundry list of mandatory annual training we have to either sit or click through each year. It must, theoretically, be completed by the end of each fiscal year, or the end of September if you’re not tracking the federal budget year. In any case, this mark on the wall being five months off doesn’t stop management from starting to harp on “getting the training done” here in April. Look, I’ve been doing this for 20 years. In none of those have I ever come up short on checking the block on the absurd amount of mandatory training our employer requires. If Uncle wants it done in April, the due date should be April and not September… unless the intent is just to check some other box that proves we’re all high speed and running ahead of schedule. In that case, carry on, I suppose.

3. Twitter. Every 7-10 days I have to go on a mad tear muting and block people who show up on my “for you” feed. Regardless of what Mr. Musk seems to think, I’m not in the market for getting additional exposure to right wing nutters, conspiracy theorist anti-vaxxers, or rednecks butthurt about their favorite beer. Still, about a week from now, Twitter’s “for you” will be full of them again. You know, I’m beginning to think Twitter’s algorithm might not be entirely guided simply by tweets that I interact with and they could be pushing an agenda.

The increasing fuckery of Twitter…

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Twitter has never exactly been a walled garden, but over the last couple of years I’ve been able to curate the kind of experience I wanted to have using the platform. For the most part, the posts I was seeing were of interest – ranging between current day Army policy, to politics, to general history and more specifically the age of fighting sail. 

The last few weeks, I’ve increasingly seen posts (and ads) that are of no particular use or interest to me. This morning, for some reason, the theme mixed in with my normal fair was posts and ads from whack job conspiracy theories and anti-vaccine organizations. 

I just can’t muster the time or interest to deal with that. I want to like Twitter. I find it an incredibly useful tool for breaking news and information. I even appreciate the often serendipitous posts that land in my feed. 

What I don’t appreciate is having those normal bits of my feed shouted down in favor of whoever happens to be the loudest, most obnoxious people using the app. I more or less abandoned Instagram when its “new and improved” features ceased providing the experience that added value to my life. I feel Twitter slowly and surely following the same route. Increasingly, it feels like the direction the whole universe of social media is taking. 

I’m going to give it one more try to adjust the settings and lay in some new “words to never show me,” but it’s quickly descending into “more trouble than it’s worth” territory. It almost feels inevitable that eventually I’ll just withdraw from the socials altogether into a world of books and animals where everything else can bugger directly off. I’m fast approaching the hard limit of the amount of fuckery I intend to allow into my life.

At least he’s entertaining…

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Elon Musk has always engendered my curiosity. From Tesla and The Boring Company to his new role as chief of fucking around and finding out with Twitter, the man may be a lot of things, but dull and uninteresting isn’t generally considered one of them.

As much as he captures my interest, I wouldn’t exactly call myself a fan. I tend to think he’s a guy whose demons are at least as big as his better angels. Still, he’s undeniably entertaining to watch if you come at it from a slightly nihilistic perspective.

Elon’s most recent hot take, that somehow Freedom of Speech equals buying ads on Twitter, is one of those times where he just makes my head hurt. He’s obviously smart enough to know that what we commonly call “freedom of speech” precludes the government from sanctioning you, the individual, (or you the company) from things you say. It doesn’t in any way protect you from other people or businesses deciding you’re absolutely crammed full of shit and opting to not work with you.

While Elon is perfectly free to say anything he wants and use Twitter in whatever way he chooses, what he isn’t, and can’t be, is free of the natural consequences of his words and actions. In the free marketplace of radical individualism that he seems to espouse, people (and companies) voting with their feet and their wallets, should be the thing he most welcomes. The fact that the big advertisers have left in droves, is sending a message, but Elon seems determined to misinterpret the signal.

Shouting into the void…

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I’m throttling down on social media. Over the last few days, I’ve slashed and burned through Twitter to drop a lot of follows and focus in the content I want to see. Instagram was already kind of a dead letter for me after their last update. If I have to go through multiple convolutions to see people I chose to follow, versus those you want me to see, your app has very limited utility for me.

Finally, I turned my attention to Facebook and deactivated an old page I had set up when I was doing a lot more writing than reading. If anyone was following my lack of updates over there, sorry about that. I should have killed off that page a long time ago, but it’s done now. My personal Facebook page could probably use a good “friends” trimming too, but I’ll leave that effort for my next fit of streamlining and trying to make my social media footprint more useful. At least in its present form, Facebook has the advantage of being filled with people I know – or those I’ve known in years gone by. I’m less inclined to do any wholesale cleaving there… for the moment.

I’ve been looking at Mastodon for the last week or two. I like the concept, but don’t particularly want to make the jump to add yet another platform unless Elon’s fuckery on Twitter just gets to be too much to bear… or he collapses the entire company, which given his performance over the last couple of days doesn’t feel entirely out of the realm of the possible.

Look, I remain a big fan of social media. It’s given me insights and let me talk to people there’s no chance I’d have ever encountered organically. I’m never going to be one of these people who abandons the internet, tosses their cell phone in the sea, and proclaims themselves “free.” I find there is plenty of useful bits left even with vocal minority of users trying to suck up all available oxygen in the room. Still, I seem to be at a crossroads in terms of how I consume my media – and I’ll be much more purposeful going forward with where and on whom I allocate time and attention.

Not to worry, though, I’m sure I’ll still populate Facebook with my stream of consciousness rantings. There’s nothing I enjoy more, after all, than a good shout into the void.