Parasocial Silence
Producing silence has become vital for our mental health, starting within social networks.
Tuesday Evening! I'm writing from the train to Amsterdam. And the joy of travel: a poor connection at the Belgian border gives me the urge to talk about silence. You can read this new edition in French by clicking here.
In times of chaos or polycrisis, an overload of information doesn't help us hear better or find our place. Edgar Morin declared that "the progress of knowledge has caused a regression in thought." This assertion echoes a 2011 study, “The Polarizing Impact of Science Literacy and Numeracy on Perceived Climate Change Risks,” whose conclusions were (already) unequivocal: increasing scientific literacy increases the polarization of opinions.
This is an anxiety-inducing century where one commodity seems increasingly sought after: silence.
Celebrities: Beacons in This Overload
To find our way, influential figures who control the game on social networks have an ever-growing impact on how we try to understand the world around us. Parasocial relationships have become very normal in the daily lives of millions of people.
The principle: members of an audience can feel and develop a psychological relationship with artists, performers, celebrities, whether in pure fiction (for example, a series) or staged settings like talk shows. This psychological (and anthropological) mechanism grows with digital influencers, as their repeated presence in our feeds makes them intensely involved in what matters in our lives. And while we ultimately know that we don't have full access to a real relationship, the attachment created is quite tangible and significant. Numerous studies have already shown that between people and robots, relationships quickly become bilateral: we talk to ChatGPT intuitively like an Instafriend, showing concern, anger, compassion, and sympathy. A near-automatic rapport despite knowing that it’s just codes and silicon. The Eliza effect, in short.
As
reminds us, we accept reducing our online existence in favor of figures who take more of the spotlight:“using the Screwtape character, C.S. Lewis highlighted our tendency to shrink ourselves even smaller under the light of celebrity stars who hold cultural sway. He recognized how eagerly we snuff out our own light to serve as a mirror for those in the spotlight.”
Aaron Earls
This doesn't mean we accept voluntary servitude and lose all free will. But the social mechanics make us tend to be reduced to silence in favor of individuals who have a stronger presence in the internet ecosystems. And everything is done to overweight influencers who have reached a critical mass of followers. We may find ourselves there, but at what cost?
After all, charisma is an unfair trait offline; it was logical for its digital counterpart to emerge.
Producing Silence
A 2014 study titled "I'm Your Number One Fan"- A Clinical Look at Celebrity Worship” concluded that hardcore fans are more likely to develop narcissistic traits, dissociation, addictive tendencies, stalking behavior, and even compulsive buying. They are also more prone to clinical symptoms of depression, anxiety, and social dysfunction. What is at play is a reclaiming of not only our attention but especially our ability to hear again, to see clearly.
Silencing social networks is no easy task. And as demonstrated in 2022 by
, silence itself has become trendy. Various clinics try to sell "digital detox" programs, while in the Netherlands, The Offline Club offers (for a fee) to exchange screen time for real time. I think this type of silence solves our problem only infinitesimally (and without even delving into the debate about the commodification of our mental health…). Moreover, all platforms have created models based on our tastes, our abilities to defend our interests, to group around a star, a creator, to divide and reorganize us into clusters. But as Seth Godin brilliantly explains, this highly audible decay of our passions—which gives us a reason to exist online, to say "I...", to feel part of a group—has a disastrous consequence: we forget that there are indisputable facts, absolute truths, which should be the real basis of our exchanges.“Every day, we’re celebrating a splintering of taste, but it’s worth pausing before we embrace the idea that there are no facts. That’s not useful.”
- Seth Godin
"Isn't it midnight in our century?" wrote Edgar Morin. Several actions can help us produce silence:
Consume social networks with full awareness. On platforms, creating multiple accounts while prohibiting access to your address book is a way to partially break the logic of concatenation. On TikTok, this "trick" is revealing: the platform will give you content you actually want to see after a few days. But you will also see how TikTok is not neutral in pushing small phrases from a Jordan Bardella next to a Raël follower because TikTok thinks it should see if it can hook you. The referendum is real-time and against us.
Consult platforms at night. It may seem surprising, but Discord servers, or “live” streams generally follow the life cycle in a geographic area (unless you are binational or a celebrity yourself…). It is so pleasant to see a drastically reduced notification rate, often seeing flows of higher quality exchanges. In short, making the digital day silent and putting your phone in airplane mode in the morning.
Create silent spaces.Study groups voluntarily activate a Zoom discussion without the right to speak, to benefit from a form of silence through the logic of Body Doubling: the screen is mobilized and silent, the smartphone in a way not tolerated.
Disappear intermittently. More and more people working in digital put their accounts in inactive mode for a time. Not for a detox but to impose their own time on the platforms.
Shh! Let's listen to the night.
The Number of the Week: 17%
According to the World Economic Forum, 17% of respondents believe the risks of global disasters will be imminent within 10 years.
Amazing Links
The Santiago Boys, a major work by Evgeny Morozov, has just been released by Editions Divergences.
Google shares the future of internet search.
ICQ will be shutting down for good on June 26, 2024. Mashable explores its history.
You need to rewatch this clip of Metric, Succexy.
Have a great week! And feel free to keep sharing this newsletter, liking, commenting, sending me your correspondence or recommendations, continuing to email me: these notifications are (always) a joy.