in a recent conversation with one of my coworkers, i learned about the three sources rule. this coworker, who has a background in journalism, mentioned that when she worked in a newsroom, articles had to include quotes from three separate people in order to fully inform whatever was being reported. as a person who has never formally worked in journalism, i loved this idea—it somehow gave shape to the reporting and writing process that has always seemed weirdly nebulous to me.
i cataloged this idea into one of the drawers in my brain, tucking it away until a few mornings ago. i had posted on instagram about voting, to which one of my high school classmates responded, “not voting for a pedophile or a rapist. sorry.” weirdly shocked by the comment and not immediately wanting to engage, i urged him to at least vote on a local level and let it be.
i originally thought the topic for this newsletter would focus on what we lose when we gain efficiency. i thought about this idea often during the last election, when it was becoming apparent that the ubiquity of conspiracy theories and growing societal polarization was due less in part to a former reality television star being on the ballot. i was more concerned with what was happening behind the scenes—algorithms creating my own media echo chamber, foreign governments buying facebook ads, reporters embedding tweets in their articles in order to publish faster—otherwise understood as the rapid acceptance and dissemination of information via the internet.
this same sort of feeling returned when reviews and posts urging me to watch the social dilemma appeared in my various feeds a few weeks ago. relatively familiar with these kinds of documentaries, i watched it expecting to witness the usual storyline: gen x takes aim at millennials for continuous screen time and catastrophizes about what it might mean for the future. instead, the documentary seemed to introduce surveillance capitalism in an easily digestible way, causing viewers to reframe their past and present behavior with social platforms in real time.
doom scrolling, the millennial character flaw
now, time for a disclaimer: i thought that most of the documentary was wildly hysterical—there is a fictional narrative that runs alongside ex-technology executives’ revelations about their previous positions (at google, twitter, pinterest, etc.) that, when paired with an anxiety-inducing score, gives you the feeling that you’re watching humanity, as we know it, extinguish. but something about it has flipped a switch, as i’ve watched friends and acquaintances sign off, of course, announcing that they’re doing so in posts on the platforms.
the social dilemma is valuable because it is spurring passive internet users to become more conscious and critical—of their data, privacy, and the internet as a whole. yes, you can download a file of data that facebook has collected about you, based on what you’ve published to your profile over the years. there’s a reason why that ad in your instagram feed is prompting you to buy the next book in series you just marked as “read” on goodreads. while there aren’t minions assigned to every profile who pull the strings (as is explicitly illustrated in the documentary), corporations are surveilling the public, mining valuable data, and, as a result, often changing the way we interact with each other.
in anna weiner’s big tech memoir, uncanny valley, she writes about the echo chambers that these companies have forged in every aspect of life—contributing to and creating what is now understood to be the commercialized millennial aesthetic. a few years ago, apartment therapy created “millennial apartment bingo,” which made its rounds on instagram again earlier this year. step into a young person’s living space and map the commonalities: houseplants from the sill, a floyd bed, nontoxic all-in-one cookware from our place. for a person who is familiar with the internet, that sentence makes sense. these environments don’t just appear out of nowhere—as a result of growing up with the internet, it has come to influence every aspect of our lives, pun intended.
when you think about what is lost in the wake of efficiency, the question of personal taste also becomes apparent. recently, i read somewhere that today’s 25 year-olds are the last people to have grown up with cds and dvds—the most recent forms of physical media. most of us can think back to the exact experience of buying a cd at an entertainment retailer and listening to it on repeat in the days that followed. this begs the question: what will the future look like when the tastes of the generations that follow us are determined and developed by algorithms? as millennial apartment bingo demonstrates, it’s already happening.
what i’m trying to get at is the fact of a universal homogeneity brought on by the ubiquity of and our reliance on the internet. the initial shock of the comment from my former classmate is an example of my own digital environment that has been shaped by myriad forces. the mistake is thinking that the membrane between the digital and the physical is equally permeable when it isn’t.
i’ve been thinking about how to apply the three sources rule to other aspects of my life, in addition to my writing. what does that look like? i’m hoping that will evolve with time. but for now, reading more about topics i don’t feel very well-versed in, trying to understand different perspectives and opinions (except for when those opinions become human rights issues), and, overall, trying to think more critically about the information that is put before me.
tiny morsels
MUSIC: hope sandoval in her many iterations, an annual folk renaissance, and a song that, every october, anchors me.
BOOKS: currently reading marilynne robinson’s housekeeping, spurred by this beautiful profile i read on her in the new yorker. also, mary ruefle for autumn and some interviews with nora ephron.
INTERNET: self-soothing with these delicioussoups, a reminder that we are still in pandemic, and always laughing at mcsweeneys.
ETC: the definition of a word i didn’t know until recently and a great spite watch: kendall jenner’s home tour.