The Muskening

Posted on by Josh Nudell

I will admit that I am watching the mess that is Elon Musk’s early tenure at Twitter with a certain amount of perverse joy, as a long time critic of the man. And yet, I also regret that this is the public forum where all of my prior assumptions and criticisms once again get confirmed because it comes at the expense of both the employees at Twitter and a larger number of people who were able to exploit its potential for virality to build a public following and, from that, economic opportunities.

My own relationship with Twitter has been decidedly mixed. I am an active user, and my follower count topped out at just over 1700 on the same day that the company’s purchase was finalized, but I have done precious little to cultivate that list. I tweet a little bit, retweet a little bit more, and try to interact with interesting accounts, but I actually think that the greatest key to reaching that number is that I have just always been there.

That is, I created my Twitter account in 2008, before hashtags were an official part of the Twitter functionality and before it was possible to create threads. I don’t even know how many accounts existed back then because a quick internet search only returned data going back to 2010, which also happens to be when the new owner created his account. This was also before I went to graduate school. I was managing a Quiznos in Boston at the time, waiting to hear back about graduate school applications, and trying to keep my Greek fresh in case I got in. I also had no plans to make this a professional “historian” Twitter account because, well, I wasn’t a professional historian when I started the account and I only had the loosest idea of what that would even look like. By the time that #twitterstorians and #classicstwitter, I was already here and so became absorbed into those movements. My Twitter usage has evolved over the years, especially because I prefer interacting with people to generating original content. I still sometimes find the juxtaposition of academic and non-academic activities somewhat awkward, even as I deeply appreciate its democratizing effect on knowledge creation and how it shows that (most) professors have interests beyond their immediate research subjects.

Frankly, the histrionic meta-commentary about whether to stay on Twitter or to find a new platform that has unfolded in the days since the purchase annoys me more than does the leadership transfer of one billionaire to another. I shared a lot of people’s concerns about being able to promote my writing and with the likely proliferation of hate speech even beyond what is currently tolerated. However, my Twitter experience is generally tolerable because I make frequent use of the mute features aggressively curate my experience there. Nobody online is entitled to my attention. I expected that the Twitter experience would degrade over the coming months and years, but I would be fine so long as those pieces of functionality continued to exist.

The first week of the Musk experience is beyond anything I could have predicted, starting with the new owner boosting a vile conspiracy that excused an act of political violence against the Pelosi family and then blaming the loss in advertising revenue on activists, when, in fact, the advertisers froze their buys over other fears that were exacerbated by Musk having fired the people they coordinated with at the company and then Musk’s performance on a conference call with them. The advertising fracas took place against the backdrop of obvious attempts to monetize a site that has never turned a profit because Musk had been locked into a mindbogglingly stupid offer to purchase Twitter for vastly more than it was worth. Thus his attention turned to the blue check mark, which is nothing more than an emoji that “verifies” that “an account of public interest” is who they say they are. Or at least it did. Musk first proposed a $20 dollar per month fee for verification, which led to him publicly bartering, perhaps in jest on his part, with both Stephen King and Garfield the cat. King adamantly refused to pay a dime, to which supporters of Musk asked how Stephen King would stay relevant without that blue check.

Twitter’s greatest success is in persuading a lot of people that what happens there is real life.

All of which brings me to the roll-out of the new Twitter Blue. For $7.99 a month, users will receive perks like a blue check mark “just like celebrities, companies and politicians,” as well as an edit function (just learn to accept typos, it’s fine), and a promise to show only half the number of ads, which strikes me as only meaningful if there is transparency about the number of ads one sees now and could easily be construed as a threat to drown free accounts in a torrent of ads. While I am inclined not to believe Musk’s claims that this paid service will reduce the number of bot accounts, the more pressing question for how I use Twitter is what this will do to the content on my feed. Twitter has had an algorithmic timeline for a number of years now, but I refuse to use it because whether I am interacting with friends and colleagues or following an event live, I want to be able to see Tweets as they happened. So long as that function continues to exist I can tolerate the other changes, but Musk’s vision of “free speech” seems to include a demand that other people listen to you and he is willing to offer you that function for a moderate monthly fee. In particular, Twitter Blue will offer paid users algorithmic priority for their Tweets. If this means that option for a chronological timeline goes away, then it might well render the site unusable for me.

However, the proof is going to be in the pudding. If the site becomes unusable for me or no longer serves my needs I will stop using it in the same way that I stopped using Facebook a decade ago. I will continue to trundle along there in the meantime, and I also keep a list of the other places where I can be found online.

The most common destination for people I follow leaving Twitter right now is Mastodon, which has many of the same Twitter functions. I created an account back in April, if for no other reason than to have a presence there. My initial impressions of the site are mixed. For one thing, rather than simply making a Twitter account, you join one of the many Mastodon instances, each of which has its own code of conduct. This fragmentation creates a local timeline populated by “toots” from the people in your little interest group, but then also you have a home timeline created by the people you follow who can be from any instance. These and other differences have taken some getting used to, but I would describe them as different rather than either good or bad.

My other observation about Mastodon is that writing there feels to me much more like micro-blogging than Twitter ever did. Where Twitter allowed 140 characters and then expanded out to 280, Mastodon allows 500. Critics of Twitter’s brevity argue that the limits killed nuance and encouraged flippancy, I appreciated the challenge of expressing ideas concisely. I find that 500 characters is just enough that I can slip back toward being long-winded and that is giving me pause on how I want to use the site.

Ultimately, the experience on Mastodon is going to be determined by the people on it. The instance I joined at first and the fact that my early activity on the platform has been academic means that Mastodon feels a bit like an academic conference to me right now. I can talk about things that are not academic, but more than a few people will probably give me the side eye for doing so. I certainly don’t mind academic conferences and will be happy to stay on Mastodon, perhaps on this server, perhaps migrating to another one when I have some time to explore my options, even if it never evolves past this, but it does mean that my relationship to the platform will be different than was my relationship to Twitter.

Then again, a lot has changed in the last fourteen years so perhaps these changes should be expected.

The Twilight of the Blogs

Posted on by Josh Nudell

A few months ago Bill Caraher declared that this is a “golden age” of blogging about the ancient world, a sentiment that I find hard to disagree with despite the popular idea of a blogpocaplyse. And yet when Neville Morley posted last week about a decline in blog traffic, that, too rang true.

Caraher subsequently posted a reflection on the changing rhythm of blogs, suggesting: “Instead of blogs maturing into a less-formal and more intimate complement to the scholarly discourse, blogs have become places where we negotiate the social conscience of our fields.”

I am perhaps a little too aware of my blog traffic. Since switching to the WordPress platform I have had slow, but steady year over year growth. Although much of this growth is attributable to the WordPress reader, the single largest referrer, particularly when a post blows up, is Twitter.

(The exception to this statement is an intermittent flurry of activity from India any time there is an election because I once wrote about Intizar Husain’s Basti.)

Ultimately, though, I am small potatoes. “Growth” here is relative in that I started virtually from scratch and do very little promotion outside linking to each post in a tweet.

Nor do I really engage with scholarship or sources like most substantial classics-related blogs. I’ve written about this before, but, in short, my writing has passed through several iterations before settling into what it is now: a catchall where I can write about things for which I do not have another outlet. Writing helps me organize my thoughts, and, for instance, I don’t write about books for any other outlet (at the moment––I would love to start), so those posts go here.

At the same time, blog posts are as resource where I can direct people should I not have space to give a substantial answer. To give just one example, a Twitter-friend asked about The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, a book I wrote about last year and so in addition to a short answer on Twitter, I was able to point to the longer thoughts here. Similarly, I wrote reflections about the Society for Classical Studies Annual Meeting in San Diego and in defense of graduate programs at non-elite schools, as well as posting a reading list for teaching at the college level. Like the examples Caraher gives, the most trafficked posts are those grappling with the social or structural issues in academia and rely on viral (at least by my standards) transmission.

Other platforms serve other purposes. Podcasts give the sense of being a silent participant in the conversation. Instagram allows me to post pictures of things I bake and places I go. Twitter tends toward the ephemeral, albeit with a long public record, as it flies by in quick drips that fit both hot-take culture and the large number of demands on our attention.

Does this mean that the current blog landscape is populated not by survivors living in a new Eden, but those who are already dead and just don’t know it?

Yes and no. A few years ago I noticed that a blurring between reportage and analysis or opinion on news sites. The suggested “articles” were increasingly from the latter category, on blogs hosted by the site. This says to me that the problem of declining traffic isn’t a matter of “blogs,” but of unaffiliated blogs. Based on the comments on Morley’s post, I am hardly alone in struggling to see value in writing substantial posts for a personal blog since the odds of it being picked up are significantly lower.

But, as Caraher notes, blogging has matured in a somewhat different direction, and each blog will reflect the individual author(s). Traffic is a sort of validation, but reasons to blog exist beyond that alone. So long as I see value in using this space to organize my thoughts I will continue to blog. At the moment I am confident enough that I plan to use student-run blogs in two of my classes for the upcoming semester.

Hate in a Digital World

Posted on by Josh Nudell

Despite how exhausting the 2016 election cycle was in this regard, I continue to be fascinated by the effect of social media on interpersonal relations, something I wrote about a little bit in 2012 when I deleted my Facebook account, in 2014 about the intimidation of professional Twitter, with respect to activism in 2015.

I stand by most of what I wrote before, about the ways in which social media is performative (there is an entire genre of Instagram posts comparing posed and “natural” pictures), is intimidating even when interacting with well-meaning enthusiasts, and isolating. I would revise my assessment of its role on friendship, something I was reminded of this week in light of a thread on Twitter. The general point, since this is not my main focus here, is that when there is a reciprocal interest, social media and other forms of digital communication are an immense boon to friendship. The catch is that reciprocity is foundational, so while it has allowed me to maintain several friendships with people who I have only seen in person once or twice in a decade, many others have withered as one or both sides in the relationship have lapsed. This is not explicitly the fault of social media—people have busy lives and many other responsibilities—but I think Facebook and other social media sites that give the appearance of intimacy make it easier for people to not put in the work to maintain relationships.

Like a lot of people, I have been impressed with the high school students from Florida and elsewhere in the country organizing marches and keeping up the pressure on issues such as gun control. Their ability to sustain pressure online is the one thing that gives me hope that this time, in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting might result in change. Not immediately, and probably not enough, but something.

On the other side of the equation is this:

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

As the Twitter user mentions in subsequent tweets, the origin of this photoshopped image could well be a Russian troll farm, but it still has its intended effect. This and the issue of privacy, brought again into public discourse by the revelations about Cambridge Analytica, are the legacies of the first two decades of social networking.

The features of the internet that were meant to bring about an enlightened, educated populace and connect people have done that. There is more information on many more topics on Wikipedia than there ever were in the old, lacunate collection of hardbound Encyclopedia Britannica’s I pored through as a child. Sure, it might not have the same specific figures for the size of the East German army as in EB, but in terms of breadth, depth, and (if you know how to look) granularity of the information online, even just counting the content that isn’t behind paywalls, is astounding. News travels at an incredible pace, though rumor still travels faster. The diversity of voices and ability to communicate online is remarkable.

And yet, these same features have their perversions. Falsehood, rumor, myth, and propaganda abound, reinforced and socialized in niche communities. The intersection of the intimate and the impersonal are particularly insidious in this respect. Beyond even the fact that it is easy to attack someone anonymously, the tools of the internet make it easier to attack someone for several reasons.

1. It is possible to see someone like David Hogg as a social media avatar rather than as an individual. He is a face to an issue, not a person expressing one. Besides, if everyone is performing to some extent online, then who is to say that school shooting victims aren’t actors?

2. There is the impersonal nature of the internet. Not only is it easier to attack someone who you will never meet, but it is also easier to caricature or otherwise other them.

3. It is easier to engage with a partial or corrupted versions of ideas rather than their entirety. This happens on all sides; I know I have been guilty of falling for fake Twitter accounts or buying a misleading headline of an article that I didn’t read.

4. This is always the case, but the acceptance of a truth is the responsibility of the beholder. Some facts are more verifiable than others, but accepted truth is just that: a social consensus that is usually based on a deference to authority. With an abundance of information and misinformation online, anything and everything might be regarded as “Fake News.”

Here is the thing: none of this is new. Each of these forms of slander and misinformation has been used against people for as long as there has been communication. For instance, portraying your opponent as an “other” (the more grotesque the better) is a common feature of anti-Jewish, Bolshevik, Irish, and German iconography. Partial truths and outlandish fabrications fill the pages of ancient texts. Some of these come from cultural misunderstandings and curiosities, some from deliberate propaganda, and some out of simple malice. These stories have been the justification for slavery and the cause of wars.

What has changed, in my opinion, is how easy the internet has made the transmission of information. In other words, hate in the digital age is not new. It a cancerous mutation of old problem.

Calcification of opinion

Posted on by Josh Nudell

I am hardly alone when I say that recent politics has been a major drag on my mental and emotional energy. I don’t know what is going to happen in the near future, but the current direction scares me in more ways than I care to mention. Still, I find myself thinking a lot about politics and doing my best to stay informed because, as difficult as it might be, that remains a civic duty. I also remain problematically addicted to checking my Twitter feed, albeit recently in shorter and less-comprehensive bursts.

These moments of checking Twitter have led me to a realization about the current superficial maelstrom, as epitomized and led by the current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That realization is this:

There is nothing that President Trump could post to his Twitter account that would change my opinion of him.

Sure, there are things that he could post that would change the trajectory of the country and do good in the world, but that would mean one of three things: 1) the account was hacked; 2) someone else was managing the account; or 3) that President Trump decided to make an about-face in order to be more popular. None of those three options would change my opinion of him, while what he does post simply digs deeper. I still see people retweeting (usually with sarcastic comment) what he says or dredging up past posts looking for inconsistency. Neither genre of tweet does much for me and in many cases both distract from the substance of issues—not to mention that feeding the ego of someone who fundamentally wants to be the center of attention, whose interests run toward habitual misinformation and complaining about media coverage.

I could never bring myself to follow Trump’s twitter account, but, for months, I would regularly check in, caught up in whatever the latest utterance was. No longer. The campaign is over and I don’t need to actually see the latest bout of internet logorrhea in order to know what he said, at least in reasonable facsimile. I can’t live isolated from the news, but that doesn’t mean that I have to partake in online farce.

Social Media and an Academic Conference CAMWS 2016

Posted on by Josh Nudell

Last weekend I attended the Classical Association of the Middle West and South (CAMWS) annual meeting in Williamsburg, Virginia. It is a conference I have been to before, but, for a variety of reasons, some of which are the topic of this post, I had a different interaction with it than usual. For a compilation of the tweets I sent during conference, see here.

I went into the CAMWS meeting figuring that I would be at least somewhat active on Twitter; my posts there ebb and flow depending on a number of offline factors, including an internal debate over what I want the platform to be “for.” But I am active on Twitter and figured, as is my wont, that I would post something. I was not going to make an attempt at live-tweeting sessions, knowing my attention span, but I thought I’d do some posting after the fact. This was facilitated because, for once, the venue had fast, free, widely available wifi.

Then a funny thing happened: early in the conference a debate popped up on Twitter from people who couldn’t make it to the conference asking why there was an apparent zone of silence over the conference. More and more often conferences and meetings are pushing toward digital interaction, often establishing a conference hashtag right up front and, in at least one instance that I saw (on Twitter), offering to put a member’s Twitter handle on the name tag. I think CAMWS was interested in this being a thing at the meeting, but to the extent that the information was there it was somewhat buried.

There are certainly an issue of ethics when it comes to live-tweeting a conference, and the debate on Twitter moved in that direction, including one person arguing that, if done well, this sort of publication actually protects copyright because the idea is linked to the name. For whatever reason, the media presence from this particular CAMWS meeting was limited to a small handful of people.

Partly inspired by this debate, my Twitter “agenda” changed over the course of the meeting and thus my interaction with the meeting changed. Originally I was only going to do sporadic posts, but because of the external debate, I decided to do recaps of papers I saw. A lot of these tweets were developed back in my hotel room in the evening or in the airport waiting for a flight, but I was more assiduous about taking notes while in the sessions knowing that I intended to post them online later. Even so, I found myself struggling to find a consistent format on Twitter, particularly once I was posting more than one comment per paper, and trying to find a way to link the tweets about a given paper together. This was easier once I storified the whole thing, but I wanted to find a way to link on the main feed. Yet another reason to avoid the algorithmic timeline.

I almost called this post “Two Days of Minor Internet Celebrity,” because my conference tweets were picked up by Classics twitter writ large, including Rogue Classicist. This gave me ten new followers and spiked the “impressions” from a few hundred a day to fifteen thousand in two days. Those have since subsided somewhat now that I am falling into more usual patterns of activity, but it was nonetheless an interesting experience, no doubt aided by relatively few people tweeting from the conference and a relatively large number of interested parties who couldn’t make it.

As much as this was a good experience for me, I wish I had been more organized and prepared to tweet from the outset. I did put my twitter handle on my handout, but with so few people doing anything with it, I’m not sure this made an impression. This is not to say that I won’t put my twitter handle on future handouts, but that I might want to call attention to it, either myself or in the introduction in the future. As for the conference as a whole, there could have been a more concerted effort to foreground the hashtag and other social media opportunities in the program and packet. I heard belatedly that there was this information, but I was using the online program and often found myself searching in the page for names or topics, or otherwise skipping around, rather than reading it in a linear way. Similarly, if there had been hashtags associated with particular panels (as Hamish Cameron was adding to his live-tweeting, I think), then there would have been greater awareness that the conference endorsed social media outreach. That said, the conference had the single most important thing for this sort of engagement, which was wifi.

This is the first time I offered dedicated tweets from a conference, but it won’t be the last. As long as I am going to be part of this academic world, I plan to make the most of it.

2016 CAMWS Meeting: Storify

Posted on by Josh Nudell

Via Storify, here my Tweets from this past weekend’s CAMWS meeting. In the next few days I will have a post working through various issues concerning social media that came up at the meeting–or, particularly the discussion that took place on Twitter with people who were following along from afar.

//storify.com/jpnudell/2016-camws-in-williamsburg/embed?border=false//storify.com/jpnudell/2016-camws-in-williamsburg.js?border=false[View the story “2016 CAMWS in Williamsburg” on Storify]