AN ASOCIAL WORLD
April 20, 2019

Many thanks to slugmax for pointing me to sol_solaris's social
media post[1], which argues that "social" media is really
ANTI-social. I think that is correct. Karl Marx once described
religion as "the heart of a heartless world."[2] In a
similar fashion, I think one can argue that social media is
the social of an asocial world, a world that is "killing human
contact one relationship at the time. Promoting shallowness,
vanity..." to use sol_solaris's words.

I am now trying to think through the differences between the
social interaction of the web's social media and the social
interaction one finds here in gopherspace. One's interactions
with others in gopherspace is every bit as "virtual" as what
one finds on the web, but there are clearly differences. At
least one of those differences is the fact that the inter-
actions are not being manipulated by corporate owners and
sponsors. There are undoubtedly more differences, and I feel
sure some of those other differences would be more revealing
of the differences between gopher and the web -- and
perhaps of the characteristics of social interaction in the
21st century. 

[1] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/~sol_solaris/datalogs/20042019_purging_the_www.txt
[2] Marx, Karl. A Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. (1844)