immanence

My book Ecologies of the Moving Image provides some suggestions into how we can become better consumers and co-producers of media. But these suggestions come couched within a 400-page treatise of media (and environmental) philosophy that includes a history of cinema, analyses of various films, and much else. While the focus there is on cinema and on the cultivation of habits that could help make us better viewers of it, the arguments apply to all visual media.

Here I want to try to isolate a couple of practical pointers into “media hygiene” for our densely mediated world. But first, some off-the-cuff rules for “social media hygiene” (mostly to do with clickbait, and not about teen sexting practices or anything like that). This is an evolving list, so feel free to suggest others.

Rules for Social Media Hygiene

Or, How Not to Spread Crapdip, i.e., Clickbait, Rage, and Assorted Paranoia-inducing and Debilitating Informational Puffery. (Note: The assumption here is that clickbait makes us stupid. If it doesn’t, prove it.)

1) Before posting, ask yourself: should people really care about what I am about to say? If the answer is no, shut the f. up. Too many of us in here are already saying enough; a little listening and quietness can never hurt.

2) If what you’re about to say (or spread) looks like, talks like, walks like, and smells like crapdip, it is. Spreading it makes you smell like it, and your friends too.

3) If a “news” story reaffirms your preconceptions while taking you to a web site full of clickbait, it’s probably not news. If you spread it, not only are you being suckered, you’re spreading that suckeredness to your friends. Smelly.

4) If a “news” story makes you really angry, check some other sources to make sure that the story isn’t just trying to make you really angry. If it is, redirect your anger. Just say no.

5) If a “news” story doesn’t tell you who wrote it (and give you some clue as to who that person is or where you could find out more about them), treat it with suspicion. (Unless the source is a known quantity, like The Economist. In which case it will smell like The Economist, or whatever source it is, which is usually okay if you know what the smell means.)

6) If it does tell you who wrote it, but it looks suspect (for one of the other reasons outlined here), look into what else that person has written. If things start to smell smelly, be aware that sharing it will make you start to smell that way, too.

7) If you’re resharing “news” that isn’t news because it’s old, acknowledge that it’s old. If you don’t know, look into it. If you don’t, you’re already starting to smell.

8) If you don’t know the source of something you’re sharing, you don’t know where it’s been or whose hands and body parts have accessed it. Chances are, somewhere along the way it got a little smelly. Look into it. Or wash your hands.

OK, now, more seriously…

Media Hygiene 101

1. We live immersed in media. We cannot really step out of that immersion, but we can step back from the more intensive media often enough to develop a better cognizance of how we engage with them.

Tip: Practice media-free moments — mornings, meals, evenings, or even occasional days without television, computers, or that persistent background hum of streamed audio and smart phone interactions. Immediately before, between, and after those moments, note how you — the physical, emotional, and cognitive flow that makes you up — are affected by your engagement with (and disengagement from) those media. Cultivate mindfulness of your media immersion. Get better at giving away your attention, keeping it to yourself, and knowing which to do when. And every once in a while, just go for a long walk. Find some animals to watch. Let yourself get taken by surprise.

2. Our realities are built up from the “information” we receive from media. “Information” is another word for stuff that informs, i.e., stuff that forms us, in and out. It’s made up of data — “bits of world” that consist of words and images, connections between those words and images (which come wrapped as factual assertions and claims and as more general interpretive frames), and movements — physical, affective, emotional, and cognitive inflections, propensities, swerves, rushes, and flows. These things move us, shape us, and form us. We know where some of them come from; but about most of them, we don’t. As long as we can rely on our sources, it doesn’t really matter. But when you sail the open seas of social media (or live in the twenty-first century), reliability becomes elusive.

Tip: Take time away from the active reproduction of yourself — your usual informational habits — in order to get a better sense of where those “bits of world” that shape you come from. Probe deeper into the sources of your usual avenues of informational self-reproduction. Try some new sources, new routes, new habits, to see what they feel like, who you might befriend on the way, and how they challenge you. Then take a break (see #1 above) and let your insights sink in. Next time, try being more selective and judicious. See what that feels like, and take it from there.