{"id":6885,"date":"2021-04-16T16:19:37","date_gmt":"2021-04-16T14:19:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prod-2018.frictions.co\/?p=6885"},"modified":"2021-11-16T15:20:33","modified_gmt":"2021-11-16T14:20:33","slug":"cher-instagram-cher-facebook-je-vous-presente-ma-demission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prod-2018.frictions.co\/english\/9-to-5-the-time-of-your-life-s3\/dear-instagram-dear-facebook-i-hereby-tender-my-resignation\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Instagram, dear Facebook, I hereby tender my resignation\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A few months ago, I uninstalled Facebook and Instagram from my phone \u2014 an anticipated hibernation. I am the co-producer of a podcast \u2014 a non-profit side passion project \u2014 and having said that, these apps have come in quite handy: to spread the word about our content, attract new subscribers, and expand a small but interested community\u2026 The classic webmarketing ritornello. Yet, I felt no lack, just a great relief to be able to stop going on these two apps in order to make posts and stories, or like and comment publications. \n
\nAt times I had the naive but exquisite illusion that my sleep was a general shutdown of Instagram and Facebook, according to that dangerous adage I fondly use occasionally: \u201cWhat I don\u2019t know simply doesn\u2019t exist.\u201d At other times, I also considered social networks as far-flung countries, worlds apart, which would continue to live by their own rules and practices \u2014 similar to the \u201cmagic circle\u201d that historian Huizinga referred to when defining play spaces: \u201ctemporary worlds in the heart of the usual world\u201d. No more playing was, in my case, a pure delight.\n
\nI wondered how I got to this point, after years of producing free content online. Why had weariness gradually replaced pleasure in these activities? And why was I so much enjoying this digital detox?<\/p>

In 2006, when I started my very first job in the digital department of a communication agency, social networks were almost non-existent. But forums and blogs were swarming, conversations buzzing everywhere. We were talking about \u201cweb 2.0\u201d and of \u201cuser-generated content\u201d, a barbaric term to explain that users could fully be co-founders of the Internet that was taking shape at the time \u2014 O\u2019Reilly often spoke of \u201cuser added value\u201d. While social networks were deploying, there was at that time a strong belief in the original ideals of the web: access to information, free information, horizontality of knowledge and skills. Everyone believed in the new technologies as a vector of positive social change. It was also, as Patrice Flichy wrote in 2010 in <\/span>Le Sacre de l'amateur, sociologie des passions ordinaires \u00e0 l'\u00e8re du num\u00e9rique [\u201cConsecration Of The Amateur: Sociology Of Ordinary Passions In The Digital Age\u201d]<\/span><\/i>, \u201cthe rise of the amateurs [...]: these passionate people who are neither novices nor professionals, but brilliant all-rounders. Thanks to computers and the participative web, they have invested all aspects of contemporary culture. Their practices are profuse and often pioneering, and have changed the way we create artworks, diffuse information, generate knowledge, and engage in activism.\u201d <\/span><\/p>

In my professional ecosystem, many people were creating and producing content on the Internet. Blog posts, tweets, videos... we were constantly expressing ourselves. And at a time when brands were starting to monitor their e-reputation, the same idea started to make sense for individuals: to consciously build an online identity, monitor your image. And if possible gain notoriety. Do you remember Klout? This tool \u2014 which I abhorred \u2014 evaluated the social influence of an Internet user by mixing different statistics from his practices on the networks. We were then given a score that we could brandish proudly as soon as it flew a bit high. We were encouraged to produce relentlessly and to devise strategies to promote this content as cleverly as possible. We had to trick Google's SEO to make our blog appear in the first search results, choose our #followfriday on Twitter to get noticed by the influencers, or buy fake fans to increase our community (well I wouldn't classify this last one as a smart strategy).<\/span><\/p>

I am speaking in the past tense, but you know how the story unfolds: nothing has changed today. The phenomenon has simply increased substantially with the boom of smartphones and the proliferation of all the content produced from these little devices, photos, audios and videos \u2014 and of course with the increase in the number of people producing every second of the day and night.<\/span><\/p>

More than ever, everything is baked in platforms and apps so as to keep our attention as a user. As Tristan Harris explained in 2016 in a now famous Medium post, \u201cHow Technology is Hijacking Your Mind \u2014 from a Magician and Google Design Ethicist\u201d, there are a multitude of techniques, whether in user experience or interface design, that exploit our cognitive biases and psychological weaknesses, with the ultimate goal of getting us to spend as much time as possible on the site, network or app in question. With that bitter aftertaste in our mouths that we all know: What have I been doing for the last 45 minutes? Literally nothing, I've just been watching those Facebook videos that play automatically one after the other (that's hijack number 6 identified by Harris: Bottomless bowls, Infinite Feeds, and Autoplay).<\/p>


<\/span>And everything is also geared, on these same platforms and applications, for content creators to produce and promote relentlessly, in a constant struggle for visibility. In fact, the initial content (be it a podcast, an article, an illustration...) is never enough in itself. You have to constantly produce meta-content on social networks: to keep your account fed, to occupy the field and to hope that the initial content will be noticed. Let's take the example of Instagram and its voracious algorithm, which asks a lot in exchange of a little exposure \u2014 to quote a tweet that I read in January: \u201cto gain visibility, every week you'll have to supply it with: 3 posts in feed, 8 to 10 stories, 4 to 7 Reels, 1 to 3 IGTV\u201d. So you have to feed the beast, copiously, and at the right times. But with tact, otherwise you will lose the subscribers you will not have sufficiently \u201cengaged\u201d, and who will have grown weary. <\/span><\/p>

You also have to keep up with the pace and join the hectic flow \u2014 Trying to create based on your needs and listening to your desires has proven pointless to me. For example, once again on Instagram, if you distance yourself for a while, the network \u201cpunishes\u201d you by reducing your visibility \u2014 and here you go, a slight step backwards.<\/span><\/p>

And yet, when you create, and it works, you have no reason to stop. Quite the opposite. Your \u201ccommunity\u201d rewards you with likes, comments, reposts and more. You feed the community and you feed the algorithms which thank and reward you with new subscribers, but who \u2014 like ravenous animals \u2014 stick out their tongues to receive always more. <\/span><\/p>

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One day when I was preparing content in advance and scheduling it for the whole week \u2014 impossible to do otherwise! \u2014 in order to promote the latest episode of the podcast, I really felt like I'd put my finger on a never-ending spiral. Yes, it was exciting to get positive feedback, yes, it was gratifying to see the number of subscribers grow, yes, it was sometimes a delicious ego booster to receive a like from a highly regarded person. <\/span>
<\/span>But wasn't it terribly laborious and exhausting in the end? Could this activity still be enjoyable when the main concern was visibility \u2014 and thus permanent allegiance to algorithms?<\/span>
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For a long time I thought that creating non-remunerated content was something close to a hobby, a bit like that absurd category in the resume, where you can introduce yourself saying, for example, \u201cI'm a consultant and I have a blog about vegan food\u201d. The \u201creal\u201d job that allows you to earn a living versus passion, done for genuine pleasure. In reality, the boundaries are much more blurred between a \u201creal\u201d job and our digital productions. <\/span>
<\/span>What actually distinguishes an amateur blogger from a professional blogger, who lives of his platform? When both are talented, not much \u2014 except for the income. On the other hand, they share a lot: writing and promoting content, interacting with their community, being responsive, tracking and analyzing metrics, maintaining their blog, etc. In short, time invested and tasks performed with assiduity that resemble what we usually put behind the word work.<\/span><\/p>

Moreover, remuneration is not an operative category for thinking about \u201cwork\u201d on the Internet. This is what Antonio Casilli and Dominique Cardon explained early on in 2015, when they contributed to coining the concept of \u201cdigital labor\u201d known in France \u2014 a term showing that behind our daily digital actions lies an invisible work \u2014 all the more invisible because it is not perceived as work by Internet users. A work insofar as these uses generate value captured by digital companies. Each like, each click on a Google search result, each profile update creates valuable metadata to improve services (and of course, to optimize advertising targeting). For example, by designating an email as spam, I improve the functioning of the Gmail spam detection algorithm. However, \u201cGmail's spam detection algorithm can only work if a large number of people designate an email as spam\u201d. It is therefore a mass of non-remunerated users who work daily for large digital companies.<\/p>

To be honest, I am worn out \u2014 not only from working indirectly for digital companies, graciously delivering value to them, but of bending to their injunctions and desiderata for so long. Where is the pleasure of creation if constraints seem overly important to me? <\/span><\/p>

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It was therefore with a sigh of relief that I uninstalled Instagram and Facebook. I certainly felt like I was stopping a form of work, with invisible and heartless managers. And with unrealistic goals: I felt like I was contributing to a system that fully endorses the overload of content. This frantic race to over-produce and over-consume made my head spin. This race for attention. As one of my \u201cASMR-tists\u201d idols, that I listen to at night sneakily and who was celebrating her two million subscribers on her channel, says: \u201cI want to thank you for your time, that you invest into my channel even though you have literally millions of different things to watch, any second of your time \u2014 and you chose to watch my videos.\u201d<\/p>


<\/span>Our time, our attention is a limited resource. However, the offer available to feed it has never been so abundant on the Internet. And while we are able to adapt our lifestyles \u2014 at least, to think about it \u2014 to address the societal issues we have to face, we continue to produce and consume digital content at full capacity. And too bad for the CO2 emissions, but in our representations the materiality of digital content is completely absent. Yet, according to the Shift Project, 1% of the world's pollution is caused by watching videos on the Internet (Can you imagine the pollution caused by the entire Internet?).<\/span><\/p>

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I don't like the radical injunctions of a \u201cdigital detox\u201d or to \u201cdisconnect!\u201d that don't solve the problem and only make the users feel guilty. On the other hand, in my La la land dreams, I aspire to a milder consumption and production, without performance stakes, in which the greedy side of algorithms would be replaced by frugality, where the organic would take precedence over the viral and the paid. And where, perhaps, for amateurs, the feeling of \u201cworking\u201d would fade away in favor of a rediscovered pleasure.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Don't miss the next stories ...!<\/p><\/div><\/div>

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