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Are Social Media Values Human Values?

Perhaps it’s time to consider whether the values reflected by social media enterprises align with values we consider important as human beings.

Facebook’s ballyhooed IPO and subsequent stumble has generated the expected amount of Monday morning quarterbacking, most if not all focused on the viability of the company’s economic model, or lack thereof.

But while many look at Facebook now and see a company that was overvalued financially, I am looking at a company that has been overvalued morally.

Much the way that it has become clear over a long period of time that corporate values and human values are not in fact aligned, so has it become clear, in a much shorter period of time, that social media values and human values are likewise not aligned.

In our collective love affair with Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest and the rest, we have maybe failed to see this clearly.

Social media offer us cool tools and unprecedented connectivity with one another, and I am not here to argue against our using and enjoying services such as Facebook and Twitter. But I do think we will serve ourselves far better if we can begin to approach social media not with the rapt enthusiasm of the zealot (or investor) but, rather, with the informed skepticism of someone approaching anything or anyone that has demonstrated its inability to operate from a system of shared values.

Not sure what I mean? Then have a look. I’ve identified five major values that are, by now, built into the social media world. Understood as attributes of the social media environment, these things are not new news. But I think it’s time that we understand these attributes as actual values being promoted by social media enterprises, and time that we consider whether these values reflect what most of us would consider helpful human values.

The value of rejecting privacy

Facebook has long been spearheading an online movement to trespass on what are otherwise widely recognized as standard principles of human privacy. Convincing people to share personal information in a setting that only appears to be private is by its nature anti-privacy; to do so while repeatedly changing the structure of its privacy settings—always, seemingly, in service of making non-sharing more difficult and sharing more automatic—is all the more suspect.

From a human point of view, Facebook’s shifty, unforthcoming behavior regarding privacy is shameful; from Facebook’s perspective it is both natural and defensible. The company is merely pursuing its goal of being a very large, very dominant social media network.

Social media companies are by their nature uninterested in the value of privacy; in fact, their growth seems to depend in large part upon convincing most people that privacy is somehow quaint or passé and is in any case not important.

The value of quantity over quality

In the social media world, everything, all the time, is about quantity.

Even when it’s been demonstrated that human beings cannot in fact have more than 150 actual friends, over there on Facebook, the orientation has always been to add more friends, and then more. You have to take a conscious stand against the site’s prevailing culture and the behavior of most everyone around you to accept a humanly reasonable number of so-called friends.

And Twitter of course has typically been focused on the number of followers one can accumulate. I have long since lost track of how many people have followed me on Twitter only to unfollow me simply because I did not follow them back. Such people were not concerned with the quality of what I might be sharing on Twitter, they were concerned only with the quantity of followers they themselves were seeking to attain.

And yet in the course of our daily human lives, I am pretty sure we consistently require the capacity to choose based on quality over quantity, and that a value system based on quality is an inherently more connective and compelling one than a value system based on quantity.

The quantity orientation grows subtly dehumanizing day by day on social media sites, with their relentless assumption that you must always want more friends, must always share everything, must always desire a bigger and bigger audience for your life.

Quantity orientation is subtly reinforced by the very structure of social media sites. If you do not post regularly to Facebook, your updates will automatically be less likely to show up in the streams of others. Over in Twitterland, your perceived influence is determined almost exclusively by a combination of how many followers you have and how often you tweet. If you are someone who measures your words carefully, and thinks long and hard before bothering to say something, you are automatically considered less valuable than those who just can’t stop themselves.

The value of the permanent present

Social media is about speed, not reflection. The immediate moment rules the roost. People vie not to be most reliable but to be first, because in many real ways, the only moment that exists in the social media environment is right now.

This is not a philosophical construct but a practical description. If you are successful at playing the social media game, and therefore have large quantities of Facebook friends or Twitter followers, your visible “news stream” is reduced almost entirely to things that are happening right now. Even 15 minutes ago, even five minutes ago, might be off your front page—out of sight and, therefore, out of mind.

This kind of heedless permanent present should not be confused with a spiritual sense of being in the present moment. The instantaneity fostered by social media is akin to the dog in the movie Up, forever distracted by squirrels. Whereas a deeper, more genuine awareness of the present moment means more than being blinded by the surface of life. It’s not that spiritually aware people don’t also get distracted by squirrels—the difference is that they quickly understand that they’ve been distracted. A deep sense of presence allows you to transcend the present moment, not be held prisoner by it.

The permanent present fostered by social media networks tends to imprison users in a landscape overrun with squirrels.

The value of friendship-free friendship

Social media have pioneered a new frontier in human relationships: the friendship-free friendship. Click a button and gain a “friend,” no matter whether you actually know the person in any meaningful way.

Twitter stands out for its honesty and straightforwardness in this regard. On Twitter, you don’t seek friends, you seek followers. Which is semantically a big improvement, although I still question the focus on quantity (see above).

Mark Zuckerberg, on the other hand, made a conscious decision from the beginning to call the people you connect with on Facebook your “friends.” It was a telling choice, made by a young man who simply could not have previously had experience with the soul-sharing, emotionally interactive relationship between two people—i.e., actual friendship—about which countless poets and philosophers through the centuries have rhapsodized.

The proof is in the pudding: if Zuckerberg had previously had a deep and potent understanding of human friendship, he would have never used the word “friend” to describe a Facebook connection in the first place.

Note that in so saying, I do not belittle the potential for online friendship. Two people can surely exchange thoughts and feelings via this electronic medium in a manner that can both create and nourish a significant friendship. But true friendship, experienced through whatever medium, takes time to blossom and care to tend to. Adding a “friend” on Facebook via the click of a mouse is a feeble shadow of the real thing.

The value of attention-getting

In part because the online world is open to one and all—such a difference from the “old media” model of one-to-many broadcasting—an intractable problem facing anyone who seeks an audience is how to get anyone’s attention.

Thus has the very idea of getting people’s attention risen to a value in and of itself. This is the essence of anything that’s said to have gone “viral”—most typically, videos. As noted in a previous essay—“It’s Called Viral For a Reason“—we all know, instinctively, that the fact that something has grabbed our attention does not have any inherent relation to its qualitative merit. But we somehow lose sight of this far too easily when interacting with social media, where we are daily instructed to be impressed by something’s “viral-ness.”

I’ll say it again: it’s called “viral” for a reason. Viruses are things that do harm to human systems.

The loss of the interior

If these five stated social media values, together, have one thing in common it is a relentless focus on the surface and/or exterior of things rather than the depth and/or interior of things. The social media milieu is by nature marked by information overload—there are endless streams to follow, interests to “pin,” pictures to look at, videos to watch; to operate in this setting effectively one must avoid the depth that might exist in people, places, and/or ideas. There just isn’t time. It is best, in fact, not even to recognize that there is any depth to be had. Just “like” it, share it, move on.

And so back to the original question: is this a human value? Is this how we want to live together? Racing breathlessly along the surface? Considering a near-infinite parade of exteriors, ignoring interiors?

I know there are many of us, already, who resist this—who indeed make a determined effort here online to seek depth and meaningful interaction. But we are thus far operating against the grain of online culture—against the grain of capitalism itself, it often seems, since it is by and large the pursuit of dollars at all costs that typically fosters this misalignment of values in the first place.

In the long run, I am, oddly enough, optimistic. Because I don’t think this cultural landscape is sustainable. We will come to our senses at some point, survey the damage done after the fact, and find a more helpful and meaningful way to forge ahead.

In the meantime, until our human values re-assert themselves here online, we will be living through interesting times indeed. Just try to remember that this interesting period of time does not inform us very much about where we are heading in the long run: first, because none of the values promoted by a social-media-dominated world are helpful with depth-oriented, long-term thinking; second, because our collective awareness during this time period, in thrall to social media values, cannot yet begin to imagine life on the other side of the trance. We will get there someday and wonder at the path we took.

Free and legal MP3: Pure Bathing Culture (sweet & unhurried, w/ sneaky depth)

“Ivory Coast” floats along on a gentle bed of guitar and percussion, in an atmosphere at once muddy and lucid.

“Ivory Coast” – Pure Bathing Culture

Sweet, unhurried, and reverby, “Ivory Coast” floats along on a gentle bed of guitar and percussion, its purposeful melody sung with an engaging mix of muddiness and clarity. The verse opens with singer Sarah Versprille sounding a bit far back in the mix, but harmonies added in the second half of the line (0:17) seem to sharpen her presence even as the vocal layers remain kind of blurry and indistinct. That’s kind of a cool trick, actually.

Another cool trick: the verse’s opening melody is seven measures long, an unusual and ear-catching length. The melody then repeats, this time in ten measures, another unusual length. This isn’t anything you will necessarily be aware of, but it adds to the song’s depth and character. In the chorus, we get a twist not only on length of melody (five measures this time) but with time signature, as one measure of six beats is inserted, coinciding with the song’s defining chord change (first heard at 0:54-0:56). With the elusive air of a major-minor alternation, the chord change is concise and melodramatic, and yet comes and goes with an insouciance that almost makes you feel as if you didn’t hear it right. And speaking of chord changes, another signature moment is a chord change added to the second line in the second verse, at 1:33. It comes and goes quickly, but leaves a penetrating aftertaste. This is one artful song.

Versprille and band mate Daniel Hindman became Pure Bathing Culture upon moving from New York City to Portland in early 2011. They played their first show in January 2012. “Ivory Coast” is from the duo’s debut, self-titled EP, which was released this week on Father/Daughter Records. And to show you how well-crafted this song is, check out the simple, acoustic, un-reverby version the two of them perform for the music site Natural Beardy:

Free and legal MP3: Husky (buoyant neo-folk-rock)

Cross Love with America and you’re in the ballpark.

“The Woods” – Husky

Although it has more than a touch of ’60s/’70s West Coast folk-rock earnestness about it, “The Woods” feels somehow more approachable than this might imply. The overall tone is buoyant, not weighty. Cross Love with America and you’re in the ballpark.

A lot is going on here for a song that’s not much more than three minutes long. The crisp acoustic intro—yes, it kind of sounds like “Hotel California” for a moment—starts in one key then switches us to another. The song proper opens with a verse melody that descends via a series of alternating up and down intervals, a particularly engaging melody because it begins with seven distinct, non-repeating notes. This an nifty feat, drawing the listener without effort into the song’s universe. The dramatic drum accents don’t hurt. Moving forward, we get: a rhythmic shift with the chorus (0:44), itself featuring a yearning, briefly-sing-along melody; a revisit of the verse in light of the new rhythm (1:21) (and keep your ear on the lovely piano fills); a bridge that slows the song nearly to a halt (2:14); and a haunting, falsetto-driven coda inspired by the song’s first line (2:44).

Named for front man Husky Gawenda, the band coalesced as a foursome in Melbourne in 2008. Its debut album, Forever So, was released in Australia last fall, and is coming on in the US on Sub Pop in July. They are in fact the first Australian band signed to the landmark indie label. MP3 via Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3: Two Wounded Birds (brisk, unironic rock’n’roll, w/ pure pop appeal)

No electronic trickery, thematic gimmickry, or theatrical tomfoolery; rock’n’roll with an unironic heart of pure pop.

“To Be Young” – Two Wounded Birds

“To Be Young” is so insidiously appealing that anything that might cause some possible trouble here (copping half a melody from the Pretenders “Don’t Get Me Wrong”; intermittently affected vocal style) is neutralized by the soaring success of its pure pop songiness.

A deep-noted guitar lick both launches and anchors the piece. Note how swiftly the music moves even as the lyrics take their time; both in the verse and the chorus there are at least two brisk measures of music between every single lyrical line. This creates a built-in anticipation for each subsequent line—as listeners, we kind of lean in, waiting. This kind of structural delayed gratification is reinforced by melodies that deliver their payoff on the back end. For instance, the verse hook (or, maybe, not so much a hook as a “moment”) is the repeated melody at the end of the line (in the first verse (0:34), it’s the same lyric too: “My head don’t feel right”). In the chorus, as much as the ear is lured in by the opening salvo (“It’s too early”), the song, to my ears, triumphs by nailing the landing, as it were—with the lines “‘Cause we were young/And hopeless,” with that slightly hesitant melisma on the word “young,” the notes of which repeat on “hopeless,” and the music separating them out while we wait, and wait, for the resolution. This comes, actually, only with the transition back to the verse. The song moves on, briskly.

Two Wounded Birds are a quartet from Margate, in the UK. They have previously released an EP and a couple of singles. “To Be Young” is from the band’s self-titled debut album, set for release in June on the Holiday Friends Recording Co., a label co-founded by Jacob Graham of the Drums and now part of the French Kiss Records family. MP3 via Austin Town Hall.

Free and legal MP3: Cub Scouts (breezy, but w/ melancholy core)

Breezy, but with a melancholy core.

“Do You Hear” – Cub Scouts

A breezy song with a melancholy core. Tempo-wise, it’s a finger-snapper but listen attentively and you’ll hear a song that again and again resists resolution, both melodically and harmonically. The expectant vibe with which it launches never quite disappears. That’s what makes it feel kind of lost and lonely, independent of the lyrics (which sound lost and lonely too, though, as much as I can grasp them).

So what’s going on is that the song is rooted in a chord that is not the song’s tonic chord. The tonic chord is, typically, the home base of a song, the chord based on the song’s key (i.e., if a song is written in D major, the D major chord is the tonic chord). We don’t need to hear this chord all the time but it’s usually there to ground us. “Do You Hear” opens up on one chord, stays with it for nearly half a minute, and it’s not the tonic. This would feel pretty edgy except for the bouncy demeanor. And it is this juxtaposition that gives the song its depth and allure, as far as I can tell. In the chorus, by the way, we get a kind of opposite effect, as the melody stays focused mostly on one note as the chords shuffle through a progression that finally resolves—briefly—when the melody drops through to the tonic note (heard the first time at 0:53, on the third iteration of “things you’ve done”). But listen to how quickly we are kicked away from that moment, emphasized by a guitar riff yet again away from the tonic chord. Even the song’s final chord (3:02) keeps the resolution at bay, a not-often-heard effect.

A quintet from Brisbane, Cub Scouts is a new band with two singles so far to their name. “Do You Hear” will appear on a forthcoming EP.

Free and legal MP3: Chromatics (buzzy, reverby gorgeousness)

Buzzy, reverby gorgeousness.

“Kill For Love” – Chromatics

A masterly slice of buzzy, reverby gorgeousness, “Kill For Love” is half Jesus & Mary Chain/New Order mashup, half resplendent dance-club shimmer. There are bleepy, twittery synthesizers, scronky guitars, a rigorous (but seemingly handmade) drumbeat, instrumental melody lines, and a fuzzed-up soundscape. On top of it all we get the subtly radiant voice of Ruth Radelet, who sings without pretension and with a wonderful touch of smoke.

Overall the song seems built on a series of simple gestures that read aurally as elegant. An example is in the drumming, and how the song begins with a distinct, pulse-like pounding, which unconsciously draws us in with its heart-related sonic imagery. At 0:49, an insistent high-hat adds a metallic blur, out of which a number of new background sounds emerge. This is not complicated but it is incisive. More songs would be this relatively simple if they knew how; it’s kind of like that old saw about how I would’ve written you a shorter letter but I didn’t have the time.

Chromatics is/are (so difficult to select the right verb form in this case) a Portland, Ore.-based band that began as a punk-rock outfit in Seattle in 2002. Personnel changes led to a major reboot in 2007, with the album Night Drive, on the Italians Do It Better label, which introduced Radelet as vocalist and Johnny Jewel as the band’s mastermind. Kill For Love, released in March, continues in this mode. You can listen to the entire album, blended together without breaks between songs, via SoundCloud. If nothing else, be sure to check out the opening track, which is a splendid if unexpected reworking of Neil Young’s “My My Hey Hey (Into the Black).”

MP3 via SoundCloud; thanks to Pitchfork for the head’s up. And actually I was first alerted to this song via Matt Pond’s Twitter feed, so thanks to him too.

Free and legal MP3: Soltero (jaunty & homespun)

Reminiscent of Yo La Tengo’s acoustic side.

“Mercenary Heart” – Soltero

Jaunty and homespun, “Mercenary Heart” has the loose-limbed warmth of Yo La Tengo’s acoustic side. Underneath the mild-mannered ambiance, however, is the same kind of songwriting diligence that Soltero has displayed the previous two times they’ve been featured here (in 2004 and 2008).

Although not as extremely positioned as the Cub Scouts song regarding resolution, or lack thereof, singer/songwriter Tim Howard definitely uses unresolved moments to his advantage here, employing melody lines both in the verse and in the chorus that end before resolving. Rather than leaving the ear hanging, however, Howard lets the music resolve after the singing stops, which, in addition to the breezy pace, is what gives the song its sense of relentless motion.

I also like how effectively Howard works with sound, and how he shows that you don’t have to go nuts with strange and novel sonic elements to create compelling textures. Here, Howard works with little more than two guitar sounds and the regular and upper register of his own voice. True to the cliche, less can often be more.

Soltero recorded four albums as a (usually) four-piece band in Boston from 2000 to 2005. The fifth album, in 2008, was pretty much a solo endeavor for Howard, who was then living in Philadelphia. He went on to live in North Carolina and Central America before settling recently in Brooklyn. “Mercenary Heart” is a song from 1943, the latest Soltero album, set for release next week. The album was recorded largely with Alex Drum (who is in fact a drummer), but playing live now the band is back to four pieces. Note that there are two other songs in addition to this one available as free and legal MP3s via Bandcamp.

Free and legal MP3: Balthrop, Alabama (incisive storytelling from 11-piece ensemble)

“Electricity” offers us a refreshing break from 21st-century indie-rock’s inclination towards obscurantism. And you can dance to it.

“Electricity” – Balthrop, Alabama

“Electricity” offers us a refreshing break from 21st-century indie-rock’s inclination towards obscurantism. And you can dance to it.

I’ve got nothing against a certain amount of lyrical mystery, mind you, but I think today’s exceedingly well-educated rockers often overdo it in the “what are they talking about?” category. There’s something to be said for narrative clarity and matter-of-fact insight, and “Electricity,” the dryly related story of a small town and its first long-ago Saturday night with electricity, has both. The storytelling is musical as much as lyrical here. You’ll obviously notice the noodly, sci-fi synth that is immediate aural code for “ooh! electricity!” But note too the perfect electric guitar sound, right there in the intro—that buzzy but vibrant tone, which, combined with a fuzzed-out drumbeat, feels shot through with current. When the opening riff returns in an instrumental break at 2:47, the guitar sounds even more thematically aligned; I can’t describe it but it feels to my ears like the sound an electrified fence would make if you could play it like an instrument.

As for the story itself, I like how it extends beyond the Saturday night into Sunday morning, when no one could get up because they had all been up so late. This, we are being told indirectly, is really how “things will never be the same in this city.” It’s an incisive twist.

Brooklyn-based Balthrop, Alabama was founded by Alabama-born siblings Pascal and Lauren Balthrop, who have named the band as they did for their idea that the band itself, with 11 members, is a kind of small town. “Electricity” is the semi-title-track from the ensemble’s new album, We Have Electricity, released last month on the not-for-profit End Up Records, also located in Brooklyn. After a double-album debut in 2007 and four subsequent EPs, this is the band’s first regular-length album. MP3 via Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3: Sophie Barker (downtempo loveliness)

“Say Goodbye” weaves a knowing spell, breaking no new territory but doing what it does with great bittersweet panache.

“Say Goodbye” – Sophie Barker

Sophie Barker is not a name you’re likely to recognize but you may well recognize her voice—she sang a number of songs fronting the musical outfit Zero 7, which helped popularize the so-called downtempo (or chillout, or downbeat) genre early in the millennium. (She co-wrote and sang, for one, the widely-heard song “In The Waiting Line.”) Personally, I never warmed to Zero 7, and I think it was because of my irrational prejudice against “producer music.” Zero 7 was/is the brainchild of two British producer/remixer types, and to me that eliminates the main thing I get out of music, which is a sense of personal connection to a musician who is playing an instrument and/or singing a song. This is just me, I will note. You are entitled and even encouraged to feel otherwise.

Anyway, so if Sophie Barker now comes along with a similarly chilled-out sound but is singing and performing her own material, rather than as a hired hand on a musical “project,” I find my heart much more open to it than I was to her Zero 7 performances. “Say Goodbye” weaves a knowing spell, breaking no new territory but doing what it does with great bittersweet panache. (New territory, as I’ve said many times, is way overrated.) Barker has a lovely voice, at once plainspoken and rich, with a thrilling upper register that she unleashes largely in the chorus (although don’t miss how she sometimes flits into it briefly, as for instance when she sings the words “Will you” in the line “Will you be standing by me?” at 0:45). With its offhand melodies and melancholy bursts of harmony, “Say Goodbye” shimmers with feeling, and, to me, shows the potential power of this kind of composition when sung truly from the heart.

“Say Goodbye” is from the album Seagull, Barker’s third solo album, released last year in the UK. She is currently playing in the US. No word yet on whether the album is slated for a US release, but the promotional MP3 suggests something might be in the works. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the lead.

Free and legal MP3: Mirror Lady (luminous lo-fi)

This is one of those songs that you can take a slice of at any point and find all sorts of interesting and wonderful things happening.

“Hands Are Tied” – Mirror Lady

Careful readers will know that lo-fi music makes an occasional appearance here, but it’s more accident than statement. I am not a fan of lo-fi for the sake of its lo-fi-ness; I am a fan of good songs, and when they happen to be constructed in a lo-fi environment, hooray for that, because it’s another worthy three or four minutes of music unleashed in the world.

“Hands Are Tied” is a particular marvel, a song both superbly crafted and distinctly attuned to its lo-fi setting—so attuned in fact that you almost don’t notice how lo-fi it is. That, to me, is a brilliant accomplishment. The key is the warmth of the sound. Bathed in reverb, the song still feels lucid and distinct. The keyboard, guitar, and the bass all but melt together, sketching lazy joint melodies over a drum beat at once urgent and welcoming. This is one of those songs that you can take a slice of at any point and find all sorts of interesting and wonderful things happening. I particularly like the woodwind-y synth melody that chimes in after the phrase “always the same,” first heard at 1:45. I am charmed as well by the very end of the song, how you can hear the bass turn off, which in that one sound/gesture embodies the song’s lo-fi warmth.

Now based in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, the three men calling themselves Mirror Lady first started playing together while students at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. “Hands Are Tied” is from the band’s debut recording, an EP entitled Roman Candles, which was self-released last month and is available via Bandcamp on a “name your price” basis.