Today’s thesis: Technology in the cultural mainstream presents great potential for writers and educators, but I’m afraid we’ll always feel like we’re swimming upstream.
In the past ten days, I’ve had three TikToks go moderately viral. I know, I know: So. Many. Questions. Well let me regale you…
A few months back, Penguin Press held an event called “Author’s University” for first-time authors looking to build an audience for their forthcoming books. Because they are publishing my forthcoming, co-authored book on philosophy and everyday life (which you can pre-order by following that link…I’ll wait!), I attended and enthusiastically devoured every panelist’s advice. Basically, it all boiled down to three points:
Authors need to pro-actively build an audience (base).
Social media is the only (or at least the fastest, most powerful) way to do this.
When it comes to platforms, beggars can’t be choosers.
I was intrigued, of course, both because I’d like to be a successful author, and also because I’ve long had a love-hate-but-mostly-love relationship with the internet and social media. Before fancy “Learning Management Systems” built up powerful “educational-technology” (ed-tech) tools, I was using Google-groups, Twitter, and private Facebook groups in my classes. I’m an ed-tech nut. So for my publisher to basically say that it’s part of my job to create and post content aimed at reaching hundreds or thousands of people with my educational message was kind of a dream come true…
Enter TikTok.
Because platforms like Facebook and Instagram have been around for so long, they are pretty much saturated with content. Any bizarre sub-culture you’re a part of probably has 10+ public groups with tens or hundreds of thousands of members. Any distinctive angle on your niche interests is probably occupied by hundreds or thousands of Instagrammers with better cameras than you. But TikTok. Oh, TikTok is the absolute wild west of social media.
It’s growing so rapidly, and the ratio of content producers to content consumers is still so small, that it’s relatively easy to attract a fair amount of attention. For an analogy: think about how much attention you’d garner walking into an active circus and starting to juggle, vs. walking into a completely silent prayer service and doing the same thing (before the liturgy even begins). All eyes (all clicks, all likes) are on you.
So, I tried it.
My first viral post was about the difference between self-control (or willpower) and the ancient religious and philosophical idea of “detachment.” The second, and my favorite, was a collaboration with my neighbor Brian (also a philosopher), in which he explains the metaphysics of nothingness exceedingly quickly. Our third, another Paul-Brian collaboration, features my insanely awkward dance moves as Brian explains all the holes in a particular contemporary moral theory.
Of all the possible questions you might have, I’m going to explore exactly one. And that is: Are we — educators, authors, people of good will with a message — wasting our time by trying to reach audiences through the increasingly invasive, manipulative, and intellectually destructive tools of New Media.
The short answer, of course, is that I have no idea. There are techno-optimists (none of whom I feel particularly convinced by), and, of course, the techno-pessimists (like the people behind Netflix’s quasi-self-undermining viral documentary “The Social Dilemma”). Nicholas Carr, whose book I’ve been reading in parallel with the rise of my TikTok, sits somewhere in the middle.
What I like about Carr’s work is not the neuroscience he uses to bolster his various arguments (which strike me as itself rather shallow, and possibly outright pseudo-science). Rather, I enjoy listening to Carr’s intelligent reflections on the effects of the internet on his own mind, consciousness, and brain. Indeed, some of the passages in the book helped me recall (and then inspired nostalgia for) a time before smartphones, and high-speed internet. (A time that I can, but just barely, remember mentally occupying.)
I gather — from this book and from broader reading like this stunningly reported recent Harper’s article — that we’re all well aware of the internet’s effects on our brains; it shortens our attention spans, reduces our ability to engage in “deep thinking,” and increases vicious desires for more shocking, more outlandish information bursts. But Carr, somewhat unintentionally, I think, stumbles upon a related and more interested question, i.e. what are these digital tools doing to our souls? This question, for various reasons, seems to be one that is better addressed reflectively, and through deep conversation, than through any sort of empirical research. And it’s very much the impetus behind my recent experiments.
I’m wondering if the far reaches of the internet (TikTok, etc.) are more like the wildernesses the Jesuit missionaries of the 17th and 18th centuries found themselves enmeshed in — spaces wherein potentially beautiful cultures, rich traditions, and hitherto unimagined technological progress awaits — or whether these are the sputtering and decadent parties of a culture near collapse. We can, of course, armchair these questions, but what fun is that? So that’s why I’ll be out in the field, taking notes and participating in some strange new ceremonies and rituals. If ever my missives become altered or unintelligible, send help. Until then, I can be found @profblaschko.
-pb
Deep(ish) Thoughts
I’m still very much at work on my class about work, and this week I spent several days filming videos (some instructional, some aimed to hype you up). In this video, I tackle the topics that initially sparked my interest in the philosophy of work, with guest appearances by Aristotle and Karl Marx.
(As always, if you like what you see here, feel free to subscribe to my channel here.)
Parting Recs
Here’s a stack, with some new and some familiar titles, that represents my aspirational “summer reading.”
I’ll highlight the Suzman book on work (at the very bottom), which has been getting lots of attention on Notre Dame’s campus and beyond. Full review forthcoming, I hope.
Lost in Thought defends the “vita contemplativa” in rich and thoughtful prose filled with personal reflections and “Brain-Picking’s” style references galore.
How to Think Like a Roman Emperor is for anyone visiting the Daily Stoic, but who wants a bit more scholarly substance. (A good pairing with Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations.)
Dreamland is the book I got to follow up on HBO’s devastating two-part documentary on the opioid crisis. I recommend both (all three?).\
The Amateur Hour reviews (hilariously) the history of the college lecture, and argues (in a way familiar to anyone with actual training in the field of education, I gather) that there’s nothing “professional” about teaching in higher-ed.
Super Courses is a book we’re reading for an on-campus book club I’m organizing. I enjoyed Bain’s What the Best College Teachers Do, and I’m hoping this is the course-design version of that.
I’ll leave with a poem (that will serve as my argument that internet tools needn’t leave us always shallowbrained) from my one and only Mary Oliver (you may have to click through to actually watch / listen).
And a shout-out to SoR (i.e. “Space of Reason”) reader Rand, who rec’d (and then lent) me Rilke’s gorgeous Book of Hours. It contains such beautiful, devastating truths.
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