Political Discussion and Debates in the Modern Attention-Defecient age

You aren't saying anything all too much new if you say that "Social Media is frying people's dopamine receptors". It has been long documented and we have truly experienced first-hand the effects of this new age of prevalent short-form content which is further optimized to retain the user as much as they can. There is something truly dystopian about this "optimization" that I wish to delve into first as a tangent before going into the titular topic. 

There is a certain hopelessness associated with the act of reducing human beings into this quantifiable amalgamated entity - there are multiple courses, gurus, influencers online who will teach you how to "optimize" your content; when translated into English, meaning, how can you as a "creator" make your content in a way that you are sure to hold the viewer's interest up until the end of your reel/tiktok/youtube video. One might ponder, well, how does it differ at all from let's say George Lucas or Kurosawa talking about how movies should be made or how they make movies. And upon that, I would say that while the great filmmakers intend to deliver a story in an efficient manner to their audiences. The optimization of the short form content aims to sedate. While, the greatest works of art aims to leave the viewer with a discovery personal or otherwise - short form content aims to bombard the viewer with an overload of information until their senses give in with absolute servitude. There is something so inherently disgusting to me about a reel or a video which employs all these "tricks" like making the reel's audio be completely subtitled with text coming in at a rapid intensity employing crazy transitions with more background FX to totally overload our senses - mind you the subtitles are not becuase they care about accessibility or inclusivity but rather because our brains do respond to stimuli positively over anything else. Doing rapid editing which employs a catchy hookline as it begins - including multiple layers of video editing with foreground text, background text, background music, text FX, transitions, overlay elements, sudden changes in the intensity of the video's pacing. 

While, I realize, this does sound like well... any other video form content and not exclusive to short form content but while these were the tools to achieve a coherent experience in usual art medium like movies - in short form content, they are pumped to an intensity so high that our dopamine receptors have not been able to adapt fast enough and get hooked akin to cocaine on it. Fuck that, let's include a second video in split screen of a random game being played just so that the user doesn't get a chance to be bored for even a second because we can't afford that the labrat human be ever allowed to think a thought as they scroll through social media. The picture I am trying to paint of short-form content - you might agree with or disagree with. One argument could be, in the end it's just entertainment and it's consumption changing as technology progresses, sure. Something that affects us, or rather the whole world more deeply is politics. We have evolved as a society by the power bestowed upon us of our ancestors. There is a need to have dialogue with groups of people. There is a need to talk and sort things. There is a need to make sure things are properly discussed and the people whose voice aren't normally heard through convential channels are properly respresented. Initially, it felt like social media would enable that but somehow this algorithmically super "optimized" social media is drowing unique voices more persistently than before.

 

While, entertainment could be confined into short one-liners, politics requires lengthy discussions. Let me avoid being country-agnostic for a second and talk about my country, India. The country has just begun to experience an economic uptick. A country where education was a privillige for so long (and sadly still remains in a large part of the country). We had visionaries like Mr. Bhimrao Ambedkar, Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru, Mr. Bhagat Singh and so many countless others who didn't only contribute to the freedom struggle but also were responsible for laying the fundamentals of our consistution (except Bhagat Singh, sadly). Our consitution and it's basis were always focused on communication and upliftment. Hell, even our bicameral system of legislation relies on consistent meetings, long drawn discussions with the opposition sitting together to form policies. That is the basis of our system through and through. These discussions and meetings are supposed to be rigorous and require hours to properly do. Heck, Lok Sabha TV, Rajya Sabha TV have days long sessions. As you can probably guess what I am getting into, in our modern day and age, this place for dialogue has now shifted to short-form content. Instead of long-drawn properly constructed arguments, we delve into a pool of ad-hominem one liners. Instead of rallying for larger participation and large scale discussions, these platforms inherently favor reactionary videos that conform to a certain standard drowning out any nuance in the process.

We have seen widespread use of the power of short form content and the grip it has on us to its full potential. Political parties are now relying on not even promising all that much to the citizens but rather perpetuating a smear campaign by the use of popular memes and media. Every political party from every ideology and sect has started doing this, killing nuance and the places to nurture productive discussions.

There is a something to be taken note of from this that while I lay out an example of political discussions, this extends to almost every sect of every field imaginable and isn't limited to just politics. Just how long drawn discussions can't be broken down into digestible 20 seconds discussions - similarly so can't a million other fields. There is a general trend of "infotainment" short-form videos taking over that I want to talk about next. 

Short-form videos which we initially discussed could be valid for entertainment (despite the attention-span concerns). When we start to talk about information spreading through short-form content, this becomes a larger problem. People are breaking down lengthy books into a 20 second video diluting the original purpose of that book with a strawman summary of the same. Philosophy is now spread through tiktoks relying on one liners to do the majority of the bidding while the actual Philosophy scholars, say, studying epistemology and trying to argue against the K-Aim theory are now misrepresented as the dark edgy Nietzsche quotes flood the internet persuading potential students to not pursue this. Let me rephrase, while art and science will always be misrepresented by the zeitgeist - the difference here being that the incredible reach of this content these days will dissuade younger people from pursuing their dreams or interests by the massive misrepresentation of what these things actually are. Another example is Economics and Equity Trading - while Economics and Trading may seem to be closely related; their actual study is very much separate from each other. Trading deals with using empirical evidence to extrapolate an asset's price into the future and bet on it accordingly. Obviously I am watering down the essence of trading here to get to what I want to talk about [In reality, there are thousands of methods from quant analysis to insider trading to different market making techniques to gamma delta neutral spreads]. All of this is reduced to short form content, again dissuading people into believing that trading isn't a rigorous everyday job where you have to dedicate the entirety of your days just to get the slightest alpha over your counterparties but instead a snoozefest where if you just memorize all the bullflags, spoons, head and shoulders and are able to draw S/R on the chart, you're golden and good to go.

I seem to be stretching this point a lot but I think that helps prove my point even more. Notice how even a paragraph of pure text wasn't enough to properly get across just about anything? This is text that could be digested, re-read and reflected upon and yet STILL this isn't even the tiniest fraction of what the actual studies are supposed to be. Drawing a parallel from this to short-form content where the duration is smaller, most of the "information" is rapidly thrown at your face and there's a new video waiting after a single swipe. 

Circling back to my initial point, if this information is so transient and ineffective in explaining nuances, the havoc it could cause on the uninitiated or the uninformed about politics or in general policies is absolutely unproportional. Indoctrination of people who don't know better into something potentially dangerous, harmful or even violent has become easier than ever. The way these recommendations work also further encourages upsetting or distressful content over anything else. There are already well documented theories about these such as the Alt-Right Pipeline all possible because of these burst of information type content. And, I don't wish to make this blogpost biased towards one political ideology either because misinformation and indoctrination does happen on both ends of the spectrum. 

As tech progresses and the algorithms become more optimized - as these algorithms get even closer to our mind. As the tech constructs greater tools for humans to do just about anything, we seem to be drowning out a lot of what makes humans great. I don't wish for this blog post to be a complete "we are doomed" post because they are rarely productive and always just titillating and sensationalist - instead, I wish to point out this trend we seem to be headed towards and which could easily be avoided by simple regulations and better platforms to discuss what matters for us as a species. While, this blog has a more downbeat tone than how my blogs usually go - at the end I would like to just ask for a little more consideration when interacting with a human being online and also putting a bit more effort into airing your ideas on the betterment of your species because alike everyone else, your voice also matters.

Lastly, the internet is a wonderful place and alike no other. The fact that you can access anything in the world at anytime from anywhere is something never seen hitherto. I wouldn't be 80% of what I am today if not for the internet and I wouldn't have met some of the most genuine, most beloved people in my life if not for the internet. The whole point of the blog is to echo a voice into the void trying to preserve those remnants of a knowledgeable internet before we are thrown into a swirlpool being whiplashed by AI generated misinformation.

Anyway, here's a cute cat for all your troubles.