Status as a Service
Facebook News Feed simultaneously increased the efficiency of distribution of new posts and pitted all such posts against each other in what was effectively a single giant attention arena, complete with live updating scoreboards on each post. It was as if the panopticon inverted itself overnight, as if a giant spotlight turned on and suddenly all of us performing on Facebook for approval realized we were all in the same auditorium, on one large, connected infinite stage, singing karaoke to the same audience at the same time. As humans, we intuitively understand that some galling percentage of our happiness with our own status is relative. What matters is less our absolute status than how are we doing compared to those around us. By taking the scope of our status competitions virtual, we scaled them up in a way that we weren't entirely prepared for. Is it any surprise that seeing other people signaling so hard about how wonderful their lives are decreases our happiness? Facebook, with its explicit attachment to the real world graph and its enforcement of a single public identity, is just a poor structural fit for the more complex social capital requirements of the young. Every network has some ceiling on its ultimate number of contributors, and it is often a direct function of its proof of work. This season, the color of the moment might be saffron. Why? Because someone cooler than me said so. Tech tends to prioritize growth at all costs given the non-rival, zero marginal cost qualities of digital information. In a world of abundance, that makes sense. However, technology still has much to learn from industries like fashion about how to proactively manage scarcity, which is important when goods are rivalrous. Since many types of status are relative, it is, by definition, rivalrous. There is some equivalent of crop rotation theory which applies to social networks, but it's not part of the standard tech playbook yet. but if I have anything to offer on that front, it’s this: if you want control of your own happiness, don’t tie it to someone else’s scoreboard.