silence’s grammar Embodied presence also liberates us from the need to prematurely reach for explanations and solutions — for an answer. If I can only speak, then the use of words will require me to search for sense. Silence can contemplate the mysterious, the absurd, and the act of grace, but words must search for reasons and solutions.

In the fall of 2009, as the age of blogs was already fading, I launched The Frailest Thing as a space to think out loud as I worked my way through a graduate program in technology studies. In the y...

I recently stumbled upon this tweet from Aaron Lewis: “what if old tweets were displayed with the profile pic you had at the time of posting. a way to differentiate between past and present selves.” ​ I’m going to set aside for now an obviously and integrally related matter: to what degree should our present self be held responsible for the utterances of an older iteration of the self that resurface through the operations of our new memory machines? ​ What I’m reading into Lewis’s proposal then is an impulse, not at all unwarranted, to reassert a measure of agency over the operations of digitally mediated memory. ​ Yes, that was me as I was, but that is no longer me as I now am, and this critical difference was implicit in the evolution of my physical appearance, which signaled as much to all who saw me. No such signals are available to the self as it exists online.

I have to confess that Twitter has yielded some good relationships and opportunities over the past few years. And there’s a part of me that wants to keep that portal open. It’s just that on most days, I’m not sure it’s worth it. ​ going indie, as it were, works better (better, I grant, depends on your purposes) when you’ve already got a large audience that is going to follow you where ever you go ​ divided ​ What I do know is that the newsletter is increasingly where I want to write and what I want to keep developing

instead what seemed required was a kind of ironic disavowal of disavowal with regard to our online presentation: The tone foregrounds the idea that we all must put on an act that fools no one. ​ Among the historical antecedents, ​ They reinforce the idea that people should always be working by providing another arena for invidious comparison, self-branding, and optimization. But something more subtle may be happening as well. Social media platforms, like all technologies that mediate the self, “heighten consciousness,” in media scholar Walter Ong’s words. But if earlier technological developments, like writing, heightened consciousness to extend the self, newer technologies may heighten it to a point where it no longer sustains the self but undermines it. ​ writing — the “technologizing of the word,” as Ong described it — distanced us from the flux of immediate experience and expanded consciousness into space and across time. The diary could be considered paradigmatic: It makes subjectivity an object of reflection, both in the moment of composition and for future readers as well. ​ is to see at least some aspect of yourself suspended in time and space. ​ The audience’s resulting dispersal through space and time leads to a sporadic and unpredictable set of interactions, which can anchor habits of continual checking or an intensified susceptibility to push notifications (part of how platforms try to elicit compulsive engagement). The result is that we can’t help but be aware of ourselves through these platforms as continual performers, moment by moment. ​ What kind of self derives from this condition? Imagine a wedding photographer who circulates, trying to capture candid images of spontaneous or unscripted moments. “Act naturally,” they might joke, before encouraging everyone to “pretend I’m not here,” ironically vocalizing the impossible possibility to diffuse some of the pressure of doing as they say. Now imagine that you are that photographer, but that it is also your wedding. And imagine also that the wedding never ends. ​ To borrow sociologist Erving Goffman’s terminology, broadcasting on social media amounts to a substantial expansion of what he called our “front stage,” where we are consciously and continually involved in the work of impression management ​ But they have really mastered the art of transforming the backstage into another front stage. ​ We can understand backstage experience, then, as a respite not only from the gaze of an audience but also the gaze we must fix on ourselves to pull off our performances. ​ The algorithms that ostensibly reveal what your “true” or “authentic” self would choose for itself feed off the very exhaustion that the platforms generate, offering refuge from the burden of identity work in the automation of the will. ​ Life needs the protection of nonawareness.