Thank you, Ugo, for the clear explanation of the links between mimetics and FB/social media. I would add this dynamic:: for a great many people, their selfhood and identity is now dependent on their social media presence. Stripped of a social media presence and "likes" (positive feedback that yes, I exist and am worthy of attention), an important source of their sense of self and identity is lost. Once deplatformed, involuntarily or voluntarily, they are shipped to what I call "digital Siberia." Those few of us with independent web presences (blogs, vlogs, etc.) that are not platform-dependent have the equivalent of a ham radio in our attic: a few people might receive our weak signals. Those without truly stand-alone digital "selfhoods / identities" have no backup and so their sense of loss in being deplatformed may be profound. I started thinking about these topics some years ago, for example in this post from February 2011: 800 Million Channels of Me https://www.oftwominds.com/blogfeb11/800-million-channels-of-me2-11.html
Following this line of thinking, perhaps FB et al. won't collapse until there is a non-profit-maximizing platform they can use, the equivalent of a public utility that is managed transparently and that treats every user the same. Thank you for all you do-- warm regards, Charles Hugh Smith https://charleshughsmith.substack.com/
I appreciate your explanations and illustrations. What prompted me to leave, and this was many years ago (with an account under another name), was that FB fiddled around with the algorithms such that I couldn't be sure if my posts were reaching my followers. So I switched back to using email and a newsletter. As for my personal friends and family interacting with me on FB, I figured my leaving FB would be a useful test of the relationship. It was.
Ugo, you speak of platform members acting as an immune system. Here is an example of social media group apoptosis:
I belonged to a FB group consisting of all kinds of kooks, mutants, weirdos and neurodivergents. It was great fun, but as you might expect, it became very difficult to control. After a few months, the founder became tired of managing it and decided to make every single member an admin, then stepped back and watched it implode. After a few weeks of the name of the group changing every 20 minutes while the page filled up with drunken, drugged and/or deranged rants, some people began ejecting members, some of whom reemerged in sock puppet accounts. Eventually, someone removed the founder, who by then was mostly ignoring the group, or perhaps just lurking and laughing. After that, someone said something along the lines of "Enough! It's time to put this thing out of its misery!" He removed the remaining members, quit the group and left it as an inaccessible, smoldering zombie husk floating in space.
Yep. Social groups have a limited lifetime, then they tend to decline and fade out. In some cases, it may be spectacular, as you note in this story. It is, in the end, good, old entropy at work!
Funny how it is. The one ending a kind of singularity event; a chain reaction out of control. The other a decay by diffusion. Sometimes, you can go back years later, peek inside and find some residue, the one or two guys who can't or won't let it go and still contributing material for no one but themselves.
Friendster (and myspace) declined because there was a better offer - facebook. What‘s the better offer to make facebook decline? I think that a lot of the decline of facebook is just like with the economy: under the hood there are a lot of „zombie“ accounts that are not active anymore, or at least not daily, weekly, monthly. But definitely and interesting model to see how fads „move“!
Thanks for this lesson in infection dynamics. I am trying to fit this model to global human population and need some help. Population exploded because we dramatically reduced the death rate. When we reach the limit, which model will be followed? Will decline be a slow, you-first decay, or a fast, race-to-the-bottom collapse? Does the Seneca Cilff apply when there is no new civilization, no new planet, to flee to.
I would place my bets on a rapid collapse. It is typical of population curves: they tend to be asymmetric, Seneca-like. But many factors are in play, so we cannot say for sure.
Population exploded because of the invention of the Haber Bosche process not a lowered death rate. Kangaroos for example maintain a 6 year life expectancy but can have wild variations in population numbers if they are in drought or not.
It’s feed that grows the animals- humans or otherwise
I think there are two factors in our population irruption. You only mention declining death rate.
On the flip side, we have the classical Malthusian reason, well-founded in ecology: excess trophic energy results in increased population. Half the nitrogen in our body is the result of the Haber-Bosch process for turning inert atmospheric nitrogen into fertilizer.
That's a great article. I think the mouse experiment parallels our fate. Humans are already leaving the mommy-track behind and "grooming" their CVs instead. One difference is that we do not have unlimted food, so we will starve, some of us. My answer to your question of why birth rate declines: evolution selected for decreased fertility in times of hardship. The mice were not starving, but they faced other hardships, and safety takes priority over reproduction. We think we're different because of our big brain, but really we are just mice.
Memes can disappear rapidly not only because their hosts might share their weariness with each other, but also because memes are in constant competition. It would therefore have been interesting to see whether the fall of Friendster corresponds to the rise of another social network. And then whether a new one is likely to compete with Facebook in the near future and so hasten its fall.
On the other hand, it's interesting to note that the most resilient and enduring memes - sometimes, like religions, able to withstand the centuries - are often endowed with a kind of build-in immune system that leads its hosts to consider any criticism of the meme as further proof of its veracity or usefulness. And that's probably what Facebook lacks. But it might be what could save X as some users might be convinced that their freedom of speech (or whatever) is at stake.
Beside, as people immune to viral or bacterial infection can take care of the sick ones and help them recover faster and in a greater number, the biological situation is not so different than the memetic one ;)
PS : Meme theory and its deepest implications regarding human nature is truly fascinating. I remember reading Susan Blackmore's "The Meme Machine" with the greatest interest.
FB was interesting because you could find peoples "long forgotten", that give him a huge base so it becomes a business that could be exploited and could become self-sustaining.
FB is a birthplace for this kind of self organizing meme complex, people usually struggle to find something like a sense of belong to something and usually couldn't in our competitive (almost cutthroat) society and this kind of "new shared beliefs" is a quite strong attractor. Usually, we can find analogical examples in various kinds of sects, new religions or closed clubs, successful ones can last for centuries even if core elements of belief are collapsed or made obsolete.
The effect of fast accessible information in general is deleterious to analogical meme complex, they have competition from too many competing offerings, this applies also to FB and other "aggregators" because the preferred information channels is also a matter of memetic appurtenance.
Seneca collapses but also "Seneca growth" are more fast and common because the information is really fast, human life is based on meme (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme) as compressed and self-consistent information clusters and meme are competing between themselves so increasing their transmission rate is speed up their competition with results that we could see and study in ecology: they can be modelled on a "food chain" that have a based on practical, reality related, beliefs and behaviors that are cooped and organized (predated) by hi level structures of beliefs and so on, agricultural practices had quite a lot of predation in ancient history, different and competing explanation of why things are working and how to "improve" using this supposed explanation, pray, sacrifices, rituals (some really working for the wrong reason) and so on.
Complex interdependent systems are subject to Cascading Failures (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_failure) that produce a Seneca Cliff effect, from unliving to life itself all are subject to it so why behaviors couldn't be subject to it?
and when will we collapse exactly and what does the club of rome mean on there web page strategy the decisive decade ? ps I only use facebook to contact my family but I think x is also gonna crash with the things elon musk says ?
Thank you, Ugo, for the clear explanation of the links between mimetics and FB/social media. I would add this dynamic:: for a great many people, their selfhood and identity is now dependent on their social media presence. Stripped of a social media presence and "likes" (positive feedback that yes, I exist and am worthy of attention), an important source of their sense of self and identity is lost. Once deplatformed, involuntarily or voluntarily, they are shipped to what I call "digital Siberia." Those few of us with independent web presences (blogs, vlogs, etc.) that are not platform-dependent have the equivalent of a ham radio in our attic: a few people might receive our weak signals. Those without truly stand-alone digital "selfhoods / identities" have no backup and so their sense of loss in being deplatformed may be profound. I started thinking about these topics some years ago, for example in this post from February 2011: 800 Million Channels of Me https://www.oftwominds.com/blogfeb11/800-million-channels-of-me2-11.html
Following this line of thinking, perhaps FB et al. won't collapse until there is a non-profit-maximizing platform they can use, the equivalent of a public utility that is managed transparently and that treats every user the same. Thank you for all you do-- warm regards, Charles Hugh Smith https://charleshughsmith.substack.com/
I appreciate your explanations and illustrations. What prompted me to leave, and this was many years ago (with an account under another name), was that FB fiddled around with the algorithms such that I couldn't be sure if my posts were reaching my followers. So I switched back to using email and a newsletter. As for my personal friends and family interacting with me on FB, I figured my leaving FB would be a useful test of the relationship. It was.
Yes!
Ugo, you speak of platform members acting as an immune system. Here is an example of social media group apoptosis:
I belonged to a FB group consisting of all kinds of kooks, mutants, weirdos and neurodivergents. It was great fun, but as you might expect, it became very difficult to control. After a few months, the founder became tired of managing it and decided to make every single member an admin, then stepped back and watched it implode. After a few weeks of the name of the group changing every 20 minutes while the page filled up with drunken, drugged and/or deranged rants, some people began ejecting members, some of whom reemerged in sock puppet accounts. Eventually, someone removed the founder, who by then was mostly ignoring the group, or perhaps just lurking and laughing. After that, someone said something along the lines of "Enough! It's time to put this thing out of its misery!" He removed the remaining members, quit the group and left it as an inaccessible, smoldering zombie husk floating in space.
Yep. Social groups have a limited lifetime, then they tend to decline and fade out. In some cases, it may be spectacular, as you note in this story. It is, in the end, good, old entropy at work!
Funny how it is. The one ending a kind of singularity event; a chain reaction out of control. The other a decay by diffusion. Sometimes, you can go back years later, peek inside and find some residue, the one or two guys who can't or won't let it go and still contributing material for no one but themselves.
Friendster (and myspace) declined because there was a better offer - facebook. What‘s the better offer to make facebook decline? I think that a lot of the decline of facebook is just like with the economy: under the hood there are a lot of „zombie“ accounts that are not active anymore, or at least not daily, weekly, monthly. But definitely and interesting model to see how fads „move“!
Your story sounds a lot like God giving free will to humans!
sorry that was an answer to Jon Wesenberg
Thanks for this lesson in infection dynamics. I am trying to fit this model to global human population and need some help. Population exploded because we dramatically reduced the death rate. When we reach the limit, which model will be followed? Will decline be a slow, you-first decay, or a fast, race-to-the-bottom collapse? Does the Seneca Cilff apply when there is no new civilization, no new planet, to flee to.
I would place my bets on a rapid collapse. It is typical of population curves: they tend to be asymmetric, Seneca-like. But many factors are in play, so we cannot say for sure.
Population exploded because of the invention of the Haber Bosche process not a lowered death rate. Kangaroos for example maintain a 6 year life expectancy but can have wild variations in population numbers if they are in drought or not.
It’s feed that grows the animals- humans or otherwise
I second your opinion. Humans are a K-selected species. We grow to the carrying capacity. Ecologists accept this. Whey not demographers?
Did Haber-Bosche increase the birth rate?
I think there are two factors in our population irruption. You only mention declining death rate.
On the flip side, we have the classical Malthusian reason, well-founded in ecology: excess trophic energy results in increased population. Half the nitrogen in our body is the result of the Haber-Bosch process for turning inert atmospheric nitrogen into fertilizer.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/nitrogen
trophic energy = food supply?
Yes. This is basic Ecology 101. More food equals more biomass. See the classic lynx-hare study.
The bigger mystery is: why does birth rate eventually decline, even with continued high trophic energy availability?
Calhoun's classic rat/mice studies, where they were given access to unlimited food, has some hints for our future, and they aren't pretty.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-old-experiment-with-mice-led-to-bleak-predictions-for-humanitys-future-180954423/
That's a great article. I think the mouse experiment parallels our fate. Humans are already leaving the mommy-track behind and "grooming" their CVs instead. One difference is that we do not have unlimted food, so we will starve, some of us. My answer to your question of why birth rate declines: evolution selected for decreased fertility in times of hardship. The mice were not starving, but they faced other hardships, and safety takes priority over reproduction. We think we're different because of our big brain, but really we are just mice.
A few remarks about memes if I may…
Memes can disappear rapidly not only because their hosts might share their weariness with each other, but also because memes are in constant competition. It would therefore have been interesting to see whether the fall of Friendster corresponds to the rise of another social network. And then whether a new one is likely to compete with Facebook in the near future and so hasten its fall.
On the other hand, it's interesting to note that the most resilient and enduring memes - sometimes, like religions, able to withstand the centuries - are often endowed with a kind of build-in immune system that leads its hosts to consider any criticism of the meme as further proof of its veracity or usefulness. And that's probably what Facebook lacks. But it might be what could save X as some users might be convinced that their freedom of speech (or whatever) is at stake.
Beside, as people immune to viral or bacterial infection can take care of the sick ones and help them recover faster and in a greater number, the biological situation is not so different than the memetic one ;)
PS : Meme theory and its deepest implications regarding human nature is truly fascinating. I remember reading Susan Blackmore's "The Meme Machine" with the greatest interest.
FB was interesting because you could find peoples "long forgotten", that give him a huge base so it becomes a business that could be exploited and could become self-sustaining.
In an old Manga - TV serial, there is a quite interesting concept that is related, they call it the "stand-alone complex" (https://ghostintheshell.fandom.com/wiki/Philosophy#Stand_Alone_Complex) what is most interesting is that the work is of the late 90.
FB is a birthplace for this kind of self organizing meme complex, people usually struggle to find something like a sense of belong to something and usually couldn't in our competitive (almost cutthroat) society and this kind of "new shared beliefs" is a quite strong attractor. Usually, we can find analogical examples in various kinds of sects, new religions or closed clubs, successful ones can last for centuries even if core elements of belief are collapsed or made obsolete.
The effect of fast accessible information in general is deleterious to analogical meme complex, they have competition from too many competing offerings, this applies also to FB and other "aggregators" because the preferred information channels is also a matter of memetic appurtenance.
Seneca collapses but also "Seneca growth" are more fast and common because the information is really fast, human life is based on meme (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme) as compressed and self-consistent information clusters and meme are competing between themselves so increasing their transmission rate is speed up their competition with results that we could see and study in ecology: they can be modelled on a "food chain" that have a based on practical, reality related, beliefs and behaviors that are cooped and organized (predated) by hi level structures of beliefs and so on, agricultural practices had quite a lot of predation in ancient history, different and competing explanation of why things are working and how to "improve" using this supposed explanation, pray, sacrifices, rituals (some really working for the wrong reason) and so on.
Complex interdependent systems are subject to Cascading Failures (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_failure) that produce a Seneca Cliff effect, from unliving to life itself all are subject to it so why behaviors couldn't be subject to it?
and when will we collapse exactly and what does the club of rome mean on there web page strategy the decisive decade ? ps I only use facebook to contact my family but I think x is also gonna crash with the things elon musk says ?