"Post-Social" Social Media
The other day, I found a music mix on youtube that was 100% AI generated. I liked it a lot, and I've been jamming it as I work, nonstop. I've also been jamming it in the car.
In fact, it was recommended to me by the YouTube algorithm just a few minutes after it was released, and I was impressed with the quality of the mix, and I was surprised that there was only a handful of views.
Below is the mix in question:
STABLE FOCUS - Deep Ambient Techno Mix (HTTPS)
A few days later, I was continuing to jam the mix, and it occurred to me that I must be the only person in the world, or at least, one of only a handful of people in the world, who are jamming this mix nonstop like it's their new favorite record!
Suddenly, I felt kind of weird, like I was oddly alone in my situation. Like there was nobody else who would get why this mix was just so good. It's hard to describe exactly how the weird feeling felt. That said, I'm still jamming the mix right now!
But at that moment I also recalled an earlier musing I had when I first used Udio to generate a custom song that I wanted to hear: A techno version of the Christmas song "O Holy Night". I was amazed, so much so that I posted about it on Facebook to suggest that one day people might generate their own music according to their own tastes, or even their own films, television, or video games.
Then, as I had that odd moment of finding myself addicted to an earworm that few others had ever heard, I had another thought about how that potential future might actually play out.
Today, I am jamming a track that was generated en masse and I happened to be recommended and enjoy this track. Perhaps one or two others enjoy it too. But it could be that, in the future, social media platforms innovate and find ways to generate content in real-time custom tailored to the individual user, such that what you might encounter in a music mix is no longer something that anyone could find, but instead something that nobody else has ever heard, nor could ever hear, unless you shared it with them directly.
And, this might extend beyond music into television, movies, video games, or even brand new invented board game concepts, t-shirts, consumer electronics, products, and more.
Yes - perhaps there is a future where you see an ad for a *spatula* that does not exist, and would never exist, except for the fact that an algorithm thought you might spend money to purchase it, at which point it would be created and sent to you.
Perhaps there is a future where you are watching television, clicking through the channels, going from one show that never existed to another show that never existed, one channel at a time, in an endless battle against an algorithm designed to please your tastes so thoroughly that you will stop clicking the "channel up" button.
It's an amazing thought. It's no doubt that our dopamine levels would be maximized, our satisfaction would be high - and we would have a wealth of enjoyable content to where nobody would say "There are 300 channels and still nothing good on TV", but rather, "There are infinite channels and nothing *bad* on TV"... At least in your own opinion.
But what would the implication be on our mental health and society? This is why I propose the term "post-social" social media... The evolution might come out of the social media industry, companies like Meta, X, Google may be pioneers, or perhaps others. In this future, likely what started as "social media"; media that was so named due to the fact that it facilitated hyper-scaled social interactions with media, evolved into a place where media has absolutely no shared experience whatsoever.
I think about the example of Spongebob, how it spawned countless memes and defined a generation. Or perhaps System of a Down - Chop Suey, or BYOB, and how these songs spread as memes in the collective consciousness of teenagers and young adults in the 2000s. In our current world, we experience things together and bond on them. In the world of social media, we face a machine that makes quick work of ensuring we share experiences according to a fine-tuned algorithm, in bubbles. In the world of post-social social media, we no longer share experiences at all.
What will the affect of this be on our mental health and the cohesiveness of our society?
Another Squid musing...
/musings/