🕸️Social Media moving from Self to Someone Else📲
Photo by Jakob Dalbjörn on Unsplash
Summary:
Someone Else is a networking platform that connects people through the hopeful stories they share about other people or projects. It’s mission is bring people together through shared inspiration and create a culture that celebrates the other.
It hypothesises that how we speak of others is a better window into our personality than how we speak about ourselves.
The Problem(s)
Social media business models are driving a 'race to the bottom'
Social Media platforms currently profit from harvesting users attention and shaping ‘consumer’ preferences for advertisers. This has created a ‘race to the bottom’ in which the profits are internalised and the societal damage is externalised.
The 'Lymbic Hijack' opportunity has deeply damaging ripple effects
The lymbic hijack refers to the phenomenon of having your attention captured by emotionally triggering stimuli. Stimuli that induce rage and disgust are the most effective forms at hijacking. As attention economy grows, the ripple effect of being constantly fed these emotional triggers are being felt at the individual and societal level.
Networking platforms have become places of storyselling
Telling stories about ourselves in order to gain some material advantage is little more than storyselling the self. It is not a proper narrative practice. Narratives are the bedrock of social fabric, the stories that weave us into community. Might the degradation of social fabric have something to do with this modern phenomena of platformed self-focused, storytelling?
Ultimately, the dangers of turning inward is an age old story. The Greek myth of Narcissus is a warning.
As our narrative-creation increasingly takes place online, we need to take the design of these spaces very seriously. The work of social philosopher Byung Chul-Han is delves deeply into these dynamics.
He offers a small reminder: the "love of self is determined by negativity insofar as it devalues and wards off the Other in favour of the Own."
The Scape
Imagine in the not-so-distant future, our online spaces for storytelling are transforming. Underlying the shifts to new platforms, the banning of certain attention-dependent business models and algorithms driving polarisation, there is a wider rebalancing between Self and Society.
Characterising this shift is a platform called Someone Else.
You first came across it at a recent networking event that had partnered with the platform. Unlike many of the events you attend that begin by reviewing the bucket list of problems society faces, this started with a Someone Else 'Hopeful Hack'.You're asked to assemble into threes and each tell a story about another person or project that you've found inspiring recently. Having had this practice round, you're then asked to narrate this story again to your phone.Within a minute, your profile is entered into a web of inspiring stories. There are 500 people at the conference, each with a unique story about someone else. This web, woven by the diverse range of interests in the room, becomes the platform for networking and meeting people over the rest of the day.
Powered by an AI system capable of assorting and categorising stories across different societal concerns, the Hopeful Hack is an organising mechanism whereby people can quickly find others with mutual interests and novel takes.
Since then, you've become an active member of the platform. Not that this is hard... Someone Else simply reminds you every 2nd day of the month to put Someone's story ahead of yours. Slowly, the dopamine hit that comes with uplifting others is gaining hold. Having studied neuroscience, you know that this practice is literally reshaping the mind's reward systems toward the positive feedback loops that come with altruistic behaviour.
And as it has gained traction, the value of how we speak to others has begun to manifest in a variety of interesting ways.
Firstly, recruiters have begun surfing the platform for potentially interesting new candidates. As employers have emphasised for a while, curiosity, teamwork and emotional intelligence are some of the most desired traits in new recruits. Unlike the uncomfortable self-promotion practiced via LinkedIn and CVs, the storytelling on Someone Else seems to offer a more authentic window into the personality. This in turn has begun to establish new leaders, chosen due to their emotional intelligence, their empathic abilities, and their ability to listen.
Secondly, traditional networking landscapes are shifting. Making it easy to upload Someone Else stories on other platforms, content that celebrates the other has become more common. As Founder Steve Cole says, "We're bringing new waters to fractured and desertified lands."
Lastly, a sense of community kinship and solidarity has continued to grow. No longer are online spaces built on the story of separation and self – a pretty lonely story. Instead, our networking world today recognises the centrality of the other and the relationality of self.
The world critiqued by Byung-Chul Han, a world in which "the other disappears", is healing.
Downstream Value Creation
Opening our Imagination to New Possibilities
The emergence of these new platforms showcases the possibility of alternative futures. As many have explored, simply tweaks to the original design of social medias could have profoundly positive impact across society. As The Consilience Project have said, doing so "could simultaneously improve individual and collective mental health, enhance users’ cognitive capacity for understanding the world, grow civic participation, heal family dynamics, and reduce radicalization, violence, disinformation, and polarization." Seems worthwhile.
Telling the Story of Interdependence
In times of increasing social fracture, mental health crisis, and loneliness epidemic, sharing stories of others and building a metanarrative of interdependence is big. Someone Else offers the opportunity for everyone to contribute to this new narrative landscape.
Rewiring our Neural Circuitry
Modern neuroscience shows the important role of neuroplasticity and the dopaminergic reward systems in forming and reforming neural circuitry. The more spaces we make for altruistic practices and emotional processing capacities, the more likely we are to act in regularly in that manner, the more we reap the ensuing benefits of improved mental health and stronger social fabric. It drives a positive spiral upwards.
For Digging Deeper…
The platform that inspired this weeks scape.
Paper on neuroscience regarding the Selfish-Selfless Spectrum
Titled “Psychopathy to Altruism: Neurobiology of the Selfish–Selfless Spectrum”, the paper reviews the literature on the brain’s neuroplasticity and how we become shaped across the spectrum of selfish to selfless.
His notable works include: The Burnout Society, Psychopolitics, The Explusion of the Other, The Narrative Crisis
