How Social Media Makes Our Lives Smaller

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Is going to perform better for a number of reasons, whereas, like, a big, you know, a longitudinal study is going to have, like, some interesting findings, but it's also going to have some, you know, some contradictory findings. Science is often much less kind of explosive than, like, this one dude who's like, I took this supplement and six months later I am freaking jacked, you know, like, that's cool. I'm Charlie Worzel, and this is Galaxy Brain, a show where today we're going to answer a seemingly unanswerable question. How is social media changing the way we understand ourselves and even humanity as a whole? By any account, I have been a somewhat prolific poster for the last two decades. Like most millennials, I was a kid and a high schooler in the pre-social media days. And I went to college just as Facebook was taking off. This is partially why, as I've long argued, millennials like me are not as good as they used to be. And millennials like myself are often uniquely tortured about social media. We've experienced it profoundly shaping our social lives, our culture, our politics, and ourselves. But we can also remember just enough of a time before it that we can see this process as something that was emergent. In other words, it's not a given that our lives had to be mediated this way by these massive platforms for viral advertising. And so a few years ago, I was talking to another writer who's roughly around my age about what it's meant to come of age in the attention economy. We talked about how fun and experimental all of this was at first. How exciting it was to be connected to everyone all at once. It was both intimate and incredibly public. But we also talked about how quickly all the experimentation turned into something different. How we, without really even noticing it, began writing, posting, performing, all for this imagined audience. And how we started imagining how that imagined audience would respond. How we'd see people get mocked or shamed. Or lavished with praise and just internalize all of that in the back of our minds. How the way we spoke changed on these specific platforms as the result of in-jokes, memes, and a shared culture that we are all building at once. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, though there are countless examples of the way that social media curdles people or pushes us to be the most neurotic, reactive, and uncharitable versions of ourselves. All these versions once felt separate from our actual selves. But over time? They've become harder to untangle. And this is the subject of a new book by the writer Catherine Jesser Morton. It's titled The Story of Your Life. How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything. Jesser Morton argues that social media's greatest influence might be how we understand ourselves as humans and not, as many critics have argued, its impact on our attention spans or our politics. Humans are storytellers. And they always have been. And those stories help us understand the world and our places. And we can't deny that social media has a great place in it. And I was drawn to Jesser Morton's book in part because of her framing of social media as a place where all of us who post are telling a collective story about what it means to be a person in today's world. Now, in some sense, this is all obvious enough. But what's less clear is what these platforms and stories are doing to all of us, whether you share your life on social media or you just lurk there. Are they making us more unique or more the same? What is highlighted in the culture that is mediated by algorithms? And what leads to change? And how do these up-lived experiences are excluded? If social media is the lens through which we capture the story of our lives, is the aperture being widened or narrowed? Jesser Morton brings a nuance to this polarizing topic. And she joins me now to talk about it all. Catherine, welcome to Galaxy Brain. Thank you, Charlie. So your book is about social media, but it's really about how we make sense of it. How we make sense of ourselves and the world through personal stories. And so I wanted to start with you telling me just a bit about your own personal story growing up in a commune in Vermont. And specifically how you feel that shaped your understanding of personal and communal narratives. And how it's sort of a foundation for, I think, some of your work in this book, but also on social media in general. So I spent a lot of my childhood on a commune that my dad was part of the founding group of. In southern Vermont. And I lived there on and off for, you know, a number of years. And I think that for me, I was always really aware that, like, it was a story. The whole place was a story. I knew that we people lived together who weren't family and that the place had this kind of rich history. And that also, like, we were kind of we were hippies and it was messy and it was very like, you know, kind of it was a bit of a chaotic vibe some of the time. And so I was being told these stories from when I was very young. And I think that it gave me this really rich understanding that, like, a lot of what life is, is storytelling. So when I got to college and we started using social media, I was like, this rules. Like, this is so fun. I'm like, I'm a natural. This is like, I was born to do this. And I really just, I took to it, you know, like a fish to water. And I think it was because. I was like, no, this is what we do. We narrate ourselves. We bring ourselves to life through pictures and stories. And, you know, it's like a fun, creative project. We're basically, you know, narrating ourselves into being. And we get to do it however we want. But I think that as soon as I started using it, I was like, what are we all doing, though? Like, what are we actually up to? And from the very beginning, like, I think I joined Facebook in 2007. I was like, this feels like there's something going on here. And I think we're doing something. We don't even really know what we're doing. Let's go back a little, though, to you loving social media. I mean, one thing that's very clear from your work is that, like, that genuine affection. And also that, like, I'm not trying to tell you that, like, posting is bad or that, you know, your screens are destroying you just because they're there all the time. But I want to go back to this. I have a very similar relationship to social media. I mean, it's tortured. But it's also, especially in the beginning, I was like, wow, you made this thing for me. Like, this is, like, all I want to do is perform for, you know, for different people and create this persona. What did you, like, what was part of your, like, the story you were crafting? Like, what were you trying to do very early on in those, like, the halcyon days? So I was freshly graduated from college. I was living in New Orleans. I was married. I was, like, living this little professional life. And I think it was an opportunity. And I think it was an opportunity to show the world, like, check it out, guys. Like, this is me and my little life. And it was very millennial. There's something deeply cringe about it looking back. Like, you know, here's my house. And, like, check it out. Like, we made gumbo. Like, it was so fun. And, you know, here's Mardi Gras. Like, here are our costumes. And, I mean, it was also, like, I was living very far away from my family. And so there was a practical aspect where I was like, look at my life in New Orleans, guys. And New Orleans is a cool place. And it photographs well. So I was. It was easy. But I think I was just, honestly, becoming an adult and becoming independent and telling everyone that I was happy about that. It was very. And, you know, I think I was doing a little bit of nascent personal branding in that I wanted to seem fun, but also like an adult. Like, I was independent. You devoted your academic career, in part, to understanding how these feeds shape us. And this led you to do, like, anthropological work of interviewing normal people about their social media use. And you say that you've been fascinated by how little people want to discuss what they do in their feeds. And I found that really, really interesting. Why do you think that is, that people kind of balk at, like, examining what it is they're doing? Because we're spending so much time on these platforms. Yeah, to me, that was, like, what got me started writing this book. I was like, no one wants to talk about it. And yet we're doing it for a public audience. So, like, right, what's going on when you choose this picture instead of that picture and post it? I know it's not just automatic behavior, because I'm thinking about it. I mean, that's really where it started. I was like, if I'm thinking about this, if I'm being careful with my messaging, then everyone else is, too. And we never talk about that. And it's also very, I think, you know, in a kind of maybe, like, puritanical sense or something. Like, it's embarrassing to admit. That we are really kind of working hard to project a certain image. no one really wants to admit that and everyone accuses other people of doing that and no one self-implicates so that was really the starting point of like i want to talk i want to sit with someone and be like talk to me about your feed tell me what you're doing it's okay it's just you and me just tell me what you have going on and what i found was like a lot of people were like no one's ever asked me this before and if i could gain their trust they were like yeah man let's let's get into it like i have actually a lot i think about this a lot okay broadly speaking what is it that you think we're we're all doing when we post so i just want to begin by saying that obviously if this is it is the world social media so it is enormously diverse and there are going to be exceptions always so i can't say everyone's doing the same thing i think that we're doing is we're maintaining a brand that we have built over time each of us has one it's an identity it's there's a sort of consistency that we're seeking to maintain and we're just working in the service of maintaining you it um and i think for some of us it might be something that we're a bit tired of maybe we kind of started working with this brand at the beginning of our social media time and we're kind of stuck with it and maybe we're not posting anymore because we're like i just like i don't want to keep doing that thing anymore that shtick is old like i'm i can't but a lot of us are just like yeah i'll just keep doing it basically and it's to do with demonstrating that you you have your life under control that you have a certain degree of fitness in your life that's like economic or physical just like you're really with it you understand the world you can kind of handle the world as it's coming at you i think it's about capacity you're you're basically proving your capacity to survive day after day or however often you're posting and yeah i think that's what people are doing and i i don't think that's how it started and i think that's how it is now how would you describe that that evolution right because the the way that i think about it from my own perspective i think from you know what you were just saying about stumbling onto these platforms and figuring out is is it was so light it was so experimental right it was okay i'm gonna i'm gonna do this i'm gonna try on this piece of my persona it all felt like it had no consequences right just like very intimate stuff that's happening very public but also ephemeral and and light and like this is my facebook persona right this is my like this is how i am on twitter with you know like being a young journalist i'm just being very you know very personally like on the town in new york city doing fun stuff working for this company buzzfeed right it was all very like low stakes i guess i would say and then something happened but how what happened as these platforms became more mature i think that the movement away from the chronological news feed was really huge i think that once uh you know an algorithm was starting to feed us stuff based on its kind of performance it changed i think users clocked to that really quickly and i think that we just started to learn that some stuff got seen and other stuff didn't and we did start i think not everybody but i think a lot of people started to change ever so slightly the way that they do it and i think that's a big part of it and i think that's a big part of it and i posted people came to understand that selfies or pictures of themselves performed better um i think that just the the idea of being visible in this huge population changed the dynamic like remember when we started using these things at the beginning it was just people that we knew and i think for most people it still is like you know you're a journalist so you have people who are following you just for your work but it's also like over years and years like you go through different jobs and you know you're a journalist and you're a journalist and you're a journalist you move so you have these people now who are following you and seeing your stuff who you'll never see again and who you haven't seen in years so they're effectively strangers and i think that that changes it too where you're like okay so there's my friends but then there's all these random people that are looking at me and i think even if you're a person who has no professional business on social media you're not selling anything you're not maintaining anything whatever you're still talking to strangers and i think that forces a certain formality a certain kind of um concern for your reputation that was not present at the and about uh boomers on facebook it was all about like these boomers are being radicalized on on facebook and and i talked to a lot of them and one of the things that they they described to me that i thought that was so fascinating is especially for boomers you know like for for us who are like relatively around the age of college while we were on it or whatever it was like we were meeting people at parties and adding them on facebook right or something like that but for the boomers it was like oh my gosh that was the kid who lived down the street from me 50 years ago and like i can reconnect with them and there was a magic to that and it was great but it used once once the news feed shifted into you know less away from the personal updates into the political updates you would see stuff like oh god my next door neighbor from 50 years ago was an incredible kid and now i need to argue with them right and like and so all these people were just exposed to essentially strangers because the the relationship was so tenuous to begin with even though it was so exciting to uncover and it just like so much of this conflict had happened because really you weren't supposed to be hanging out with that person right or like having that person then comment on a photo of your grandchild right where you're like what gives you the right man like you know there's like all this conflict yeah these are not people that you have any business being in contact with there's no utility to to this these points of contact they're unprecedented socially like and so now we're having to deal with it and i would say yeah younger people have the same thing where it's like even really younger people like gen z they're meeting churning through tons of new connections you know 15 year olds will have like a thousand people on snapchat and it's like how do you know that many people at your young age it's like that's how it works now and it just creates this totally like nonsensical social environment and i think that's why i think that's why i think that's why i think that's why i think that's why i think that's why i think that's why i think that's why i think that's why i think that's why i think that's why i think that's why i think that's why i think that's why i think that's why i think that's why i think that's why i think that's why i think that's why i think that's why i think that's why i think we are not talking about personal ai assistant to cut the time needed to draft a document we are talking about the leadership aspect some companies when they connect the right data and the business logic they are able to operate in that way but it requires bringing all the enterprise corpus and context into glean that was a message from glean at the agent transformation summit glean connects knowledge systems and context so ai can actually get to work learn more at glean.com this episode is brought to you by google chrome you think you know a browser but gemini and chrome that's new it can help you with practically anything on the web like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks gemini and chrome is here for it ready to make anything online make sense there's no place like chrome check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus so you mentioned the phrase personal branding earlier talking about you know what people are doing and how social media has pushed people into really thinking like like a brand right uh and so you know i think of branding obviously as a way to sell something what what do you think people are selling and and and why are they why are they sort of forced into that specific behavior of posting the way that you know wendy's posts on on you know facebook or whatever like why why did that why did people sort of become more like the brands instead of i mean i guess the brands have become more like the brands have become more like the brands have become more like people too but why do you think that that that fusing has happened yeah it's true that the brands have become more like people the people have become more like brands and now we're all kind of in this weird middle place it's great um i think that i mean first of all it's just like the affordances of the platform i think the platform the designs the interfaces encouraged us to do certain things i think that just when we started to have you know like the likes, and then, you know, task it in comments, like, you're suddenly in this kind of market research environment where people can give you feedback. And I think that just the very fact of likes and comments kind of puts a person in a position to be like, okay, well, now I'm looking for your approval. Now I want to see how, I want to do this because I want you guys to like it. So there's that, just very simply, the interface kind of puts us in that position. I think if we didn't have those features, we would behave differently. And I think that's true, you know, on interfaces where there aren't these kind of interactive features, people do behave differently. If you think about like Flickr or whatever, like these like photo sharing sites, people just put photos and it's different. We have been over the last 20 years in this, you know, period of like precarity becoming like a larger and larger part of sort of the economic environment, the workplace environment. People are having to kind of try to promote themselves, even if they're not really trying to sell anything, they are kind of like, I need to look my best. I want to try to maintain a certain reputation. You're competing in the job market. You feel more and more that you're competing in the social environment, like in the world of dating. When I try to explain to the college students that I teach, like, you know, there's like other ways of telling a story about yourself or presenting yourself to the world. And this kind of branded self where you're trying to kind of demonstrate a certain kind of fitness and like you want to always look a certain way. They don't understand what I mean at all. Because to them, it's like, why wouldn't I want to have people think that I'm the best version of myself? Like, that's my purpose is to get better and better at something, become a better version of myself, get more fit, whatever the case may be. I'm working on myself. I'm trying to get better. I want people to see that. I want people to see that I'm trying and that I'm succeeding. And they can't comprehend that there's a different narrative structure around selfhood that could possibly exist. And the fact is, like, there was before social media that everyone lived in, that you were a person, you had your hobbies, you had your goals, you had the things that you were up to. But yourself might have been somewhat separate from these sets of, you know, work concerns or creative concerns. And it really wasn't all this kind of, it wasn't all one thing that you were trying to kind of convince. people of, I think that we accepted that there was something about each of us that was a little bit kind of uncontainable or like, you know, just ourselves. Mm-hmm. Or worth protecting, yeah. Yeah, worth protecting. And I think that that idea has just completely faded into like kind of obsolescence. The precarity part is really fascinating to me, especially in the way that it is a behavior that obviously benefits the platform. If you don't post with a certain type of frequency now, it's, A, it's less at bats, right? Less chances for the algorithm to reward you or to be seen or to whatever, or to make money off of, you know, whatever thing, or have a brand deal. But it's also just like, to exist, right? You disappear in these things if you don't continue to feed them. Like, there's just too much to drown you out if you're not also doing, you know, the constant connection and posting. And whether that's in the in the dating space or just on Instagram or, you know, Twitter, sharing stories and articles, whatever it is, TikTok, you name it, YouTube. This is what happens, I think, when people go through, like, a really difficult time. You'll see they'll disappear, you know, because they can't narrate, like, a divorce, illness, like, tragedy. Sometimes people will narrate through it. You'll see that. And it's very interesting. But a lot of the time, people don't because they're like, "I don't know how to accommodate this, like, complexity of feeling. I can't narrate it. So I'm just I'm just out of here." And then if they want to come back, it's like, you know, then you have to make some kind of statement, like, you know, "Hey, I'm back." Like, it's very, I think that this is where we, like, hit the limitations of the medium. It doesn't welcome us back in a way that feels, like, kind of full of possibility. It feels like you have to kind of engage within the constraints of this, like, brand environment. And to me, I think it's very inhibiting for people who are going through complex, like, deeply ambivalent life chapters. And so, and I say this in the book, like, we don't have that many examples of telling stories that have to do with struggle and ambivalence and pain, because people just don't know how to do it. And so the longer we don't do it, the longer we're not going to do it, because we just don't have examples to look to, like, "Oh, well, that person, you know, narrated their, like, really painful divorce in a way that really made sense to me." And, like, so I can kind of, like, build on that. It's, you just don't see these stories. You see people having bounced back. Well, this is what I wanted to go to next, too, which is the idea of what you call, like, master narratives in the, in the social, that the sort of architecture of a lot of these platforms builds towards, right? And, and one of them being, you know, things like, like, redemption, right? Redemption being a very important one of those, or just progress in general as a kind of master narrative. But what are some of the other, like, master narratives that these platforms favor? I mean, I think redemption is the number one, which is just, you know, I'm, I'm going, getting better and better. I'm overcoming. I think, you know, just the idea of, even within suffering, battling an illness, like, you know, overcoming, like being a warrior, you know, all of this kind of, you know, like, military sort of metaphors around illness and, and recovery. I think it's, I think that's the main one. I think it's to do with just being someone who is going to overcome it, going to kill it, going to, going to be awesome in the end. And I think there are certainly exceptions to this rule. And I think, especially among younger people, like, you're seeing people talk about suffering in new ways, to me, like, that I'm kind of impressed with. But I would say, like, among millennials and older people, you know, even like a GoFundMe, for example, which, you know, a GoFundMe is about suffering. People don't usually make their own GoFundMe pages. They're made on behalf of someone. And you accept the charity of your friend who kindly sets up a GoFundMe on your behalf. People don't do it for themselves. And I really do think that's just like a bit of, it's, it's like a, a value system at work. People are like, I can't, I don't want to be seen asking for help. I want someone to ask for help for me. And, and I think that's part of the same master narrative. It's like, if I'm asking for help, I'm, I'm asking for pity. Like, I'm asking for, it's, it feels, I think, very, it feels very wrong, very uncomfortable for most people to do that. Which is really interesting because asking for help is, like, extremely human. And, you know, any therapist will tell you that it's really good to do it. And it's good to get comfortable doing it. Um, but I think it's something that people have a very hard time with. Mm-hmm. So, um, with the idea of the demonstrating growth or, or progress or, or redemption, you, you also say that social media structure penalizes what, what you call flat stories. So what, what are flat stories? So flat story is a story that doesn't have an upward, uh, an upward trending arc. So it's like, uh, yeah, I got a divorce and I'm not sure if it was a good idea or not. And like, honestly, I'm very confused, but life goes on. It's like, you know, I'm having a really hard time in this job and I don't feel like I'm doing a good job, but I'm going to try to hang on for as long as possible because I need the money. Right. And for me, like the novel is the technology of the flat story. You know, my favorite novels are novels that kind of end with this feeling where you're like, dang, you know, poof, life. Yeah. Ain't, ain't it just like that, you know, like, like the age of innocence by Edith Wharton where he's like, yep, I'm just going to be with someone who I'm not in love with. And, uh, that's, and, and you, as a reader, you're like, oh God, devastating. But like, you know, and, and I think this is why people love novels. It's like, it puts you in someone else's subject position. It introduces a whole other reality. And then it kind of like forces you to account for like how being a human is complex and hard. And you're, and I mean, it's the best, right? So, okay. That's novels, social media, not the same thing. We just, it's the technology affords different stories. And, um, for me, like the way I started thinking about flat stories was the commune of my childhood. It's, it's still around. It's been around for 50 years. Uh, there's only a couple of people living there now. Uh, but like, it keeps on somehow, but it's not like a triumphant story. Like a hundred percent, the golden age was in the past. But if you go up there, you're like, man, this place is kind of cool. Like this is, this is, uh, this is different. These people are cool and getting old and they're here. And, you know, it's like, it's hard to kind of place it within a narrative framework that I think many of us are familiar with. What I can't stop thinking about as you're talking about this is the idea to similar to the commune that so much of like, business, pre social media and like in the internet, like family businesses, right? Like it's the hardware store that just kind of is around for 75 years and like, is it going well? Yeah. We have some good months and some good years and then there's some bad years and oh yeah, we had to replace the roof and, you know, took out a loan, whatever. Right. Versus the narrative around business finance, the economy now, which is just like, it can't be a flat narrative, right? Like you're in order to raise venture capital money, you're just going to have to pay for it. Like, you're in order to raise venture capital money to do whatever. It's like, it's growth at all costs. It's scale. The number go up, right? All these things just have to increase, increase, increase, and it's better and better. And the story has to be like algorithmically, you know, enticing. But just the way that this all bleeds into everything, right? Like now, now it's a weird thing. Like it's hard to put, you can find a way to post about like, oh, my store endured, right? My hardware store endured for forever. But it's not like an interesting cultural narrative anymore to exist and to, you know, persist in that way. It has to be this I think that's really fascinating, like, that it seems to be bleeding in very much to the general concept of what success is and can be. Exactly. No, it's this idea that you have to 10X your story or you're dead, right? Like, it's crazy that this has become kind of a narrative, any kind of concern that we have. But, like, if you talk to a teenager, like, I have a 15-year-old son, he's almost 16, and he doesn't really use social media, but, like, a lot of teens, boys in particular, I don't really know that much about what girls are up to, but, like, you know, they're into fitness. They go to the gym. "That's cool. Go to the gym. Sure." "What can I say?" "Fine." And, you know, he's not, like, taking supplements, but it's just-- it's an activity that allows you to think in terms of getting better and better and better. It just has-- it has that built in. And so I don't even know how much he likes going to school. I don't know how much he likes going to the gym. I really can't tell. But it allows him to participate in the discourse of, "I was here, and now I'm here, and in a year, I'll be here." And it just-- I think it's, like, socially, especially if you're young, it just makes sense. It's easy. You plug yourself in, you're like-- and now you have something to talk about with, like, tons and tons of people. And I'm convinced it's part of the same thing. Listen, we've always-- human beings are interested in the body. It's not like this is unprecedented. I think that wherever you can get your growth narrative is where you're gonna try to get it. And, you know, the gym is one such place. I mean, there's a reason why, you know, optimization culture is what everyone is part of. It's not just because we're obsessed with being better. It's because it's a very convenient way of telling your story as a person in a way that other people can understand. And I really think that social media has kind of given us all kind of, like, the training to participate in this. And it's safe, too, right? Like, it's very safe to be like, "I'm just trying to get better," you know? Like, who's gonna be like, "Oh, get rid of this guy," you know? -Yeah, what a loser. -He's trying to be healthy. Yikes. So, okay, so we've established that social media teaches us to sell a story of ourselves as this product that we're locked in in these master narratives, improvement, redemption, resilience. The algorithms then also reward the sort of the most legible, the most, like, emotionally salient and intense versions of all of this. And then what you write about in the book is how our lives start to reorganize themselves around this. And I'd love to kind of go through a couple of those examples. And the first one is vacations. So what have you learned from studying posts about vacations from influencers, but also just from regular people? Yeah, so I went to Scottsdale, Arizona, and I hung out with some moms there, and this one mom just, she said this amazing thing to me. She was like, "Oh, yeah, like, when I'm posting, especially, like, on trips, activities out and about with my family, I just want people to see that we do shit. We do shit. We are a family that does shit. We're, like, not boring, and we're active, and we're, like, really good at, like, making the best of it. Like, we're out in the world." And so I think a vacation is a great opportunity to kind of stage a really successful, kind of engaged, spirit of we know how to make the most of our time together. We're not kind of, you know, stuck inside. We're not ruminating. We're not grumping at each other. We're, like, at the Eiffel Tower. We're grinning. We got here. We're having the time of our lives. And so it creates this kind of, like, affective container, almost, like travel does, vacations do, and then just creating these really legible scenes around, like, big landmarks that everyone recognizes, you know, like Positano, whatever it is, a place that everyone's like, "Oh, beautiful. Yes, you made it." Vacations were not always an opportunity to show people your kind of economic and sort of emotional fitness. It used to be about other things, too. Something that you note, though, that I think is really interesting to this broader idea is that it kind of makes us, because there's these conventions, right, and this sort of way of doing something even as, sort of, that we've done forever, like vacations, there's this, like, small-c conservatism to it, right? Can you say a little more about how it pushes people to be more conservative, not ideologically or politically, but, like, just in what they do? Yeah, so, like, small-c conservatism, meaning just, like, the desire to replicate things as they have previously been done, like tradition. It's usually done like this, so I want to do it in that way. I want to replicate the photo, that I've seen, and by doing it successfully, I will have succeeded, as opposed to, like, for example, in other eras. People might have been like, when I go on vacation, I want to have a transcendent experience where I feel maybe, like, I'm transformed, or, like, a place gets under my skin and I feel like a different version of myself altogether, that I'll, like, I may take home with me or I may not, but it's, like, very kind of, you know, you could call it woo-woo, you can call it whatever you want, but it's to do with this kind of the mysteries of the self. It has nothing to do with proving or recreating anything that you've seen other people do. You're like, "No, I'm gonna do it in a completely new way, getting loose." So, yeah, this conservatism has to do with, like, I just want it to look the way that, you know, the pictures look when the influencers do it. And I see this, like, in a lot of young people, like, for them, the enjoyment of having gotten just the right shot, making something look really, like, aesthetic, as they say, it's like, it's a deep enjoyment for them. It's a source of real satisfaction that I can't relate to. I'm too old, but I see they're like, "Ooh, like, this is fun." Like, we're having fun now because we got just the right frame. We got everything in it just right. Yeah, and I think it's important, like, what I notice in your work and there and in this conversation is not, like, belittling that, right? Like, it's not, like, passing judgment on that, just noting that, like, that has actually happened. I think it's very similar with phones at concerts and things like that, right? Where there are some people who see it and go, like, "Great. So you're not even doing the thing, right? Like, you're not even engaged with this. You're just so consumed with capturing it." And you'll hear a lot of people say, like, "I'm having a great time. This is, like, what I'm here to do. I'm here to capture this in this way," you know? Totally. And I say this in the book, and I would actually like to spend more time thinking about this because I didn't really have time to develop it, that, like, I think that when people feel the emotion of, like, "I'm having fun. Like, this feels so great. Here we are at the concert." I think that taking out your phone and capturing it has now become part of expressing that emotion, right? Like, emotions are partly in our bodies, but they're also partly, like, culturally expressed. You know, like, people express emotions differently in other parts of the world. And I think that the taking out of the phone and being like, "We're gonna get this capture," it's, like, part and parcel of this feeling of, like, this is so awesome. Like, I am loving this. And I don't think that it's the same thing as, like, you know, erasing yourself from the moment or, like, failing to experience it. I think it's part of experiencing it for a lot of people. Let's move into politics, specifically the way that the internet is shaping political identities. How have you seen social media changing the way that we express and perform our politics in this way? Fundamentally, I'm like, we're performing as brands. We are compelled to act this way. But in fact, being a person is a very terrible fit for branding. We're constantly in violation of our own brand guidelines. We're constantly failing to be consistent. Like, that's what being a person is, like, it's a mess. It's like square peg in a round hole, personal branding and being a person. And I think that really comes up. It shows in politics because I think we assume that when someone is posting about politics, they're coming from a place of, like, kind of cool-headed, like, I'm making a statement. On, you know, the events. When often, and I found this in my research, it's very emotional and it's very irrational. And it's maybe there's, like, a couple people out there in the audience that you're trying to get through to, and you really don't care what anyone else thinks, but these are the people that you're in communication with. Or whatever, you're working through something. You're compensating for something. Whatever it is, you have ulterior motives, and you're expressing them through your posts, the things that you're sharing. You're sharing about politics. And I think it's very easy to misinterpret that and to think that, you know, "Oh, this person is, you know, just stating their political views." 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A corollary to the politics part of this, I think, is how the platforms and all of our collective behaviors on the platforms change our relationships to facts and truth. And you have an observation here that I think is, it kind of, I spent a lot of time just thinking about it. So I'd love for you to explain this out even more for me, which is the idea that truth in some ways has been replaced by the idea of authenticity. Can you tease that out a little more for me and for everyone listening? Yeah. So like authenticity being that someone is willing to kind of put themselves out there or kind of seem really, seem unfiltered, seem sort of, yeah, like unpracticed. And I think it is a little bit of a, maybe we have a sort of a fatigue or like a, we're getting wary of the whole personal brand polish and we want people who kind of violate the rules of personal branding. Donald Trump, perfect example, right? He's not a very consistent persona. He does all kinds of stuff that, very contradictory. And for that reason, he's considered very authentic. Like he says what he means, even if it contradicts what he just said. You always know that, you know, he's coming from someplace that is real within him or whatever. I mean, authentic doesn't mean true anymore. That's, it has a different meaning. And I think we see this. So the example that I gave, and I see so many examples of this now all over Instagram is, you know, no one's interested in like scientific data as much as they're interested in like a really compelling anecdote. And this is just like attention economy stuff. This is because a really compelling anecdote is going to perform, better for a number of reasons. Whereas like a big, you know, a longitudinal study is going to have like some interesting findings, but it's also going to have some, you know, some contradictory findings, or it's not always going to, you know, science is often much less kind of explosive than like this one dude who's like, I took this supplement and six months later, I am freaking jacked. You know, like, that's cool. I can see the results. This like, you know, these charts, like, ugh, it involved like $50,000. People, subjects, like, there's some real conclusive evidence here, but like, it's way less fun. Like, the results are just much more ambiguous. It's like, yeah, we're living in like the age of the anecdote, like the anecdote is so much better than, than the data. And because the anecdote comes from someone's passion, it involves like this affective kind of loadedness that we get to appreciate. I've talked about this with certain influencers before, and it's so interesting because, you know, in my professional career, like we're here at the Atlantic, this is a, an institution that's been around for a long time. There's a lot of like credibility that is, you know, that is supposed to come with that and to the processes of, you know, whether it's the Atlantic or the New York Times or any, any media institution or any university or, or, or place that has been around and has norms and standards and has built up a trust around that. And you, what you see in the current attention economy, as you, as you say, is, you know, the truth being replaced, by the authentic feeling anecdote, but also too, is the feeling of with that authenticity that comes from the influencer and not the institution is, is like the, the forgiveness that, that comes from that, right? Like an influencer screws up and it's like, Hey man, it's just one guy. He's at, he, she's out there. They're just, you know, hustling. They're making a million videos. They're posting all the time. What do you expect? You're going to get some stuff wrong, man, but they're trying and they're real and they're not corporate versus like, you know, the New York times or the Washington post or the Atlantic or whoever makes a mistake. And it's like, no forgiveness. Like there is none. In fact, yeah. Like, like the person who feels authentic is given so much rope in these situations. Yeah. I think that when someone is like, I'm going to stream my life and I'm going to show you my whole, my whole vibe, people are like, I honestly don't care what they say. I love that they're showing me their whole vibe. And I think that people, again, I think this is maybe a little bit of a response. To a fatigue of this kind of perfect brand itself. People are like, no, I want to watch someone, you know, just be in front of the camera for eight hours talking about any old thing. And I'll listen to them and I'm into it because it feels really real. And I'll listen to their anecdotes. I'll just like catch their vibe. And it feels satisfying in a way that, you know, when people are pretending to be kind of perfect, we're losing maybe some of the satisfaction of that. I want to zoom out a little because you argue that. Stories, which is like what humans are storytellers, historically expand our understanding of human beings, who we are, what we can do. And they invite really big, open-ended questions. But that social media and its stories are kind of shrinking instead of the open-ended questions. It's the, like the aperture is narrower. Is social media and these platforms that we're telling our stories, are they shrinking like our idea of what the world can be? I think so. I think we're always trying to fit our experience into these very limiting narratives that social media gives us. And I think that has an effect of shrinking our capacity. And I do think that ultimately so much of human life, it's an imaginative activity. Like everyone's talking about the Odyssey right now. Like the Odyssey before it was written down was many, many versions of the same story that had many possible endings. And people who've heard the story of Odysseus, had heard it told in a number of different ways. And they accepted the fact that the story had like, you know, infinite possible endings. And that was like, cognitively normal for them. They were like, a given story, who knows how it's going to end. And I do think that that is, gives people a capacity to understand life in a different way than people who are mostly hearing their narratives from social media, or they're really just hearing about how people are doing awesome and they're growing and they're improving and they're overcoming. And it feels pretty unidirectional and pretty kind of, it just feels limited. And I just think that the stories that you hear help you to then tell your own story. And the stories that we hear are not as kind of capacious as they could be. Well, and I think there's something too of the relentless growth and resilience and positivity as the master narratives, as you call them. As they sandwich up against the reality, the precarity that we also talked about that you're experiencing, right? When you're looking at whether it's climate change or economic insecurity or AI is coming for whatever, you know, political unrest, you see all that. And it's like, no, the story has to be this way. And it just kind of, it's hard to reckon the two of them. And I think that kind of makes a person feel a little, like maybe a little insane. You wrote something I felt very, very deeply. Yeah. As a fellow person who spent the last two decades on social media. And I quote you to yourself here. It is humiliating to try to account for our experiences on platforms that are obviously hostile towards their users. It's degrading. We're being treated like shit. And not surprisingly, it's getting to us. After enough years of this degradation, we may start to believe that we are shit. Is it any surprise that contempt and self-loathing animate much of what's left of posting culture? And personally, I feel like less and less attached to the fact that I'm being attached to the story of myself as a result of all this. The story I'm telling on these platforms. Like, it is work now. It's not fun. It's begun to feel like work. And you know that without a viable alternative, we're probably not going to get off these platforms or just like have a wholesale change of our behaviors. But I do wonder if you think there's going to be something of a wake up. Like, we'll stop posting on the platforms as terms, maybe. Or we'll begin to treat them very differently. And almost in a kind of protest to what they want us to be. Do you see that happening? Or do you think that it's just so entwined with our lives and identities that we're just going to continue to be living in this abusive relationship? I really see this book as my farewell to the posting era. I do think that people are posting less. I think they're going to be posting less and less. I think more of social media is going to be populated by AI anyway. And I think the humans are going to have less and less of a role to play. And I do think we're going to come up with something different. It's not going to be like a new social media platform. I don't believe that that's imminent. But I think we do come up with creative solutions. We have workarounds. We do find a way to kind of escape capture in our storytelling. We manage that. Memes are one such way, I think. I don't know about a wake up that feels a little major. I think it's going to be slow. I think it's going to be very gradual. But I think that people already are like, this narrative tool is no longer working for me. And I don't know what we're going to replace it with. But I know that the desire, the need to tell our stories to each other and to ourselves is going to find a new container somehow. I fully believe that. I hope that it is something that is not owned by Mark Zuckerberg, whatever it is. Me too. Catherine, thank you so much for coming on Galaxy Brain and talking through these perfectly galaxy-brained concepts with us. Thanks so much for having me. I'll see you next time. That's it for us here. Thank you again to my guest, Catherine Jezzer-Morton. Just a quick show note. We are going on a little bit of a hiatus for a portion of this summer to spend some time thinking about what we're going to do for the new episodes. But we will be back very soon. I promise you that. And if you want to support this work and the work of my fellow colleagues, you can subscribe to the publication at theatlantic.com slash listener. That's theatlantic.com slash listener. And as a little Easter egg for all of those of you who have made it here through the credits, you may have noticed something wispy and strange behind me. I lost a bet to a bunch of my friends on a golf trip and had to get a mullet. So if you're stuck around, this one's for you. Thanks so much. And I'll see you on the internet. We are not talking about personal AI assistants to cut the time needed to draft a document. We are talking about the leadership aspect. Some companies, when they connect the right data and the business logic, they are able to operate in that way. But it requires bringing all the enterprise corpus and context into Glean. That was a message from Glean at the Agent Transformation Summit. 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