I’ve read Jacobs for many years. I don’t think I’m revealing any sensitive information when I say that he has made clear on many occasions that he has a problem with social media. Many people, myself included, can take it or leave it. They scroll a bit, maybe comment here or there, and then go back to everyday life and forget about it. Jacobs may start by saying “Just a brief scroll; just a couple comments,” but by the end of the evening, he’s blotto and in a holding cell after starting a brawl and kicking out the window of a police cruiser.
I don’t begrudge anyone his choices about how to manage his free time. I do feel a twinge of irritation when “I hate social media” morphs into “and that’s why we should all do this instead.” I’ve also made clear many times my distaste for social media. But I was around during the early blogosphere a quarter-century ago, and all the same pathologies were represented there too, if less concentrated. His beloved “IndieWeb” will be no different. Human beings are garbage wherever you find them, which is why I’m not in any hurry to herd them in this direction or that. They’re still going to behave the same way when you get them there. And thus, to my chagrin, I’m forced to agree with Ezra Klein (another product of that early blogosphere) — let people make their own choices, however poorly. Set a better example if you want, but leave your shepherd’s crook behind.
At first, I wondered if this proselytizing instinct was just a natural outgrowth of his evangelical background. But then it occurred to me that he is also a professional writer and an academic. What is one of the first rules we learned when doing serious, formal writing? To never use the word “I.” First-person writing is usually seen as overly subjective and self-indulgent, which is why it’s left to lowly bloggers. “I keep checking Twitter and it makes me miserable” can feel embarrassingly confessional, even narcissistic. “Social media destroys tranquility and habituates us to pointless conflict” sounds like cultural criticism. It has altitude. It places the writer above the phenomenon rather than inside it. If I say, “This thing has a peculiar hold over me,” I admit weakness, susceptibility, perhaps lack of control. If I say, “This technology is engineered to addict and deform human beings,” then my struggle becomes evidence of the enemy’s power rather than evidence of my particular vulnerability.
So now I lean toward the idea that this prohibition against first-person perspectives has unwittingly caused the plague of crusading busybodies. Denied the opportunity to do what they really want — to talk about themselves — they are forced to sublimate their desires into sociology and punditry. So let me contradict myself in the spirit of Whitman and call for a collective change in focus. Let’s put the “I” back in writing and see if the performative political grandstanding doesn’t fade away.