Big Thoughts

Nothing is easy. Everything is complicated. And no, you’re probably not imagining it: things are more complicated than they used to be.

Take writing. In the old days, before the internet, answering how do I become a writer was easy. There was the work, and there were publishers, and you did the work until you found a publisher and that was how your book went into the world.

You, as the author, did not have to have a one-on-one relationship with your readers. The book-stores had that, with the folks in their local area, and you had a one-on-one relationship with your agent, your publisher, or the reps from your distributor.

Today? It’s complicated. You can go with the traditional publishers, or you can work the proliferation of small presses that are springing up, or you can publish your book on your own and have access to distribution models that make self-publishing effective.

Choices.

Lots of choices.

And none of them are simple. They ask you to factor in how you work and what you want to work on and what your long term goals are and what’s your business plan before the useful answers even begin to show up on the radar.

And yet, people still seem to think it should be easy. They set forth to argue that traditional publishing is the one true path, or that indie publishing is the best choice for authors, or…fuck, I don’t know, whatever their preferred catechism is when it comes to writing and publishing.

We all have them. I have them. You see them seeping through into this blog every day, but I will opening admit that I know fuck all and my articles of faith, when it comes to writing, are exactly that.

Thing is: in writing, we have it easy.

Things that are more complicated than they used to be, when you first heard about them: feminism; equality; every strand of politics and economics.

Because, like writing, we used to focus on the one story. The equivalent of write a good book, find a publisher, get it out there. You’ll hear them echoed in the speeches of politicians: this is the way the family unit should be; this is how relationships should be; this is who belong here, in our country, and this is who should not; this is how you should be an adult; this is how you should earn a living and be a productive member of the capitalist culture that surrounds you.

We have old, worn-in stories about the way we live in the world that people are trying to change. And it’s not easy. If dismantling the patriarchy were easy, the first wave feminists would have done it and gone out for waffles after.

But making that kind of change, especially if you’re the kind of person who has benefited from those old, worn-in stories? It means you need to get comfortable with the idea that things are complex. That no-one is going to come out with an easy answer, any time soon.

You need to get comfortable with the idea that one story, one way of doing things, isn’t going to cut it.

You need to get comfortable with your own discomfort, ’cause complexity ain’t exactly easy to embrace; we are, after all, a path of least resistance kind of species.

Whenever someone says I have an easy answer, punch them in the throat and run. Odds are, they’re trying to sell you something. Or win an election.

The side-effect of Facebook is clicking on things. This works to the site’s advantage, since it’s a tool for sharing information, collating recommendations from friends that come loaded with a kind of social authority. There are interesting posts I’ve read purely because they were linked to on Facebook. Stuff I’d never find on my own, or even consider searching for it.

There are people who find their way here, most days, in much the same way.

This is one of the reasons I go to Facebook. Why it replaces my carefully curated RSS feeds, some days, when I’m feeling particularly lazy.

Yesterday I found myself hovering over a link where a poster took Australian gossip magazines to task for their portrayal of two local celebrities. An automatic reaction on my part – if there is a link, and it’s vaguely interesting, then I’m inclined to click on it. Facebook isn’t inherently interesting in and of itself; it’s at it’s best when there is conversation. Interaction. Connection with others. It cannot be consumed passively in a way that is satisfying for me.

But I have no interest in the local magazines, or the celebrities in question. I had no interest in joining the conversation. I was clicking it ’cause it was there, ’cause a conversation was happening and I didn’t want to be left out.

This bothers me about Facebook. It’s not just the things shared on my feed by friends – their advertising algorithm has become too good, able to play to my darker impulses and deliver me things I’m willing to click upon. Links that take me to content mills where a simple list-post is split over fifteen goddamn pages, each of them filled with advertising and little that’s truly worth reading.

Facebook is smarter than I am, now. The signal to noise is high. Not yet unbearable, but I can see that day coming. Facebook has become a place of habitual behaviour. It’s a place I visit because it’s a habit, more than any particular desire to be there. It’s a steady stream of little pleasures that come from connection, and snark, and Pavlovian rewards systems.

Facebook’s particular genius is reading who I am at the moment, and catering to those desires. It’s all about the little hit, the micro-reward, the dopamine economy. But my usage is dropping. Still registering in the hours of time there, every week, but it’s in the single-digits when it started in the double.

Facebook’s failure, in the end, will be the gulf that’s generated – the moments where I think, when did I become this guy? How do I stop this? 

My threshold for being the guy who clicks gets lower every week.