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Yeah, social media is broken.

On the Book of Faces, a friend asked:

With the advent of social media these days the art of "discussion" is being lost which is really sad. Doesn't anyone ever just "talk" anymore?

A few thoughts on that.

Interacting with people in-person is very, very different from interacting with people online.

You miss so many social cues with text. Voice, expression, body language are all missing. Even with video conferencing, you miss a tremendous amount of potential information.

Read old letters. People put great effort into accurate expression. They captured their state of mind, their emotions, and their consideration for others. Those writers understood the depth they needed to achieve. They worked to make their communication as unambiguous as possible.

We dash off something that is not even a quick note in comparison... Then wonder why someone misinterpreted our "LOL" response.

Even worse - as my brother once used to affirm, "People suck." There is one tried and true way to get that dopamine hit off of social media, to get that like or thumbs up or whatever. Identify someone that your cohort dislikes, and then trash them. You might want a more nuanced discussion, but most people don't care. They are more than happy to agree that someone else is awful, because at least the mob isn't focused on them.

Political ad makers have known this for years. Going negative works. People are 10x more likely to complain than to give a compliment. In then end? It is easier to destroy than to create, and destruction gives the same rush and feeling of importance.

Let's be honest. Think about trying to magnify the absolutely worst aspects of human interpersonal interaction. You'd be hard pressed to come up with something more effective than social media. As far as "makes us worse" goes, that is close to the top of the list, right up there with politics. (The absolute top of the list, of course, is the unholy union of politics on social media. That particular mix has all of the redeeming qualities of a dumpster fire in a toxic waste plant.)

"So Sam," you say, "what is the answer? How do we avoid this hellscape of broken interpersonal interaction?"

Sorry, man. I don't know.

It's not lost on me that this question and my response originated on Facebook. "It's where the people are", after all. I hear that particular phrase all the time.

The problem seems to be that we're no longer people online. I'm not saying that we don't see each other as people. We still do, which is the crazy thing!

Somehow, even though we still can see others as people, we don't act like it. Not always - but sometimes. It's way too easy to let the hindbrain take over. So instead of acting like, well, people, we let ourselves act like part of the mob. Happy to go along, because while there's some poor bastard getting torn to bits - at least it isn't us.

Each of us only has so much energy and effort that we can put into our social interactions each day. We can't always be the leader. It takes effort - mental, physical and emotional - to be the one who stands up, stands out, and makes a difference.

In normal life, you might have to do that a couple of times a day. Social media puts us in a place where you might face that challenge a couple of times a minute.

Do you engage with John? Is it worth it? Do you bother to stop and think of the nuances of Jane's argument, or are you going to click on "Like" and keep going? Did you post that article to get people talking, or to get affirmation from your crowd?

Social media puts us into a place where a hundred times a day, we simply don’t have the energy to make the conversation better. So we either do nothing, or - worse - just go along because that’s the easiest choice.

We become the Mob.

Ghandi once said, "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians."

That's social media in a nutshell.

The problem isn't the media - it's the social aspect.

The problem is us.

If you want to fix social media, it's not going to be with better algorithms. New technology and advanced interfaces will only let us fail faster.

No. To fix social media, we're going to have to understand people.

Good luck with that.

Oh - and don't forget to click "Like" and share!

Gotta get those followers, you know.