Podcast: Facebook Unplugged

On this episode of Margin Call, the crew discusses the perils and merits of social media, trying to answer the question: “How much would someone have to pay you to get off facebook forever?”

Russell Morse:                    Greetings and welcome to Margin Call the podcast and editorial meeting for Kwest On Media. I’m your host, Russell Morse. Today’s episode. We have quite a few things to discuss, but let me start off by welcoming our guests. Charlie, always a pleasure to have you and with us as always, our producer, fearless, bold Eming Piansay. I want to start off with a story. Actually, this is something that Eming sent to me, which it begs discussion. It’s one of those things, you see it, you can’t believe it. You have to talk about it. This is a headline is you’d have to pay the average Facebook user over $1,000 a year to stop using Facebook and you know, they presented in the context of the #deletefacebook trending in terms of privacy concerns and you know, connections to Russian meddling in the election and they’re trying to connect that to know whether people are actually quitting and what you would have to do to get people to delete Facebook or if it’s equally possible.

Russell Morse:                    You know, I mean it’s possible, but they don’t make it easy. So it says on average a user would need to be paid well over than $1,000 a year to do so. So this is a study, right? Obviously you have to unpack the study. How many people participating or who are you asking? But it’s an interesting conversation point because how much would it take for you to get off? Right. Me Personally, and I don’t know if this is true for you guys, I really feel like Facebook is kind of past its prime and I don’t know if there will be any amount of money. Like I say easily, like I don’t know, I guess I would do it for free. What if you told me tomorrow like just quit Facebook, like on a dare. It wouldn’t be that big a deal to me. But then I also remember like just because I’m not on Facebook every day, Facebook too, like in my world really is just comprised of kind of like pissed off uncles who have like questionable politics anywhere on the spectrum.

Russell Morse:                    Not just, you know, that’s my Facebook world. It seems like a lot of older people on there. And when I talked to young people and a lot of young people at work, I’m in the middle, I’m not an old person, I’m not a young person. Facebook just kind of seems to be greying. Right? Like kids are going to instagram, snapchat probably other apps I haven’t even heard of yet. So it seems outrageous to me that the average Facebook user is asking for a thousand dollars. But then I get reminded of how valuable it can be. Right. Most recently we tried to have a party for, you know, Pacific News Service, New America media people, Kwest On staff members to get together in San Francisco as many people as we could get. And we thought like, oh, what’s the easiest way to invite people? I just went through and invited everybody on Facebook.

Russell Morse:                    Right. I don’t go on there, I don’t use it very often, but it’s a handy tool in that regard. So I wonder like, oh yeah, they’re probably people I’m only in touch with on there. And if I deleted it, it would be the 21st century version of like, you know, deleting or a burning your Rolodex or losing your little black book or something. So I’m torn. I was ready to say thousand dollars. That’s crazy that people would even give that answer. But, you know, I forget actually how much I use it, even if I’m not on that, on there that much. So, I mean, did you guys have the same response to this?

Eming Piansay:                   So the reason why I sent that story was because I’ve noticed a theme running through all our podcasts or it’s kinda like social media seems to be the cause of all our issues. And so I. So I was kind of wondering like what would people when people actually do that kind of thing where they are paid to not go on social media. Could that be a thing that anyone does? Because I mean, I find myself always on my Facebook when I’m like in between things at work because, you know, I have family everywhere and I’m curious where people are, how they are. And you know, you get caught up in the feed, you get lost in the scrolling process k. That’s why I can’t go on twitter because just like stop, just keeps going.

Russell Morse:                    Here’s my question, does it include Instagram? I know Facebook owns Instagram, so it’s like what? I also have to get rid of Instagram because I think I recently went through, I stopped going on Instagram like about a month ago. Not like, not for any reason other than I was just wasting so much time on there. Like you said, I just like, I would find myself coming home from work. I wouldn’t do anything. I’d just like chill on the couch and just like, I love memes, follow a lot of meme pages. I’m just like scrolling, looking for good memes and as you say it keeps going, keeps going. And I was like, God, this is like hours of my life. So I got off but I didn’t. It wasn’t like a permanent decision and you know, there’s still value. I’m still curious about it, you know, it’s like I saw my cousin at Christmas and she’s like, how come you didn’t respond to any of those memes?

Russell Morse:                    I tagged you in, you know, and I was like really interested in. I was like, Ooh, I got to see because she sounds good mean she says fire memes. So I want it to go look, so I’ll probably end up back there, you know, how much would I take a thousand dollars to never go on instagram again? I don’t know, I don’t think I even have like a full understanding of the role that social media plays in my life to be honest. Like I think that I downplay it because I, because I’m on there less than other people, so I think I’m not on there, but that’s actually not true. Well, I watched that movie, American Meme It’s good. I don’t think I finished it. I watched most of it.

Russell Morse:                   Um, but, uh, you know, I don’t know if there’s one major takeaway. I think it’s well done. I think the subjects that they chose a really. I’m interested in people’s stories. I actually did learn a lot about Paris Hilton, Paris Hilton. Well, that’s the thing. Like when, when Melanie mentioned her, I feel like I was like very callous and Melanie was talking about how hurt Paris Hilton’s still is, how mortified she’s still is by like the leaking of her sex tape. And I think when she mentioned that I was dismissive, I was like, oh Paris, like get over it or whatever. And then I watched the movie. I was like, oh man. I was like really insensitive. Like that is a terrible thing that happened to her and like Paris Hilton is Paris Hilton, but she’s still a person. And then as I watched it, I would just kind of felt bad for all of these people actually genuinely felt sympathetic.

Russell Morse:                    Not specifically for Paris Hilton, but for all of them because you know, to have your life and your identity wrapped up in followers. Uh, that’s, that’s a crazy way to live, man. It’s a crazy way to live. It feels, it seems very unsustainable and sad. And one of the guys on there was actually really pretty smart and had a lot of insight and I think he was the guy I actually hadn’t heard he was the one person I hadn’t heard of before, but he was the guy who got famous for like pouring champagne all over girls at nightclubs and taking pictures with pills.

Eming Piansay:                     She mentioned that.

Russell Morse:                    Okay. So I had never heard of that guy before and you know, he kinda like became a troll, right? Obviously because a lot of women were really upset at him. Like, oh, like this is disgusting. Like what you’re doing here is like objectifying women and like incredibly misogynistic.

Russell Morse:                    So he kind of responded to that criticism by like being a troll, kind of like an antifeminist even though that’s not really who he is when you see him, when you meet him and talk to him. So it also made me feel very sad for someone like, oh, like you’re a troll, you’re like this kind of like a misogynist on the internet because that’s the behavior that’s expected of you. I don’t know man. I empathize with these people a lot. But I also was very glad that I was not, I think I am not of the generation where like being on social media is absolutely central to your life, you know? And I feel I feel absolved of that.

Eming Piansay:                   You kind of stopped. It’s like, yeah, it’s easy in a way. Like you’ve already kind of.. purging yourself of it.

Russell Morse:                    Yeah, but I think like, I don’t know, when you were in high school, there was no social media.

Eming Piansay:                   There was MySpace.

Russell Morse:                    That’s what I mean. We’re a different generation now. Yeah. I think like when I, you know, like Cliff’s daughter Ella, you know, like she’s like, she’s a freshman in high school, you know, and I saw her when I was in San Francisco and we were talking about that movie Eighth Grade. You see that movie?

Eming Piansay:                   It’s sitting in my iTunes thing waiting to be watched.

Russell Morse:                    It’s good. Good review when you talked about it, but…

Charles Jones:                    I was curious about that. It’s a good movie?

Russell Morse:                    I liked it. Yeah, I liked it. It’s not a perfect film. It’s not high art, but I thought like, you know, a lot of the times I think when they make movies about young people and like try to tell movies from young people’s perspectives, it feels like a little fake or you know what I mean.

Russell Morse:                    This didn’t, this felt, this felt genuine and I thought like the actor, the woman who plays that girl did a really good job and I thought she was really well cast and you know, like it’s a world, I don’t know, like I’m not a girl in eighth grade in 2018. And I felt like I got some insight into it, you know, and some of the challenges are not new, you know, the idea of being insecure and self-conscious, all that stuff. Those are an age-old situation. But the role that actually social media is pretty empowering for her because she has a YouTube channel, you know, like her character and how she kind of overcomes not being that popular or feeling insecure is that she has these little diary entries on YouTube. I thought it was good. You know, I thought it was good. You know, the reason I mentioned it was just because we had that conversation. I had a conversation with Ella when I was in San Francisco about like, oh, did you think that that was pretty accurate? She said, yeah, she’s exactly her age. She’s a freshman now, but she was the same age and that will come round.

Eming Piansay:                   I wonder how similar it is for me because when we first started doing, when YO! started doing the YouTube stuff, like vlogging and I was the only one doing it for a while because no one else knew what the hell it was. would upload every week and I would. And I was not aware of what YouTube comments were until I started doing it and I was like, what? Early twenties. And there was some mean, ass comments and I like that was super sensitive and I would like, I would sit there and my friend was like, what’s wrong? I’m like, I read a mean comment. I’m just like in my feelings right now.

Russell Morse:                    You can’t read the comments man.

Charles Jones:                    Comments, like what?

Eming Piansay:                   I don’t really want to talk about it, but it was mean.

Charles Jones:                    No. Okay. So it was like personal attacks,…

Eming Piansay:                   Yeah like physical attacks. I just don’t, I don’t want to get into that, but was just mean. I was, I was hurt. I mean I was already sensitive as it was. And you just add another layer of it just, it just didn’t go well for me internally.

Russell Morse:                    When I went, um, you know, when we finished filming that reality show that I’m From Rolling Stone show, uh, you know, they didn’t air it right awa. We filmed for a few months and then they’re going to edit it and then it was going to air like months later. So they had someone come in and like give us advice on like how to like, it’s going to be weird because going to be on TV, like here’s some things to think about while this is happening. The first thing they said was don’t read the comments anywhere about anything. Don’t even read reviews of the show. Like don’t read articles about the show. Like people are going to say really mean things like you’re not going to believe how they’re going to be.

Charles Jones:                    It was funny, I had to stop reading the comments about that fucking show because I found myself in and comment threads defending your ass.

Eming Piansay:                   Aw! Charlie, that’s so sweet.

Russell Morse:                    Charlie to the rescue.

Charles Jones:                    I felt I ain’t one of them people. You ain’t going to sit here and talk shit about people. If I see it, I’m going to. So and so I was just like, what the, like people like hating. I wasn’t aware of Internet comment culture at that time either. And so that was like my first foray into, I think back at that time I did like maybe two blogs. I did a blog, I did a blog after Obama won his first election and I did another blog and I had weird old conservatives coming at me, uh, on my Obama winning blog and say, which still it was after his second election.

Charles Jones:                    It was two years into his second election and they were still commenting on that video to the point where I just like made a video private because it didn’t make no sense for me for the conversation to continue. But um, like comment culture is weird because people have sustained arguments, uh, like month long arguments in those, in those moments. And you as a content creator like especially if you’re any type of popular, if you get a lot of views and comments it’ll be so much shit going on in the comments that your videos that you won’t even notice. It’s insane.

Russell Morse:                    That’s what you know to, to bring it back to our subject here in some ways. I’m glad you mentioned that kind of feels like Facebook has become just an offshoot of comment culture. If you consider the amount of like political debates that are going on there.

Russell Morse:                    I know friendships to get lost over Facebook arguments, political debates to like instantly devolved, you know, because we all have a pretty diverse friend sets, you know, not everybody going to have the same perspectives as you. And some of those comment words like, people don’t back down, man. I’m like, I kind of stay out of those conversations early on. I thought it was kind of cool to be like a troll or like have debates, but that like just instantly bit my hands and I was like, this is not healthy, but not the witness that as like people I know, like my family members have been arguments that go on for 30, 40, 50 comment lines. I don’t want to be a part of that man. And I want to say that’s the majority of…

Charles Jones:                    I engage in facebook arguments for like sports that’s a sport. There’s a sports group I’m in and you know, I’ll go there all day and you know, troll people about Steph Curry being better than Lebron as I do this. Like I’m realizing like some of these people are even getting serious in this fucking sports group. And so there’s a culture of damn internet bullying, you know what I’m saying? That happens, uh, within, within sports fandom online. It happens on twitter, it happens on facebook. Like, you know, everybody got all the memes when the warriors lose, everybody got all the meme.

Charles Jones:                    What, facebook has kind of devolved to a, to your point is that whole like argument, debate and people feel entitled to a debate. Like it’s like you can’t just make a point and walk away.

Russell Morse:                    Charlie, this is a very relevant story. This happened a long time ago, but I learned a lot from this. This was an exchange that, uh, uh, Krea I had on facebook, like God, I don’t know, I must have been four or five years ago because it was the last World Cup, not this World Cup. The one before that. Um, and she had a post about, you know, how she was sad because she wanted Argentina to win the World Cup. Germany won the World Cup. And she said something about like, Oh, you know, I had to tell my daughter had tears in her eyes, you know, and you know, she said the colonizers won again or whatever, you know, talking about Germany. And I was like, well, you know, Germany is not really a colonial power, you know, especially when you put them up against Argentina, you know, like if you look at the back of those jerseys, you know, those are all Italian names.

Russell Morse:                    You know, like Argentina was really a colonial adventure. There’s a reason that you don’t see a lot of indigenous people and that’s where the tango is. And you know, Europeans say, Oh yeah, Argentina is where we raise our cows. So I was trying to like make a point, a point that I’ll make to you. It’s either of you or I was like, oh, we’re like, who’s the bigger colonial power, you know, if that’s what your main concern is right, half as a joke and half as like, like a minor troll. And she got upset because she felt like I was challenging her. But like it was a thing where I felt like if we were in person and I mentioned that, you know, she might’ve said, oh yeah, well, you know, Germans, not like Germans don’t have anything else in their past. You know what I’m saying?

Russell Morse:                    They got some secrets of their own, a very, very open dark secrets, but it just turned ugly. Uh, if we had been in person and I watched that, I was like, oh damn. But like, this is the person who actually is friend who I like have a lot of love and respect for. I’m not gonna, you know what I mean? Like I’m not going to double down on this, you know, point about Germany versus Argentina. And that was very instructive to me. That was the last time I just randomly will go on a friend’s page and like contradicts something they post, you know what I mean? Because I felt like this is potentially volatile in a way that’s not just a friend being funny but could potentially turn into something that’s unpleasant or challenged friendships. And that was years ago, obviously.

Charles Jones:                    I think what lends to kind of the speed which vitriol coming up here in facebook conversation is like the complete lack of nuance. And then shit, you know. And, and, um, because we’re so limited in how we can respond with, with simple gestures like, you know, nobody asks for all those weirdo emojis that now appear at the like button, but we asked for a simple dislike button imagine how much easier, how much more could be communicated and how much simpler it could be communicated if there were a simple dislike button.

Charles Jones:                    Well, first of all, facebook, it is strange to me that you said that people would have to be paid what, a thousand dollars…

Russell Morse:                    According to this study, Facebook users said that they would have to be offered a thousand dollars in order to give up facebook. I’m surprised by that figure.

Charles Jones:                    That is insane to me. I have like, I have strong feelings about a continued relationship with Facebook. I don’t see outside of like instant access to some of my family members that I normally wouldn’t have the same access to. I don’t see the benefit of um, I can see the benefit of Twitter. Um, because of things. Because, uh, you know, you’re limited in characters. You have to say what the fuck you mean? Or, you know, tell your joke and get out of the way. Whereas Facebook, uh, supports these long as diatribes and encourages a conversation for the sake of user interaction because they make more money off of it. So it doesn’t really matter what the conversation is. They did investigate hella deep into those Russian Bots. They didn’t do any deep investigation into Russian bots because those Russian bots were driving fucking traffic and that was making Facebook money. So our country is in a spiral, partially because of that. I’m, I’m really, I’m really kicking myself for having a facebook account right now. I grew up watching the NFL and after Colin Kaepernick started kneeling, A bunch of NFL fans, reacted a certain way, a bunch of NFL owners reacted a certain way and it put a distance between me and the NFL that I never felt before. I think that’s Kinda what’s happening now

Charles Jones                    For you with Facebook you mean? Yeah. Like what’s strange is I haven’t watched a football game in three seasons. I boycotted once Colin Kaepernick got blacklisted in my mind, got blacklisted and…

Russell Morse:                    Charlie just so you know. The Niners beat the Seahawks a few weeks ago. It was pretty glorious. I’m sure you didn’t miss that much as a Niners fan.

Charles Jones:                    I’m not one of these dudes like super righteous about it. Like I’m never gonna go watch the NFL again, blah, blah blah, blah, blah. Like I love NFL football. This is a real life sacrifice for me.

Russell Morse:                    There’s a guy in my office, he’s like I don’t watch the NFL anymore because of Kap. I guess he’s young. He’s young, he”s black, he’s from Harlem and he sounded, had a lot of the same kind of response. You’re saying the things that NFL fans were saying, things that owners were saying like really turned him off in the wake of Kaepernick. So he’s like, I’m not going to watch the NFL. It’s like, all right, cool. You know, like, I totally understand that, but he’s still playing fantasy football, which, you know, like I understand you don’t watch the game so you don’t create revenue. You’re not going to be a viewer that supports the league. But I’m like, you know, you’re still in it and you know what I mean, like I think if you’re playing fantasy, you still like that. That’s a pretty tangential boycott, you know what I mean?

Charles Jones:                    This is the argument that I’ve been having with people like, because I’ve completely divested, I’m not playing fantasy, I haven’t bought anything forty-niners related. I’m not wearing the 49ers items for already own plan and it started with Kaepernick, but it got so much bigger than that once show eyes. You know, once the new penny shine is taken off of something and you see all the dents and scratches body it is, you know, come see.

Russell Morse:                    I think that’s actually a really interesting point, which is, you know, nobody offered you a thousand dollars to stop watching NFL games. You reached a point where your politics couldn’t, could no longer support it. You were like, you know what, I can’t support this. And I’m thinking the real problem with this study is that they asked people who are on Facebook and love Facebook what it will cost. Right? But like the real question is how many people would just leave Facebook right now if you just asked them to, you know what I mean? Like if there are a lot of people, there are a lot of people were on the bubble man. Like all the stuff about Russian hacking. The more I heard about it and how dark it was, you know, I think at the, at the beginning I assumed it was all that kind of like extreme conservative propaganda that was out there.

Russell Morse:                    All that Anti Hillary stuff. They had to be black and started their own phone, you know, like black lives matter pages with, you know. And I felt so insidious and dark.

Charles Jones:                    I don’t know why I followed at least one of those pages, those pages. And I was just like, like, well, comedy central, the daily show made a joke of it by saying like, you know, the Russians had to learn what black people like, what we don’t have, which is something I would appreciate if, you know, my own government doing

Russell Morse:                    The Russian government, spent more time trying to understand black people than the American government,

Charles Jones:                    Facebook fostered that Facebook hasn’t properly apologized or changed or restructured in any way that I could see that would prevent that from happening again. I made a fake group page just to see if I could make a fake group page. Um, that was it. It was a page for women, you know, what I’m saying? Posed as a woman. I made the page just to see if it was just that simple to make the page and create the page. And it was. And it’s like deleted the page and it’s like I’m scared. Like, what? Uh, you know, this is a real Black Mirror level shit. Who can you trust like what’s real and what’s not? And um, they didn’t just do it on facebook, they did it across other social media platforms for other social media platforms in a way better job of addressing it. This is just like, not just that, but like the racism you hear about happening at Facebook, it there just so many reasons for me as I’m finding myself kind of wanting to shut up because the further I continue this conversation, the less likely it is that I’ll log back on facebook.

Russell Morse:                    It’s one of those things in order to keep doing it, you have to not think about it. And you know what I mean? Like I used to get really caught up like buying clothes. I’ll be like, well damn, hold on, this is what country is this made in? And are they’re using sweatshop labor. It’s like, the more you think about it, the more you’re like, you realize everything around you is a product of a capitalist oppressive structure. So I had to just shut my brain off and just buy some jeans at Levi’s and just keep it moving. You know what I mean? I had, I had to just get those Nike’s and then just not think about the fact that it’s probably like an 11 year old who, who put them together.

Russell Morse:                    I’m not advocating that world view, but I know exactly what you mean. If you think about something too long, you realize like I’m participating in an immoral structure just to just to bring up a positive point. Uh, so I’m going to leave it there. I just, my last question before we go, aside from like, how much do you have to pay people to get them to go on facebook? Like I believe that, you know, pretty soon we will be in a post facebook world, right? Like facebook is not here to stay, right? I want to say it’s going to go the same place that Friendster and MySpace did, but is that true? Am I being foolish or, or is it realistic to expect?

Charles Jones:                    I think facebook is kind of too big to fail at this point. It might at some point do away with social media component. They, but they provide too many services and own so much outside of just the website. And facebook, you know, if a facebook ceased to exist tomorrow, the, they’re still instagram, they’re still like a know…

Russell Morse:                    They have hardware now. Wasn’t that a big like Christmas holiday season they were pushing. Facebook interactive?

Russell Morse:                    I just want to say like, if, if the reason that it technology fails is that you, its algorithm isn’t any good. Right? Like there’s, there’s a flaw. Somebody comes along with a better set, like a better written code for this same thing if, if facebook has been exposed to have these flaws where it’s like very easily undermined isn’t impossible that someone’s come along with a better version of that and people will gravitate towards that, I guess. I mean, you know. Yeah. Just like present an alternative, you know, people could gravitate.

Charles Jones:                    I’m ready for the antibook.

Russell Morse:                    Anti book, that they could be called antibook. Too bad none of us can code. We could just make antibook. It’s a good name. I’m going to leave it there. Thanks to both of you, Eming and Charlie for coming on tonight. Thanks to everybody for listening. Until next time. Kwest On everybody.

Eming Piansay:                   This episode of Kwest On Media is Margin Call was produced in Richmond, California.