Social media

Wednesday

The Spectator

Welcome to congressional fight club!

From our US edition

Fight Club is so back — and this time it’s in the halls of Congress. First rule of congressional fight club: throw down in front of the media. Representative Tim Burchett exploded onto the national scene when he joined with seven House Republicans and every House Democrat in throwing Speaker Kevin McCarthy out of his leadership position. Now, he’s claiming that McCarthy sucker-punched him in the kidneys. Representative Matt Gaetz in turn lodged an ethics complaint against McCarthy for “assaulting” Burchett.  McCarthy claims Burchett is making it up and that any contact was unintentional and merely the result of tight hallways.

Tuesday

Bridget Phetasy

The year’s horrors have left me speechless

From our US edition

I’ve started and stopped three articles, written 1,500 words and hated every single one. This column was due days ago and I’ve been stuck. Completely blocked. I’m not sure if it’s one thing or many things — and sometimes the only way through writer’s block is to sit down and write all the jumbled, disconnected thoughts that are jamming me up. So I will start this piece and end this year with an apology to my editor and to you, dear reader. There is the thought that stands in the way of every other thought — and because I refuse to put horrifically graphic images in your head while you sip your coffee, I’ll let you fill in the blanks yourself. But the thought goes something like: “Hamas did X and Y and Z and I’m supposed to write or care about anything else?

horrors
marketplace
Mary Kate Skehan

The promise and peril of Facebook Marketplace

From our US edition

Items currently available for sale on Facebook Marketplace within eleven miles of my kitchen table (a partial list): Two antique candlesticks, $20 One 1994 Lane cedar chest, $110 One Birkin philodendron, $20 Drunk Elephant Bronze Drops, $30 I became a Facebook Marketplace power user when my husband and I moved from a one-bedroom in San Antonio to a lovelorn Victorian in Pennsylvania. We had 3,000 square feet to furnish, and a budget depleted by closing costs and moving expenses. Marketplace is a classified-ad section of Facebook that was introduced as a less-seedy alternative to Craigslist, a place your grandma could browse for an antique footstool without stumbling across a solicitation for feet pics.

Wednesday

Mary Wakefield

Are smartphones making us care less about humanity?

Generation Z were the first to grow up attached to smartphones. They spent their adolescence bathed in screen-light and now they’re depressed and anxious. Should we have seen it coming? Until very recently my parent friends were in determined denial. Z is the best generation that has ever lived, they said, free from prejudice and determined to recycle. I remember a piece by Caitlin Moran in which she insisted that her children were far more noble and caring than her contemporaries. No one picks up their iPhone to grapple with complex ideological truths Well, those optimistic days are over. The stats are now too stark. We daren’t take the kids’ phones away – we fear their rage – but we mothers huddle in the pub and brood. What’s gone wrong? Is it Instagram? TikTok?

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

‘Childhood has been rewired’: Professor Jonathan Haidt on how smartphones are damaging a generation

Something strange is happening with teenagers’ mental health. In Britain, the US, Australia and beyond, the same trend can be seen: around the middle of the last decade, the number of young people with anxiety, depression and even suicidal tendancies started to rise sharply. Jonathan Haidt, a psychology professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, noticed a change when students who were brought up with smartphones started to arrive on campus. They were angrier. More fragile. More likely to take offence. Social media, he concluded, was shaping their view that society is in permanent conflict, which in turn led to ideas about microaggressions and competitive victimhood. All this, he found, was damaging young people’s mental health.

Friday

The Spectator

Who will replace Dianne Feinstein?

From our US edition

She’s not even cold... Does anyone have Gavin Newsom’s number? The California governor’s phone must be blowing up today after the sad passing of his state’s senior senator Dianne Feinstein at the age of ninety. Feinstein was already set to retire this cycle, with three members of Congress in the running to replace her, who my comrade Cockburn characterizes as “fresh-faced seventy-seven-year-old Barbara Lee, boss-of-the-year Katie Porter and grown-up Caillou Adam Schiff.” Another option from the House comes in the form of Lee’s Senate campaign co-chair. Newsom had previously pledged to select a black woman to fill any future vacancies — which could indicate a preference for Lee.

Wednesday

Martin Kulldorff and Jay Bhattacharya

We’re fighting the Covid censors

From our US edition

On July 4, our Independence Day, Judge Terry Doughty issued a preliminary injunction ordering the federal government to immediately cease contact with social media companies, which it had been urging to censor protected free speech. Evidence unearthed in the Missouri v. Biden case, in which we are co-plaintiffs, has revealed a vast federal enterprise dictating to social media companies who and what to censor. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Surgeon General’s office, the National Institutes of Health, the FBI, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the White House itself were all closely involved.

censorship
doombragging
Neal Pollack

Doombragging: the rise of sustainable boasting

From our US edition

A post came across my social media feed last week that looked like half the posts in my social media feed: a smiling Caucasian couple at an outdoor restaurant table with palm trees in the background. But the caption was more unusual: “The world is suffering beyond measure — but we have to find moments to be grateful for good health, good food and nice weather. Hoping for good news every day. (Heart emoji).” On the one hand, this is very true: we do have to find moments to be grateful for good health, good food and nice weather. But why the first part? Is the world really suffering beyond measure? And if it is, why do you need to mention that in a post that features you and your spouse going out for what looks like a pleasant meal?

taylor lorenz
David Weigel

Taylor Lorenz is optimistic about the internet

From our US edition

“People,” wrote Dwight Macdonald, “feel a need to be related to other people.” Not a happy sentiment, not intentionally. This was how mass culture — “masscult,” he called it — created diversion out of artless entertainment. His example was John Barrymore, an icon of a great acting dynasty whose alcoholic decline brought out raucous crowds, “because it showed them he was no better than they were.” Macdonald’s old pessimism came back to me toward the end of Extremely Online, which is more than a history of the internet creator “revolution.” Taylor Lorenz, a Washington Post columnist with a vivid online life, is its John Reed, chronicling the influencers’ victories while cheering them on.

Wednesday

Amber Duke

TikTok trends are ruining fashion

From our US edition

There are plenty of reasons to despise TikTok, the most downloaded app in the world and certainly the most popular among teen girls and young women. It poses a national security threat to the US due to its connection to the Chinese Communist Party, which uses it as both spyware and a means of socially engineering our youth. In a previous edition of this newsletter, I discussed the devastating effects that social media use can have on young women, from screen addiction to body image issues and deeper mental health problems.Photo and video-based apps such as TikTok and Instagram provide young women with more reasons to hate themselves than ever before.

Saturday

David Marcus

Elon is offering us a raw deal with X

From our US edition

Elon Musk, the owner of X — once known as Twitter, may she rest in peace — is making Americans an offer that they must refuse. When he purchased the social media platform last year for a whopping $44 billion, he led us to believe he was doing it in order to save free speech, an ideal in regard to which he said was an absolutist. Today, what he is actually offering instead is a censorship regime slightly more friendly to the right than his predecessor. It’s a recipe for disaster. Back during the bad old Twitter days of Jack Dorsey, most of us had a fairly consistent idea of how the site should moderate its content.

elon musk

Thursday

Amber Duke

Social media is killing our girls

From our US edition

America’s girls are in a serious crisis. Mental health maladies are becoming more common among all teens, but the problem is particularly acute for young women. A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that almost 60 percent of US girls said they felt persistently sad or hopeless. More than twice as many girls as boys reported experiencing poor mental health in the past thirty days. And 30 percent of high school girls in America said they were seriously considering suicide, while 13 percent have already made an attempt on their life, almost twice the rate of boys.

girls social media

Tuesday

Geoff Norcott

Can topical comedy survive?

Seen any good stand-up recently? It’s a loaded question, but if you have, there’s every chance you didn’t view it via terrestrial TV. You might instead have laughed at some brash American on Netflix, or a deeply un-PC comic on YouTube – or more likely still, a comedian sitting in the palm of your hand. Over the past 12 months in particular, stand-up clips have been going down a storm on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. The kind of clips which do well online have come as a surprise to some of the industry’s traditional gatekeepers. In a shock twist, it seems audiences still find stuff about the differences between men and women pretty funny (and we’re talking behavioural differences here, rather than biological or semantic ones).

Friday

Georgia Toffolo

Starting a Threads account feels like adultery

As I hit the pillow, up popped a notification: ‘Threads’, Meta’s new offering, is available to download. My heart thumped – I’ve been excited about this launch since I first heard of it. As a frustrated influencer, and somebody who couldn’t care less what Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk are doing to each other, I don’t care about the politics. I just thought Threads could be just right for me. And social media is all about me, me, me, obviously.  It’s easy to take a photograph of myself. I do it a lot. But Twitter is a different kind of vanity – for people who aren’t necessarily obsessed with images. That’s why I’ve always felt tentative about it. Threads will be better, I say to myself, as the app downloads.  Is this what having a child is like?

Tuesday

Bethany Mandel

Is my favorite dress company the new Bud Light?

From our US edition

I’ve been pregnant for the better part of the last decade; fifty-four months to be precise. I recently started investing in refreshing my non-maternity or postpartum wardrobe. Everything I have from that stage of life is from when I was twenty-seven; and I’m definitely no longer able to pull off the same look from when I was in my twenties and childless. Now I’m a mom of six and inching uncomfortably close to forty.   In my research, I found the aesthetic I was shooting for, from a company called Son de Flor. Every time another conservative homeschool mom appeared in a dress I loved, it was one of theirs.   https://www.instagram.com/reel/CsJDbisgeC6/?igshid=Y2I2MzMwZWM3ZA== I was ready to pull the trigger on their summer sale...

David Ross Lawn poses in Son de Flor dresses (Instagram screenshot)

Monday

Katherine Dee

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the world’s strangest influencer

From our US edition

How did Yevgeny Prigozhin, the hot dog vendor-cum-leader of the Wagner private military company, become addicted to the allure of likes, retweets and digital validation? From the outside looking in, the warlord posts like a rich kid splayed over his dad’s Porsche — except rather than a swanky car, Prigozhin brags of the travails of the world’s deadliest private military, replete with tanks and artillery.   The early war days of PMC Wagner’s social media presence could be compared to that of ISIS or other paramilitary groups: the posts had a clear agenda, including intimidation, like the “hammer of revenge” video they circulated over Telegram, which documented the brutal murder of Yevgeny Nuzhin, a former Wagner Group member.

Yevgeny Prigozhin influencer

Thursday

Matthew Foldi

Republicans urge DoJ probe of TikTok CEO for ‘lying’ to Congress

From our US edition

Just as TikTok looked as though it had weathered the storm following a murky congressional hearing, a group of Republicans are demanding that the Department of Justice investigate its CEO for allegedly lying to Congress. Thirteen House Republicans, led by Representative Tim Walberg, wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland, in a letter obtained by The Spectator, demanding that the DoJ look into what they claim are critical lies told to Congress by TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, while he was testifying under oath. “It is imperative that we hold Chew and TikTok accountable for his false statements regarding crucial facts of the company’s operations,” the Republicans wrote. The signatories are all members of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which grilled Chew earlier this year.

tiktok

Friday

Julie Burchill

The case for culling friends

Since I’m so old – 64 this summer – Facebook has always been my preferred form of social media. But if I was a softer soul there’s a feature on it that might really tug at my heartstrings: 'See your memories.' Because many of mine – going back more than a decade – are now blank of any actual memory: 'Content not available.' I know what these were: photographs of me with ex-friends (they’d always take the selfies, as I don’t have a camera-phone) who I’ve fallen out with and who have since deleted the photographs. In 90 per cent of cases, I’d say that I was the one who caused the falling-out.  If I’m being honest, I don’t miss any of them.

Sunday

Kara Kennedy

Has the influencer bubble burst?

From our US edition

If you ask anybody under twenty about their life plan, social media will likely play some part in the answer. A friend’s nine-year-old son has just launched his own YouTube channel. My prepubescent cousins are telling their parents that TikTok is “the key to financial freedom.” When I was their age, my entrepreneurial skills went as far as selling single cigarettes to my classmates for loose change. The appeal of the influencer life isn’t hard to understand. Over the last decade, it’s been touted as the sexy, well-paid, democratic career of the future. A 2019 Morning Consult survey found that one in ten young people consider themselves “influencers.” But now these micro-celebrities are trading in their tripods and ring-lights for real jobs.

influencer
multilevel marketing
Katrina Gulliver

Inside the world of multilevel marketing

From our US edition

Emily Paulson felt lost. A young mother with several small children, she’d stepped away from the career ladder and found herself stuck juggling childcare alone when her husband traveled for his corporate job. She was trapped in a circuit of sweatpants and Spongebob. So when an old high school acquaintance invited her out for wine, she was thrilled at the chance to get dressed up, go somewhere swish and feel like herself again. It turned out to be a trap. Although she wasn’t swept into the back of a van by kidnappers, she was propelled into the world of Multilevel Marketing (MLM), also known as a pyramid scheme. The drinks invitation was a lure, first to be wowed by the fabulous cosmetics she could buy (at a discount!! And didn’t her friend’s skin look amazing?