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  "canonicalUrl": "https://www.jacky.wtf//essays/2025/autochattering",
  "path": "/essays/2025/autochattering",
  "publishedAt": "2025-06-02T23:30:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:e2ctbutx6kya6si4if5ngjmm/site.standard.publication/3mniussyp2d2g",
  "tags": "essay",
  "textContent": "For some time, I've wrestled with what to write on this blog. I'm currently\nworking on a rewrite of it — something that's become more of a [worry\nstone][1], kudos to [Ethan on the notion][5]. The thing that's itching my mind\nis the rethinking I have of the Web as a _valid_ extension of one's self and\nits explicit role in dehumanizing experiences for the corporate sake of\nquantifying what it _seems to feels_ like to be a person online. This idea has\nspawn itself into my brain in this form since reading [24/7][2] and its mention\nof the concept of auto-chattering. Jonathon Crary writes (emphasis mine):\n\n> The forms of control accompanying the rise of neoliberalism in the 1990s were\n> more invasive in their subjective effects and in their devastation of shared\n> and collectively supported relations. [The cycle of] 24/7 presents the\n> _delusion of a time without waiting_, of an on-demand instantaneity, of having\n> and getting insulated from the presence of others. The responsibility for\n> other people that proximity entails can now easily be bypassed by the\n> electronic management of one's daily routines and contacts. Perhaps more\n> importantly, 24/7 has produced an atrophy of the individual patience and\n> deference that are essential to any form of direct democracy: the patience to\n> listen to others, to wait one's turn to speak. The phenomenon of blogging\n> is one example - among many - of the triumph of a one-way model of\n> auto-chattering in which the possibility of ever having to wait and listen to\n> someone else has been eliminated. Blogging, no matter what its intentions, is\n> thus one of the many announcements of the end of the politics. The waiting\n> that one actually does now - in traffic jams or airport lines - acts to\n> intensify resentment and competitiveness with those nearby. One of the\n> superficial but piercing truisms about class society is that the rich never\n> have to wait, and this feeds the desire to emulate wherever possible this\n> particular privilege of the elite.\n\nThis specific section, in addition to the book as a whole, has silently fucked\nwith my perspective of engaging the social Web. Folks who are staunch liberal\nadvocates for it (public access to everything, privacy as a privilege and not a\nfeature, etc) feed into the ideas of the above — requiring near-absolute\naccess to anyone who participates in this system. It's the kind of socio-technical\necosystem that would help accelerate things like [The Network State][3]. The\nmore folks submit to such a socio-technical system, the more that can be\nautomated in judgment by said systems.\n\nI don't want to discount the anthropological benefits of having folks\ntranscribe parts, if not all, of their life online. As Dr Andre Brock Jr\nhighlights with [CTDA][4], this provides a deeper approach to understand\ndigital subcultures and their echoes back into the meatspace. A brief explainer\nof it could be gleamed from the paper:\n\n> [Critical technocultural discourse analysis] reduces this formulation (the\n> formulation of technology as a construct of technical artifacts) to a triad\n> of artifact, practice, and belief, becoming essentially a hermeneutic empirical\n> analysis inte- grating interface analysis (semiosis of the material and virtual\n> aspects of the artifact) and critical discourse analysis (focusing on\n> representations within and of technology) framed by rhetorics of information\n> technology and critical race theory. In particular, CTDA is keenly interested\n> in the technological artifact, here theorized as a “set of rules and resources\n> built into the technology by designers during its development which are then\n> appropriated by users as they interact with the technology”\n\nA (dark) example of this is examining how misognyoir can be traced to its advocates\nby way of podcasts and video blogging and the parroting of points made there\ncan be done in favor of a libidinal, while violent, ecosystem that cishetero\nmen thrive in. But with all of this information, this analysis; the most that's\ndone is the capture of this into books (sometimes into instructive but\nnon-actionable film) that can't reach people who need to be moved by it the\nmost: the folks who are swept up in these toxic economics of emotional exchange\nthat then become advocates of folks who commit harm.\n\nTying back to the usefulness of the output of CTDA to a system driven by the doctrine\nof a networked state; it would be _increasingly_ easy for those who are\nconsidered to be deviant to be pulled out and tracked by state-run tools since\nthese services emit _all_ of this information out of a \"firehose\". Making a\njoke about an elected official? With a networked state, one could see that\nbeing tied into policing technology; a not-so-nascent field that's hungry for\nnew ways to \"fight crime\" by first manufacturing the idea of it and then\n\"solving\" it. You want to organize a Juneteenth event in a state whose\ngovernance is all but anti-Black in name? Expect to see police there with\nstingrays to scoop up any 3G or 4G non-LTE communications for interception. The\ntools of state warfare against the people who pay for it (either in taxes or\ntithes to Big Tech) has accelerated from the days of [They Live][7] or [The\nSpook Who Sat By the Door][8]; almost in _response_ to heightened awareness of\nthe such.\n\nJumping back to what Crary writes, this idea of \"a time without waiting\" is\nsomething that American tech companies have preached as the highest value of\nits ecocide-driven systems: the idea that it's best to rely on them to\nsubstitute the behaviors that we've come to understand as _necessary_ to be\namongst one another. Things from shopping in your local neighborhood, relying\non librarians or local education centers or even taking the time to parse\ndocumentation or instructions are all part of the new product advertisements\nfrom Google and Microsoft. You're _too_ valuable to wait for _anything_: your\ntime is way too important. I've been wrestling with how to add to the\nconversation to the way generative AI is hijacking our collective ability to\nunderstand what it means to reason if the act of reasoning itself can be\nshort-circuited and made more \"redundant\". It's troubling to see that, on the\nlabor advocacy side, many folks looking at this as a way to weaken worker\nrights due to the general devaluing of work, and from the perspective of those\nwithin [the professional managerial class][6] (or adjacent to them) that these\ndevelopments are not only inevitable but _necessary_ to \"transform work\" as we\nknow it. Some folks see it as a binary and I can understand how one can,\nwhereas others see it as a more gray space, though I struggle to see how one\ncan comfortably sit in the middle of such a situation _without_ ceding some\nperspective away from folks either in a lower economic situation from them.\n\n---\n\nAuto-chattering is effectively what I'm doing now: writing with the intent of\nbeing read but not giving much space for hearing feedback _as_ I do it.\nMicroblogging platforms provide a way to introduce that discourse, indirectly\nwith their size constraints (that can be curtailed by the use of imagery\n— another subjective form of communication) but that, in my experience,\nhas led to folks becoming even _less_ willing to hear anyone out. It can\ndevolve into a shouting match or a reinforcement of the stances made. It's easy\nto blame the platforms for causing this — inanimate, non-corporeal\nentities like the profiles we engage online. But that's part of the\ndehumanizing aspect of the Web: that _if_ there's a person behind it; we\ndramatically reduce our ability to understand by labelling them a bot (which\nthey might be), deranged (which isn't improbable either) or a unexpected\ndeviant of online discourse worthy of blocking (which is needed at times). The\nwhole \"social\" part of social media becomes a bit of a neo-tribal attempt\nto _not_ be excluded from the \"good timeline\", whichever one that might be.\n\nIt is _very_ hard for me to come to this conclusion because of how much time I\nspent wrangling with different spaces and ideas, only to understand that I\ntraded time that I should have optimized around deeper community building\noffline that would have paid (larger) dividends versus attempting to parse\nspecifications for the sake of powering shitposting on the Internet. This\nbrings me back to the genesis of frustration when it comes to writing things on\nthis blog. Folks totally use their space however they choose. My intention is\nto try to highlight things I come across in my own development of\nunderstanding. I've toyed with the idea of media commentary but that touches\ntoo closely into the \"content creation\" world that I have friends in and I\ndon't want to trespass that very blurry boundary. So, in the art of\nauto-chattering, a futile attempt at conversation in a networked space, I think\nI'll focus on making this worry stone of mine more throughout and consistent in\nits critique and perspective while reminding myself and readers that it is\nnon-representative of me (it can't be). I'll have more patience for those who\nwrite out replies with equal effort. No longer does making a disconnected\nblog on a platforms that I'm routinely subject to misinterpretation work for me\n— I have to treat it as by its purpose — a data collection tool for\ngeneral real-time sentiment analysis.\n\n[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worry_stone\n[2]: https://www.versobooks.com/products/2315-24-7\n[3]: https://thenetworkstate.com/\n[4]: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1461444816677532\n[5]: https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/let-a-website-be-a-worry-stone/\n[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional%E2%80%93managerial_class\n[7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live\n[8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spook_Who_Sat_by_the_Door_(film)\n[9]: https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/4597/HashtagActivismNetworks-of-Race-and-Gender-Justice",
  "title": "Clocking My Autochattering in Relation to it All"
}