Category Archives: Rants about Stupid Things

You’re Too Ironic for Foursquare

Posted on by
Reply

The “most annoying” things about those “ubiquitous Zagat reviews” that every “restaurant” has “scotch-taped” to their front windows in the hope that it contains a “magical phrase” to somehow distinguish the restaurant as “better” than “the other 800 totally anonymous and transitory” establishments on that particular block of lower Manhattan are definitely the “scare quotes” that surround the anonymous “review excerpts.” When Mr. and Mrs. Zagat first xeroxed their sheet of critical culinary metadata to hand out at dinner parties (like most soon-to-be successful people their destiny was given away by how fucking annoying they were), they did not know that they had stumbled upon the fundamental building-block of the most-valuable-to-date advancement of civilization: the social network. The two-hand, four-fingered genius of the Zagats struck me when I was considering how disappointed I am that one of the latest,1 and one of my favorite, social networks, Foursquare, seemed to have lost much of its social momentum.

Foursquare, briefly, is a smartphone app that allows you to “check in” where you are – home, at work, at a bar, restaurant, event, anywhere – and see who else is there and who the “mayor” is (i.e., who has been there the most, a rather dubious distinction for Jason P., mayor of the corner Deli near me that smells like mummified cat). The main screen also allows you to see where your friends have most recently checked-in. The whole thing is mildly addicting in its inexplicable necessity, the way any good mobile app is.

I’ve had the same ten friends or so ever since I signed up for Foursquare. I convinced a couple people to join, but then some other people dropped out. So there hasn’t been a lot of growth in foursquare usage among my friends, who, in comparison, have been relatively good sports about Twitter and Google Reader. There is sadness when one’s chosen platform flounders. Like going out to happy hour with your coworkers, and then being the one stuck sitting at the table with your boss, the working mom who complains about her husband’s sexual performance, and the IT guy who gets Fox News updates pushed to his blackberry every 15 seconds so he can get vocally angry about how stupid they are.

But what do I even use foursquare for? Not to see where my 11 friends are, because that doesn’t really change. A.H. is always somewhere where they serve alcohol; K.S. will be at a hipster event like the roller derby or accordion lessons; M.H. will be at work; and my undergraduate intern (who friended me on foursquare even though he has yet to say a single word to me without being forced to by my boss)2 has been checked in at Grand Central Station ever since he returned from Christmas Break eight weeks ago.

What I *do* use Foursquare for is its “tips” section, where other 4sq’ers leave handy information about what’s fun, what’s shady, and what’s obnoxious about wherever I am. I’ve found no group more honest about what to order for brunch at a cafe or which bartender is the meanest, because there’s something about recording observations while you’re at a place (Foursquare makes it hard to review something when you’re not checked in there) that brings out a visceral sincerity. Writing a Yelp.com review three hours after you received an Eggs Benedict with a toenail in it lacks the same fury that you would summon while typing out the review staring at the offending keratin itself.

And I realized that Foursquare will live and die not by its gaming mechanics nor its silly game of follow-the leader, but by the time-tested method of showing us other people’s opinions on our lives. What is Facebook, other than a massive, Zagat metareview of ourselves, with comments on photos, events, and opinions that together form a word-judgement of our existence? Twitter is the same, only that we see the reviews coming together in real time. We value Social Media not to connect but to evaluate and be evaluated. That girl who hated you in high school is friending you just so you can see how beautiful she looked the day she married her hot, rich husband. She is sticking her Zagat’s review right in the window as you walk by.

Every heavy user of facebook believes he or she “is only on it to make fun of other people”, in other words, ironically. But Facebook can only be used ironically,3 because in order to endure its harsh light we must sustain the illusion that we are not asking its opinion even as we beg for it on every last bit of our life.

Foursquare makes it easy to judge and be judged about where you and your friend have been. But it does a poor job of making it seem like that’s not at all what you’re using it for, and so people avoid it. It lacks irony. Try to get someone to join Foursquare and they’ll say, “letting people know where I am makes me uncomfortable,” even though checking in is 100% optional and friend lists are under your total control, and also they will probably post Facebook updates and pictures from that very place. Their real reason is, “Foursquare makes it too obvious that I want people to know where I am.” Facebook’s “Places” app has been met with the same resistance.

So how does this go back to Mr. & Mrs. Zagat and the instantly-reviewed podiatrist’s dream brunch? Our sense of ironic television has been so highly developed by commercial-supported television that we can no longer view public social interactions without considering how we are above them.4 Facebook and Twitter continue the irony of being individual in a gigantic crowd of normalized action, and apps that fall short in this way, like Foursquare, do so “at their own risk.”

—

  1. Someone needs to find a shorter word for “latest” so it’s less likely to lose its meaning by the time you’re finished typing it.
  2. He was “Mayor” of NYU Press for a while until I left a sarcastic foursquare tip about it; he then relinquished control back to me without another word. Did I mention he is 6’4″, 100 lbs, dark-rim-spectacled, and obviously the owner of more than one blog focusing on the slow death of culture in Bushwick? My theory is he had forgotten my name in a fog of fear and friended me thinking I was another intern, and now cannot drop me because of that same fear.
  3. Unless you are over 55.
  4. David Foster Wallace, E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction.

Rant about Stanley Fish and Internet Anonymity

Posted on by
Reply

Stanley Fish dislikes that the internet is not peer-reviewed, since peer-review is his only source of power, and he has found a creative new way to complain about it in the New York Times. He suggests that we should end “anonymous” posts on the internet by forcing internet service providers to be responsible for them. This is like suing New York City because all the “anonymous” people who throw gum on the street are messing up your expensive loafers. But dammit, Stanley Fish should be able to walk anywhere he damn pleases without looking down:

The idea (which goes back at least as far as Milton’s Areopagitica) is that false and defamatory speech openly published will provoke counter speech and lead to correction; the truth will ultimately prevail. (Justice Louis Brandeis: “Sunshine is the best disinfectant.”) But however likely that happy outcome may be in the world of books and newspapers (and I have always thought it extremely unlikely), the special conditions and powers of the Internet conspire against it and the more likely outcome is the one prophesied by Alexander Pope in the final lines of “The Dunciad”: “Light dies before thy uncreating word . . . / And universal darkness buries all.”

You must be wildly out of touch with how people use the internet to make a statement like that. When I read something outrageous online – for instance, a comment on the above article saying “Stanley Fish was never convicted for murdering those prostitutes, but everyone knows he was the only one with that much frozen salmon,” – I can fact check it immediately on one of the thousands of other websites with information on Stanley Fish. I’d start at Wikipedia, or maybe just google “Stanley Fish kills hooker with salmon” to see what comes up. If I find no evidence, then I’m going to disregard the claim. The beauty of the internet is that even if there is a significant conspiracy to spread a lie about someone, there is going to be a significant and google-able record of people arguing against that claim. The internet loves an argument, and is a better to evaluate the veracity of speech because of it. On the internet, you don’t need to buy a rival newspaper or go to the library to discover when someone is full of shit, because you can bet your ass that someone has already registered StanleyFishsDetractorsAreFullOfShit.com or its close scatological equivalent.

And no, that doesn’t mean you must fact-check every claim you read. First, we are not all researchers, and impact of us not knowing the full truth of Stanley Fish’s life is minimal. We can let these things go either way. Like most people who would care about Stanley Fish, I have a decent eye for specious or malicious factual claims. This intelligent evaluation begins with not believing most negative comments left on New York Times blog posts. The responsibility to debate and preserve the truth falls on readers as much as it falls on writers; both must be intelligent and careful. It’s your responsibility to not step in the gum. Suing internet providers will not encourage intelligence or compassion, but making the internet a free and accessible place for speech and content will.