Dependent, Distracted, Bored by Susanna Paasonen

Author:Susanna Paasonen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Networked Media; Social Media; Affect; Temporality; Attention Economy; Boredom; Dependence; Distraction
Publisher: MIT Press

Distraction and Affective Ambiguity

Distractify claims to generate universal, shared emotion, Upworthy and happiness apps aim to optimize positivity, and Facebook explicitly aims to track and modulate affect. Such attempts at the transmission of affect (Brennan 2004) are, however, necessarily volatile and disjointed. Reaction options or words written in a Facebook post, for example—of, say, loving or hating a song, a politician, or a specific dish—do not quite translate as, or speak of, how or what we feel, or what interests and attachments drive our actions, for all this is grounded in a much more complex nexus of personal histories, life events, surroundings, and encounters, many of which may not find their expression in language at all. Clicking “like,” “love,” “wow,” “haha,” or “care” on a post provides the platform with easily analyzable data, yet much of user experience remains permanently inaccessible to datafication (see also Jarrett 2014).

As a rich body of social media scholarship has shown, that which people disclose and share, with whom and how, results from strategies and decisions concerning audience management and self-presentation (e.g., Ellison and boyd 2013; Light 2014; Zhao et al. 2013). Social media updates, reactions, emojis, and comments are not transparent or immediate expressions of personal feeling as much as knowingly crafted displays of, and invitations to, certain forms of interaction. The modes that these interactions take can be studied, just as their affective tone can be modulated and monetized by platforms controlling the content available to users. All this does not, however, afford access to the nuances of experience, social ties, emotional investments, or affective intensities as such.

The distractions of social media cannot be confined to positive affective management for the reason that their allure owes equally to disturbing properties and mixed feelings. Writing on play, Miguel Sicart (2014, 3) points out how the pleasures it generates “are not always submissive to enjoyment, happiness, or positive traits.” The same applies to social media, the attraction and value of which involve diverse intensifications of experience. These may involve the management of self-image, the hopeful pursuits of marketing, the tortuous dynamics of trolling or romancing, the heated waves of polarized political debate, or aggressive, collective displays of resentment felt toward a public figure (Paasonen 2015b). A joint object of hate alone sticks people fast and firmly together, motivates much posting, and fuels the flows of data (Chun 2018, 84–85). Contrary to any straightforward happiness imperative, the affective economy of social media is centrally one of diverting pleasures yet not necessarily one of sheer fun, for “joy and sadness, anticipation and anxiety intermingle in digital connectivity in ways that make them bleed and blend into each other” (Sundén 2018, 64). Pleasures, as intensities of feeling, can be elusive, strained, and dark; ambiguous and paradoxical—and this may well be where much of their appeal lies (see also Coyne 2016, 98–100). Attempts to ramp up positive affect within the compulsory promise of happiness do away with the entanglement of diverse, ambiguous intensities that make social media engaging.

The same goes for the affective formation of distraction.

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