
Why I Am a Sociomediapath (2015) - simonebrunozzi
https://www.nealstephenson.com/social-media.html
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saeranv
My favorite Stephenson book (thus far, I haven't read all of them yet) Anathem
(2008) seems to directly capture this assumptions about the power of isolation
on mental ability. Anathem describes a society of monks (the avout) that are
isolated from the outside world, and also other monks. Their isolation
basically allows them to cultivate mental superpowers in math, science, and
philosophy, relative to people media-addled people on the outside.

When I was reading it, I had this romantic notion that the avout are kind of
like our scholars in universities, isolated to pursue some narrow
specialization without attention from the outside world. But, it's kind of
depressing to realize how much even academics are pressured to play the social
media game. There was even that paper (posted here on HN) that showed that
researchers that tweeted more got more citations on their paper.

~~~
didericis
I used to think hiring people to manage social media was kind of silly unless
you were some big brandname or marketing heavy organization, but it seems like
a decent way to get most of the visibility benefits while avoiding the
distraction related downsides, and a good opportunity to employ people.
Depending how much you need to post to say relevant, I can’t imagine most
modestly successful small scale businesses/authors/academics etc would find it
that expensive.

I cut out social media a while ago and have never hired anybody for it, so I
might be a bit out of touch/underestimating what people expect your personal
involvement or frequency of posting to be like, but it seems like something a
fair number of people could afford to offload.

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dang
If curious see also

a thread from 2016:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10850084](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10850084)

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TimSchumann
I wonder when this was published.

Maybe it’s the device I’m on, or maybe I missed it, but I can’t seem to find a
date anywhere.

~~~
acheron
Based on nothing more than my memory, I believe it was in 2015, around the
time _Seveneves_ was published.

~~~
madcaptenor
January 7, 2015 is the first snapshot in the wayback machine:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20150107180518/https://www.neals...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150107180518/https://www.nealstephenson.com/social-
media.html)

