Does This Professor Need Twitter?

00:00:00.000 | - All right, next question's from Bo, a 38 year old teacher.

00:00:03.800 | I'm not big on social media,

00:00:05.360 | but as an independent researcher in the humanities,

00:00:07.620 | I use academia.edu and ResearchGate

00:00:10.540 | mainly to get access to papers.

00:00:12.720 | I also have a Twitter and a LinkedIn account

00:00:14.900 | mainly to share my blog posts

00:00:16.560 | and see if I can find an audience.

00:00:18.520 | Is this the right balance?

00:00:20.400 | - Right, there's a good case study of our discussion

00:00:22.600 | from the deep dive earlier in the show.

00:00:24.800 | So not knowing too much about specifically

00:00:28.060 | what type of research you do or your career,

00:00:30.240 | let's just give some random recommendations here.

00:00:33.760 | Paying for access to academic articles is a no brainer

00:00:37.120 | if you are an academic who's not associated

00:00:39.760 | with an institution that gives you that access, so of course.

00:00:43.400 | Twitter, I don't think you need to be there.

00:00:46.020 | We just talked about this.

00:00:48.000 | Twitter gives you this illusion

00:00:50.180 | that it's gonna grant you a virality

00:00:53.520 | that will grow your audience bigger

00:00:54.600 | than if you hadn't had Twitter.

00:00:55.540 | I would say, forget it, just produce really good work.

00:00:58.600 | Twitter may work on your behalf.

00:01:01.080 | People may share your work on there

00:01:02.520 | and you need to have a platform you own

00:01:04.040 | to capture that attention,

00:01:05.660 | but putting your attention in the content production

00:01:07.860 | on Twitter is going to open you up to all these negatives

00:01:12.640 | and dilute the positives you get from your own platform.

00:01:15.760 | LinkedIn, I guess it just depends what you're doing on it.

00:01:19.300 | So for LinkedIn to be effective,

00:01:21.200 | A, you have to ignore the sort of increasing social features

00:01:24.720 | slash streaming distraction features

00:01:26.520 | and just focus on the core original ability

00:01:30.180 | to use it to look at tertiary network connections.

00:01:32.840 | I mean, the value of LinkedIn,

00:01:34.740 | the unique value proposition of LinkedIn

00:01:37.140 | is I can look at people

00:01:39.140 | who are in the network of people I know.

00:01:41.780 | So not secondary, but tertiary connections.

00:01:44.340 | That's really useful, right?

00:01:46.100 | So you say, okay, I need a connection to the movie industry.

00:01:51.100 | I don't know anyone in the movie industry,

00:01:53.380 | but I probably know someone

00:01:54.740 | who knows someone in the movie industry.

00:01:56.780 | That person can make a recommendation on my behalf.

00:02:01.020 | And so it opens up contacts.

00:02:03.560 | And because you have an intermediary

00:02:05.320 | who knows both ends of this link,

00:02:07.600 | that's actually a high quality contact.

00:02:09.340 | If you go out one more layer, it doesn't work anymore.

00:02:13.660 | So if it's, I know someone who knows someone

00:02:15.240 | who knows someone in the movie industry,

00:02:16.720 | that connection doesn't work

00:02:18.160 | because there's no person in common

00:02:19.740 | between you and the ultimate person you wanna talk to.

00:02:22.820 | So I remember my longtime friend, Ben Kastnoka,

00:02:26.620 | who used to be Reed Hoffman's chief of staff.

00:02:28.780 | I remember him at the time

00:02:30.500 | when LinkedIn was really taking off,

00:02:32.780 | explaining this network theory to me.

00:02:35.500 | It's all about the sweet spot of your friends' friends

00:02:39.540 | is the sweet spot of opening yourself up

00:02:42.620 | to a huge amount of potential connections

00:02:45.460 | while still having the ability

00:02:46.500 | to make those connections strong.

00:02:47.840 | So if your work is such that as an independent researcher,

00:02:51.620 | you need contracts or engagements with clients

00:02:54.460 | in various type of industries,

00:02:56.100 | and you need connections to people in those industries,

00:02:58.920 | that aspect of LinkedIn could be very valuable.

00:03:01.220 | So I would summarize this, I guess, as saying,

00:03:05.140 | yes, to paying money to gain access to articles,

00:03:07.440 | no to Twitter, maybe yes to LinkedIn if you really need it.

00:03:12.040 | Now, there's a bigger point here

00:03:14.100 | that I made in a New York Times op-ed

00:03:17.060 | that came out in 2016,

00:03:18.540 | and it actually generated a lot of furor at the time.

00:03:21.900 | But I wrote this New York Times op-ed where I said,

00:03:25.660 | "We overestimate the value of social media presence

00:03:30.660 | "in getting noticed and succeeding in your career."

00:03:34.780 | And I say, "We are forgetting the fact

00:03:36.220 | "that these platforms are very new,

00:03:38.120 | "and most industries have been around for a very long time.

00:03:41.040 | "Twitter was not used at a high rate until 2012 or 2014."

00:03:46.040 | So when I was writing that op-ed,

00:03:48.260 | this is a few years ago.

00:03:49.860 | Before that, all these industries still existed.

00:03:52.380 | People still got noticed, got hired,

00:03:54.980 | grew reputations, grew really big careers,

00:03:58.140 | and they did this all without Twitter followers.

00:04:01.480 | And they did this all

00:04:02.380 | without being an influencer on Instagram.

00:04:04.800 | So presumably, these bespoke methods

00:04:08.200 | by which your work is noticed and rewarded

00:04:10.260 | still exist in most fields that have been around

00:04:12.420 | for more than just a handful of years.

00:04:14.580 | So don't ignore those.

00:04:16.100 | In fact, if you ignore those and say,

00:04:17.600 | "I'm gonna invent my own way to get noticed

00:04:19.500 | "and succeed in my field based on social media,"

00:04:21.900 | you're taking a huge risk.

00:04:23.980 | You need to pay less attention to your Twitter followers

00:04:26.060 | and say, "In my particular field,

00:04:27.860 | "I'm this independent researcher in humanities

00:04:29.740 | "who makes my money this way,

00:04:31.520 | "how do people traditionally get noticed and succeed?"

00:04:34.940 | Almost all of those channels are still there.

00:04:37.940 | Social media's rise,

00:04:39.540 | which is only still just a decade old at this point

00:04:42.100 | of any sort of widespread adoption,

00:04:43.780 | has not gotten rid of existing channels

00:04:46.140 | of getting noticed and succeeding.

00:04:47.780 | And so I keep coming back to that with people.

00:04:50.720 | How do people traditionally get noticed

00:04:53.340 | and succeed in your field?

00:04:54.180 | And usually it involves producing really good stuff,

00:04:57.300 | and it's really hard.

00:04:58.580 | It has nothing to do with virality

00:05:00.380 | or having large follower counts.

00:05:02.780 | And it's almost always that's gonna be the answer.

00:05:05.140 | And so until you have a really good answer to that question,

00:05:08.140 | forget about new tools

00:05:09.700 | are gonna somehow give you a shortcut.

00:05:11.820 | Now, when I wrote that op-ed in 2016,

00:05:14.580 | that caused a lot of problems.

00:05:16.180 | This was right before the mainstream

00:05:20.740 | had turned against social media.

00:05:22.980 | So the political right in America

00:05:24.780 | had turned against social media at this point

00:05:26.260 | because they were worried about being censored.

00:05:29.100 | But the political center and left in America

00:05:31.220 | was still very laudatory towards social media

00:05:34.020 | at this point when that came out.

00:05:35.420 | And so me standing up and saying,

00:05:37.760 | "Social media is not as important

00:05:39.200 | "as you think for your career.

00:05:40.660 | "You should maybe ignore that

00:05:41.820 | "and focus on the fundamentals."

00:05:43.900 | It was considered a heretical,

00:05:47.260 | almost certifiable thing to say.

00:05:49.740 | It really upset people.

00:05:51.940 | It was, "Whoa, no, no, no.

00:05:52.940 | "Social media is the key.

00:05:54.320 | "It's how you get noticed.

00:05:55.580 | "It's how you circumvent all of these gatekeepers.

00:05:57.980 | "It's how you build up movements."

00:05:59.740 | I mean, there was so much pushback, really surprised me.

00:06:04.420 | And I've talked about this on the show before,

00:06:05.860 | but the New York Times commissioned the next week

00:06:08.340 | a response op-ed.

00:06:09.580 | They got the social media manager of monster.com,

00:06:13.500 | Patrick someone, Patrick Gilroy,

00:06:15.660 | to write a response op-ed to mine and say,

00:06:17.700 | "This is crazy, don't listen to this.

00:06:20.000 | "A lot of articles were written in response to mine.

00:06:22.040 | "This is crazy, don't listen to this.

00:06:23.360 | "I had hostile radio interviews."

00:06:24.900 | We're like, "How can you believe this?"

00:06:26.500 | Now I understand this mechanism

00:06:28.100 | because we see it all the time in 2022, 2023.

00:06:31.740 | We see this all the time.

00:06:33.660 | Where is the fiercest pushback generated?

00:06:38.100 | This sort of, when you get these type

00:06:39.240 | of big pylons generated.

00:06:40.860 | It's not when someone comes from left field

00:06:44.260 | from the completely other team and throw some rocks.

00:06:46.620 | You're used to that.

00:06:47.740 | It's when someone who you feel like is in

00:06:50.340 | or close to your tribe pushes a little bit to the edge.

00:06:54.780 | Then it seemed a little bit more like heresy

00:06:56.900 | and that has to be policed.

00:06:58.360 | So if, you know, in 2016,

00:07:01.700 | Jaron Lanier stands up and says, "Social media is nonsense."

00:07:05.620 | People like, "Yeah, that's Jaron Lanier.

00:07:06.780 | "I mean, he's like kind of crazy and brilliant.

00:07:08.340 | "And this is what he's been saying for a long time.

00:07:09.780 | "And we know it, it's not a big deal."

00:07:11.860 | But if a computer scientist comes out and says that,

00:07:14.860 | someone who is in sort of mainstream thought,

00:07:17.300 | someone who has some influence with an audience,

00:07:19.080 | someone who's sort of a part of that sort

00:07:20.620 | of mainstream centrist or leftist inner tribe

00:07:23.300 | comes out and says, "I don't think that's that important."

00:07:25.160 | You have to fiercely, at the time,

00:07:27.340 | you had to fiercely police that

00:07:28.420 | to prevent the Overton window from shifting away

00:07:30.340 | from the direction you wanted to shift.

00:07:32.220 | So it was an interesting example

00:07:33.820 | of what became much more prevalent

00:07:36.460 | in the years that followed.

00:07:37.780 | The sort of policing of views.

00:07:40.380 | And this became increasingly political after a while.

00:07:43.180 | So the left and the right would do this

00:07:44.660 | on political hot topics, but this was less political,

00:07:47.060 | but it was just more,

00:07:48.380 | there's this mainstream intellectual thought

00:07:50.260 | that social media was this powerful force

00:07:53.580 | that toppled dictators and helped Barack Obama get elected.

00:07:56.460 | And it was very meaningful, important.

00:07:58.780 | And so if you're involved

00:08:00.060 | in this sort of mainstream intellectual life,

00:08:02.660 | they did not like someone

00:08:05.340 | starting to veer off the reservation.

00:08:06.940 | Now everyone's like, "Of course."

00:08:09.140 | Yeah, everyone agrees with it now, but it was interesting.

00:08:11.500 | So it was like an early mild pile on,

00:08:14.340 | but it showed a general internet dynamic

00:08:16.820 | that I think has really strengthened ever since then.

00:08:19.340 | - So you wrote that before the Like button

00:08:21.100 | got introduced, right?

00:08:22.220 | - Like, no, the Like button actually got introduced earlier.

00:08:25.580 | - Oh, okay.

00:08:26.420 | - Yeah, so the Like button got introduced

00:08:28.140 | like 2007 or eight or something like that.

00:08:30.620 | - Oh, right, right, right.

00:08:31.460 | - Yeah.

00:08:32.340 | Yeah, the interesting thing was when I wrote that,

00:08:34.260 | it was right, so the turning point

00:08:35.740 | in the mainstream intellectual thought on social media

00:08:40.380 | was Donald Trump getting elected.

00:08:42.220 | And that's ultimately what turned it

00:08:44.660 | is the shift from Facebook helping Barack Obama

00:08:48.620 | to Facebook helping Trump shifted, I think,

00:08:52.260 | the reception of social media.

00:08:53.460 | And it opened up like a lot more skepticism

00:08:55.980 | and hostility towards the platform from the center and left.

00:08:58.140 | The hostility from the right was already there.

00:09:00.700 | I started hearing that like 2015.

00:09:03.100 | So that was already there.

00:09:05.060 | But from the center and the left,

00:09:06.220 | that was after the Trump election.

00:09:08.860 | But it wasn't immediate because that op-ed,

00:09:12.820 | that op-ed came out in the Sunday in the New York Times

00:09:16.300 | in the Week in Review,

00:09:17.580 | the Sunday after Donald Trump was elected.

00:09:19.740 | So it wasn't an immediate response.

00:09:22.660 | I mean, it was a Week in Review section

00:09:24.580 | that was that and like a bunch of political stuff.

00:09:28.580 | And then the next week they had the follow-up, right?

00:09:31.460 | So in the first, the last months of 2016,

00:09:35.020 | early months of 2017,

00:09:37.340 | there still was a general positive consensus on social media.

00:09:41.020 | It wasn't really till the Cambridge Analytica

00:09:43.380 | and the Russian disinformation stories.

00:09:45.100 | When those really took off,

00:09:46.380 | which was more after Trump was in office in 2017,

00:09:50.340 | that's when you began to see the shift.

00:09:52.540 | So I know it's an interesting time point.

00:09:54.340 | So really the shift towards universal negativity

00:09:57.100 | towards social media was probably

00:09:58.820 | first or second quarter of 2017.

00:10:01.980 | If not all the way around,

00:10:03.620 | you had to get all the way to like 2018 really

00:10:05.740 | before people were on board.

00:10:07.500 | But then by the time I was promoting

00:10:08.900 | digital minimalism in 2019,

00:10:11.180 | the pushback I was getting from reporters is like,

00:10:13.100 | why aren't you pushing for even harder,

00:10:15.100 | regulations and shutting down these companies?

00:10:18.420 | So I mean, man, that thing flipped.

00:10:20.260 | That thing flipped hard.

00:10:21.460 | [MUSIC]

Does This Professor Need Twitter?

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