Good piece. The ecosystem is so very male, or rather, incentivizes a certain brashness and overstatement rather than thoughtfulness. (Even the recent CBS purchase demonstrates this.) It needs to be said that all the owners of all the social media platforms are men. That all the major podcasters are men. The vast majority of the major voices even here on substack are largely men. Your bibliography is most men. That's fine, but it must be said that social media replicates the old newsroom biases. An observation not a criticism.
I believe this takes a very wrong turn about here: "By removing barriers to entry and the influence of elite gatekeepers, they radically democratised the public sphere."
Excuse me for a moment: ELON MUSK IS THE RICHEST PERSON IN THE WORLD! He is *AN ELITE* - of elites - by any but the most tortured definitions. And that's just one example.
The public sphere has not been "democratised". Instead, civic institutions have been destroyed, in favor of strengthening the influence of propagandists (sigh - Internet necessity - what didn't I say? I didn't say "Propagandists never existed before the Internet, or in previous media". The word I used was *strengthening*, as in existed before but now have greater power). This isn't a technological determinism claim for social media. Rather, that's one part of a very big story, and shouldn't be considered in isolation from very deliberate decisions to deform the public sphere.
A key problem is an implicit restriction of "elites" to apparently mean something like "some concern about facts", rather than more at political power. Thus, public health officials will then count as "elites", but right-wing anti-vax lunatics won't count as "elites", even if they're Secretary Of Health and come from a family political dynasty.
I was around for the first wave of Social Media evangelism, and got slammed for repeatedly pointing out that the "No Gatekeepers" slogan was just different and far worse gatekeepers. Which I suppose is sort of self-proving the uselessness of making that point.
Great essay. Its title takes me back to a previous essay of my own: Everyone Has lost Control of the Digital Age:
A ‘Culture of Narcissism’? Older readers may have grown up with the remnants of a Christian moral sense that everyone (including oneself) is an imperfect being. In the following decades, that moral/philosophical centre ‘progressively’ unravelled. Key to this was the entry into the Western collective psyche of a supposed deficit of self-love … one that needed correcting via maximal self-esteem. In the post-60s decades, self-esteem’s supposed importance to healthy personal development became axiomatic right across the spectrum from Left to Right. But it had a downside. Once you are encouraged to view yourself as axiomatically personally blameless, the next step is to look for someone (or something) else to blame for your discontents. Re-cast your wonderful self as a ‘victim’….. of something or other. To put all this in a nutshell: Wokeness is not Marxism in extremis, it is Liberal Individualism in extremis. It could well be that the current Trumpist revolution is necessary medicine and who knows what course-correction it might achieve on the good ship Western Liberalism. Trusting in the democratically expressed wisdom of the electorate is, after all, the philosophical keystone on which Liberalism is founded. Even if in darker moments one might wonder whether – in the withering words of H L Menchen: ‘Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.’ https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/everyone-has-lost-control-of-the
Surprised to not see 'Democracy for Realists' mentioned here. I haven't been able to read it, but I listened to a good Dutch language podcast episode about it.
Here a summary by ChatGPT:
---
Main points:
1. Rejection of the “folk theory” of democracy:
The authors argue that the traditional view — that citizens make rational policy choices, elect representatives who reflect these preferences, and thereby steer government — is empirically false. Voters lack stable, coherent policy preferences and are poorly informed about political realities.
2. Group and identity-based voting:
Instead of ideological or policy-driven decision-making, voting is largely determined by social identities and group loyalties. People support parties as expressions of who they are (e.g., class, religion, race), not because they rationally evaluate policies.
3. Retrospective performance evaluation is flawed:
The “retrospective voting” model (punishing or rewarding incumbents for performance) also fails in practice. Voters react to short-term or irrelevant factors (e.g., local sports victories, weather, or shark attacks) rather than meaningful governance outcomes.
4. Implications for democratic theory:
Since citizen input is structured by identity and circumstance rather than rational deliberation, democratic accountability is limited. Real democracy functions more as group competition mediated by elites than as popular control of policy.
5. “Realist” model of democracy:
The authors propose a more sociological and realistic understanding: democracy works (to the extent it does) through party systems that organize and aggregate group interests, not through informed individual choice. Elites matter; voters mainly choose among pre-shaped identities and narratives.
Great article. I think we are reaching the end of a roughly 100 year period where the 'liberal elite' was in the ascendancy throughout Western countries. This took the form of social progressivism and was indeed enabled by the top-down media platforms of the period – radio, TV, the press.
As you say, the rise of social media makes the contradictions between symbolically valuing and actually valuing democracy clear. These contradictions are becoming impossible.
I would also say though that the other part of liberal elite failure to control the narrative is mass immigration, which is an actual, real change. Liberal elite views on sex and gender were unlikely to provoke such opposition, even with social media. Trans would be the exception, but there was elite pushback on this too.
How this article was written WITHOUT mentioning Andrey Mir is beyond me. Anybody who names Martin Gurri typically knows Mir, while his newest book has been reviewed broadly just he past few months.
One of Mir's core positions is that since msm went digital, losing around 90% of ad revenue at the same time, to survive it more or less became the voice of its viewers/readers pov's, concerns and interests. A, perhaps not completely, but significantly closed off circuit where the outlet dares not leave its designated moral space (and likely doesn't want to - anymore - since the employees mimic their viewers/readers perspectives.
A funny media thing happend in that respect here in the Netherlands early this year. We have 5 mainstream newspapers, 4 highly to significantly progressive, and one centrist/conservative (or 'fascist' as leftists prefer). One of the most progressive, the De Volkskrant ('The Peoplespaper', turned progressive in the 60s from being conservative Catholic before that, and now for generations the destination for civil services workers, teachers and other middle class professionals) faced a revolt of its readership.
After havng been soaked in most virulent climate doom for decades, readers could not take Trump 2 and his ending of various US climate policies. They demanded from the Volkskrant editor that, next to the already abundant standard climate doom articles, opeds, interviews, columnists and the like, he would announce basically the end of journalism. They wanted 100% pure activism from every Volkskrant article that touched climate. Roughly the demand was: No more research or the slightest doubt, let alone counter-voices. We want you to express our fear!
The editor then had to defend in a rather 'curved' piece, both the core items of journalism ánd the activism of his freaked-out readership...
PS Just minutes ago i stumbled upon this via Mary Harrington's substack, have not yet read it:
The Internet as the Astral Plane. The Internet as Fairyland
from the Philosophical Research Society panel with Tara Isabella Burton, MemeAnalysis, and Gary Lachman
Good piece. The ecosystem is so very male, or rather, incentivizes a certain brashness and overstatement rather than thoughtfulness. (Even the recent CBS purchase demonstrates this.) It needs to be said that all the owners of all the social media platforms are men. That all the major podcasters are men. The vast majority of the major voices even here on substack are largely men. Your bibliography is most men. That's fine, but it must be said that social media replicates the old newsroom biases. An observation not a criticism.
Thanks - and yes, fair points.
I believe this takes a very wrong turn about here: "By removing barriers to entry and the influence of elite gatekeepers, they radically democratised the public sphere."
Excuse me for a moment: ELON MUSK IS THE RICHEST PERSON IN THE WORLD! He is *AN ELITE* - of elites - by any but the most tortured definitions. And that's just one example.
The public sphere has not been "democratised". Instead, civic institutions have been destroyed, in favor of strengthening the influence of propagandists (sigh - Internet necessity - what didn't I say? I didn't say "Propagandists never existed before the Internet, or in previous media". The word I used was *strengthening*, as in existed before but now have greater power). This isn't a technological determinism claim for social media. Rather, that's one part of a very big story, and shouldn't be considered in isolation from very deliberate decisions to deform the public sphere.
A key problem is an implicit restriction of "elites" to apparently mean something like "some concern about facts", rather than more at political power. Thus, public health officials will then count as "elites", but right-wing anti-vax lunatics won't count as "elites", even if they're Secretary Of Health and come from a family political dynasty.
I was around for the first wave of Social Media evangelism, and got slammed for repeatedly pointing out that the "No Gatekeepers" slogan was just different and far worse gatekeepers. Which I suppose is sort of self-proving the uselessness of making that point.
Great essay. Its title takes me back to a previous essay of my own: Everyone Has lost Control of the Digital Age:
A ‘Culture of Narcissism’? Older readers may have grown up with the remnants of a Christian moral sense that everyone (including oneself) is an imperfect being. In the following decades, that moral/philosophical centre ‘progressively’ unravelled. Key to this was the entry into the Western collective psyche of a supposed deficit of self-love … one that needed correcting via maximal self-esteem. In the post-60s decades, self-esteem’s supposed importance to healthy personal development became axiomatic right across the spectrum from Left to Right. But it had a downside. Once you are encouraged to view yourself as axiomatically personally blameless, the next step is to look for someone (or something) else to blame for your discontents. Re-cast your wonderful self as a ‘victim’….. of something or other. To put all this in a nutshell: Wokeness is not Marxism in extremis, it is Liberal Individualism in extremis. It could well be that the current Trumpist revolution is necessary medicine and who knows what course-correction it might achieve on the good ship Western Liberalism. Trusting in the democratically expressed wisdom of the electorate is, after all, the philosophical keystone on which Liberalism is founded. Even if in darker moments one might wonder whether – in the withering words of H L Menchen: ‘Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.’ https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/everyone-has-lost-control-of-the
Surprised to not see 'Democracy for Realists' mentioned here. I haven't been able to read it, but I listened to a good Dutch language podcast episode about it.
Here a summary by ChatGPT:
---
Main points:
1. Rejection of the “folk theory” of democracy:
The authors argue that the traditional view — that citizens make rational policy choices, elect representatives who reflect these preferences, and thereby steer government — is empirically false. Voters lack stable, coherent policy preferences and are poorly informed about political realities.
2. Group and identity-based voting:
Instead of ideological or policy-driven decision-making, voting is largely determined by social identities and group loyalties. People support parties as expressions of who they are (e.g., class, religion, race), not because they rationally evaluate policies.
3. Retrospective performance evaluation is flawed:
The “retrospective voting” model (punishing or rewarding incumbents for performance) also fails in practice. Voters react to short-term or irrelevant factors (e.g., local sports victories, weather, or shark attacks) rather than meaningful governance outcomes.
4. Implications for democratic theory:
Since citizen input is structured by identity and circumstance rather than rational deliberation, democratic accountability is limited. Real democracy functions more as group competition mediated by elites than as popular control of policy.
5. “Realist” model of democracy:
The authors propose a more sociological and realistic understanding: democracy works (to the extent it does) through party systems that organize and aggregate group interests, not through informed individual choice. Elites matter; voters mainly choose among pre-shaped identities and narratives.
Great article. I think we are reaching the end of a roughly 100 year period where the 'liberal elite' was in the ascendancy throughout Western countries. This took the form of social progressivism and was indeed enabled by the top-down media platforms of the period – radio, TV, the press.
As you say, the rise of social media makes the contradictions between symbolically valuing and actually valuing democracy clear. These contradictions are becoming impossible.
I would also say though that the other part of liberal elite failure to control the narrative is mass immigration, which is an actual, real change. Liberal elite views on sex and gender were unlikely to provoke such opposition, even with social media. Trans would be the exception, but there was elite pushback on this too.
How this article was written WITHOUT mentioning Andrey Mir is beyond me. Anybody who names Martin Gurri typically knows Mir, while his newest book has been reviewed broadly just he past few months.
The Digital Rush of the 2010s: Discourse reversal
https://andrey4mir.substack.com/p/the-digital-rush-of-the-2010s-discourse?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2178914&post_id=175455957&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=6mos7&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Human as media
https://human-as-media.com/about/
Thanks for the recommendation.
You're welcome.
One of Mir's core positions is that since msm went digital, losing around 90% of ad revenue at the same time, to survive it more or less became the voice of its viewers/readers pov's, concerns and interests. A, perhaps not completely, but significantly closed off circuit where the outlet dares not leave its designated moral space (and likely doesn't want to - anymore - since the employees mimic their viewers/readers perspectives.
A funny media thing happend in that respect here in the Netherlands early this year. We have 5 mainstream newspapers, 4 highly to significantly progressive, and one centrist/conservative (or 'fascist' as leftists prefer). One of the most progressive, the De Volkskrant ('The Peoplespaper', turned progressive in the 60s from being conservative Catholic before that, and now for generations the destination for civil services workers, teachers and other middle class professionals) faced a revolt of its readership.
After havng been soaked in most virulent climate doom for decades, readers could not take Trump 2 and his ending of various US climate policies. They demanded from the Volkskrant editor that, next to the already abundant standard climate doom articles, opeds, interviews, columnists and the like, he would announce basically the end of journalism. They wanted 100% pure activism from every Volkskrant article that touched climate. Roughly the demand was: No more research or the slightest doubt, let alone counter-voices. We want you to express our fear!
The editor then had to defend in a rather 'curved' piece, both the core items of journalism ánd the activism of his freaked-out readership...
PS Just minutes ago i stumbled upon this via Mary Harrington's substack, have not yet read it:
The Internet as the Astral Plane. The Internet as Fairyland
from the Philosophical Research Society panel with Tara Isabella Burton, MemeAnalysis, and Gary Lachman
Katherine Dee
https://default.blog/p/the-internet-as-the-astral-plane?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web