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Q&A with Patrick Crowder

2023-05-05 | Q&A

So Blue Tick: can you tell us about the concept of the book.

Blue Tick is about the way we communicate, and how that communication is changing. Specifically, it’s about the way that social media and instant communication can affect the way that we feel about ourselves, those we love, and the world around us. These effects don’t always come from obvious places. The title comes from the infamous “blue ticks”, or read receipts, which are well-known on Whatsapp and popular on most messaging apps and social media. They are useful for knowing if your message was received, but because we are human, we seem to have constructed an entire set of social norms surrounding them. Nobody wants to be “left on read”, but equally nobody wants to feel bad about missing a message and feel pressured to respond. It leads to anxiety on both sides. These small features of modern communication can affect how we think – in the case of read receipts, they can add fuel to an argument, sow seeds of doubt in an otherwise healthy relationship, or alienate friends.

There are small features like this sewn into the fabric of modern communication, and Blue Tick seeks to find out how they came about, why they were introduced, and what effect they have on us. We look at the history of the main culprits – Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp – as well as new emerging social media sites. By combining my own experiences, those of others, and perspectives from moral philosophers, theologians, and behavioural psychologists, Blue Tick will form a picture of the way that we as humans interact through technology.

So in a way it’s a book about recent history in the tech sector, but it also asks about how these big tech corporates alter how we feel about our lives – and about each other?

Yes, that’s exactly it. Remote communication has become such a huge part of most of our lives now that we need to examine how it is affecting us. The connection that technological advancement has brought us is obviously a very good thing, and I don’t think that doing away with it entirely is the answer. But I do think that if we can identify the parts of how we communicate that distort the message or add additional stress to interactions, then we can temper the social and mental side effects while staying connected.

Although the title comes from What’s App, you’ve also looked at the features in Facebook – what did you discover?

Facebook is obviously a social media giant, but if we’re talking about only the site itself and not the other social media brands owned by Facebook, then it is fair to say that the site is waning in popularity, especially with younger people. I, and many of my peers, see Facebook as a way to keep up with relatives and friends who don’t have Whatsapp, and only use the Messenger aspect of it. That being said, there are many people who still post on Facebook daily for better or worse. Facebook’s interesting feature is the variety of ways to respond to a post – you can “like” the post, “heart” the post, or use a variety of pre-packaged emojis. They would like you to believe that the options presented to you represent the full spectrum of human emotion, but they most certainly do not – not to mention the possibility of a misclick which leaves a “crying laughing” response on a divorce announcement. Facebook was the first social media site to teach the older generation how to get a dopamine high from approval on the internet. It has also become many people’s primary source of news, which causes too many problems to list here. It’s important to remember that, even with all this talk of Meta and terrible press, Facebook isn’t dead yet.

Twitter also plays a big role in many peoples’ lives – what’s been your sense of that platform, and how it affects our relationships?

Twitter is interesting because of its focus on brevity and text. Twitter is a platform for sharing brief opinions and making announcements, and its popularity means that this can be done on a massive scale. People who you follow on Twitter aren’t necessarily friends as they are on Facebook, but companies, journalists, celebrities, political groups, joke pages, and anything else you’d like to see on your feed. Twitter also has its own kind of Blue Tick in the form of verification. Copycat accounts are common, so many public figures have their accounts verified with a blue check mark next to their name. The issue there is that in order to get verified, you must apply and be accepted. This process is much more than “prove who you are, and you’re good to go” – it often arbitrarily depends on news coverage, Wikipedia mentions, Google trends, and the amount of followers an account has. The problem that a lot of people run into is that they are big enough public figures to be impersonated, but not big enough to be verified. Twitter verification has become something to chase, something to achieve in the world of internet fame now. Placing that much self-worth in such an ultimately insignificant status symbol is where serious problems can start.

Did you get a sense of how these decisions are taken in these big companies? Are they given a huge amount of thought or are they to some extent taken lightly?

The decisions behind the features within a communication app will almost always be made with mass appeal in mind. The goal of any type of social media is to gain users, keep users through a good experience, and become ubiquitous. So features like read receipts and Twitter verification will come about naturally as ways to “improve” an application, and the consequences are usually seen after the fact. I don’t think that Apple invented read receipts to make us feel anxiety, nor do I think they deeply considered the effect such a simple feature would have on communication. These features are launched by companies, then as is often the case with read receipts, public outcry will lead to a feature becoming optional. I can’t speak to the amount of thought given to these decisions, but from what I have seen it’s an act then react situation.

In terms of the future, Instagram and TikTok seem to be gaining in popularity while Facebook’s recent stats show its influence to be waning a little. What might that mean for the future?

Facebook as a brand is in a decline, but the concept at its core is not. They’ve rebranded as Meta because the company and Zuckerberg have become synonymous with misinformation, targeted advertising, and the death of privacy. But there will always be a Facebook out there – it may not be the exact same concept, but the idea of an internet message board and personal profiles isn’t going away any time soon. Instagram is massively popular, but it serves a different purpose than Facebook. It’s not set up for long discussions, and it’s usually used for small updates and sharing interesting experiences. TikTok is a huge phenomenon, but it is not geared towards messaging and connectivity. Instead, it relies on the relative anonymity of the viewer-creator relationship while also fostering one-sided parasocial connections which can be damaging if taken too far. Facebook has had some bad press, and rightfully so, but I don’t think that the end of Facebook will mean the end of the format.

Some people talk of switching off their phones for the sake of their mental health? What’s your sense of the future of that movement? Do you think it will alter or increase over the coming years?

It’s certainly an evolving movement – but I hesitate to call it a movement because so much of it comes down to individual choice. It has to be a personal, quiet choice, because if you start trying to proselytise and say, “Throw out your phones! Everybody, look at me, I’m living without social media, who needs it?” then you end up falling into the same performative, ego-feeding cycle just like people do on social media, which is what we’re trying to avoid in the first place.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to live in today’s world without, at the bare minimum, a cell phone, so I think that we’re going to see a rise in what I’ll call “managed phone use”. The idea of having a smart phone but stripping it down to only the barebones apps has been around for a while, and the beauty of it is that you can be connected on your own terms with just a bit of willpower. As I talk about in Blue Tick, I had a flip phone for years after burning out on the smarter options. Just calls and text – no internet. And it was freeing, there’s no doubt about it. I’ve moved over to a smartphone now, and to be honest I still don’t have a great relationship with the darned thing, but I’ve learned to manage the way I use it. Mostly, it’s about setting expectations. You can talk to family and friends and just let them know how you feel about the way you communicate. Humans weren’t built to be in constant contact with multiple people at once, it’s nothing to be ashamed about. I normally tell people, “If it’s urgent, call, and if I don’t respond to a text then don’t take it personally, I will get to it when I have time.” Most people seem to understand that eventually.