Thinking about what makes media like newspapers, TV, and twitter scratch a very particular “morning coffee” itch of where you go to plug into what’s up in the world. Though TV news is more a PM thing. 

Other media might be pleasurable (music) or socially satisfying (saying hi to friends) but don’t scratch this

Blogger at ribbonfarm.com, running summerofprotocols.com, host of /gloom ☀️

I mean that literally, not poetically. Newspapers, TV, and twitter are the 3 places where you can reliably see run into everything from latest JWST photos to latest virus news.

I’m going to call these 3 “saltwater media” as in oceans. As opposed to theme/perspective-restricted “freshwater” media.

This oceanic feel is a false consciousness of course. You’re still only getting a tiny non-random taste of the universe, with lots of systematic blindness. A Chinese person checking in on WeChat or whatever tastes a different, disconnected ocean with their morning coffee. But it’s a *nice* illusion.

Saltwater media only work if they allow suspension of meta-consciousness that it’s false. On mastodon even if you follow people on other instances you’re never unconscious of your local bubble.

Local newspapers have that mastodon feel too. Global newspapers/tv of record like NYT and CNN used to have unconscious saltwater vibe but it’s slowly collapsing.

Twitter has flipped sharply from saltwater to freshwater in weeks. It’s not possible to forget you’re in Elon’s local bubble universe.

TV already flipped from saltwater to freshwater with the rise of cable in 80s/90s, and streaming has completely unbundled even the freshwater system into little puddles of consciousness around bigger hit shows. I’m guessing people < 30 never experienced saltwater TV at all (it was powerful)

So I guess 2 questions I have are:

Are saltwater media healthy to have? 

Perhaps a false consciousness of being plugged into whole universe is bad.

If yes, then how do you create new saltwater consciousness given old ones are failing?

If no, how do you create a healthy and satisfying freshwater consciousness?

In physical chemistry terms, saltwater is the highest entropy form of water with the fresh-to-salt gradient being maintained by solar power, and high to low altitude by earths gravity. So it’s the “least common denominator” water on earth. 

I’m leaning towards “saltwater media are good”

They are good because even though they induce a false consciousness of universality, freshwater media are even worse. They induce a false consciousness of your local bubble being “special” and “chosen”

Paradoxically what made classic twitter so special was the sense that there was nothing special about being there. But even the slight agency involved in choosing a mastodon instance or high agency in getting past a subcultural gate like on a discord or Facebook group creates bad specialness vibes.

There’s differences: newspapers are more summarized, TV is more live snippets, Twitter is a combination: conversational “takes” are summaries+snippets+opinion. But the common feature is, 5 minutes dissipates the claustrophobia of being caught in your own narrow life. All 3 connect you to whole universe.