So there's this island. Small. Tropical. Corrupt. The tourists come in through the airport. They enjoy the shows, the beaches, and the casinos. Visitors from nearby islands come in through the dock, and they're not particularly welcome.
So a guy arrives at the dock early in the morning and the two customs agents take the basket he's carrying and look inside. They see a bunch of rocks.
Protestors have been throwing rocks at police, so rocks of a certain size aren't allowed in the country. The customs agents measure the guy's rocks by length, they weigh them, and they put them in a special pan full of water to test their displacement. They check them for subversive messages and even crack a few in half to check inside. It's a long and ridiculous process, but all of the rocks are fine.
So they tell the guy to put the rocks back into his basket and go about his business.
That evening, they see the guy leave on the last boat out of the dock.
The next day, the guy is at the dock. Early in the morning. Unfazed by his experience yesterday. But, instead of rocks the customs agents find his basket is half full of poker chips. They aren't labeled with the name of any casino, but the casinos pay a lot of money to keep counterfeit chips off of the island.
The two agents scan each chip for fake RFID chips. They break a few in half and check inside. They use a UV light to check them for barcodes. They measure them against a diagram showing casino chip sizes and they're different from all the other chips on the island.
After forty-five minutes of every other arrival staring holes in the back of the guy's head, the customs agents tell him to put his chips back in his basket and go about his business.
That evening, they see the guy leave on the last boat out of the dock.
The next morning, he's back, sweating with a basket full of plastic water bottles. There's no law against bringing water onto the island, but the government has a sole license to sell alcohol and rioters have been using molotov cocktails.
So they have to check every bottle to see if the contents are flammable. They open them, sniff them, pour out some drops and try to light them on fire. They peel off every label and search them for anti-government propaganda. This process goes on a while so they even drink one each.
But it's all water. So they tell the guy to wipe down their counter, take his water bottles, and go.
He does, and that evening they see the guy leave on the last boat out of the dock.
This goes on for several months until the rioters become revolutionaries, recruit a majority of the citizens to their cause, and overthrow the government. Government control is relaxed, relations with neighboring islands are improved, and the customs agents are let go and find different jobs.
Some time later, the guy and one of the former customs agents happen across each other at a shop. The agent strikes up a conversation and says, "We knew you were smuggling something, but we could never figure it out. What was it?"
The guy says, "I was smuggling hemp baskets. The rebels turned them into paper for pamphlets."
The Town Square
I like social media. When I worked offshore, I would be gone for 4 weeks at a time and I would be back for 2 weeks. Believe it or not there were people who wanted to know where I was for non-malicious purposes. Twitter was a great way for me to keep those people apprised. I could say, "Hey I'm getting on the boat. You won't see me for a bit." I could say, "Hey I'm getting off the boat. Hit me up for a hang in the next week or two." It was an easy way to let people know what my situation was.
This was during 2011, which we space people of the future call "Arab Spring," of which social media was an important part. Now this was all because back in the day, social media was there to be something real people got value out of while platforms scrambled to find the monetization to be solvent.
But then that trust network between real people became an economically, politically, and socially exploitable tap into human society by bad actors. You know the type: political, governmental, and/or corporate actors who found it beneficial to create and elevate social media accounts that were racists, jackasses, bigots, and idiots (and overlaps of the same).
While we know people like Elon Musk let ketamine take the wheel to tell their LLMs and algorithms to be more racist and defend making CSAM, I want to talk about the accounts taking a slightly more subtle approach to declaring Elongated Muskrat the world's greatest pissdrinker. So let me classify types of social media users and theorize about why they are on social media.
My (former) use of Twitter is, I think, the ideal use of social media; keeping folks around you in the loop. These are otherwise private posts, but my family isn't signing up for Bluesky, so requiring a login would defeat the purpose somewhat. Our circles, and our circles' wearying variation in technical skills, are porous so it can't always be private.
That's most of your non-insane Facebook people. You know, "Peepaw got out of hip surgery okay." "Auntie Eliza has eczema." "Joe-John graduated high school (we don't believe it either)."
"Keeping Up," is good for people that do literally anything but talk to family all day. It's good for people who rarely talk to family but still like to be in the loop. Families get big and friends get distant and "Keeping Up" is a good way to use social media to keep people close.
I also like that once upon a time on Twitter, I could sign up for notifications from my city, my county, my state, possibly even my country, and get little notifications for weather, traffic, or events. I follow my federal Representative on Bluesky and I would my Senators, but I live in a red state so my senators are complete bullshit fountains. Generally speaking though social media is a good way to keep abreast of information from sources like your community and elected officials.
Let's call that "Local News."
There are also specialists. I follow a corporate law specialist on Bluesky right now. I don't always get what they're talking about, but they generally talk about corporate law. Corporate law is interesting to me, but it is something which I am generally ignorant of. Peering into "Specialists" social media is always a good time for me. There are so many little worlds that work to make our bigger, shared world function. It's easy to take those things for granted, but I couldn't see NOT being interested in that.
Sometimes they talk about their dogs, personal life, car, and yada, yada, yada, which is a reminder that most of these categories overlap a bit. Our elected leaders are–or should be–a type of specialist. Hearing about a corporate lawyer's dog is nice. And–dangerously–our close friends and family might have insight on local news we want to hear.
I also follow celebrities, not like big celebrities, but–you know I don't want to act like following Bruce Campbell is somehow more respectable than following…Chloe Kardashian? That sounds like one of the Kardashians. Are the Kardashians still relevant beyond Caitlyn Jenner keeping the r/LeopardsAteMyFace subreddit going?
I like when people who make the type of things I like let me know when they're doing a new project that I can support them by checking out. Maybe Bruce Coville and Keith David have earned my ear after the years of well-crafted words. Unless they post about sports too much. Or they grandpa post–George Takei and Mark Hamil. Mike Stackpole is currently doing a little project with other writers. They put out pieces every month and you get to read something for free from an author you might not normally engage with. Social media is a good way for people who are making work to promote their work.
I would like to think that most celebrities are there to promote their work. Sure, they engage with fans and post about politics, but this, too, is promotion. Is there a distinction between the Facebook account of Four Seasons Total Landscaping and an artist like @eldoniousrex.bsky.social who uses social media to showcase their work and get commissions?
So "Promotion," is probably a more accurate way to describe that use of social media. Anyone who has consumers who follow them for their work is a celebrity.
The second-to-last type of social media account is "The Fan." An account that consistently posts things they're interested in. I follow a Bluesky account about Star Trek: The Customizable Card Game. They post a random card every day. I follow an astronomical photo Bluesky. They post photos of astronomy all day. There's never an opinion, or something about a dog or cat or meal or husband or whatever. Just one topic from hell to breakfast with an occasional apology for missing a day because they were mangled in Victorian-era clockwork.
Keeping Up, Local News, Promotion, Specialists, and Fans are fine reasons to have social media. They're the reasons I have social media. You know I'm giving and receiving; I like making my little blogs and videos. I like my BattleTech stuff and rules systems for games. I like talking about the ordinaryness of my day and a little bit about my areas of specialty.
Maybe someone sees some of that and says, "hey man, that's cool" and when I see that and look back I see someone who is also cool. Or hey, maybe some jackasses will be like, "Hey, I have the same jackass opinions as VanVelding. This jackass from another city/county/state/country really nailed it."
Sometimes when I'm scrolling, I slide past a slush pile of ideas and all those monkeys typing on typewriters and occasionally there's something clever and true, and I like that about the internet. In those moments we're joined in the Great Chain of Humanity.
Well, "Mid Chain of Humanity."
I think these types of social media are extensions of ways we've communicated in the past. Folks talk about social media platforms as a town square, and I do see it as one, albeit one scaled up for our larger world. Should we have that kind of connection to our larger world? Do we need information systems to make sure the global information we're bombarded with is delivered efficiently? A question for another time.
We like being connected with people who are making things we might like, we like talking to friends, we need to know what's going on in our communities. Occasionally learning about the goings-on of specialists and engaging with hobbies isn't super-critical, but they're reasonable things to be interested in.
Title Drop
That's comprehensive of the uses I feel are justified, but there's a sixth that's not justified at all. The Clout Chaser.
The clout chaser is an interesting little duck. It may appear at first to be one of those fan blogs and instead of posting about astronomy, "this day in history," or a day by day post of the Dracula novel, it posts about different types of things. More impactful things. More salient things. More…engageable things.
It's telling you things you need to be afraid of. Things you need to be scared of. There are sad and uplifting stories that make you feel things. Maybe it tells you someone you don't like is having a bad time. Maybe it tells you someone you like said something mean about someone you don't like. Is any of it true? You believe it's essentially true.
You like them. You trust them. They produce nothing. They give you no real information, only warnings and spectres that inspire fear, but never doing anything as unpleasant as asking you to responsibly prepare for it. They don't share pictures of their city. They don't like a movie unless it's to position themselves in a cultural battle. There's not a single human post that's not part of the hustle.
Their goal is to accumulate followers to integrate the clout chaser's stream of trusted data into their own feeds.
Why? "Money" is the first answer. Having subscribers, views, and engagement on YouTube can get you injected into the algorithm. That means more subscribers, views, and engagement, but those things are monetizeable.
YouTube videos get ad revenue. They can get sponsorships to mention or endorse products during their videos (also ad revenue, but different). They can get conversions to their own products and merchandise. On the site formerly known as Twitter, you can allegedly get a slice of ad revenue just for putting up posts that get engagement. Instagram, TikTok, Twitch also have these dynamics.
I hate to use the word "panhandler," but you can also just beg for money. I see plenty of appeals for money on the internet. I couldn't say how many of those pleas are connected to real people in need of mutual aid, vet bills, or relief from Israel's bombing campaign in Gaza, but I know that not all of them are, and using reach on the internet to call for that is another way for a cynical actor to get value out of their internet clout.
I'm not here to poo-poo that. I'm not going to judge whether a trad-wife influencer is any more or less valid an internet actor than a gay OnlyFans creator*. I'm here to talk about the accounts that don't have a financial incentive. The accounts that aren't connecting with the mid chain of humanity. The ones who put a lot of time, effort, and even money into accumulating internet points and visibility.
My theory is that they're smuggling hemp baskets. And I'll talk about it more in part two.
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