Vauhini Vara
Appearances
It's Been a Minute
Lonely? There's an app for that... but should there be?
For me, something I argue for and I write about in my book is just acknowledging the way we're doing in this conversation here. A, what's happening, right? And then B, the fact that we do have agency. Nobody's forcing us to use TikTok or Facebook or Tinder or whatever. We can if we choose to, but nobody is forcing us.
It's Been a Minute
Lonely? There's an app for that... but should there be?
There are a lot of incentives lined up in order to try to get us to use these things. But we do have free will. We do have agency. We do have choice. And I think the really the only starting point to moving out of this into something better is exercising that agency, like really working hard to exercise that agency and to try to do it collectively.
It's Been a Minute
Lonely? There's an app for that... but should there be?
So the tech companies that claim that they're bringing us closer together, their algorithms tend to favor what they call more engagement, right? It's like more likes, more shares, more followers. And that isn't necessarily conducive to, for example, like connecting me with my neighbor who I really enjoy talking to in the yard, but who has, you know...
It's Been a Minute
Lonely? There's an app for that... but should there be?
25 followers on social media and gets two likes on her posts, right? Like if a social media algorithm is deciding between showing me her post about her garden, which I probably would be genuinely interested in, or the post of some influencer in LA who has millions of followers and gets thousands of likes and shares of her posts, it's going to choose that influencer over my friend.
It's Been a Minute
Lonely? There's an app for that... but should there be?
So all of a sudden these social media platforms that are supposedly about human connection end up prioritizing kind of the opposite of that.
It's Been a Minute
Lonely? There's an app for that... but should there be?
Nobody's investing a bunch of money in saying, hey, Brittany, you can go to the bar and meet some people. You can go, like, sit on the stoop of your apartment building and talk to passersby. Like, nobody's throwing billions of billions of dollars into marketing campaigns telling you that that's the case.
It's Been a Minute
Lonely? There's an app for that... but should there be?
All the dollars are going toward telling you, hey, you need a tech solution to be able to help you to do this, right? Yeah.
It's Been a Minute
Lonely? There's an app for that... but should there be?
Yes. So we all know that problems exist in society. I was watching the Super Bowl ads. I watched just the ads of the Super Bowl. That's the best part. Exactly. And there was this one ad, I don't know if you two saw it, there was this one ad that started out as like this really radical message about public health funding. Yeah. and how it's all broken.
It's Been a Minute
Lonely? There's an app for that... but should there be?
And I was like, who is, you know, like who is going to be sponsoring this? And I thought it was like some kind of public service announcement. I had no idea. And then it turns out it's the startup. It was a startup that was selling some, I don't know, like web-based pharmaceutical something or other. It's not false that these problems exist.
It's Been a Minute
Lonely? There's an app for that... but should there be?
The problem is making some venture capitalists a bunch of money rather than solving the problem. And so, yes, like we could invest a lot more money in public health and education and all these social systems and infrastructure in parks where we can all congregate and spend time together in shelters. But that's really expensive and takes a lot of political will.
It's Been a Minute
Lonely? There's an app for that... but should there be?
So instead, we allow venture capitalists to invest in companies that then insinuate themselves into our communities, into our social systems.
It's Been a Minute
Lonely? There's an app for that... but should there be?
And the solution they're offering us is a solution that plays into this idea that individualism is more... powerful than communal action, right? Like you can sign up for an app by yourself. You don't need to get together two or 10 or 20 or 50 people in your community to do it with you, right? Yeah.
It's Been a Minute
Lonely? There's an app for that... but should there be?
Okay. A couple of years ago, I spent a year in Madrid because my husband had a sabbatical. We started the year, I didn't speak Spanish at all. And then I took intensive Spanish classes and started to learn. And then about halfway through the year, I got on this website called ConversationExchange.com, which is very like old school, not some new bells and whistles, well-funded startup or anything.
It's Been a Minute
Lonely? There's an app for that... but should there be?
And I wrote to people on this website who were Spanish speakers who wanted to practice their English and started meeting up with them in person. I now have three very good friends in Madrid who I met through that site. Notably, we don't use the site anymore. We just used it to meet up the first time. And we, you know, we talk on Zoom all the time when we're in different countries.
It's Been a Minute
Lonely? There's an app for that... but should there be?
When I'm in Madrid, we spend a lot of time together. And like they're three of my close friends and I met them on a website, I will say.
It's Been a Minute
Lonely? There's an app for that... but should there be?
Yeah, that seems yeah, that seems right. And it's notable that I went on this site like one time to arrange meetups with these real human beings and then moved to, you know, texting with them to set up a time to meet. Right.
It's Been a Minute
Lonely? There's an app for that... but should there be?
Which is a problem only by the logic of the market, right? Right, right. If the goal is really to get people to have friends, then they've been super successful, it sounds like.