Social Dynamics

Book Summary: No Filter & The Inside Story of Instagram

July 18, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram (2020) narrates the civil networking service’s ascendance from a Silicon Valley startup to a cultural phenomenon with an ever-present feature of everyday life and an advertising juggernaut.

The book’s author, Bloomberg journalist Sarah Frier, says, “On social media, the average user is scrolling passively, wanting to be entertained and updated on the latest. They are therefore even more susceptible to suggestions by the companies, and by the professional users on a platform who tailor their behavior to what works well on the site.”

Instagram evolved from Burbn, a mobile check-in app. The founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger refocused their app on photo-sharing, which had become a well-liked feature among Burbn’s users. Most cellphone cameras were pretty shoddy then, so Systrom and Krieger implemented filters to make the pictures prettier.

The founders didn’t, however, consider the downside of their innovation—reality-adjusting filters made not only users’ pictures but their lives, by extension, look more appealing. “Instagram’s early popularity was less about the technology and more about the psychology—about how it made people feel. The filters made reality look like art. And then, in cataloging that art, people would start to think about their lives differently, and themselves differently.”

No Filter author Frier shines in analyzing how Instagram rewired society and ushered far-reaching consequences for society, especially on young people’s mental health. Instagram and its ilk have stolen self-esteem and our attention span, leaving us with a needy dependency on strangers’ affirmation for a scripted-reality form of our lives. “The more you give up who you are to be liked by other people, it’s a formula for chipping away at your soul. You become a product of what everyone else wants, and not who you’re supposed to be.” The ability to rework photos to perfection has spread insecurity—even leading to a surge in filter-inspired plastic surgery.

No Filter also fixates on the battle for Instagram’s soul, following its purchase by Facebook for a then-absurd $1 billion, but seemingly a bargain today. There’s considerable corporate drama and cultural clash, but nothing like the co-founder infighting retold in Nick Bilton’s Hatching Twitter (2013; my summary.) Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg emerges controlling and rather callous. In seeking incessant growth, he continually thwarts the Instagram team. Paranoid that Instagram’s advance could “cannibalize” and replace Facebook in cultural relevance someday, Zuckerberg held them back. As Instagram grew bigger and cooler, Facebook acted “like the big sister that wants to dress you up for the party but does not want you to be prettier than she is.” In 2018, Systrom and Krieger left Facebook.

Recommendation: Quick read No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram (2020) for a compelling founding story and a relevant primer on the sweeping socio-cultural impacts ushered by the heavy use of social media.

Why You May Be Overlooking Your Best Talent

April 25, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Many organizations have a hard time articulating their culture. They can’t explain what they mean when they evoke the phrase “culture fit.” Sometimes it’s just an excuse to engage employees better whom managers feel they can personally relate.

Affinity bias is a common tendency to evaluate people like us more positively than others. This bias often affects who gets hired, promoted, or picked for job opportunities. Employees who look like those already in leadership roles are more likely to be recognized for career development, resulting in a lack of representation in senior positions.

This affinity for people who are like ourselves is hard-wired into our brains. Outlawing bias is doomed to fail.

Idea for Impact: If you want to avoid missing your top talent, become conscious of implicit biases. Don’t overlook any preference for like-minded people.

For any role, create a profile that encompasses which combination of hard and soft skills will matter for the role and on the team. Determine what matters and focus on the traits and skills you need.

Cancel Culture has a Condescension Problem

February 28, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Cancel culture and wokism have allowed for overly politicized worldviews where people both on the left and on the right are quick to take offence. There is, at present, a strong instinct to censure, anathematize, ostracize, and insist upon punishment for people or perspectives that are deemed unacceptable. Acceptable expression is being forced into ever-smaller confines.

It’s not enough for each faction to point to the hypocrisy of the other. It’s also crucial for each to defend theirs—and the others’—right to say disagreeable and objectionable statements and subject them to empirical and logical assessment.

While we shouldn’t organize our worlds around the sensibilities of those who’re easily distressed, every person should have the right to decide his beliefs for himself, speak freely, and defend his views during civilized discourse. Intellectual inquiry can’t thrive if people can’t express themselves in good faith.

Idea for Impact: Cancel culture is to be kept within bounds if we are to preserve a free society. If we fail to stand up for the right to speech that we dislike, why retain the right for the speech we do like?

Many Creative People Think They Can Invent Best Working Solo

January 19, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Apple co-founder Steve “Woz” Wozniak writes in his memoir, iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It (2006):

Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me—they’re shy and they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone—best outside of corporate environments, best where they can control an invention’s design without a lot of other people designing it for marketing or some other committee. I don’t believe anything really revolutionary has ever been invented by committee… I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone.

Teams aren’t automatically better at creativity. In what’s termed “collaborative inhibition,” everyone needs to be happy, so team members talk and talk until they’ve reached a consensus on a decision which is usually the lowest common denominator—something tepid that everyone, worn out from the prolonged discussion, can endorse.

Idea for Impact: The best creative decisions often reflect a unique, opinionated perspective. Look for ways to increase organizational creativity by building better environments in which individual creativity can thrive.

Buy Yourself Time

September 30, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The secret of “thinking on the spot” is to be prepared. Occasionally, though, when you’re put on the spot, the unanticipated questions and requests for your time and money can leave you feeling tongue-tied and wanting to head for the door.

To put your best response forward and prevent getting forced into some commitment that you might regret later, see if you can buy yourself some time.

When someone says something that you don’t agree with, and you can’t speak up at that moment, you can declare that you need to get educated on the subject before chatting about it further. Bonus: Conversations are often easier when you think through the nuances and get prepared to assert your positions.
When someone asks you to do something that you aren’t sure you want to do, buy yourself time by saying you must check on something or consult somebody before making a commitment. Bonus: Taking time before you say no can soften the news of your rejection.

Buy yourself more time and speak up later on your own terms. Even if you end up disagreeing with your interlocutor or declining her request, she’ll feel appreciated knowing you’ve given her opinion or request some thought.

Idea for Impact: Buying time—and sometimes stalling—is your prerogative. It shows consideration for others—and for yourself. It’s is a way of respecting your own wants and needs.

Consensus is Dangerous

August 30, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Management books tout the importance of harmony, cohesion, and alignment with company values and practices. Comforting though they are, such goals often carry with them the assumption that unanimity is always helpful.

Indeed, like-mindedness has its benefits, viz. high morale, a sense of identity, and a vision’s execution. But an unchallenged majority can “bend reality.” Toeing the line can delude everyone into having faith in opinions that’re not true or beneficial.

I’ve talked previously about how humans have a tendency to create, maintain, and guard cliques. Life-minded groups recruit, socialize, and reward consensus while reproving dissent (consider Scientology.) People are recruited to fit with the organization, and they become even more socialized into the culture.

Influence-by-majority belief narrows the cognitive map

For the sake of consensus, people can overlook the confutation from their own senses and blindly follow the majority, whether right or wrong. In the bestselling Outliers: The Story of Success (2008,) pop sociologist Malcolm Gladwell calls attention to the cultural predisposition to maintain silence and not rock the boat:

Korean Air had more plane crashes than almost any other airline in the world for a period at the end of the 1990s. When we think of airline crashes, we think, Oh, they must have had old planes. They must have had badly trained pilots. No. What they were struggling with was a cultural legacy, that Korean culture is hierarchical. You are obliged to be deferential toward your elders and superiors in a way that would be unimaginable in the U.S.

Uniformity of thought and esprit de corps can act together to make people amenable and taciturn when they see a problem or a better option.

Idea for Impact: Making sure everyone’s on the same page can produce harmony—of the cult-like variety. Encourage dissent and counterevidence in decision-making.

Entitlement and Anger Go Together

July 15, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Exaggerated entitlement could possibly explain what’s driving the recent surge of abusive or violent incidents on flights in America.

We live in a time where everyone seems hypervigilant to the point where even a slight snub can be taken as an act of deliberate aggression—either reactively or without provocation. People want to assert themselves, and every little social interaction seems to turn quickly into a battleground of entitlement.

Self-Protective Efforts Heighten Entitlement

To make things worse, air travel sits at the confluence of so many things involving so many people (and circumstances) where each “participant” has little direct control over what’s happening to them and others around. Political polarization and mask mandates seem to have intensified these anxieties too. Moreover, the FAA’s zero-tolerance policy toward disturbances and the threat of massive fines are unlikely to disincentivize passengers and staff in the heat of the moment.

When people feel entitled, they’re not just frustrated when others fail to acknowledge and entertain—even listen to—their presumed superior rights. People feel deceived and wronged. They feel victimized, get angry, and exude hostility. Worse, they feel even more justified in their demands and thus assume an even stronger sense of entitlement as compensation.

Idea for Impact: Entitlement and Responsibility are Inextricably Linked

Underlying this kind of anger process is a lack of separation of rights from responsibility. No professional, social, or domestic environment can remain stable and peaceful without everyone respecting the fact that rights and responsibilities are inseparable.

Nobody is entitled to compassion or fair treatment without acting on the responsibility to give it to others. If you don’t care about how others feel, you can’t demand that they care about how you feel. It’s a formula for disaster in human interactions.

The Problem of Living Inside Echo Chambers

June 14, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Psychologists use the term realistic ignorance to explain the human tendency to believe that we’re normal—that the way we see and do things is entirely representative of everybody else.

Realistic ignorance is intensified by our natural desire to associate with people similar to ourselves.

Social media algorithms make this worse—they reinforce our attitudes but not change them. They steer us to the type of stuff we already know and like. They make it easy for us to form our own echo chambers, packed with people who share the same views. This causes confirmation bias. Tribal allegiances form flawed ideas and viewpoints about what is typical for organizations and communities.

Idea for Impact: Seek out and engage thoughtful folks who don’t think like you. Discuss, debate, and improve your reasoned understanding of one another and of the crucial issues. Your goal should be to enhance your own awareness of the counterarguments in contentious matters, not win over anyone.

Tribalism Needs to Self-Destruct

January 20, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Big Tech’s recent rush to repress provocative content has expanded the debate on free speech and the social-media algorithms’raw power to preside over how people see the world.

Democracy and free markets aren’t supposed to function this way. Overall, capitalism works because it typically rewards players for being right and penalizes players for being wrong. If you’re an investor and you’re wide of the mark about something, the market will penalize you.

That used to be valid with journalism too. Traditionally, if a mainstream news outlet got something wrong, it’d face disapproval, retractions, and embarrassment. If the outlet was wrong often enough, its circulation would shrink, and advertisers would drop.

Sadly, this feedback loop has gone. Our media consumption has become so segmented and tribal. For instance, Fox News could assert whatever it wants its audience to believe, and the market won’t punish it. Indeed, Fox News could even be rewarded with more significant viewership.

Tribal media consumption is especially manifest with social media because the platforms’business model is driven by tribe-segmentation, engagement, and clicks. Social media reward fanaticism, emotionalism, and hyperbole. There’s no natural self-regulating market apparatus any longer.

All told, tribalism and hyperpolarized filter bubbles have taken their toll. They’re contributing to society’s intellectual decay.

Idea for Impact: This isn’t as much a freedom-of-speech issue as it is a distribution issue. Yes, everyone should be free to express themselves without the interference of editors or other filters. But what does—and doesn’t—surface for consumption needs to be moderated. Gate-keeping must be done in a way that doesn’t devalue truth and ignore the counterevidence. Technology needs to pivot to help society break through the mental barriers of tribes.

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Social Dynamics

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Influence-by-majority belief narrows the cognitive map

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Self-Protective Efforts Heighten Entitlement

Idea for Impact: Entitlement and Responsibility are Inextricably Linked

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