Visual jazz riff sketches from the edges of notebooks, some drawn with phone, nine images under a thematic title. Click anywhere in the gallery for scroll and captions.
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Tag: social media
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On Photography
A photograph isn’t thinking in motion, as writing is. A photograph is a stop sign, a red light. Our automatic pilot, built for continuous movement, starts to hallucinate. We are at the intersection of natural and unnatural.
Of the three foundational arguments framing photography, its effects on the hopeful snapper and unwitting object, the one viewfinders might agree most persuasive is Roland Barthes “Camera Lucida,” for he preserves the physicality of perception. The other two arguments are contained in the books “On Photography,” Susan Sontag’s theoretical warning that photography is political in its power to capture, and Marshall McLuhan’s “Understanding Media,” showing photography emerging from woodcuts. If you’d like to add a fourth chair to the discussion table, we might include the newbie Nathan Jurgenson, whose book “The Social Photo” argues photos are now pics like burps in a ballpark, adding to the communal noise that both applauds and boos.
What is a photograph? McLuhan called it “The Brothel Without Walls” (169). In a few sentences, he opens corridors leading to distant galleries:
“It is one of the peculiar characteristics of the photo that it isolates single moments in time. The TV camera does not. The continuous scanning action of the TV camera provides, not the isolated moment or aspect, but the contour, the iconic profile and the transparency. Egyptian art, like primitive sculpture today [1964], provided the significant outline that had nothing to do with a moment in time. Sculpture tends toward the timeless.” 169
What does the photograph change?
“Awareness of the transforming power of the photo is often embodied in popular stories like the one about the admiring friend who said, ‘My, that’s a fine child you have there!’ Mother: ‘Oh, that’s nothing. You should see his photograph.’” 169
McLuhan distinguishes between what he calls hot and cool media. Users of hot media can do other things while engaged with it, for example, dust the furniture while listening to the radio. Users of cool media are stuck, unable to do anything else while watching TV. Hot media doesn’t require full participation. Cool media does. The importance of the distinction comes from the different effects each has on the user.
“There is a basic principle that distinguishes a hot medium like radio from a cool one like the telephone, or a hot medium like the movie from a cool one like TV. A hot medium is one that extends one single sense in ‘high definition.’ High definition is the state of being well filled with data. A photograph is, visually, ‘high definition.’ A cartoon is ‘low definition,’ simply because very little visual information is provided. Telephone is a cool medium, or one of low definition, because the ear is given a meager amount of information. And speech is a cool medium of low definition, because so little is given and so much has to be filled in by the listener. On the other hand, hot media do not leave so much to be filled in or completed by the audience. Hot media are, therefore, low in participation, and cool media are high in participation or completion by the audience. Naturally, therefore, a hot medium like radio has very different effects on the user from a cool medium like the telephone.” 36
In McLuhan’s analysis, the photograph is complete; we don’t have to finish it as we do a cartoon. We don’t have to participate in a photo because it is visually “high definition” – not in terms of megapixels, but in communication density. It’s “hot” – so packed with detail – we don’t so much work to finish the picture as simply consume it – we photograph the photograph. The viewer is a passive participant.
What do we mean when we say someone is “photogenic”? Why isn’t everyone photogenic?
“The vested interests of acquired knowledge and conventional wisdom have always been by-passed and engulfed by new media.” 175
Images can do a lot of damage.
A problem might stem from thinking of photography as something more than a disappearing act, of wanting to think about pics as a creation that exceeds film, paper, or pixels, of something that must be learned to look at. Is every photo an argument? In a selfie, what is the subject and what the object? Why do snappers take so many pics of their food – an act seemingly like cats who bury their business? Is taking a photo compulsive, ritual, disposable? What is the source of that urge to take yet another sunset pic, to join a doom stream of falling flowers, of posting not simply one photo of our trip to the market, but a gallery down each aisle, the veggies, the dry goods, the deli, the dairy, the meat and fish, and even that’s not enough, but we must add a selfie at the self-service check out, the shopping cart navigating the parking lot, the loaded brown bags in the trunk.
On the way home we catch the same stop signs, the same red lights. Someone standing on a corner waiting to cross pulls out their cell phone and appears to snap a pic of the light. The light changes. We move on.
Photograph of child’s hand and footprints in cement. -
Are We Becoming Non-literate?
Jay Caspian Kang’s article in the online New Yorker this week reminded me of the early days at the Toads, when the “Reading Crisis” first appeared. The argument, at the time somewhat famously mentioned in the The Atlantic article “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” and in a couple of Caleb Crain articles in The New Yorker, including “Twilight of the Books,” was formally discussed in the Congressional Quarterly Researcher. Kang’s article is titled “If You Quit Social Media, Will You Read More Books?”
Never mind false dichotomies, not to mention the embedded claim that reading books is somehow superior to spending time on social media, it’s a worthwhile, as refreshing as the changing seasons, question. I tried just the other day to quit the blog; would I read more books? That resolve lasted not even a week. The habit of writing almost daily for 18 years (the blog, 8 books, plus stuff for various jobs) was harder to kick than I had anticipated.
Last year (as usual late to the book club), I read Kang’s book “The Dead Do Not Improve” (2012), which I enjoyed for its San Francisco setting and its surfing theme, but I’m not sure I learned anything from it, other than Kang’s a good writer, by which I mean his book accomplished its objectives. But I did not read it to learn anything, but for pleasure, but I’m still not too pleased with the title, but I get it: there are no tidy endings in a random world.
That reading anything in any amount suggests being or becoming smarter is already a tired bias held by, well, those purportedly who read the most. But Kang, in the article, admits to trading book time for phone time, and he’s concerned reading skills might be atrophying, and that he’s wasting time on social media even while facing a deadline for a new book that he, well, will want others to put their phones down and read.
But what we do learn from reading, or should learn, though it’s sometimes intuited, such that we might not even realize we’re getting it, is rhetoric, by which we mean the art of persuasion, and, of course, rhetoric can be misused, and only by reading extensively will we come to recognize rhetorical devices being used and their effects on us. Still, as for reading making us better people, there have been and still are well read people who are arguably not the best examples of humanity, but even that doesn’t mean we should give up reading as a way to improve our minds, our spirits, our conversations: as Becket said, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better” (Worstward Ho, 1983).
There are many activities that keep us from reading: playing a musical instrument, watching a movie or listening to a baseball game on the radio, playing cards, attending church, talking – not to mention work: waitressing, plumbing, nursing, gardening. Does it follow that if we abandon any of these activities we’ll read more?
But if we are reading fewer books, are we becoming more illiterate or non-literate? There’s a difference. It’s impossible to be illiterate in a non-literate culture, as McLuhan showed. And people in non-literate cultures have never been and are not now stupid; on the contrary.
The Discourse -
If you don’t know, who do you ask?
I’d been asking, like a smart aleck or wise guy school-kid, a couple of Artificial Intelligence apps (Gemini and ChatGPT) questions to see if I could stump them. The apps provide disclaimers. ChatGPT cautions, “ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.” I questioned ChatGPT what is meant by “important.” In short, important is any fact or idea that you might rely on to your detriment if proven wrong.
I was also thinking of the Universe, and William Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence”: “To see a world in a grain of sand….The questioner, who sits so sly, Shall never know how to reply.”
I asked ChatGPT how many photos had been uploaded to Instagram since its beginning:
Based on the latest available data, here’s what we know about Instagram:
📸 Total Photos & Videos Shared
Instagram has seen over 50 billion photos and videos uploaded since its launch on October 6, 2010 wired.com+4en.wikipedia.org+4time.com+4increditools.com+4earthweb.com+4predis.ai+4.
📈 Recent Upload Rates
Estimates from mid‑2024 to early 2025 indicate that:
- Roughly 1,074 photos/video posts are uploaded per second
- That equates to about 95 million posts per day, or almost 4 million per hour
I retrieved that data a few days ago, so I caution my reader to recheck the numbers with ChatGPT if important. The universe is expanding.
I then asked ChatGPT about blogs, how many new blog posts go up daily:
WordPress.com alone sees roughly 2.3 million new blog posts per day.
All blogging platforms combined—WordPress.org, Tumblr, Medium, Blogger, self-hosted setups, and more—generate around 7.5 million posts daily.
I then asked, considering social media formats, at what point, a tipping point or a break-even point – what is the number or percent a user can functionally follow other users? ChatGPT’s answer was long and involved, including definitions I had not specifically asked for:
Tipping Point in Following Behavior
This is the point at which a user starts experiencing diminishing returns from following more accounts — the quality of their feed drops, content becomes more generic or algorithmically filtered, and they lose meaningful engagement with individuals.Breakeven Point for Social Value
This could be defined as the point where a user’s following count results in reciprocal value — e.g., they follow others and start receiving useful content or engagement in return.I might have thought ChatGPT would quote John Cage somewhere in its answer, but it did not. The Cage quote I might have suggested, my paraphrase here: “If you don’t know the answer, why are you asking the question”?
One day down at
Black Mountain College,
David
Tudor was eating his lunch.A student came over
to his table and began asking him
questions.David Tudor
went on
eating his lunch.The student
kept on asking
questions.Finally
David Tudor looked at him and
said,
“If you don’t know,why do you ask?”
Copied from “Indeterminacy,” compiled by Eddie Kohler, here.
Why, indeed, not to mention who. Who (or what) do you ask? (And before you get your red pencil out, I know all about who and whom, but I’ve my own style book here at the Toads, and I’ve unfollowed whom, so don’t bother.) I first read “Indeterminacy” in John Cage’s book titled “Silence” (1961, 1973, Wesleyan) – from page 260:
“In oral delivery of this lecture, I tell one story a minute. If it’s a short one, I have to spread it out; when I come to a long one, I have to speak as rapidly as I can” (260).
Part of ChatGPT’s answer to my question regarding the number of social media accounts one can follow or be followed with meaningful contact referenced “Dunbar’s Number”:
📊 Data-Based Estimates and Psychological Limits
1. Cognitive Limit — Dunbar’s Number (~150)
- Humans can meaningfully maintain social relationships with around 150 people.
- In social media, this is often expanded because of the passive nature of interaction — but past ~500–1,000 follows, users typically experience:
- Less meaningful engagement
- Algorithmic filtering becomes dominant
👉 Tipping point for meaningful social following: ~150–500 follows
Beyond that, you don’t “functionally” follow people — the algorithm filters most content out.What is meaningful or reciprocally engaging of course differs depending on one’s purpose or goal and the type of social media format one’s using. I did know the answer, but I wanted ChatGPT to confirm and provide some data with support. I was just playing around. But I had not heard of Dunbar’s Number. Dunbar’s Number is 150 – humans can interact meaningfully with 150 others. A further breakdown of Dunbar’s Number as supplied by ChatGPT follows:
Dunbar’s Number (~150) is more than just a single limit. Robin Dunbar, a British anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist, proposed that human social relationships are layered in discrete tiers, each with its own emotional closeness and frequency of interaction.
🔹 Dunbar’s Social Group Layers
These layers form a hierarchy of relationships, expanding by a rough factor of ~3 at each level:
Layer Approx. Size Relationship Type Characteristics 1. Support Clique 3–5 Closest relationships Daily contact, deep emotional support (best friends, close family) 2. Sympathy Group 12–15 Good friends Weekly contact, trusted confidants 3. Close Network ~50 Friends you would invite to a party Monthly contact, mutual interest, still emotionally meaningful 4. Casual Network ~150 Dunbar’s Number People you know and recognize by name/face, occasional contact 5. Acquaintances ~500 Recognizable individuals Low or no emotional intensity, weak ties (colleagues, mutuals) 6. Faces Known ~1,500 People whose faces you recognize Stored in memory, but not personally connected
🔸 What This Means for Social Media
- Most people can recognize ~1,500 profiles, but only maintain meaningful interaction with ~150.
- Your Instagram close friends list or Twitter DMs likely reflects the 15–50 layer.
- Follows, likes, or casual comments beyond the 150–500 range are often algorithmically or socially shallow.
I don’t mention any of this to cause or reflect distress, and I think most users intuitively realize a law of large numbers at work with regard to social media accounts, but I want to emphasize the importance, significance, or value of any relatively small number of followers writers may have, or may be following, not necessarily as “follow backs” without ever looking again, but in efforts to maintain meaningful reading and writing encounters, effort that takes time and trust and mutual engagement.
There is of course much more to this discussion one might pursue (the phenomenom of likes and comments, or lack thereof, for example), but this has been question and answer enough. To follow is not necessarily to befriend; to unfollow is not necessarily to defriend. In summary, I’m reminded of the advice Shakespeare’s Polonius gives to his son Laertes:
“Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel” (Hamlet, Act I, Scene 3).
But Polonius, in spite of his reputation for sound advice, is a bumbling fool and not to be trusted, and anyway, who wants to be grappled to another’s soul with a hoop of steel, particularly where grapple means wrestle and struggle?
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The Best of the Toads
The gravity of social media at times it seems profoundly influences our every move. By gravity I mean that mutual attraction force that pulls us under and down, down rabbit holes, sink holes, the vortex created by following. By social media I mean to refer here to the sites that are for the most part vertically inclined, up and down, the newest appearing at the top, the oldest nudged down to an endless bottom where they are forgotten relics or remaindered in the fossil record. These social media sites are not formatted as mosaics, like newspapers, but like scrolls – though scrolls, even the most ancient, were often formatted horizontally as well as vertically. And the newspaper could be taken apart and shared: “Who has the funnies?” By profoundly I mean the unlimited hours an addiction to social media at any site soaks up the dark energy of our otherwise beachcombing days.
There are the followers and the following, not always the same, and often as not unknown to one another. How many and how often seen or read? And there’s the rub. I’ve been working on a formula. What number of followers or following beyond which to say one is actually following in any meaningful sense of seeing and responding to even if only to think about without comment or response – beyond which any significant number of posts, tweets, pics, etc., is no longer possible?
In other words, for example, the Instagramer I might follow who posts daily several pics multiplied by 100 other Instagramers I also follow equals hours of staring at Instagram until I can no longer honestly say I’m following all the number of individuals my account accounts for. Something like that. I could say, attending a live football game in the huge arena where sit 80,000 fans, that I’m following them all. Likewise, the social media follower who says they are following me back but who also follows say 5,000 others can’t possibly be paying much attention to me. Thus Instagram, recognizing we’ve a problem here, initiates a feature like close friends. Close friends, good neighbors, faithful followers, on the same team, family (though of course this latter often may come fraught with unfollowing in biblical proportions).
What has all this to do with “The Best of the Toads”? Just this: Here too the posts have been falling, a long way down, since my first post in December of 2007, and at least monthly since. There are now 1,463 posts. Where did they all go? And which ones might a reader most enjoy, find interesting, not to mention well written? The latest post is not necessarily the best.
So, I’ve made a Best of the Toads page, that visitors to the blog might be able at a glance to view the most successful posts since the beginning of the blog in 2007, successful as defined by number of views, but also including some posts that are my favorites no matter the number of views. You can view the new page here, or click on it in the blog menu. Happy falling!
The Coming of the Toads 