Buzzfeed, BlueSky, The Blue Check, and the End of Social Media
Tech Tribe Dispatch #199
Welcome back to the Tech Tribe Dispatch. As some of you noted, the Dispatch has been spotty over the past few weeks. I’m excited to be back on my feet and to once more share inspiration in your inbox!
💡 Think:
Two events occurred last week: The end of so called ‘legacy blue checks’ on Twitter and the shuttering of Buzzfeed News. The world of social media and digital media has continued to fluctuate since then - with other tech and media companies announcing layoffs (Please share links to friends looking for work with us to share with the community!) and the Bird App experiencing by the minute drama (Follow me on Bluesky!) - but the coincidence of these two events deserves some unpacking.
Sure it’s easy to say “Digital journalists! Blue checks! Essentially the same thing” and call it a day… but it’s something more: It represents the end of the Social Media era - at least as we understood it for the past decade and a half.
Buzzfeed
I first had a chance to visit BuzzFeed’s office in December 2013 - at the time the platform was quickly racing into the public discourse. There was a paper cut out of Ryan Gosling to pose with for selfies, celebrities just roamed the halls. CEO Jonah Peretti, himself Jewish, quipped that BuzzFeed aimed to “be like the Mormons, instead of the Jews” (at the time I noted that it would, in fact, be better to be like Chabad. History, perhaps, has shown similarly) The vibe was a delightful crystallization of the Web.
I made friends there, some of whom remain active members of the Tech Tribe family today.
BuzzFeed as a whole was radically open. Radically Millennial (before that was cringe). I sent a text or slid in the DMs of someone I knew there, and then we’d show up a few days later with boxes menorahs and doughnuts before Chanukah, Shmurah matzah before Passover… We’d set up shop in the canteen (while Tasty videos filmed in the background) and a message was sent on Slack, written in BuzzFeed house style to pique the curiosity gap of coworkers. Soon the place would be full of folks lighting the menorah or the matzah would appear in videos they produced. I wandered around meeting people, stopped by the news room and schmoozed with a host of journalists who became friends as well.
Twitter
And therein lies the similarity to Social Media during the ‘blue check’ era. Part of the wild joy of Twitter is (was?) the ability to just slide into the mentions of someone brilliant or fascinating or (in)famous and get into a conversation with them. There was an openness of conversation, and the knowledge of authenticity that someone who you wanted to seriously engage with really was who they said they were.
A media wonk with a long history in digital media once quipped to me,‘I see someone say something about Chasidic Jews and you reply to them, and I’m convinced there’s going to be a fight… I come back later and I see they’re going to your house for Shabbat chicken soup.’
The system wasn’t perfect, and at least some of what made Twitter special is still there, but it represented what made that era of Social Media unique.
If the early aughts were marked by blogging, a handful of creators creating digital content that most others passively consumed, the next decade was filled with social media that not only encouraged users to share with friends, it could become part of a ‘democratizing’ experience - where the barriers between those sharing and those responding were seemingly equalized. The blue check mark, as arbitrary as it was, didn’t show elites vs pleebs, it showed that the interaction was an authentic one.
And it seemed poised to save the world. I remember musing in my own blog on the dark day after the Mumbai Terrorist attack, about the experience of witnessing something so awful that in real time… engaging in conversations with others on the ground.
“…I can't help but wonder, am I part of this revolution? Of this moment of instant and constant information that spirals in on itself like a dog chasing its tale until it has swallowed itself whole . . .
And is it something great or is it something horrible?”
Now it feels that the pendulum has swung the other way: TikTok, Instagram and others all focus on algorithmically shared feed. People passively scroll through the videos of a handful of creators. Sure they can interact in the comments, and who doesn’t create a video hoping it will be picked up in #ForYou page… but in the end, the dynamic has shifted.
Beginning Chanukah 1989, a new epoch in sharing Judaism began. At the twilight of the Cold War era, satellite technology - originally created to target weapons and send military communications, was harnessed to create a global Chanukah experience.
The Rebbe had long encouraged his chasidim to harness technology to share Jewish inspiration. But those broadcasts, despite the Rebbe’s encouragement were basically one-direction: From Chabad headquarters out.
These satellite broadcasts were something else:
Dubbed Chanukah Live, they connected Jewish communities around the world - in Hong Kong, Melbourne, Jerusalem, Moscow and Paris and beyond - in a live moment of light and connectivity.
That expression of global unity through a mitzvah, and its medium of broadcast specifically via what was once military grade edge technology, was not lost on the Rebbe.
In this swords to plowshares moment could be found the veritable unity of the spiritual physical itself:
“Seemingly, Heaven and Earth are two disparate entities,” the Rebbe said in a talk broadcast over satellite hookup in 1991, “how can it truthfully be claimed that at their core they are truly one?”
But taking a lesson from the satellite hookup itself, one could see the underlying unity in Creation. “Jews on opposite sides of the world, in Moscow and New York, Calcutta and Japan, or Israel and Australia, are able to connect to each other -- not just to send a message or talk, but to bring tangible relief for their most basic physical needs.”
In other words, a person on one side of the world could instantly transfer charitable funds to someone on the other - ones and zeroes and theoretical calculations existing on computer chips could be harnessed by Cold War era technology designed for targeting bombs to provide immediate physical assistance to someone else.
That is where, I believe we must always be heading.
🏃 DO:
👽 What Does The Torah say about Alien Life? Find out at next week’s #FirstFriday Society, Friday, May 5th!
🤖 Stream of Twelvex: From Robots to Golems.(And while you’re streaming, check out Twelvex speakers Michal Schick and Alex Zeldin in Mandalorthodox: Jewish History and Modern Practice)
🧀 Shavuot With Tech Tribe! Join us Sunday, May 25th for nosh, drinks and the Ten Commandments, as we celebrate Shavuot!
🙌 Please join us for our son Berel’s Bar Mitzvah on June 4th!
🎬 Watch:
Ever wonder how those lovely black Chabad hats are made?
🎉 Mazel:
We have a few exciting birthdays these past weeks in the Tech Tribe Fam!
Mazel tov and Happy Birthday to #ChaiSociety members Max Sklar, David Rosenberg, Tzali and to Tech Tribe Member Armin Rosen!
📈 Invest:
Invest in Tech Tribe, join the #ChaiSociety!
Do you have a startup, announcement or message you’d like to share? Get your message seen by hundreds of people in Tech and Digital media!
📚 Read:
🕯️ Al Jaffee, 102, Cartoonist Found His Inner Jewish Superhero. The illustrator’s not-so-secret identity was as creator of “The Shpy,” hero to generations of children.
🤳 Social media is doomed to die. After seven years at Snapchat, Ellis Hamburger finally learned the truth about why our most important apps seem destined to disappoint us.
🎵 Religious Pop Star Singing of ‘God and Faith’ Wins Over Secular Israel
🍞 Let the Bread Be Free. When charging extra is the norm, some complimentary focaccia is a nice surprise.
📲 Why all your friends are sending you voice notes Phone call? Lol. Voice note? Sure.
📉 The Internet of the 2010s Ended Today. BuzzFeed News was more than a website: It defined an era.
🍷 Nazi-looted silver cup comes home to Bay Area descendant after 80 years.
🔥 Lit:
This week, light Shabbat candles in NYC at 7:31
For Shabbat candle-lighting time in your area click here.
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