Anthropology after Twitter and the power of old things in new hands

I’m sitting here at Toronto Pearson International Airport after this year’s AAA meetings. The first time I went to the AAA’s was back in 2008, in San Francisco. I was a grad student back then, all worried and nervous about presenting at a professional conference.

My first shock was just basic economics. The room at the conference hotel was $250, and it wasn’t particularly luxurious. It was tiny. And the sink was inside the room. As a grad student I didn’t have much money so that was all pretty unnerving.

My presentation was on a Sunday morning. Four people showed up…and two of them were my friends from grad school. The presentation was fine. I made it. I didn’t break any major theoretical boundaries but I did make it through my presentation somewhat coherently. So it was a win.

It could have been an alienating experience. I mean, it was alienating in terms of cost and some of the usual badge-checking social status sort of stuff that tends to happen with these kinds of things. But it also wasn’t alienating because there was this thing we had back then called…the internet.

Maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s that thing that’s dead, dying, decrepit. That thing that Elon Musk and others are actively seizing and taking apart, piece by piece.

Back in 2008, there was this whole social space that was building up on blogs and, yes, Twitter. But those were still the days when blogs (and other things) were on the rise. There was this whole community that was building at the time, and it helped open things up.

For me, as a grad student, that whole network gave me other ways to find people, get in touch, have conversations, make connections. It sounds like some ad for a social media company, but I’m serious. It actually worked. There were all these spaces and conversations happening, and you could jump into them by starting your own site, posting comments, sharing stuff, and so on. It helped cut through some of the alienation–to jump through or past some of the tensions, status competitions, and sheer volume of such meetings. 

For me, that whole network added an entirely different layer to conferences…and to anthropology. It was, in many ways, some of the best of it all. 

Of course, that’s all mostly gone now. You know the story, right? People migrated from all their blogs to micro-blogging sites, mostly Twitter. Some of that had to do with some of the challenges of comment moderation, but there were other reasons. Users migrated, and this thing called #Anthrotwitter was born, and it was both great and problematic (as were blogs). 

And then Elon Musk did his work, and that network, all those spaces and conversations, are mostly dead. 

This was my first conference after the demise of Twitter, and it was a different thing. Conferences often take place in big spaces, so it can be a challenge not to feel a bit lost in it all. Back in the day, things like the anthroblogosphere (yes that’s what people called it) and #Anthrotwitter helped bring folks together (again, though, it wasn’t some utopia).

Just to bring things full circle here, my panel was again at 8 am. It was about theorizing sea level rise. I walked to the session assuming nobody would show up. But–surprise–we had a pretty solid turnout. It was fun. We had a good conversation. It was nice. That’s how things should work. Maybe there are some lessons here about how we meet, what we expect, and how we make and maintain connections. It turns out that actually meeting people in person, talking, and sharing ideas still works pretty well. So that’s good news.

But there was a layer that I used to value and appreciate that was missing. It was that layer that was the blogosphere–and then Twitter. A place, of sorts. As Hilary Agro wrote on Twitter/X just today, it was a “place that filled in the gaps left by institutions and professional organizations–people supported each other, learned, even theorized.”

It was, indeed. We should rebuild that place, or something like it, while heeding some of the lessons we have (hopefully) learned in the past decade or so. Key point: don’t bank on a private, corporate space to serve as a public sphere. As we have seen, that doesn’t pan out all that well. Some good news, as Alex Golub posted on FB somewhere today, is that the other, older internet is still around…and it STILL WORKS.

Go start a blog or something. Then tell me–and others–about it. Post stuff, then share it on a somewhat regular basis. Keep control of your content as much as possible. That’s the basic plan. Here are some details and ideas. 

There’s a certain power in old things. Particularly in some new hands. Consider this an invitation.

Onward, and keep in touch. Post some comments below.