The next newsletter goes out 1 April. Includes:
Reflecting on Iraq, 20 years later (and what might have been the “peak” experience), returning to “why we fight,” and pulling the plug – again. For the last time?
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A long time ago, I made a note to write something about the below concept.
But, I don’t need to. It’s already happening.
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Fascinating episode of the Pineland Underground featuring former Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (SEAC) John Wayne Troxell.
Lots of interesting takes from the former SEAC on messaging, the role of social media in the modern military (both good and bad), and choosing whether to be an enabler or an agitator in retirement.
What I found particularly interesting was his vignette early in the episode about the E-Tool incident.
Somehow, I missed all that at the time.
While that story is interesting as it stands, I found the behind-the-scenes discussion about it especially compelling.
While visiting troops and making comments suggesting the E-Tool could be used as a non-standard weapon in the fight against ISIS (it absolutely can), a reporter who heard the remarks and took offense told him that he was going to make them public.
So I called up my trusty Public Affairs guy… and I said this reporter is going to go public with this and he said “Well let’s beat him to the punch.”
SEAC(R) John Wayne Troxell, Pineland Underground Podcast ~6:45
So, a picture of the CSM holding an E-Tool with a defeat ISIS message was put together and shared on social media. And of course, like all effective messaging, it garnered strong opinions, some in support, some against.
It’s another example of the importance of getting to the story first. Framing matters. And being shy in the information space can easily put you on the defensive.
What makes these types of efforts successful? A supportive chain of command that is willing to accept failure. And if there are failures, learn from them and move on. Leaders get timid in the information space when they believe that one errant move can implode a mission, a team, or a career.
We’re willing to send them up that hill or around that corner or into that breach, fully knowing the potential outcomes. We can’t continuously lament that we’re “getting our asses kicked” in the information environment while simultaneously eating ourselves alive whenever something we put out there actually does well.
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There’s something about a long cross-country road trip that induces reflection. The passage of time, the dusty truck stops, miles and miles of road, lots of time with your own thoughts. It’s like you didn’t even have a choice, you’re going to do some reflecting.
I’ll have a lot more to say about that in the next newsletter which goes out next week. If you haven’t signed up, you should.
Teaser: “Oh, you thought this was going to be easy?”
For now, I’m settling into a routine, so posting should resume as normal.
Over the past month, a few things stuck out (ideas, articles, podcasts).
In no particular order:
And as always, sometimes things just ‘pop in there.’ Here are some future posts you can look forward to.
And more.
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I had some positive feedback this week on a nearly decade old post about social media and my desire to use it less.
Just about everyone has a relationship with social media these days. It’s an evergreen topic. You can always write about social media the way playwrights can always write plays about the theater.
For those who use social media daily – which seems to be most people – there is an undying curiousity to know “what it’s like” to pull the plug.
I did it for over four years. No Facebook, no Twitter, no blog.
What changed?
Not much, really.
As I summed it up in the post:
The truth is, when it comes to social media and whether you’re on it or not, nobody really cares. The thing people notice most about social media is their own presence in it – not the lack of someone else’s.
What I missed mostly was having this space – here on this site – to write and reflect. Social media, in all of its forms, but especially Twitter, is mostly a place to get the word out. Or at least, that’s how I prefer to use it these days.
I don’t like the performative nature of threads.
I don’t like the addictive quality of shortform video, designed to keep you hooked without imparting anything useful.
And I don’t like the general toxicity of the platform.
Attention is easy: Be outrageous. Be mean-spirited.
Burn bridges, name-names.
If you’re not careful, you can easily get caught up in it and start thinking that being there is the point. Chasing likes, follows, and retweets becomes a kind of score that no one really cares about.
For me, it’s not worth it. This isn’t about Twitter.
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I don’t like threads on Twitter.
Even the good ones.
Don’t get me wrong – they’re often entertaining, interesting, and educational.
And I do enjoy them.
But I don’t like them because they’re so ephemeral.
A lot of works goes into them, they’re fun to poke through, but then they’re gone. And there’s not really a good way to save them.
You can bookmark them, but then you’re stuck with a list of bookmarks. I tend to use bookmarks for things to check out later, and then I clear them out.
There is definitely a place for them, and I get their utility. And I understand how they are engaging.
But some of them are so engaging I want them to live somewhere that I can easily return to for reference.
You know, like a blog.
A few weeks ago I started building a thread on what ‘winning’ looks like in Great Power Competition. I had a good vision for it and I know it would be engaging. It was full of video clips, gifs, pictures, and smart copy.
I stopped building it because I knew that it would be a great thread that would quickly be pushed aside and forgotten.
Instead, I’ll turn it into an article where it can survive.
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I’ve written about this before.
And it’s happening again.
We’re living in a very strange time, where events are beamed to our televisions, computers, and phones as they happen.
Real people are out there – in the arena – doing incredible things and experiencing real trauma.
And we watch – in real-time – and critique, scowl, and gossip.
The flash-to-bang is getting shorter and shorter. 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina were the opening acts.
January 6th and the fall of Kabul are the most recent manifestations of this phenomenon.
Things used to happen and then you’d read about it, dispassionately, in a newspaper the morning after. If you were lucky, there was a picture that accompanied the article.
Today it’s all reaction and little reflection.
Emotion and absence of mind.
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Had this thought the other day as I continue to slog through rebuilding. When I pulled the plug in 2016, I was in a pretty good place. My Twitter/Facebook accounts had thousands of followers and just about every blog post got attention. Daily traffic to CTG was high. It was something I had built over five years.
And then zap – it’s all gone.
Well the blog is still here and has plenty of followers. And each day I am moving forward towards a goal of rebuilding.
The whole thing feels very similar to what happens when you beat a video game, and then are offered the opportunity to replay the game in “New Game+” mode. New Game+ is where you get to play the whole thing over from the beginnning, but you retain whatever skills, equipement, and experience you earned in the first playthrough. The experience is also easier because you know the rules of the game and have gotten pretty good. I know how to write, I know the world map, and I know which oracles to visit. It’s definitely starting over with an advantage. The goal of New Game+ mode is to explore the things you missed while getting another opportunity to enjoy the game.
But boy, it’s still a slog.
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I completely dropped social media four years ago. Deleted Facebook. Deleted Twitter. Shut down the blog.
I was a power user. I cultivated an online presence. (It felt like) people wanted to hear what I had to say.
And then I decided to pull the plug. 100%, full stop.
I was ready for the fallout. I was ready for the text messages and phone calls. “What happened?” “Are you ok?”
Instead, what I got was silence.
It kind of reminded me of the scene in Bettlejuice, after the Maitlands try to frighten the Deetzes at the dinner party by having them sing and dance to “The Banana Boat Song.” Afterwards, they’re just looking out the window, waiting for the Deetzes to come rushing out.
“Any second now.”
With the exception of a handful of emails over the course of the first year, most folks didn’t seem to notice.
For the most part, pulling the plug meant more time, less distraction, and less frustration. Sure, there were opportunities I may have missed, people I failed to meet, and certainly interesting things I didn’t read as a result. But honestly, I enjoyed the break. Most people will admit that they feel locked into it at this point and they can’t escape.
Pulling the plug and taking some time allows us to reset the relationship.
The truth is, when it comes to social media and whether you’re on it or not, nobody really cares. The thing people notice most about social media is their own presence in it – not the lack of someone else’s.
It’s not going away, but you can choose how you participate.
By the way, if you’re curious about why I pulled the plug in the first place, sign up for my newsletter. I lay it out.
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Last week, I heard two different variations of a theme making the claim that Facebook is the internet in differnet parts of the world.
Filipino-American journalist Maria Ressa, during a discussion on the weaponization of social media in the Philippines:
[in the Philippines] “Facebook is the internet.”
Source: Lawfare podcast
She went on to talk about how 100% of Filipinos are on Facebook.
And then from author and broadcaster Nina Schick during a similarly themed podcast.
“Facebook became the internet in Burma.”
Source: Making Sense podcast
This could just mean that this idea – that Facebook is the internet for other parts of the world is a meme or talking point, but it clicked with me as something that could be true.
It is important to think about the different contexts in which “the internet” exists across different regions/cultures. The internet that I experience is different than the one that you experience, and more so than the one that people living across the globe experience.
This idea made me think about dialing up to America Online in the 1990s. Logging in, being greeted by “You’ve Got Mail” and then choosing a domain to explore – News, Arts & Entertainment, Games – that was “the internet” for me and many others during that time in the United States. Yes, there was a wider “world wide web” that you could go and explore if you were brave and knew how to navigate it, but it was much more comfortable to explore the walled garden of America Online.
How much time does a user spend on Facebook versus exploring the wider internet? Especially in a place where “Facebook is the internet?”
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Carrying the Gun 