Superbloom by Nicholas Carr & the Tension of Visibility

For much of 2025, I've deeply considered the paradox of my Internet activity and social media use, and am sort of starting to land on an acceptance that I don't actually want to participate in the context collapse that the algorithms seem to reward, partly because of what this book points out: that the medium you uses changes how your brain works and thinks, for better and for worse.

I feel, now, that my blog expands and strengthens my thinking whereas most social media feeds intensify inflammatory (or maybe negative) bits of the psyche and culture in ways I don't like, both on an individual and cultural level. It's not as simple as "opt out," because the modern shift of art being rebranded as content means that I have a vested interest in ensuring my industry participation pays my bills. The cost of X allows me to do Y: what I really care about. And it's not like I don't enjoy the creativity challenge either, but I'm perpetually wary of a price enacted in blood.

Basically: in a society drifting towards convenience, it's actually (usually) the inherent friction of anything—a hobby, a goal, a person and relationship—that makes it feel earned and satisfying, which is the sensation that best provokes our sense that something matters. So the sanding down of all this on a broader level, from AI to dopamine-fueled "connections" has a real toll. Sometimes, the desire to shrink away from the difficulty of something is the exact sign that you should do it.

As a breezy example, I'm writing this longhand, which is a format I prefer, and will type it up later. Being succinct is good for you in many ways—hence my challenge to myself to make my work more digestible to others this year—but so is the discipline of hammering out what you think in actual, tricky words.

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I've noticed a lot of what this book discusses within my blog content over the last year or so, because I say its new format and design has fed my creativity. My investment in a custom design fortified my ability and presentation, and has probably contributed to my (obnoxious, horrifying) sense that I'm the smartest right now that I've ever been—and still have the itch to learn and think more. But I don't know if I can handle my brain whirring even more.

I feel like whatever Words Like Silver is trying to do—the core of it—is more resonant than it's ever been.

The blog is fantastic for my brain on an intellectual level and for myself on a developmental level because I process so much emotionally through it without feeling overexposed to the masses or those I know personally. Posting to any sort of feed breeds a different feeling, one explored in this book and others: that of the saturation and vulnerability being too much.

I had this question going into The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, and conversations with friends who point out that I'm such a cynic about the online ecosystem that it's interesting my blog feels exempt from the woes of other media platforms.

Why did this blog not screw over my seventh-grader wiring the way we're seeing now in the kids?

Haidt answered this for me: because what does the harm is the feed / and the possible validation of a like / and a profile you invest in and customize in combination.

Whereas, aside from my genuine longing to have the time and funding to work on Words Like Silver as much as I want (and escape the rat race more broadly by frontloading my efforts), WLS isn't subject to the same terrors because all the validation I get from it is internal. I never look at my stats. I'm not even sure anyone really reads it, unless I translate its content to a social media post.

So Superbloom, a recent release about connective technology, tackles an array of subjects in an appealing way that I'll describe more in-depth in a dedicated review:

• How different forms of media and communications changed our culture, thoughts, etc,. i.e. how medium makes the meaning.
• Politically, how we've oscillated between regulation and deregulation at various times. Court cases, legislation, business decisions, and other factors that have affected our stance on moderation, free speech, what's considered public vs. private, etc,.
• Our current dilemma of context (and content) collapse and how that's impacted our behaviors.
• & more—

The book tackles linguistics, politics, social history, and media in an appealing way that goes more heavily into policy and invention aspects of social media that feel less explored by other digital minimalism narratives. It's not too cynical, but it does feel on the nose.

Recently, so many of the books I've read and loved have had a similar global tone: zoomed-out and macro, with views of innovation and diffusion that make instinctual sense. Not an intentional choice of mine, but cool to follow and map out as a history major.

About the Book

From the author of The Shallows, a bracing exploration of how social media has warped our sense of self and society.

From the telegraph and telephone in the 1800s to the internet and social media in our own day, the public has welcomed new communication systems. Whenever people gain more power to share information, the assumption goes, society prospers. Superbloom tells a startlingly different story. As communication becomes more mechanized and efficient, it breeds confusion more than understanding, strife more than harmony. Media technologies all too often bring out the worst in us.

A celebrated interpreter of technology’s impacts on human life, Nicholas Carr guides the reader through the dark trends that have always shadowed how telegrams disrupted diplomacy, how radio aided autocrats, how the Facebook feed sowed division, how AI now blurs reality and fantasy. With vivid examples from history, science, and politics,
Superbloom unmasks a fundamental flaw in our perception of, and revolutionizes our understanding of, how media shapes society. It may be too late to curb the “superbloom” of information—but it’s not too late to change ourselves.

Other Books I Thought About While Reading

who influences us / The Influential Mind by Tali Sharot

struggling against the desire to ghost / How to Disappear by Akiko Busch

the sense that digital communication isn't connection at all / Alone Together by Sherry Turkle

being overwhelmed by information overload / The Organized Mind by Daniel Levitin

Am I Screwed Because of Social Penetration Theory?

And then on a personal level, I struggled with the aspects introduced by Nicholas Carr's analysis of social penetration theory, presented in the 1970s, which deals with the layers of self-disclosure required to feel like you "know" someone—which, hey, I just talked about in my review of East of Eden by John Steinbeck, which is all about the tension between authenticity and performance, and the loneliness of romanticizing the "idea of" someone rather than them.

Some of this conversation within Superbloom had to do with how we feel like we want to see, hear, know more about someone, and the revelation made me feel like my current relational obstacles might be even more insurmountable because of my chosen forms of expression.

Basically, y'all might assume you "know enough" about me because I tend to dive straight into the deep end in terms of challenging conversation. Or, essentially, you can read a healthy dose of my thoughts and provocations on the Internet, meaning it's actually much more likely that you'll find plenty in me to disagree with—which triggers dislike.

You're Not Listening by Kate Murphy underlines this concept from Superbloom too: that when we're not in physical proximity to someone, it intensifies our perceived sense of differences. Once we've decided to look for differences rather than similarities, we're less likely to want someone around, which then reduces the ability of physical proximity to enact its magic of making us closer.

Essentially, the more someone discloses, the more likely you are to find reasons not to connect to them. And this is intensified from a distance and by the Internet? Versus in-person, where you may pick up on other positives that mitigate or smooth them down, and make you feel like "You know what, I still like them as them."

So maybe, the more I share online, the worse it may be for my social outcomes. Whereas I always thought it was a benefit: that I don't overshare details of my own life, but that anyone who wants to be my friend (or my looooover) could go and read me ironing out my brain without feeling like me having the same conversations in person is somehow confrontational. But maybe it just makes y'all pick up on reasons not to want to know me instead. You know?

I guess: I call my own brain and processing overwhelming, but it bums me out that other people might see it as such from a distance without realizing that I don't just constantly share this way in reality. I do get the "wow" or "overwhelming" comment a decent bit re: what I think about and process, and that's all totally fine. I just don't want to be exhausting, and social penetration theory made me wonder if maybe I should just keep it shallower with others for much, much longer.

Plot twist: I actually think (know) I’m very mysterious and that supposed transparency to the masses via all this helps me preserve it. Hahaha. I’m uploading this in hindsight because it crossed my feed after initially publishing this. Feels right.

I know how to read a room. There's a time and a place for this kind of dragged-out philosophical convo, and I'm happy to go deep but also happy to just have a good time. But if you decide who I am based solely on my intellectual side, you might miss out on the rest.

Enter the whole "if you don't know me and actively keep up with me in real life, you don't actually know me" reminder, which very much dovetails with this sense I have that most of our social problems come about when we assume we know enough about others to turn them into ideas of themselves rather than their nuanced, contradictory selves. To be frank, I'm just extra aware of this because I do often think that people romanticize me at first then get disillusioned when I turn out to be an actual human being.

Expanding my presence into other media platforms seems like it could exacerbate that by flattening my "Grace-ness" into even more of an aesthetic—but then again, it could have the reverse effect by showing small snippets of myself that might dilute the impression of myself unintentionally curated here: that I am inescapably serious. Every you, every me, baby.

I like to remind people that the version of myself I am when I want to write/book club/whatever is a significant version of me, but also not the only one.

Everyone Needs Privacy

And social penetration theory is balanced out by privacy regulation theory, which is the need we have to maintain boundaries that curb the "flow and intensity of communication." As Superbloom says,

“We need communication, and we need protection from communication.”

That's probably why my favorite romantic relationships depicted in media I've talked about lately—like Taylor and Jonah from Jellicoe Road, or Rilke, or others—have this trust in the quiet and unspoken. I might accidentally overshare by default just because my brain bounces so frequently between topics and references, but I agree with the researcher behind it (Irwin Altman, who worked on both theories) that a healthy society is one that "will safeguard personal privacy at least as vigorously as it promotes self-expression."

“I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other. — Rainer Marie Rilke.”

And, from a craft-based or artistic position, learning how to work with the unsaid or negative space ultimately lends more resonance to what you do choose to share, hence the sense that the saturation of the Internet right now produces "burn and churn" "slop."

I guess, on a personal level, I can't quite keep myself from "getting deep" in what I choose to work on, which is discoverable, but it almost might be better for me in reality to only post shallow, surface-level insights that don't make you feel like you actually know who I am.

Basically: I view my blog as a space where I largely invulnerable, but maybe others view it as too vulnerable because they won't see how much I do keep private.

While I cherish privacy and will always maintain it at least on a social, romantic, family level online, I do wonder if the exposure my audience has to my—intellectual density, I suppose? My ability to personalize what I read?—means that I'm shortcutting myself on the proper order of things. Or that anyone looking me up personally will emerge with an unbalanced sense of who I am that's more of a turn-off than an invitation to grow closer.

I'll probably still always write and publish as I do, but I promise I'm still just as much into small talk or getting goofy or whatever in-real-life if you give me the room to be a multifaceted person. I just find that, based on whatever persona I accidentally cultivate in my writing, many people don't. But the blog version isn't the "only" version of me.

Which is why—as this book points out—using digital connection as a substitute for physical proximity to someone generally is net-negative.

Of course, the tension between authenticity and performance, and the fragmented sense that nobody's quite getting you right, is a heavy theme from East of Eden, David Foster Wallace, and other writers I've visited this year. So the book-clubbing of it all is somewhat inevitable.

How Do the Algorithms Complicate the Theory?

I'd be curious about social penetration theory as it relates to social media and parasocial relationships, especially because there is no clear beginning to your connection with a creator.

The video or essay you first see from them might be out of order, jumbling your perception i.e. someone might share a deeply personal, emotional, "oversharing"-type of vulnerable moment that might make sense to them in the chronological order of how they've opened up to the Internet—but not to you, a complete stranger seeing a sudden snippet without the bedrock of these first stages of knowing someone.

Like character building, but with real people and online, which feels like another point to the necessity of keeping things shallow.

Does discoverability disrupt these natural sequences driving genuine closeness?

I don't entirely know how a book review or essay fits into that—because I do, luckily, have the buffer of a piece of media between me and others—but it might add to that disorienting sense of fragmentation.

If you've gone too far and disrupted the stages, can you walk it back? Do you ever feel like you can start over with someone? I'd argue yes, because time elapsed away means that you don't know the current version of someone anyway—and there's always something new to discover—but it can be hard at first to override your sense of having gotten too deep with someone too early.

Back to 'Superbloom'

Superbloom deals with plenty—the political elements of our hopeful views of democracy and libertarianism, the distortion present in the desire for pure rationality in imperfect information ecosystems, salience á la The Organized Mind, etc,. I don't remember loving The Shallows by the author quite as much, but thought Superbloom painted a compelling modern portrait of how we sort through our impressions of others (and their opinions) both online and IRL.

Next up for me is The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World by Christine Rosen, so don't be surprised if I ghost the Internet for a while.

Kidding, kidding. (I'm a creative trying to strike gold in the 21st century.) But if you know me personally and read this, maybe try to see me in person, give me a phone call, or hell—write me a letter—instead of assuming a one-way broadcast is enough to know me at all. I promise I'll do the reverse.

We can start shallow again, and not skip ahead.