Hey Mark, great to have you back writing again.

I absolutely agree with your intuition that social media, grading, testing, and standardization are part of the same phenomenon. You tease out some of those connections, but I think that some of this just remains in our blind spot right now. Your mention of the immensity of the “wave after wave” really is probably the true nature of reality (learning, relationships, etc.), which is obscured (reduced, atomized, itemized, objectified) by the mediating lenses of social media and measurement. Your post calls to mind Herbert Mancuse’s assertion that our predominant mode of knowing and being known is operationalism, the notion that we can’t know something unless we have a way of measuring it. As he writes in One-Dimensional Man:

To adopt the operational point of view involves much more than a mere restriction of the sense in which we understand ‘concept,’ but means a far-reaching change in all our habits of thought, in that we shall no longer permit ourselves to use as tools in our thinking concepts of which we cannot give an adequate account in terms of operations.

Although going gradeless alone probably doesn’t constitute the “great refusal” he thought necessary, I think it has allowed us to pull back the curtain on this dominant viewpoint and at least consider the possibility of alternative ways of knowing. Speaking of “wave after wave,” I am officially beyond my depth so I’m going to sign off. Thanks for another thoughtful piece!