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Too many people have peed in the pool

stephenfry.com

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Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#141

Post by bpd1069 »

jgrahamc wrote: post #91
zkhalique wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emojis are fine. But I remember the first times I started seeing "LOL" and "ROTFLMAO". And I realized that the person wasn't really laughing, but they were quietly typing that on the keyboard. If you think about it, before AIM and online chat (way before texting), people hardly ever faked their emotions so much. I mean, you could fake a small laugh, but you didn't outright say that you're rolling on the floor laughin…

If you think about it, before AIM and online chat (way before texting), people hardly ever faked their emotions so much In the late 1980s terms like LOL were used on BBSes and on Usenet. Perhaps you just aren't old enough to remember that? :-)

also irc (EFNet) made use of emoticons, and 'lol's. The longest I remember wa ROTFLMAOASTC.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#142

Post by madaxe_again »

jgrahamc wrote: post #63
jonstokes wrote: post #38

I have a theory about FB and Twitter -- or maybe more of an observation. Anyway, back in the stone age, people had bumper stickers with little slogans on them. And in the break rooms of various places of work, there was always a bulletin board an on a corner of it there was always some faded-from-to-many-xeroxes bit of humor/racism/sports fandom/sexism/dirty joke or other us-vs.-them thing on it that people would loo…

It's like the way that millennials communicate with emoji I'm GenX and not a millennial. I don't see anything wrong with using some emoji as part of my language. I already speak a language (English) which is some bastard child of French, German, Dutch, Arabic, etc. I'm happy to add a (poo emoji) when it's appropriate.

Indeed. I actually find the fact that we've come full circle and are going back to ideograms rather fascinating.

If anything, see Japanese - Kanji are essentially ancient Chinese emoticons, which succinctly express common notions which would be far more expansive in katakana or hiragana.

I can't read the latter, but I can read Kanji - which gets me by in both China and Japan.

Emoticons are even more universal.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#143

Post by FussyZeus »

bshimmin wrote: post #44

Probably worth noting as a bit of context to this that Fry was presenting the BAFTA awards last night, said something offensive about someone who was a friend of his (but the public wouldn't necessarily have known that), and people on social media reacted badly.

Is there anything social media people don't react badly too? Facebook/Twitter just move from one social snafu to the next, facts be damned, we're offended over here!

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#145

Post by danharaj »

cousin_it wrote: post #132
danharaj wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The status quo is always political. There is no apolitical center.

Sure, we can't have an apolitical space. But we can have an activism-free space, and that's exactly what I want.

so, a safe space from activism? :p

i think your desire is reasonable. however, i think it would be unreasonable to demand it of something as public and global as Twitter.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#146

Post by organsnyder »

Paul-ish wrote: post #116
seren wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if it will prevail in the end, but I think that Reddit approach by splitting the community in small subgroups/communities has a better chance to last in the long run. Of course, you'll create feuds between communities but at least it is somewhat confined and not always spilling in the common public space. Unfortunately it also greatly increases the echo chamber / filter bubble but it seems you can not ha…

I have been waiting a long time for someone to use lessons learned from recommender systems to build a social media site like reddit, but rather than having users group themselves up, they would be shown posts algorithmically, based on how they have voted in the past. For example, if I vote for a lot of pro EFF posts, maybe I will see more posts about free software or something like that. This also allows the site to…

Isn't that basically how Facebook's algorithms work? The only difference is that it restricts the pool of possible content to your list of "friends".

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#147

Post by typon »

jonstokes wrote: post #38

I have a theory about FB and Twitter -- or maybe more of an observation. Anyway, back in the stone age, people had bumper stickers with little slogans on them. And in the break rooms of various places of work, there was always a bulletin board an on a corner of it there was always some faded-from-to-many-xeroxes bit of humor/racism/sports fandom/sexism/dirty joke or other us-vs.-them thing on it that people would loo…

If you doubt the immense amount of creativity in the language and slang used by teenagers, you need to take a Linguistics 101 and you'll find plenty of evidence.

There is something to be said about the oversharing effects of social media on human psyche, but this old school yearning for a better intellectual past is bullshit.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#148

Post by jsmthrowaway »

Kiro wrote: post #43
moron4hire wrote: post #31

The problem isn't that this is a Twitter problem. It's that this is a cultural problem. People kinda suck. People kinda suck a lot. I was having a conversation with a friend at lunch, when I started putting ketchup on my hotdog. He looked at me and incredulously questioned, "really? What are you, like, 8 years old?" I had never even heard of the idea that "only children put ketchup on a hotdog." Yet here was someone…

Where are you from? I'm very surprised anyone would even consider eating hotdog without ketchup so it must be a cultural thing.

It's a capital crime in Chicago, if you do it in public.

That's where the joking about it comes from; ketchup on hot dogs is one of those things that people take jestingly serious with tongue firmly planted in cheek at all times. Nobody actually cares, nobody's actually going to kill you in Chicago despite my joke, but people interpret the joshing as caring and demeaning because nobody can actually take a joke any more, as evidenced by GP (and which is far more often the problem). And yet here we are, lamenting the downfall of society.

I can't even fathom a world where someone giving a friend crap over lunch for their choice of condiment is enough to start a Serious Conversation about Culture. That's funny in itself, honestly, but I don't want to live in that world. That's why I eschew social media altogether.

I remember when I was a boy, laughing was something to be celebrated, because sharing something funny with your friends was one of the high points of life. Actually cutting loose and laughing with your friends about the stupidest things is easily one of the best feelings you can experience, but now every time I genuinely laugh at something that I find funny, I often have to look around and be worried about who saw me do it. It's genuinely depressing, the older I get. I don't even have humor any more. Now I just have liquor.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#149

Post by sesutton »

[deleted] wrote: post #125
AJ007 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no friendly way to say it, the mass market are morons. It might be derogatory jokes, but this can also include things like spreading urban legends which were debunked four decades ago. Just like Usenet and countless other online communities, what starts a a small group of fairly privileged and elite eventually degrades in to garbage as the reach increases. This is not so much an overall size issue but a rela…

[deleted]

This is an amusing comment because that's not how averages work.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#150

Post by typon »

[deleted] wrote: post #125
AJ007 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no friendly way to say it, the mass market are morons. It might be derogatory jokes, but this can also include things like spreading urban legends which were debunked four decades ago. Just like Usenet and countless other online communities, what starts a a small group of fairly privileged and elite eventually degrades in to garbage as the reach increases. This is not so much an overall size issue but a rela…

[deleted]

Yea and I'm sure none of them are on this thread. The self congratulatory opinions in this thread are super cringe worthy.
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