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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

#151

Post by spatulan »

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…

That sounds horrible. I don't want the internet to become a giant echo chamber. I want to hear differing views from time to time, because I might be wrong.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#152

Post by striking »

baltar wrote: post #104
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…

"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 " This sort of dreck was as despicable then as it is now, off- or online. If people posting such things now leave Twitter, I'm all for it. They can go back to the stone age where they belong - oh wait, even then most people were likely…

It seems you'll get your wish soon enough, at least with respects to Twitter.

But how clean is clean enough?

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#153

Post by nly »

zkhalique wrote: post #81
jgrahamc wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

It's exceptionally rare to read the transcript of a conversation or story and to physically burst out laughing. A huge part of humour is in the context ("you had to be there") and the delivery.

The current use of "lol" and "lmao" just makes a whole lot more sense than their hijacked and literal definition... it's about replacing what would normally be subtle visual cues and gestures, which signal acknowledgement and/or encouragement, with something that is universally understood.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#154

Post by david-given »

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…

My theory is that it's because social media systems encourage and publicise agreement, while discouraging and hiding disagreement. This leads to a huge positive feedback effect on any meme that catches even a tiny number of people's attention, no matter how crazy.

On twitter, you signify agreement by retweeting; this takes seconds and permanently adds to the tweet's score. But to disagree, I have to write a message of my own. It'll show up in the conversation feed but doesn't affect the original message. And each disagreement stands alone, so they'll never accumulate a high score, so even the people who see them won't consider them as important as the original message.

Let's say somebody posts a Twitter message about, oh, how they've just tried cleaning their ear using trained caterpillars. It gets passed around a bit among the ear-canal-caterpillar-cleaning community, all five of them. But then a friend-of-a-friend-of-an-acquaintance retweets it, and suddenly thousands of people see it, and it's off-the-wall enough that a small percentage of them pass it on.

Suddenly it's got thousands of retweets. It's become a movement. Bloggers write about it, a few mainstream journalists comment on it, and abruptly Caterpillar-Facilitated Ear-canal Maintainance is a thing.

Meanwhile have written a tweet about how this is a really crazy idea and don't do it, seriously, it's just dumb. It'll get passed on a bit among my friends and will peter out.

It's not just Twitter; most social media networks do this.

Maybe we just need a 'dislike' button along with the 'like' button. It'd certainly be an interesting experiment.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#155

Post by [deleted] »

chasing wrote: post #134
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…

> There is no friendly way to say it, the mass market are morons... I hate this super-condescending attitude. Even if you do happen to be smarter than the average bear (which, don't pat yourself on the back yet: there may be things these "morons" know way more about than you do), it's still asshole-ish to assume that everyone else just be completely dismissed...

[deleted]

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#156

Post by dwrs »

it says right here in the HN approach to comments that "HN is an experiment. As a rule, a community site that becomes popular will decline in quality. Our hypothesis is that this is not inevitable—that by making a conscious effort to resist decline, we can keep it from happening." the question therein is where do we go now, and to which degree can we avoid twitter and other sites beyond their ostensible utility

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#157

Post by toomuchtodo »

chasing wrote: post #134
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…

> There is no friendly way to say it, the mass market are morons... I hate this super-condescending attitude. Even if you do happen to be smarter than the average bear (which, don't pat yourself on the back yet: there may be things these "morons" know way more about than you do), it's still asshole-ish to assume that everyone else just be completely dismissed...

> Even if you do happen to be smarter than the average bear

> it's still asshole-ish to assume that everyone else just be completely dismissed...

Devil's advocate: If you're above average intelligence, you're smarter than a majority of the populace by definition. Why would you not then dismiss the thoughts and ideas of those less educated?

One person's condescension is another person's logic.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#158

Post by david-given »

carsongross wrote: post #15

I'm a bit monomaniacal about this, but the current online culture wars (and the previous offline culture wars) make me wish that secession didn't have such a bad name. It is obvious that large groups of people have irreconcilable differences of opinion on matters of free speech, sexuality, gun ownership and so on. It is a shame that rather than a firm handshake and friendly wave goodbye, we will end up with a totalit…

I came up with a joke a few years ago, which is becoming less and less funny as time passes:

Everyone's an asshole. It's just that you're usually surrounded by people who are the same kind of asshole as you are. The internet makes it trivially easy for assholes of opposing kinds to get into contact with each other, thus guaranteeing maximum offense.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#160

Post by jff »

fche wrote: post #113
hnlogics wrote: post #90

It is never acceptable to attack and use violence against other individuals. The fact that you perceive them as making money from their marginalization does not make it acceptable for you and others to attack them to send death threats, and to engage in other horrific and violent behavior. It is reprehensible and disgusting that you think your hatred and bigotry is acceptable... because somebody might've made money.…

"It is never acceptable to attack and use violence against other individuals." We're talking about electronic communications here, not meatspace.

Ah, but you see, if you redefine violence to include "anything I dislike"...
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