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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

#191

Post by richmarr »

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…

Personally I don't think there's any such thing as 'irreconcilable differences'. The idea of secession in that instance kinda scares me because it leaves you with a new foriegn nation on your doorstep with the exact same set of 'irreconcilable' differences and nobody to moderate them.

Seemingly irreconcilable differences (e.g. US rep/dem, Israel/Palestine) are created by the narratives we're fed & let fester. Sure, narratives are elusive and sticky, but they're just narratives.

In the past that's sometimes taken a global-scale event; like how the horrors of the Nazis swept away any remaining support for eugenics. Other times it's been smaller; like how Stetson Kennedy undermined support for the KKK by exposing its schoolboy ritualism to ridicule in a radio show.

Change the narrative, maybe starting with your own. Whoever the "other side" are; humanise them, don't demonise them. Be the bigger person. Admit that your own perspective on things isn't 100% bulletproof (because nobody's is).

Of course, if you disagree and want to win the argument you could always bring up Trump... I don't have an answer to that.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#192

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

sdenton4 wrote: post #73
honksillet wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit might be the perfect analogy given the propensity for censorship demonstrated both by mods and the corporate folks.

There's two reasons for strong moderation (sometimes called 'censorship' by people who don't like it) on the internet: Jackasses creating an unsafe space for other parts of the community, and making a space safe for advertisers. The first reason comes down to having a choice between taking action against jackasses to allow groups like "women" and to have a place on your site. This is pretty damn important, and someth…

Another reason for "censorship", particularly on Reddit (where the aim goes against the broader cultural default of the site) is to prevent discussions from being overrun by memes and other "low-effort" posts. Most /r/science posts that make the front page end up with a lot of deleted comments, for example.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#193

Post by chris_wot »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #96
dustingetz wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The follower system on twitter already sorts content like that, it's just the retweet system amplifies certain types of content so strongly that it drowns out other types. Amongst other glaring problems, like driving an evil feedback loop that makes twitter money by making everyone angry.

Many times online I see a friend who is justifiably upset. Let's say they like to put their dog in a sweater and somebody said it was animal abuse. Now I could care less about dogs in sweaters, but I like my friend. I hear them and I want them to know that they have been heard. So I "like" the content. When you've only got 1,000 or so followers, no big deal. But if you're around 50 or 100K? statistically you're going…

The other day my friend's pet died, and they put a status update on Facebook. Blow me down if they didn't get 5 sympathetic likes!

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#194

Post by smithkl42 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #157
chasing wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The obvious answer: because if you're wise, you realize that raw intelligence is a fairly small part of what makes someone worth listening to on a given question. On most questions of morals or politics, I'd rather listen to someone of average intelligence, but with a humble, good and patient character, than an MIT grad who's convinced they know everything.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#195

Post by im3w1l »

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 seems like there is a general trend that very strong expressions get watered down over time, and we invent new expressions to replace them.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#196

Post by chris_wot »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #177
GhotiFish wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because people don't exist on a continuum of smart and dumb.

I'm surprised to hear that, considering the story on HN the other day about how educated woman don't marry down. It seems a non-insignificant number of people want to partner with and befriend those of the same or higher intelligence. Anecdotally, I gravitate towards above average intelligence people for friendships and romantic relationships. http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/07/06/has-being-si...

Percieved same or higher intelligence.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#197

Post by jcoffland »

organsnyder wrote: post #146
Paul-ish wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

FB also decides who your real friends are. You normally only see posts from the friends you interact with most.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#198

Post by bshimmin »

tomku wrote: post #88
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.

People on social media reacted stupidly, but then he tried to engage the horde and prove that they were wrong to be offended by retweeting dozens (hundreds?) of people who backed him up. That was a strategy that could not result in anything but defeat and misery. He worked himself up into a rage trying to change the internet's mind, and when he failed, he took his ball and went home. I was and still am a fan of his,…

I agree with this. I like Stephen Fry too, but I think his public persona of being this loveable gentleman of the people - entertaining, eccentric, erudite - quite often clashes with his tendency to make either silly or spiteful remarks in public; and the difference between Fry and the people who make their living from saying horrible things (eg. comedians in Britain like Jimmy Carr or Frankie Boyle) is that 1) there's an expectation that these people will say horrible things periodically; and 2) they can take the abuse when it's dished back to them.

(I personally very much enjoy James Blunt's approach to Twitter.)

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#199

Post by bpatrianakos »

AJ007 wrote: post #102
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 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…

I couldn't agree more about the mass market being morons. It's hard to say and not often said so bluntly in public though. Not because it's untrue but because the person saying it could be afraid they might be a part of that group of morons. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a moron call everyone else morons. So is there ever any way to know when "the mass market are morons" means what it says literally or when it's a stand-in for "most people aren't agreeing with my strongly held beliefs".

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#200

Post by Niten »

haberman wrote: post #82

Sanctimonious indignation is toxic. But to be fair, people post really offensive stuff too, and often it's well-meaning people who don't even seem to realize what they are doing. The best example I've seen lately is Richard Dawkins, who posted a video I won't link to where an Islamist and a Feminist are singing a song together. The video makes a real point that isn't intrinsically offensive. But the highly caricature…

I think you've recognized something important here, which is that offense is generally a subjective matter. In such cases an clear-headed statement of objection may be warranted, but dogpiling and outright bullying is never excusable.
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