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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

#411

Post by Joeboy »

pyre wrote: post #407
derefr wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered whether you could just have a community that banned outrage. Literally: express outrage, get banned. "Signal boost" someone else's outrage, get banned. It's not welcome within the community. Would this even make sense? Or would this shove so hard against human nature that people would never be able to abide it? (Of course, sometimes you'd be outraged at the community—or its management—and that'd…

> Literally: express outrage, get banned. What is one to do then when someone does something truly outrageous? Ban the entire community?

So outrageous that literally nobody is able to talk calmly about it? I doubt such a thing is possible.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#412

Post by pacifier »

bricemo wrote: post #111

There have been numerous studies showing that outrage is one of the most viral emotions. For whatever reason, seeing something that makes you upset has a very high correlation with people sharing/liking/retweeting. I think this unfortunate fact is what is being born out in social media. Smithsonian had a good short article on it: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-emotion-go... Research shows that amaz…

Ryan Holiday's book "Trust me I'm lying" also really opened my eyes to how a lot of this stuff works.

Says the new HN account. Thanks for the comment Ryan.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#413

Post by pyre »

llamataboot wrote: post #28
malsun wrote: post #17

I left Twitter last year when it looked like the 'professionally offended' were becoming too influential. They didn't affect me as I keep a low profile, but it was like seeing an omen and noticing friends were buying into their hype. The way Twitter is now pandering to this lot with the recently announced Orwellian-style group, and other odd behaviour suggests that they approve of the current momentum. I'm just glad…

By "professionally offended", I assume you mean mostly marginalized people who are the recipients of torrents of abuse/death threats/rape threats/sexual harrassment/etc nearly every day they are active on twitter.

Communities of marginalized people also contain toxic people, unless you want to believe that by "virtue" of being marginalized we can assume a lack of toxicity.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#414

Post by david-given »

kefka wrote: post #333
Kalium wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people believe it's their right to disrupt the communities of others. They call it "activism" or "advocacy" or "defending family values" or whatever the justification du jour is. It's all basically trying to stake a claim to the whole service as the territory of your tribe. I like the idea of reinforcing some separation, but I also fear it may be too late. A lot of people seem to derive joy from attacking th…

> "defending family values" Which is what I hear exclusively regarding Christian activists. They disregard any non-Christians whom have families, or of other value systems.

This is a shibboleth, is it not? A code phrase used by a particular in-group to signal membership of that in-group. (Although frequently they're terms of art to mean certain specific things by that in-group.)

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#415

Post by pyre »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #58
dasil003 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is twofold: low bar to grabbing torches and pitchforks, and a high bar for recognizing someone else's humanity. In the old days you might not agree with your neighbor, but you had to live next to them. Now with the flick of a thumb you can denounce someone's entire existence before breakfast.

It seems to me that in the old days, not that long ago, people literally formed a mob, and often the catalyst was about who got to live next door to who. Even the bad boys of twitter, which goes right up to mobs of people trying to ruin peoples lives with death threats etc doesn't seem quite as bad as bombing someone's church for example.

It seems like it's probably "lower" impact (i.e. no physical bombs) by higher participation (people are more likely to shout on Twitter than actually bomb some place).

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#416

Post by dwaltrip »

bricemo wrote: post #111

There have been numerous studies showing that outrage is one of the most viral emotions. For whatever reason, seeing something that makes you upset has a very high correlation with people sharing/liking/retweeting. I think this unfortunate fact is what is being born out in social media. Smithsonian had a good short article on it: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-emotion-go... Research shows that amaz…

CGP Grey did a great video about this. It's called "This video will make you angry, I highly recommend it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#417

Post by minimuffins »

danharaj wrote: post #403
minimuffins wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a name for the thing where every discussion online eventually becomes about stridently defending or bashing capitalism? SOME PUBLIC FIGURE: I'm leaving twitter, too many trolls. [ 50 pages of discussion ] AGGRIEVED COMMIE: ACTUALLY, capitalism sucks! (As it happens, totally agree with the commie stuff though. All the cheery talk about liberty and voluntarism is idiotic since it acts like primitive accumulati…

> Is there a name for the thing where every discussion online eventually becomes about stridently defending or bashing capitalism? as a filthy commie, i hope it's the reawakening of the global proletariat :3

Like Bob Fitch said, vulgar Marxism explains about 90% of what goes on in the world.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#418

Post by c_c_c »

skybrian wrote: post #235
david-given wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

The problem with downvoting (at least simple versions) is that it allows separate communities to interfere which each others' communications. So, say you have hunters and animal-rights activists. They should be able to talk among themselves on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook without interference from the other side. You don't want one side to start downvoting the other side's posts into oblivion so they can't even talk…

This is off topic (sorry), but I'm an animal rights activist and I have no problem with hunting or hunters. As long as the animal is consumed as food, no problem. Trophy hunters are a different story.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#419

Post by chc »

danharaj wrote: post #136

The presence of justice and the absence of tension are not the same thing. I think a lot of people have lived a large part of their lives completely insulated from the tension that has existed in society over social justice issues for centuries. Now that you can go on Twitter and find out exactly how and why everyone is mad, it looks like comity and mutual respect has evaporated. But really what has happened is that…

> people have been angry for a while and they're angry for reasons

The reason they're mad here, evidently, is that Stephen made a joke to his friend. It doesn't seem like it's Stephen who failed to assume good faith.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#420

Post by kowdermeister »

derefr wrote: post #395
bricemo wrote: post #111

There have been numerous studies showing that outrage is one of the most viral emotions. For whatever reason, seeing something that makes you upset has a very high correlation with people sharing/liking/retweeting. I think this unfortunate fact is what is being born out in social media. Smithsonian had a good short article on it: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-emotion-go... Research shows that amaz…

I've always wondered whether you could just have a community that banned outrage. Literally: express outrage, get banned. "Signal boost" someone else's outrage, get banned. It's not welcome within the community. Would this even make sense? Or would this shove so hard against human nature that people would never be able to abide it? (Of course, sometimes you'd be outraged at the community—or its management—and that'd…

Sounds like a safe place :) Being outraged is still within the range of self expression. You are close to your limits of harming others, but not automatically.
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