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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

#511

Post by baltar »

striking wrote: post #152
baltar wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

Simple: no racism, sexism or any other de-humanizing speech based on identity is "clean enough".

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#512

Post by Nr7 »

lhnz wrote: post #164
braythwayt wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you take a moment to look around, you’ll realize that a lot of socially progressive people are saying the exact same thing about Twitter, that the “professionally offended” are becoming too influential. Mind you, they’re talking about what happens when a woman criticizes video game culture and winds up with death threats and snuff porn choking her mentions. I am not saying this to suggest that one “side” or “the o…

A problem I've noticed is that offensive content seems to float to the top. Outside of Twitter I rarely see the kind of hatred I'm about to refer to. For example, the other day Trump RT'd a tweet by an account with a name like 'White Genocide'. I kid you not. Anybody that clicks this is going to find very unpleasant material about 'the end of the white race' including photos of blood-covered Swedish women, etc. Not v…

Interesting. I have a complete opposite experience. I see a lot of disturbing stuff on Facebook but virtually none on Twitter. I guess it just depends on who you follow on these social medias.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#513

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

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…

Quora works this way to some extent, and I find that it works very well.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#514

Post by zby »

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…

In traditional societies public outrage has always been taboo. In our society, when you take into account traditional communication modes, it is not that different. The problem is with electronic communication - which feels like a private channel and we feel dis-inhibited - but it is in fact public. Frustration is an emotion that we easily copy from one another - so when it is expressed publicly it spreads like a chain reaction.

https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/online-conflict-in-the-light-...

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#515

Post by mryan »

marcosdumay wrote: post #189
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...

What?!? Masses usually act like morons. That's a well known phenomenon, old enough to become jokes in movies, and the entire audience (a mass) to get it. When people are acting smartly, they each do different things, and don't form a mass at all.

> The intelligence of that creature known as a crowd is the square root of the number of people in it.

- Terry Pratchett, Jingo

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#516

Post by varjag »

reitanqild wrote: post #270
emp_zealoth wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I personally think it is even more insidious. When I'm on facebook and see some extreme rightwing nutjob upvote ring I see what's going on On HN on a lot of downvoted commets it makes sense, they are poorly written and full of bs. But every time there is a little more political and/or contentious issue on all I see is Political Correctness police mercilessly downvoting and flagkillig anything that dares to even d…

> But every time there is a little more political and/or contentious issue on all I see is Political Correctness police mercilessly downvoting and flagkillig anything that dares to even doubt. Yes. > It is insidious and ironically has exactly the oposite effect (look:most of europe extreme right rise in popularity) Let me add a little detail here for non-Europeans. "Far right" in some western European countries has c…

> "Far right" in some western European countries has come to mean about Obama-ish politics (health insurance for all instead of government-pays-everything-for-everybody like those contries have today.)

Not as far as I see. Far right in Europe today means hostility to immigrants, religious and ethnic minorities, with varying degree of disguise. Far right stands for isolationism and nationwide NIMBY policies.

Far right universally has secessionist sentiment from EU, no exceptions, as this is required to implement their policy. EU legislation founded in humanitarian values stands in the way.

If anything, Trump would be much more at home with Euro far right than Obama.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#517

Post by rblstr »

chippy wrote: post #361
rblstr wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I watched the show, I heard what he said, it's whole tone was off compared to the rest of the night. It really stood out and sounded awfully harsh. Now I'm not going to go to twitter about it, it didn't offend me but it did come across rather mean and crass.

>it didn't offend me Fry's post says that one of the problems is due to people being offended on behalf of other people they have never met. So they are not offended personally (e.g like most people), but they imagine that it would be offensive to someone else (e.g. a minority) and decide to co-opt this imagined offence. It's a curious difference in being offended personally, and defending others via imagining the of…

Well I'm actually curious now what the twitter response was, because as I've expressed here, I think his 'joke' missed the mark and came off harsh, which I found hurtful by proxy I suppose. I wouldn't like to be called that live on television. So I'm assuming most of the response was 'that wasn't very nice I think you should apologise for that remark' and Mr Fry's response is to get annoyed that anyone would get offended by his comment and eventually close his twitter account. I'm sure there were much more extreme remarks but this is twitter, you're going to get chaff with the wheat.

I personally think he was out of line and even with the context of they were friends I think it was a mis-judged joke. I'm not going to go on social media to tell him about it but my opinion of him has certainly changed based on this behaviour.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#518

Post by EvanPlaice »

seren wrote: post #23
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 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…

The US does this by allowing states to have their own local governments and laws.

Forcing everybody into a single, homogeneous culture dictated by a central authority is a recipe for disaster.

People often point to the chaos that takes place in the US government as a 'failure of Democracy'. I'd argue the opposite, it's a side effect of a successful Democracy that supports a wide variety of subcultures with different beliefs/norms.

It should be extremely difficult to establish a universal consensus.

The danger comes when the central authority makes declarative judgements that affect everybody without working out foing due diligence. Some topics can't be addressed globally and therefore should be defined locally or not at all.

Universal laws work best when they're used to guarantee basic human rights and freedoms. Unfortunately, some groups try to manipulate public opinion and garner support by attaching 'human right' to whatever particular pet cause they're trying to force.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#519

Post by rblstr »

letsbereal wrote: post #341
rblstr wrote: post #86

I watched the BAFTAs with my girlfriend last night and I have to say, when Stephen made that comment we both said 'woah that's a bit mean' out loud. Of course, being the general public we're not aware of Mr Fry's relationship with the lady who won the award but from an outside perspective it came across as a bit bullying. I only found out today about the twitter backlash and I don't think it should be lumped in with…

But if she has just been (yet again) nominated as one of the World's or Britain's best costume designers, how is poking fun at her current outfit, by a comedian of all people, "being mean"? Is it not that contrast that makes the joke?

Well just watch the whole thing, from nomination to winning, to award acceptance to Mr Fry taking the stage again and tell me that his comment sounds like a joke. I'm sure he intended it to be a joke and to not be taken seriously, and I'm sure he was sincere when he was calling her the best costume designer in Britain, but the joke didn't work. The comment came across as crass and harsh and mocking of a woman who's just won an award just because she's dressed unconventionally for an awards ceremony.

I think he missed the mark with his 'joke', and as I've said before I'm not personally offended and I'm not going to tell him off publicly on social media but I can't help how his comment felt mean spirited to me and still does despite context of their familiarity.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#520

Post by iBzOtaku »

potatolicious wrote: post #478
iBzOtaku wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your lengthy reply. I'm a CS student and usually attend meetups and workshops, mostly related to startups and entrepreneurship. Nearly everyone there introduces themselves with their names and twitter handles. I have heard this "advice" again and again that if you want to make connections, get active on twitter. How true is it? Is twitter really the place to get in touch with people more so than Faceboo…

Yeah, this is really Twitter's saving grace, and also why as much as it is a raging dumpster fire, it is still valuable. Facebook curbs abuse by basically making sure no one can bug you unless you opt-in to it (friending them), and limiting how viral your posts can go. The flip side of this is that this is a really poor way to talk to people you don't already know. Twitter is the complete opposite - complete stranger…

> the two big reasons why Twitter succeeds (vast reach and free interjection) is precisely why it's also a shithole

The same could be said for 4chan and it's still here after 15 years and shows no signs of going away. Can't we assume that twitter will continue to exist as it is right now? But then again, twitter and 4chan are different platforms. People get hurt on twitter and by 4chan. I guess twitter is going to become the next MySpace.

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