71–80 of 138 posts
This article utterly misrepresents Tumblr as some kind of paradise. It's definitely not. It's as good and bad as Twitter or Facebook or whatever else. I used Tumblr for years, from probably 2008 until 2017. The real problem as I see it is there's a large, vocal, vicious echo-chamber effect at play. A lot of its userbase are quite radical and aggressive in their beliefs, and the reblogging system makes it easy to use…
This is quite similar to Noam Chomsky’s idea of the media requiring “concision”¹, and therefore the media can only express mainstream ideas, since non-mainstream ideas require a little bit of explanation and so cannot be expressed concisely.
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I agree that individual blogs that emit an RSS feed to follow are a great thing. However, most bloggers don’t really have the skills to host their own blog on a dedicated server. So, even if they did avoid Tumblr, they would be relying on another such hosting service like Blogspot or Wordpress.com.
It isn't that hard to install a blog on a shared hosting plan or VPS somewhere. Just find something with CPanel and some sort of auto installer (I think it was called Fantastico or something) and Bob's your uncle. Don't even need to know how FTP works or how to code anything to do that...
Main takeaways, in my view: - Longer form allows for less heated conversation - Allowing randos to emplace their screeds immediately below your post encourages fighting That second point I think bears more exploration. Maybe we shouldn't allow trolls to inject themselves into every conversation, eh? My favorite format for post/discussion is still the blog format, where comments are moderated by the author of the post…
I run a few blogs for a couple of pretty big Authors (not GRRM big, but still top 5 in Amazon for their categories). For years now, I've been suggesting to not have comments on the blog, and just have a link to their email saying something like "Want to discuss this? Send me an Email, I'd love to chat!". Every single one of them prefers this method, and has said it creates a much more valuable conversation 1-on-1 wit…
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Those are all content issues, not format/platform issues. Don't like those? Don't make your social circle out of the people who do them.
There's nothing inherently wrong with the Twitter platform.
This article utterly misrepresents Tumblr as some kind of paradise. It's definitely not. It's as good and bad as Twitter or Facebook or whatever else. I used Tumblr for years, from probably 2008 until 2017. The real problem as I see it is there's a large, vocal, vicious echo-chamber effect at play. A lot of its userbase are quite radical and aggressive in their beliefs, and the reblogging system makes it easy to use…
Ah, you've run into an anti-trans false flag operation. Obviously they need to be banned for posting death threats, but they will be a hydra since their main organisation is not organic and is outside the platform.
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> Neurons mostly produce actionable thoughts. I suppose you think this is true.
Well, no. I thought about editing this after the fact, but couldn't come up with a succinct summary of what neurons do on a high level. So I let this first impulse stand.
Tumblr is guaranteed one-upmanship. The reblogging feature causes escalation. We need to look at the brain, and figure out how neurons work together in networks to produce truth. Then use that model for our social networks.
Category error, surely? Whether or not something is true, it's truthiness or falsiness must exist outside of the brain percieving it, yes? In which case it's a process of recognition or labelling, not creation.
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Those are all content issues, not format/platform issues. Don't like those? Don't make your social circle out of the people who do them.
The medium is the message. Twitter is designed like a platform for harassment, so a lot of the content on Twitter is harassing. Tumblr is designed like a platform for radicalization, so a lot of the content on Tumblr is radicalized. It turns out that your very advice ("don't make your social circle out of the people who [create weird and distateful fringe content]") is the exact same echo-chamber-and-radicalization-m…
... how?