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The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

newyorker.com

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Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#71

Post by [deleted] »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #47
mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hang on, are you saying that people who drop off of / don't participate in social media aren't taking a stance? It certainly seems like one to me...

Your stance is removing yourself from the conversation. Meanwhile, in this moderate preacher and congregation allegory, the congregation has not left the building, because there is no leader to explain to them why they need to shut the trolls out of their life, so they are sitting ducks to become radicalized. This is what grandparent was saying afaict - moderating voices leaving the conversation capitulate the space…

[deleted]

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#72

Post by bryanrasmussen »

oblio wrote: post #65
ndnxhs wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>place where you can read and comment on casual thoughts and updates from your favorite celebs and companies Sounds like hell

Why?

hell is a place where you actually have favorite companies and engage in conversations with those companies.

it is said that you should never meet your heroes (or I suppose your favorite celebs). Hell is a place where you are exposed to your heroes' casual thoughts.

maybe it would just be hell for me; but a personality change so extreme that I ended up with favorite companies afterwards does sound like the plot to a dystopian novel.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#73

Post by oblio »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #72
oblio wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

hell is a place where you actually have favorite companies and engage in conversations with those companies. it is said that you should never meet your heroes (or I suppose your favorite celebs). Hell is a place where you are exposed to your heroes' casual thoughts. maybe it would just be hell for me; but a personality change so extreme that I ended up with favorite companies afterwards does sound like the plot to a…

People do want to meet their heroes, there's a reason we have terms such as "fans", "groupies", etc.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#74

Post by MrsPeaches »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #39
GW150914 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I connected quite a bit earlier, mostly Usenet and BBS’, and when EFnet came along a lot of that. People like to talk about Eternal September and other depredations of communities, but the truth is that while things functioned more smoothly earlier on, it was always a bunch of people and people more or less act like warring groups of primates. If someone had come back from the future and only told us about the extent…

some of the richest, most powerful and brightest people are actively trying to sweep people away for money. This is a big part of the problem IMO. General loss of moral values. I'm not religious at all, and criticize religions all the time, but one has to admit that when Christianity was the driving force in the western world, there were at least some values that were kind of universally accepted. Yes, there was lots…

Christianity before the reformation was pretty wild with things like the purhase of indugences being common[1].

Point being that Christianity is not some bastion of past hope and glory but is a mutable set of morals that have radically changed in their 2000+ years of exsistance.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence#Late_Medieval_Usage

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#75

Post by BeniBoy »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #7

" you know that you could leave at any time and you know that you will not." I have no problem. The press needs to take more responsibility for this as they are the primary enablers of Twitter. Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate opinion, and often used as the basis for some kind of rally bad straw-man argument the author wants to make. I think Twitter will wane but it won't go a…

It is sometimes even worse than that. My girlfriend used to work at a gouvernement service which specialised in "social media surveillance".

Her job was basically to screenshot outrage reaction from random people on tweeter and sending that to government officials in a newsletter. The idea was for them to feel how the populace was reacting to current events..

The ultimate echo room!

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#76

Post by BeniBoy »

czechdeveloper wrote: post #54
freshwaters wrote: post #38

The most alarming part of the article for me was the reference to climate change and its impending consequences. I I may say I've been living under quite a rock for I hadn't thought of it as mentioned here in this paragraph: " The book’s most fascinating and disturbing chapter is about how the Internet, the primary vector of information about climate change, is increasingly a vector of the problem itself. The world’s…

This actually paralyses me a bit. Nice vacation? All I think is footprint I'm making and how I'm destroying that very beautiful nature I wanted to visit. Start enterprise? I'll just add another CO2 to provide people with service they don't really need to survive. Like this new gadget? I can't buy it, I don't need it and again, just another item in vicious cycle or consumption. But what can I do. I want my enjoyment o…

I feel the same way.

How do you function as an engineer in a world with too much stuff. The most useful thing I can do is not to add to the pile of useless gizmo we covered the world with.

A bit over the top I know, but this is seriously impacting my work as I can't find any pride in what I do.

A very good graphic novel if you are interested in the subject and want to have an overview in the issue (and happen to speak french)[1].

[1]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saison_brune

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#77

Post by antpls »

vlehto wrote: post #62

What bothers me more than anything in that article is superficially smart people pouring all of their concentration onto stupidity of obviously stupid people. With my university educated 25 - 35-year-old social circle, I can easily generate boring conversation about Trump, climate change denialism, right wing activism, situation in Palestine or how facebook is cancer to regular people. 15 years ago my 15-year-old soc…

Stupidness and smartness are two subjective concepts.

In some parts of the world, all individuals have an opinion, a right to express their opinions, and a right to disagree with others' opinions.

What we see on online social networks is a mirror of the inequalities in rights and wealth amongst people.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#78

Post by lmm »

onion2k wrote: post #21
sonnyblarney wrote: post #7

" you know that you could leave at any time and you know that you will not." I have no problem. The press needs to take more responsibility for this as they are the primary enablers of Twitter. Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate opinion, and often used as the basis for some kind of rally bad straw-man argument the author wants to make. I think Twitter will wane but it won't go a…

Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate opinion What is it about tweets that would mean they're not legitimate expressions of opinion? People write them, and publish them, and it'd be a bit unreasonable to assume they have some motive other that stating their opinion, so I don't really understand why you think tweets are something else .

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweapo...

When a journalist looking to craft a story quotes someone they've encountered personally, they had the pick of at most maybe 1000 people they spoke to that day. Likely far fewer - they have a story to finish and limited time. So while their quote will support the narrative they want to push, there's a limit to how far they can distort reality; if a view is rarer than 1/100, they likely won't find the quote they wanted.

Being able to sift 100 million people for the position they want changes that. We're used to assuming anything quoted by a journalist is, if not perfectly representative, then close to representative - a view that, while maybe not the majority, is held by something like that 1/100 or better. Twitter changes that.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#79

Post by Angostura »

eksemplar wrote: post #24
sonnyblarney wrote: post #7

" you know that you could leave at any time and you know that you will not." I have no problem. The press needs to take more responsibility for this as they are the primary enablers of Twitter. Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate opinion, and often used as the basis for some kind of rally bad straw-man argument the author wants to make. I think Twitter will wane but it won't go a…

The only people I know with twitter accounts are journalists. One friend in particular has a hard time understanding how you can function without twitter. I tried using it, like most people, but when you work a job that doesn’t involve trolling the internet for news, it’s really hard to use twitter in any meaningful manner. You’ll post something and a few days later you’ll have time to post a reply. Or you’ll follow…

There are many ways to use Twitter that aren't social media per se and which are useful.

I work with a school and they Tweet out stuff bout what is happening at the school, photos of student activities, etc which parents love. They tweet out thanks to organisations that they are working with or who have come to visit. People working there follow the Twitter accounts of education specialists, regulators, other schools, education department officials etc. All useful stuff.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#80

Post by lmm »

mcrad wrote: post #31
rqs wrote: post #9

> The problem is the business model based on the manipulation of individual behavior. I don't think this is the right target to blame. The much deeper reason is people ARE stupid, while think they are clever and correct. You, me, all the others included. And at the same time, the education once applied to us, failed. Simply put, it's not a technology problem, it's a sociology problem. Around the year 2002, when I was…

So you agree the business model is manipulative, but that the ones being manipulated should be the "target to blame" for their stupidity?

One man's manipulation is another's customer service. The business model is to give you more of what you read, share and reply to, and less of what you don't. I don't see how that's "manipulation" any more than my local coffeeshop selling me good coffee so that I'll keep coming back and buying more coffee from them is "manipulation".

If your social media experience is "awful" I think that's a reflection of you rather than something inherent in the system. My social media experience is pretty positive, because that's what I engage with and respond to.

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