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The Internet of Beefs

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Re: The Internet of Beefs

#41

Post by wwweston »

omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #31
wwweston wrote: post #13

Q: How would one distinguish between IoB culture and a culture in which there is a meaningful conflict between ideas and values?

The resolution of that conflict. The author posits that the IoB tends to maximize conflict and avoid resolution.

Observing what avenues for possible resolution exist seems like a good place to start and a productive line to pursue.

But it seems to me that there are some conflicts with deeper roots than IoB culture that have gone on much longer than the internet has existed: whether or not people should be able to be understood as property, whether sacred texts are meant to be understood in the same way as scientific descriptions when it comes to understanding cosmology, to what extent and where institutions like markets, or states, or churches should shape our lives.

Violence has been employed and even full-fledged war has emerged over questions like those, so apparently better avenues for resolution were unavailable.

Does that mean those things were also based in beef-first thinking? If so, was everyone on each side of those conflicts equally guilty of beef-first thinking, and that's how war happened?

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#42

Post by danso »

nostromo wrote: post #3

At some point people will realize that Twitter doesn't matter. The sooner that happens the better. For whatever reason, our elites and media are convinced Twitter is very important . Nothing is worse than getting criticized by the peanut gallery. Twitter can end careers, cancel television shows, bring down elected officials. That power quickly turned from, "complain about lost baggage on Twitter and get an airline ti…

It's strange to see someone argue how "Twitter doesn't matter" when it's been a main platform for the world's most powerful man. I use Twitter but don't follow Pres. Trump or find it useful to engage with his tweets, but it's undeniable that he's used it to material effect. [0]

In any case, Twitter is also a very useful platform for the disenfranchised, including those who complain about corporate practices. You come up with a stilted example of "I demand anyone I disagree with be exiled to Elba" and declare that Twitter doesn't already matter, but you're ignoring the many daily situations when companies and organizations actually do respond to tweets, and make explanation or change behavior?

[0]http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/government_says_trump...

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#43

Post by quacker »

kick wrote: post #17

I hesitate to criticize this person, because they're presumably writing for an audience that already knows them, and probably are following for this style of writing, but I have to ask: What is it with think-pieces that state obvious and widespread conclusions while using jargon and jokes to obscure how basic of conclusions they really are? I can't fault people who do this because they're paid by the word and taking…

Agree. Out of context, this takes a ton of effort to understand.

Some examples

- Great Weirding morphs into the Permaweird

- underground Internet that I’ve previously called the CozyWeb

- unflattened Hobbesian honor-society conflict

- Mookcoins are mined by knights through acts of senpai-notice-me

- retreat into what I call waldenponding or to the CozyWeb

Several of these link to other essays which, in turn, use ever more jargon whose definitions are found in yet other source material.

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#44

Post by spappletrap »

virtuous_signal wrote: post #19
Lammy wrote: post #12

This article resonates with me and my experiences online to a startling degree. Specifically: “We are not beefing endlessly because we do not desire peace or because we do not know how to engineer peace. We are beefing because we no longer know who we are, each of us individually, and collectively as a species.” I think we are seeing a genuine lack of strong family, social, and organizational ties among most people,…

This is spot on. I wonder if this exodus has resulted in people trying to make workplaces their "religious community"; but obviously people who happen to be at the same company don't have any reason to agree on important issues. So then the mission becomes trying to make everyone at work care about and agree on .

It's almost like our social bonds are being broken in the same way chemical bonds get broken when we digest food. Like our capitalist society is a higher-order organism that is extracting energy from our societal bonds.

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#45

Post by sebastos »

Lammy wrote: post #12

This article resonates with me and my experiences online to a startling degree. Specifically: “We are not beefing endlessly because we do not desire peace or because we do not know how to engineer peace. We are beefing because we no longer know who we are, each of us individually, and collectively as a species.” I think we are seeing a genuine lack of strong family, social, and organizational ties among most people,…

I read this article a few days ago and said almost exactly the same thing. The mook stuff is fun, but the line you quoted:

>“We are not beefing endlessly because we do not desire peace or because we do not know how to engineer peace. We are beefing because we no longer know who we are, each of us individually, and collectively as a species.”

is the important part of the piece for me, and I'm happy to see you and others singling it out. I really relate to what Rao is saying here. It's a sensation not unlike boredom. Like we're all waiting for something, anything to happen.

A weird example: In 2016, I flew home to PA from Boston specifically to vote against Trump in a place that mattered. I stayed with my parents for the night, and when I came back from the voting booths, the TV was on and it suddenly became clear that the unthinkable was happening - Trump was winning. I vividly remember the sensation that came over me wasn't disappointment. It was excited anticipation, like the way you feel right before you leave for a big vacation. It was like "ok, here's something actually _happening_ that I'm a part of." It's kind of fucked up, but that emotion that washed over me felt "truer" than any principled argument that this guy could do real damage, etc. It felt like suddenly I was living -in- history, rather than beside it.

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#46

Post by itronitron »

Lammy wrote: post #12

This article resonates with me and my experiences online to a startling degree. Specifically: “We are not beefing endlessly because we do not desire peace or because we do not know how to engineer peace. We are beefing because we no longer know who we are, each of us individually, and collectively as a species.” I think we are seeing a genuine lack of strong family, social, and organizational ties among most people,…

I think the lack of strong social ties was also the norm through most of the 20th century (in the US at least) but people didn't have the opportunity to connect with focused interest groups as they do now. Prior to that social ties were enforced through religion and that created it's own problems.

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#48

Post by Lammy »

quacker wrote: post #43
kick wrote: post #17

I hesitate to criticize this person, because they're presumably writing for an audience that already knows them, and probably are following for this style of writing, but I have to ask: What is it with think-pieces that state obvious and widespread conclusions while using jargon and jokes to obscure how basic of conclusions they really are? I can't fault people who do this because they're paid by the word and taking…

Agree. Out of context, this takes a ton of effort to understand. Some examples - Great Weirding morphs into the Permaweird - underground Internet that I’ve previously called the CozyWeb - unflattened Hobbesian honor-society conflict - Mookcoins are mined by knights through acts of senpai-notice-me - retreat into what I call waldenponding or to the CozyWeb Several of these link to other essays which, in turn, use ever…

I understand how it might seem obtuse and undecipherable, but it makes it so much more genuine and heartfelt to me. You can’t fake the experience of somebody who can channel that style of deep 2000s Internet zeitgeist.

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#49

Post by kick »

rngAcc56 wrote: post #22
Lammy wrote: post #12

This article resonates with me and my experiences online to a startling degree. Specifically: “We are not beefing endlessly because we do not desire peace or because we do not know how to engineer peace. We are beefing because we no longer know who we are, each of us individually, and collectively as a species.” I think we are seeing a genuine lack of strong family, social, and organizational ties among most people,…

This is the sad truth about fast and rapidly changing social norms. this lack of identity and community.

What rapid changes have we seen lately? The change in that person's comment has been in the making for over a hundred years. The first thing I personally can think of (in the context of America, as one of the last Western countries to accept GLBT people, not in the context of the wider world, which has been accepting for much longer than America) is American GLBT communes in the 1780s.

Given where we are in GLBT acceptance, it seems like, if anything, this was one of the slowest-changing social norms of all, and one that more than a few generations were pushing for before the ones that are currently here.

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#50

Post by danharaj »

rob74 wrote: post #35
danharaj wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're taking for granted how twitter is used as a global cafe by communities that would otherwise be disjointed and isolated. For every controversial tweet or tweet of drama, theres thousands of enriching conversations happening that could otherwise not occur. I think it's ironic that negative takes on the twitter model tend to be as shallow and polarizing as they claim the platform to be. As for me, I think…

TBH, the 280-character limit (and of course, the attention economy) doesn't really encourage deep and balanced discourse...

"Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte."
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