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The Internet of Beefs

ribbonfarm.com

141–150 of 342 posts

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#141
In my experience, the vast majority of people have triggers that shut down reasonable communication. For instance, economics is a touchy subject on this forum. It takes a great deal of patience to put up with people who may end up wasting a large amount of your time.

In reality, I think the understanding that people should avoid conflict can only exist in periods of increasing consumption to distract from an understanding that societal engagement depends on more than voting. This is why voting does not require an explanation, especially in online forums: to silence minority opinions without actually confronting contradicting ideals.

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#143
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 agree with you, and I too kept thinking "Hmm, that is a really good point." but I found the statement you called out somewhat at odds with the rest of the thesis. What I understood him to say was that his thesis is that culture wars are not about identity and yet this endless conflict is about a lack of identity. So where does identity really fit in there? The economic and political incentives of inciting "beefing"…

"And there is nothing like amping up the inequality of the distribution of wealth"

You're adding a little bit of beef flavor to your comment with that one. Inequality of wealth is something that is increasing. That's a fact. The causes and effects of it have pros and cons that should be debated. People "amping it up" is an assertion that tastes somewhat of beef - but it can be made about both sides.

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#144
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,…

Hello fellow LGBT person! We actually have it a lot better than many marginalized groups -- if you want community, you can find it. You just have to put yourself out there in an offline sense and disabuse yourself of any ideas that you are somehow better than anyone else in the community. Go on a bunch of coffee dates and you'll make plenty of friends. It's not organized per se, but in many cities the queer people al…

I'm also LGBT and I have to guess that

>in many cities the queer people all know each other

is massively untrue based on my own anecdatum. Where I'm from, there is certainly a group who all know each other, who hang out at the gay bars, and who seem to have dated many others in the same group at some point. I have seen this by snooping on instagram or facebook - the same set of faces shows up at any gay event, and they do all seem to know each other.

I assume you're in that kind of community in your city. I'm glad for you. I'm certainly not within my city, although I've had "encounters" with people in that group. Given the significant percentage (3.5% according to google) of LGBT people in the population, I have to believe the vast majority of LGBT people are on the outside of any such group you're describing. Our social life is probably drawn from much more average sources (work, college friends, possibly church) than what you describe.

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#146
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,…

There are places that exhibit this - they’re just not well advertised. Community organizations like the elks lodge and the masons were good examples but not very modern. Eventually these sorts of things will pop up to fill the need.

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#147
post #78
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,…

My theory is that people have replaced religion with politics. They've fallen away from organized religion, but they still need somewhere deep down, the comfort and certainty, (or "faith"), that spiritual belief conferred. Many have found that comfort and certainty in the ideological tenets of the political groups with which they form affinities. As a bonus, people find a sense of belonging that is fairly similar to…

When I went to church as a kid I don't remember being anywhere this much beef between the religious vs non-religious. It's way worse. It's not just politics, it's sports, sexual orientation, gaming, and many more domains.

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#148
What's interesting about this as well is that participating in this economy of beefs makes people deeply unhappy right to the core, and yet they can't seem to step away.

Take any Twitter user with over 20k followers, and almost to a T they appear to be extremely unhappy, depressed, and anxious wrecks who use Twitter to put on a happy face and pretend they're not.

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#149
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Albeit I didn't know about those communes, but I think LGBT acceptance was extremely rapid. The only other change I'm ready to compare it to was slavery and black civil rights: consider that the first state to legalize same sex marriage was Massachusetts in 2004. Over the next 11 years, we reached 37/50 states total, and then in 2015 with the supreme court decision we reach all 50/50. For civil rights: we had slavery…

That's framing things from a legal perspective, but even then there are some key legal steps you're missing (and this isn't conclusive at all): Beating someone based on sexual orientation was recognized as a hate crime first in 1984 at the state level. 1995 and 1998 were when Clinton banned discriminating against gays at the Federal level via Executive Order. 1996 was when Clinton signed DOMA, which is the reason leg…

1992 Colorado passed Amendment 2 which specifically forbade Colorado state, county or municipal governments from recognizing homosexuals as a protected class. The amendment explicitly allowed the government of Colorado to be used to discriminate against gay people.

That's my only quibble with your list, other than Bill Clinton also signed Don't Ask Don't Tell.

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