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The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

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Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#281

Post by brimble »

tayo42 wrote: post #107
voakbasda wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not possible. People take offense at everything. Or they will tomorrow. That’s the real problem: the standards of “good” and “decent” shift from time to time. What is fine today may get you canceled tomorrow. Thus, it is not safe to put your opinions out there in any form that could come back to bite you. If you want to take that risk, fine. But do not pretend that it is safe.

It really isn't changing that much though. Maybe if you think someone might be offended by what you say in 10 years, maybe don't say it now. It's probably offensive now

Has it slowed down? The change over the last 10 years, and over the 10 before that, was fast. Just watching mass media from the early parts of those two spans should make that clear.

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#282

Post by joe_the_user »

Choosing Twitter in particular as vehicle to say "most people aren't public online" has an odd logic to it.

Twitter has a reputation as one of the most toxic of social networks. Stories of Tweets that exposed someone to tremendous harassment or embarrassment are rife. I make quite a variety of posts and comments online, occassionally publishing article in blog and so-forth. But I avoid Twitter in particular "like the plague", which it seems resemble.

Yet it also seems to be true that Twitter is taken as the standard of "being public" by much of the press. And it seems like this standard comes from both journalists operating by the instant-answer, instant-gratification standard of Twitter and an overall, "you have to be willing to take the heat to be credible" attitude of those in high government, private industry, bureaucracies and so-forth. And this expresses a toxicity to not just Twitter but our entire society.

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#283

Post by psyc »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #232
rektide wrote: post #160

so much salt in the comments. why risk putting yourself in the world? why risk opening your mouth? i dunno, why do you leave your house? a lot of you probably dont really have to. do you not want to engage in the world? are you not curious about other people, interested in heearing them think? does having direct access to incredibly high grade people not excite you for some reason? do you not want to grow and get bet…

> do you not want to engage in the world? are you not curious about other people, interested in heearing them think? Everything seems the same. Everyone is complaining about the same 10 things over and over.

Let's see if I can get to 11:

1. fire in a crowded theater

2. freedom of speech isn't freedom from consequences

3. correlation != causation

4. extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

5. your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins

6. private companies can do what they want

7. success and health imply either rich parents or pure luck

8. Paul Graham is the worst, writes terrible essays, 1-hit-wonder got lucky with viaweb

9. blackball ex-FBers

10. whataboutism, whataboutism, whataboutism, whataboutism, and ... hold up ... yep, whataboutism

11. outlaw proof-of-work

12 (bonus track). FSD == AGI and will take 100 years / never happen

13 (baker's dozen). we live in a society (as a justification for any prohibition du jure)

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#284

Post by phasersout »

jameskilton wrote: post #12

"Never pass up a chance to keep your mouth shut" Words my Dad taught me as I was growing up, but only really sank in the last 5 or so years ago.

goes together with the realization that a lot of discussions are really not that interesting to begin with.

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#285

Post by michaelcampbell »

DEADMEAT wrote: post #195
vorpalhex wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my pet theories for why social media is such a cesspool is that it exposes us to the whole of someone else. If I play boardgames with Sue, that's enough. We meet, enjoy a beer and play some Catan and go our separate ways. That's a fine relationship. If I follow Sue on social media, now I know her politics, religion, sex life, drug usage, opinions on every little thing.. and frankly, I don't care or want to. I'…

What's funny here are that the example issues you listed are exactly the issues that the vast majority of Americans actually do agree on. Those are wedge issues that were carefully crafted by political parties to try and create a division in popular opinion when there isn't one. It's a fairly common political strategy nowadays.

> (abortion, firearms, lgbtq, etc)

> exactly the issues that the vast majority of Americans actually do agree on.

cite?

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#286

Post by dvtrn »

delecti wrote: post #175
toastercat wrote: post #71

I tried being a Twitter user for a bit last year, mostly because a lot of engineers I admire use it to communicate about interesting topics and also their work. But after a while, I realized even they will pollute my feed with politically divisive topics, whether it be from them retweeting something, or liking a tweet, or even entering into the fray themselves -- Twitter will find a way to get me to see it. For a whi…

You can turn off seeing retweets from accounts you follow on a per-account basis, and more people (including yourself, if you're ever curious to go back to Twitter) should more aggressively use the option to make the site far more enjoyable. Lots of accounts are fine to follow on their own, but complete spam-fests if your feed is full of everything they retweet. Just go to their profile, hit the three dots, and then…

Does Twitter respect this toggled option and persist the state?

I’m a little burned out fighting over user preferences across social media that seem to always toggle themselves back to whatever default the platform wants that day.

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#287

Post by gedy »

herbstein wrote: post #239
everdrive wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, you can't "agree to disagree" on LGBTQ rights if you belong to one of those categories. See also pregnant people and abortion rights. Why can’t you? Is it impossible to imagine civil friendly people who simply do not share one’s views on these issues?

It's generally quite hard for a trans person to be civil with a transphobe. Just as it's hard for e.g. black people to be civil with a racist. The bigot will, whether conscious or not, make the life of the minority absolutely terrible. With LGBTQ it is therefore not just a difference of opinion on taxation, or a few percentage points difference in a tariff. For trans people it's about whether the other person even ac…

Issue is usually in defining terms like 'transphobe' - I've encountered folks who define that as someone who wouldn't be willing to sleep with or be attracted to a trans person in the same way as a biological female. I think that's an example of an area people are just going to have to agree to disagree.

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#288

Post by civilized »

joe_the_user wrote: post #282

Choosing Twitter in particular as vehicle to say "most people aren't public online" has an odd logic to it. Twitter has a reputation as one of the most toxic of social networks. Stories of Tweets that exposed someone to tremendous harassment or embarrassment are rife. I make quite a variety of posts and comments online, occassionally publishing article in blog and so-forth. But I avoid Twitter in particular "like the…

I would guess that the representation of public figures on Twitter is pretty high, maybe 70% or more (absolutely no data behind this, just my guess based on personal experience and a subjective definition of "public figure").

That said, the vast majority of those people just use Twitter to announce their various public events, professional accomplishments, media releases, etc.

IMO this is the way to go, unless you enjoy and get something out of the rough-and-tumble of direct Twitter engagement. I used to for a little while, but got over it. It definitely made me a more contentious person, for better and worse.

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#289

Post by colordrops »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #191
colordrops wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got attacked by dozens of people and eventually a twitter account ban for suggesting that free-speech is important and Chappelle's latest special shouldn't be removed from Netflix.

If you got banned by Twitter, it was probably more than merely "suggesting" that free speech was important.

No, this is exactly what happened. My tweet suggested nearly verbatim what I said above, and in response I got verbally abused and insulted by literally dozens of people from the trans community. They scrubbed through my tweet history, replying to old tweets and reporting anything they could. They reported a very old tweet where I promoted pacifism (I'm a pacifist), but it was sarcastic, stating that if we are gonna punch Nazis, we might as well punch mujahideen, ISIS, pro-lifers, Zionists, etc. They took advantage of the fact that sarcasm can be read both ways, and I was banned for promoting violence. Nevertheless I was cancelled due to my comments on free speech.

Choose to believe it or not, that's your business, but this is exactly what happened.

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#290

Post by [deleted] »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #263
DEADMEAT wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's funny here are that the example issues you listed are exactly the issues that the vast majority of Americans actually do agree on. Those are wedge issues that were carefully crafted by political parties to try and create a division in popular opinion when there isn't one. It's a fairly common political strategy nowadays.

You think the vast majority of Americans agree on abortion? I'm pretty sure that, no, they do not. The division is real, not just a political strategy.

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