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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

#321

Post by newsbinator »

gameman144 wrote: post #314
buryat wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every time, I would respond with the Navy Seal Copypasta, broken into eight twitter sized parts. Eventually they banned me for this. yeah, people like you should be banned

Is this sarcasm? If not, I'd love to hear the rationale behind this, as to me this seems far less objectionable than lots of things which happen on mainstream Twitter.

I suppose the charitable argument for banning would be: it pollutes Twitter without extending any conversations or bringing anybody joy per se. Basically it's spam.

Certainly on HN that person would/should be banned right away (which is part of the reason HN is the best place on the internet).

But Twitter is a different animal. So are Reddit and 4Chan. Sarcastic copypasta is par for the course.

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

#322

Post by pasquinelli »

d1sxeyes wrote: post #234
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?

Whenever one group is deciding on what rights another group has, it seems inevitable that civility and friendliness will at some point get left behind.

neither group decides anything, they're just a few thousand people talking online.

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

#323

Post by erichocean »

MiddleEndian wrote: post #147

I got my twitter account MyfirstnameMylastname somewhere early in the site's existence, probably around 2009. But never really got the appeal of Twitter so I never used it for anything, I'd check it once every six months or so. I eventually learned I share a name with a tech journalist who is very active on Twitter, and occasionally I would get tagged instead instead of him. Every time, I would respond with the Navy…

LOL, similar for me (2008, @FirstnameLastname) but I got banned early 2020 despite not tweeting.[0] I followed lots of CS people that I now have lost.

At least you got banned for doing something to annoy The Twitter.

[0] I appealed and was told I had evaded a previous ban! Obviously…no, no I didn't.

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

#324

Post by overkill28 »

shireboy wrote: post #123

I'm in that group. I've consciously cut out Facebook and Twitter in part because of the toxic echo chambers they've become. HN is about the only place I'll wade in sometimes because the level of discourse seems higher. A little rabbit trail though: Looking at the graph in the article, I'm wondering if US isn't ripe for a party system change. It's not _always_ been Republican vs Democrat in our history. Both sides are…

The problem is that "first past the post" voting systems inevitably lead to two party dominance.

Change the voting system across a super majority of elections and we will likely get additional parties. But until then third party votes are wasted, and the Republican and Democratic parties are against changing the system

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

#325

Post by pasquinelli »

RC_ITR wrote: post #243
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?

'Let's agree to disagree that you deserve the same rights as me' is just a really hard pill to swallow for LGBTQ+ people. You can choose to hold that opinion if you want, but most LGBTQ+ people and their loved ones will choose not to interact with you as a result.

but actually, they do. thus, social media as it exists today is a bunch of people all trying to own the other side. they live to interact with people they disagree with, the harder the disagreement the better.

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

#326

Post by Finnucane »

pessimizer wrote: post #167
Finnucane wrote: post #35

twtter has about 70 million US users, out of a population of 330 million (does twitter have an age cutoff for users?). One would presume that twitter is like other services, where a small percentage of the user base is producing a larger percentage of the content. So 'most people don't tweet' isn't really that much of a stretch.

The shocking story is that 25% of Americans tweet. As a non-tweeter, I would have assumed that number was more like 1-5%. 25% sounds pretty representative to me. I'm annoyed by how this story seems to be jamming together unrelated things to paint a picture. Are people under the impression that twitter users are big political donors, or that twitter users don't mostly self-identify as independents? Are [capital-I]ndep…

Most independents are not really 'in the middle', however much they may be disillusioned with existing party structures. They tend to lean one way or the other. I'm fairly liberal, but strongly anti-partisan (I've never belonged to a party). I think shrinking party affiliation is a good thing.

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

#327

Post by pasquinelli »

Pxtl wrote: post #265
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?

Texas just unveiled a law that proposes putting parents who support their children's gender transition in jail for child abuse. That means one side thinks the other side is a child abuser, and the other side thinks that bigots are going to throw them in prison for being a supportive parent. This is not something you can be "polite" about.

neither side decided anything though, the governer did. so all the talk aboit it online is just moving air around.

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

#328

Post by dogman144 »

vorpalhex wrote: post #146
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…

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'…

> us to the whole of someone else.

I think this hits on a critical aspect of cyberspace's impact but phrased in a new way for me.

My view has been that it allows individuals to split their personalties and actions into discrete entities based on a blend of the account/platform/information environment and relative cause the account/platform exists in support of.

But another way to look at it is what you've said - the whole person comes out through the various personalities they have online.

There is a niche but famous sci-fi book called True Names* about a similar idea: people have their true name in real life, and a digital nym that's just as valid per the impact of the nym's existence as the name. Operating the balance, and making a choice which to embrace (name vs. nym) is the big question.

The novella was written prior to cloud computing and twitter/reddit/VR, and reading it now with all that tech in place is really something.

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

#329

Post by znpy »

Hello, i'm part of the twitter majority that doesn't tweet, despite being on the platform since ~2008.

Before anybody asks:

- twitter is trash

- you just can't have proper conversations (let alone, discussion) with such limits (140 and now 280 characters)

- there are basically two types of people on twitter

- one is: people doing self-promotion / self-marketing (this includes engineers tweeting about tech stuff and journalists forced to entertain readers)

- the other is: toxic people that have an empty life and need to fill it by having arguments with other people and are going to attack anyone on anything (and make no mistake: these people can be anywhere from the far right to the far left).

- most people's opinion don't matter anyway

- I realized years ago that my life just isn't enriched by social media

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

#330

Post by useragent86 »

anotherman554 wrote: post #257
fantod wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I always read it as "advice" rather than as an insult. Unfortunately, can't seem to find much context for that quote so it's hard to determine what was intended.

Apparently Mark Twain never said it. If the quote stated "If you are ignorant on a topic it's better not to discuss it" that would be advise. (Though less quippy). But I read the quote as essentially saying: "You are so incredibly stupid you should never, ever attempt to speak to another human being ever again, on any conceivable subject". But maybe some people don't take it that way.

> Apparently Mark Twain never said it.

The advice has been written and uttered in various forms for millennia.

> If the quote stated "If you are ignorant on a topic it's better not to discuss it" that would be advise. (Though less quippy).

Your quote would be different advice; it doesn't have the same meaning nor implications.

> But I read the quote as essentially saying: "You are so incredibly stupid you should never, ever attempt to speak to another human being ever again, on any conceivable subject".

How many of your personal experiences are you reading into a context-free aphorism of the ages? Friendly suggestion: you may be making this same mistake when interpreting words in other situations.

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