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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

#341

Post by math_denial »

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.

Should tha baker have the right to refuse baking a gay wedding cake or some group has the power to decide what rights another group has? As a gay man the LGBT groups keep declining in the quality of their fights and, having survived their own usefulness, they invent fights that inevitably clash with others liberties and belief. No, I do need that cake, there are other bakeries.

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

#342

Post by gm »

Among the best mental health decisions of my life is to get rid of Twitter from my everyday life. I still have an account (the only reason to delete it would be as a sign of protect, but I don't care, and Twitter doesn't care that I don't care). I do not visit the site on my own. There's just so much negativity, cruelty, and stupid thoughts. How can anyone post anything insightful, nuanced, and worth reading with such a character limit?

I realized that interesting tweets (or rather, Twitter threads) have a way of finding me through other means. That's the only time I visit Twitter.

I'm ok on missing out on ideas that do not find me through other means. The vomit to caviar ratio on Twitter is way too high.

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

#343

Post by 9wzYQbTYsAIc »

I really wonder whether any of the political establishment even has a clue as to the political makeup of the Independents.

The two-party system keeps dominating all the news cycles, so it’s got to be pretty difficult for all of the marketing analytics companies to keep up with the noise.

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

#344

Post by JSavageOne »

I never understood why Twitter has a character limit. It reduces discussion to tiny empty soundbites. People get around it via "Twitter threads", which are a giant pain in the ass to create (vs. writing a simple post) and navigate through.

Does Twitter just hold on to the character limit for nostalgia purposes? I mean if they really wanted to keep that limit, at the least why not create a separate Twitter without a character limit as an experiment, and see what the demand is?

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

#345

Post by pvarangot »

wpietri wrote: post #247
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…

Quoted post unavailable.

In my experience running joke and pseudonymous Twitter accounts most "respectable engineers" talking about politics on Twitter are not posting about their real problems as much as trying to appeal to signal they belong to a certain culture because it's beneficial for their careers or their public image. There's a lot of exceptions of course but honestly most good engineers will probably be tweeting the interesting political stuff that really affects them from behind an account for say "Signal", "Tor", "the EFF" or whatever and not with their personal name.

I am really into politics and participate in political debate on Slack or Discord servers and private Signal or Telegram groups with an identity that can be traced back to me with zero effort almost daily or weekly. Some are bigger than others. I would never ever do it on Twitter unless I was trying to start a side-gig as a journalist or a cult-leader or whatever. Not caring about what people on Twitter say about politics is far from not caring about politics at all.

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

#346

Post by Ansil849 »

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'…

> 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'm happy just playing some Catan once in a while.

> Historically you didn't need to know everything about everyone. Your friends will always have opinions or lifestyles you will find disagreeable - that is the nature of human existence.

This hits the nail on the head perfectly, IMHO. Unfortunately, even the activities you describe have become politicized. For example, Settlers of Catan rebranding to just Catan.

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

#347

Post by 9wzYQbTYsAIc »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #32
Miner49er wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably for the same reasons you just posted this comment.

But I only post here because this community is worth interacting with. Twitter's community is the entire world. (as far as I know)

According to the article, Twitter only makes up 25% of America, let alone the world.

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

#348

Post by sjmm1989 »

madrox wrote: post #273
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'…

My favorite theory comes from an HN comment describing it as the "toaster fucker problem." I'd attempt to re-explain it, but the original comment is great (and easy to search for. Not many mentions of the phrase "toaster fucker" on HN.) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25667362

My roommate basically put it in his project for university as a similar theory to Toaster Fucker. I too have a personal similar theory where I just refer to the 'village idiot'.

They all basically revolve around one truth I think.

The internet doesn't radicalize people. People radicalize people. The internet is just full of people who are already radicalized in their daily life, and they are using the internet to radicalize others. Whether it be for the left, right, or even some weird alt thing.

Penny Arcade even has their own comic strip theory called "G.I.F.T of the Internet".

Theirs is more simplistic though in that it stipulates that the anonymity of the net is the problem insofar that it gives people a fake sense of security to be who they really are on the inside. For better or worse. Usually worse.

I think all of our ideas on the matter basically resonate on the same singular issue. That people were already nuts to begin with. The internet is just making easier to identify which are fucking screwballs and ... the rest.

But then that poses a new problem. Mob mentality even of righteous people is still just as toxic as the mob mentality of fucking idiots.

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

#349

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

vorpalhex wrote: post #267
herbstein wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Let's throw in a more complex example. Is someone who identifies as a "trap" trans? Is that self identification trans-phobic? Is it a valid self identity? What if someone identifies as a "trap" but not trans?

I've never heard of anyone identifying as a "trap" unironically. This sounds like a straw man.

I would equate a trans woman calling themselves a trap to being the same as a black person calling themselves the N word. It's a way of taking back a slur.

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

#350

Post by jimkleiber »

thrwawy283 wrote: post #274
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'…

This is an interesting idea: I wish you could Follow a combination of a person and the #topic they post to. You could choose to follow "all of" a person, but more realistically the default behavior would be to attach to posts from a particular topic that person is generating. This would be similar to your example of playing a game of Catan with someone and enjoying just that limited bandwidth you have with them. Know…

I thought I saw someone proposing that Twitter do something like this, basically allowing sub-accounts. For example, I speak some Spanish and would love to tweet in Spanish, but those who follow me and don't speak Spanish may feel annoyed for it to pop up all the time. So I'd love to have sub-accounts, where I have my main account and people can choose which sub-accounts to follow.

I'd love the same for a podcast. I don't want to create 5 separate podcast channels, I want to have a main one and then have sub-channels that people can subscribe to.

It doesn't have to be this structure, it can be another way to allow us to have more power over the feed that we're seeing, giving us filter/search/sort/algorithm options.

So, in short, I love your suggestion and wish the next generation of social network implements it in some shape, whether that be from the incumbents or new ones.

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