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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

#541

Post by [deleted] »

hjanssen wrote: post #421
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…

Im not sure that the apolitical stance many people believe to hold is such an apolitical stance. In fact, living in any state and taking part in any kind of society is political in and of itself. You do not get to take part in any community without having a political stance - being part of a community is communicating that you agree with the morals and values of the community and wilfully accept them - thats the basi…

[deleted]

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

#542

Post by Fogest »

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'…

I've had people show me things at work on things like reddit and I always try and avoid looking at their username simply because I don't want to be tempted to check what kinds of things they post. I've seen co-workers reddit accounts before and it is almost always surprising and feels too personal. I feel like I am learning things I don't care or need to know about a coworker.

I totally agree that social media has made this a bigger issue than it used to be before social media. It also doesn't help that these social media sites are likely trying to feed you some intentionally controversial content as fear/anger can keep you engaged. Facebook showing a coworkers controversial political opinion on a matter right at the top of your feed feels intentional.

I've also found social media, as well as the mass media constantly bombards you with the idea that you must pick a "side". If someone is anti-immigration, pro-abortion, pro firearms, and pro lgbtq you'd think it would make some of these online peoples heads explode. It's like they think it's not possible to have opinions and beliefs that align with both political "sides". The division that social media and mass media companies push is what I find is one of the most toxic things in the world currently. Trying to profit off creating hatred. It's pretty disgusting.

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

#543

Post by progman32 »

mecha_ghidorah wrote: post #500
ratww wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit of a strawman. That's not transphobic. Nobody is obligated to have sex with anyone, trans or cis, period. That's not even up for discussion. If one, however, goes out of their way to harass transexual people when stating this preference, then yeah, it's a bit transphobic. Intention matters.

I did just literally get into an argument with an acquaintance last week because she was insisting that it was not an ok or valid thing for someone to not want to date trans women as a category if they were ok with dating women. So I wouldn't call it a strawman. I'd say it is a probably a minority position but it is a genuinely held one

That's an interesting take. Do you recall their points?

I wonder what their position is towards someone who prefers trans people.

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

#544

Post by [deleted] »

useragent86 wrote: post #330
anotherman554 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 neve…

[deleted]

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

#546

Post by dredmorbius »

thenerdhead wrote: post #73

I always think of the ratio of 90% consume, 9% contribute, and 1% create. This is a phenomenon on wikipedia, GitHub, twitter, and other places. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule The big question is...what side do you want to be on?

On larger platforms, the ratio is probably far closer to 90%, 9.85%, 0.15%.

I've seen this ratio at Google+[1] and again on a recently-shuttered Diaspora instance (520 MUAs of 350k total profiles).

There's a very strong power law between the number of presentations of content and the number of accounts reaching that level.

Facebook sees ~5 billion-with-a-b "pieces" of content (I'm presuming these are posts, comments, images, or videos, though given other engagement-inflation, might and quite possibly do also include likes or reshares), per day. The top daily shares ... are typically in the millions-to-tens-of-millions range.[2] This is also typical of any winner-takes-all metric and follows from the inherent limits of population attention and time. Social media seems to occupy ~45 minutes/day for many people, and if you start dividing out 2,700 seconds among messages, there are only so many messages a typical person can read or view in a day: 10 is 270s (4.5 minutes) each, 100 is 27 seconds, 1,000 is 2.7 seconds. I suspect for most people, the number is in the 10--50 range.

It's not so much whether or not you want to be a producer or consumer. It's whether or not the channel is providing relevant, useful, accurate, and actionable information. For the most part, social media probably doesn't.

________________________________

Notes:

1. See: https://blogs.perficient.com/2015/04/14/real-numbers-for-the... That's based on a 500k+ true random sample of profiles, and is based on my own earlier work based on 50k+ randomly-sampled profiles.

2. There are a few "most popular on Facebook" sites which track the top shares for a given day. I'm not aware of specific systematic tracking over time, though that of course all but certainly exists.

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

#547

Post by dredmorbius »

9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote: post #343

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.

Seeing like a state ... turns out to be difficult.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State

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

#548

Post by deanCommie »

pvarangot wrote: post #513
LAC-Tech wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I care about my public image only so far as how I can use it to help others. Letting everyone know this is probably really good for your public image. You sound so selfless. It's pretty sad to realize that there are people who go through life only doing things based on how what they do will benefit their image or perception by others. Some people have the the ability to do it subconsciously, perhaps without even real…

> Some people have the the ability to do it subconsciously, perhaps without even realising it. As an LGBT latino software developer thanks for this. I was not even thinking about "diversity issue" when I wrote the the grandparent post but I'm not surprised it's the first thing that came up from a "Twitter Star".

No post body was provided.

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

#549

Post by MiddleEndian »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #433
manmal wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there something else to learn from this story besides not insulting people?

Yeah, actually a fundamental rule of comedy: always get the audience on your side. If they don't know you, aren't rooting for you, or think you're on the "wrong side", they will misinterpret your joke as a real insult. Comedians directly insult people all the time and get laughs, but only because the audience believes they're on the same side as the comedian.

True, but that's assuming my audience is the people I'm replying to!

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

#550

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

vorpalhex wrote: post #363
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This was such a hot debate on a set of subreddits it caused a collapse of a huge subreddit, the ousting of a powermod, and several spinoff subreddits. Admittedly it was a few years ago, but it was an interesting fight to watch from the sidelines. My preference here is to refer to people however they want to be referred to. When I adopted that view, I thought it was very safe but it has actually landed me in hot water…

A person referring to themselves using a common slur does not mean they want others to refer to them as that.
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