I am drowning in mutes: The current Threads experience • Hacker News Board

Re: I am drowning in mutes: The current Threads experience

#171

Post by rchaud » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:08 PM UTC

pdntspa wrote: post #99

rcme wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not commenting on your theory, but what I love about HN is that, for the most part, people comment purely to talk about a topic. There’s very little self promotion. It’s very nice.

Unless you're posting a show HN, in which case every brother and their mother chimes in with "this is nice but here's my cloud service that does a similar thing but better" sideswipes

Yeah but Ask HN is clearly marked. I don't have to click it if I don't want to see self promo stuff. With social networks, you don't get a choice at all, just an endless, unpredictable feed.

Re: I am drowning in mutes: The current Threads experience

#172

Post by hospitalJail » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:13 PM UTC

the-smug-one wrote: post #148

rcme wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I absolutely love the most about HN is that political discourse is generally discouraged. I genuinely believe people who like talking about politics are miserable humans.

> I genuinely believe people who like talking about politics are miserable humans. I dunno, maybe they're just in a place where talking and acting politically is important and useful to them? Perhaps that does make them miserable, if I was a white and rich guy in the US I probably wouldn't have to ever talk about politics.

> if I was a white and rich guy in the US I probably wouldn't have to ever talk about politics.

Semi-rich. (What do you call a 1-10%er? depending on the year since biz owner problems)

Politics affects us sooo much. My wife/biz owner is paid based on how much the government gives her for a specific healthcare treatment. Since 2019 the payments actually went down. Meanwhile the AMA got their physicians raises...

Not to mention, there is an upcoming regulation that affects my physical product...

Oh and even though we are well-off, I still hate paying 30k/yr whenever we give birth to 1 child.

And taxes are insane. You make decent money and the taxes are absurd. Meanwhile if you invest your money and don't do anything, its a mere 15% capital gains tax. Seems like the system prioritizes the 0.01% and actively prohibits the 1-5% from breaking out of it.

Not to mention economics. Interest rates basically decide what we do next, rather than sound strategy. Tariffs changed things back in 2018...

Basically everything is economics on my end. Social policy seems so obviously silly to me, but its easy to say that as a married white dude.

Re: I am drowning in mutes: The current Threads experience

#173

Post by hospitalJail » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:14 PM UTC

matrix_overload wrote: post #93

notjoemama wrote: post #74

Slight twist on dead internet theory. It's not that the internet is full of bots, it's that the internet is full of self promotion. Finding real people to have real conversations is more difficult because so many want your engagement/attention for their "brand". Similar to the Black Mirror episode about social credit score.

Or a dead society theory. The less people need each other for creating value, the more of their communication goes down to attention seeking and identity pandering.

Wow this hits home.

I quit reddit a few times, but kept coming back to ask engineering questions.

Now with chatgpt, I've found myself not using it for engineering, but rather to talk politics that would benefit me.

Re: I am drowning in mutes: The current Threads experience

#174

Post by ddq » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:15 PM UTC

jfengel wrote: post #40

speak_plainly wrote: post #33

I think there is a larger question about the role that celebrities, influencers, meme accounts, thirst trap accounts, or any other account that is incentivized to post play on social media. You immediately saw the energy and positivity drop as these groups arrived to threads. Perhaps it was a mix of egotism, phoniness, and shallow attempts at engagement, but you also saw engagement and follows rise with that group. T…

I'm interested in the contrast between the news producers, who want you to pay for content, and the flood of people desperate to attract your attention without anything of value. It feels like there is a certain amount of worthwhile stuff, despite vast numbers of people seeking ways to create it. You'd think with billions of people trying we'd get more things worth actually looking at. Is is because a lot of people j…

Why should contribution to “the world”, the gargantua of global culture, history, and economy, be the yardstick of worth? I believe almost everyone has something valuable to contribute to their friends, family, neighborhood, or community. We can step away from the chaotic, nebulous global village and focus on the tangible human connections of actual village systems, where “the defining trait of a village is that it’s group of people where the average interaction over time is with people you’ve seen before.”

https://www.marginalia.nu/log/82_killing_community/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36296882

Re: I am drowning in mutes: The current Threads experience

#175

Post by hospitalJail » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:15 PM UTC

rewmie wrote: post #126

lacrimacida wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think attention seeking is either pathological or for making money. The great majority of people continue to need eachother to create value but that is mostly hijacked by venture capital trying to monetize, extract value, etc

> I think attention seeking is either pathological or for making money. For a few decades we've been bombarded with the idea that our career depends mostly on our visibility instead of our qualifications and experience, that our next job will certainly be dictated by our social graph, and that getting ourselves known is key to have a good career. Consequently, we see a whole universe of self-promoting loudmouths gene…

>Perhaps this is a US thing that's leaking.

This is a human thing.

The US culture is less shameless about it.

Re: I am drowning in mutes: The current Threads experience

#176

Post by dboreham » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:16 PM UTC

Oh, not "mutexes".

Re: I am drowning in mutes: The current Threads experience

#177

Post by mcpackieh » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:18 PM UTC

hhh wrote: post #6

Muting like this is in my opinion dumb. Just move on, you don’t need to ‘purge’ their ability to reach your eyes. Threads is brand new, and the home feed is not meant to be only people you follow as of now.

I haven't used threads, but I mute channels on youtube frequently. It only takes literally one second and I never have to scroll past that person's videos again. This is a lot easier than playing the 'manipulate the recommendation algorithm' game.

You know the Gell-Mann Amnesia meme? You realize somebody is full of shit after reading/watching their content, but then you move on and forget what you learned, falling for them again in the future. Well if you block their content, this problem goes away. The block system remember what you might otherwise forget.

Re: I am drowning in mutes: The current Threads experience

#178

Post by araes » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:18 PM UTC

matrix_overload wrote: post #93

notjoemama wrote: post #74

Slight twist on dead internet theory. It's not that the internet is full of bots, it's that the internet is full of self promotion. Finding real people to have real conversations is more difficult because so many want your engagement/attention for their "brand". Similar to the Black Mirror episode about social credit score.

Or a dead society theory. The less people need each other for creating value, the more of their communication goes down to attention seeking and identity pandering.

Its what society promotes. Social media just happens to be very fast and visible. Almost all signalling from society says the most important people are the attention seekers.

In my view, a lot of society only want to win, and don't especially care how. Society signals and says, "those people are winners." They attention seek relentlessly. They say anything, as long as it's said confidently. If there's some scandal or controversy, its probably better, cause everybody wants to watch catfights and trainwrecks anyways (see Trump).

Its like that Goodhart quote everybody likes recently, "when we use a measure to reward performance, we provide an incentive to manipulate the measure." I've talked to music artists recently that were also very blunt about music making these days. "What do you make?" "We make what gets more views on streams."

Its not "they don't need each other for creating value", its that what society has determined "valuable" represents is effectively paradoxical.

Another issue is Productivity Punishment. See this article on "loyal work punishing" [1]. Short abstract. If we have John, in Loyal and Disloyal versions, with reputations for those behaviors. And management wants extra work with no pay. We give the scenario to 1000's of managers and then see who they try to exploit for extra work repeatedly. Uniformly try to get extra work with no pay out of guy with Loyal reputation. Nearly everybody says, "you're Loyal, that means we can exploit you. You're valuable in the sense that a mine is valuable." And if they're punishing Loyal John, then who are they rewarding? "Wanna go play some golf?"

See my previous comment on 'what society has determined "valuable" represents is effectively paradoxical.'

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00221...

Re: I am drowning in mutes: The current Threads experience

#179

Post by hospitalJail » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:21 PM UTC

tiffanyg wrote: post #121

notjoemama wrote: post #74

Slight twist on dead internet theory. It's not that the internet is full of bots, it's that the internet is full of self promotion. Finding real people to have real conversations is more difficult because so many want your engagement/attention for their "brand". Similar to the Black Mirror episode about social credit score.

Big part of it, as far as I can tell. Slight further (and darker) twist: our economic model is dying, but nothing substantive is being done to make appropriate revisions. Essentially: we have excessive, but still increasing, numbers of people with skills and in economic classes / roles that are "tertiary" and beyond. As processes have been made more efficient over time, and the surplus wealth has been accrued in an e…

I don't think the economic model is dying, it seems to be going stronger worldwide. Even with protectionist pushbacks, capitalism seems to come out on-top. (Sure there are issues like regulatory capture, but those are bumps in the road to a free-er market)

> the surplus wealth has been accrued in an ever more concentrated fashion, we increasingly seem to have a sort of "surplus" (oh boy, can it get more Dickensian?) of people in something of a "middle class limbo".

I know you are saying that billionaires have a ton of money. But I see this in the lower class. Every teen and every lower class person has an iphone, a Veblen good. Status seeking people have it even easier than ever to present an image of being rich. This means middle class people can pretend to be even more rich (A middle class person could afford a 250k car given the 8 year loans, or rent one for an IG photoshoot). It has people feeling insecure.

The French revolution was driven by bad food harvests. This is an issue of status, not starvation. 100% of people can't be billionaires.

Not sure what that will mean.

Re: I am drowning in mutes: The current Threads experience

#180

Post by bodge5000 » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:22 PM UTC

pdntspa wrote: post #99

rcme wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not commenting on your theory, but what I love about HN is that, for the most part, people comment purely to talk about a topic. There’s very little self promotion. It’s very nice.

Unless you're posting a show HN, in which case every brother and their mother chimes in with "this is nice but here's my cloud service that does a similar thing but better" sideswipes

I seem to remember someone saying on here that if you're looking for suggestions on something, the best thing to do is put up a half baked version of your own and watch as swarms of people come in to talk about their version.

I guess it tracks as well, in general on the internet I find you get better advice claiming something is the case and then getting corrected than just asking for advice