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Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

theatlantic.com

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Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#71

Post by gglitch »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #29

> "Consider TikTok....Try to imagine which posts might have been most popular on the site this year. Perhaps a dispatch from the Middle East....Or maybe something lighter, like a Gen Z dance trend....Well, no: According to TikTok’s year-end report, the most popular videos in the U.S.—clips...aren’t topical at all. They include makeup tutorials, food ASMR, a woman showing off a huge house cat, and a guy spray-painting…

>> makeup tutorials, food ASMR, a woman showing off a huge house cat, and a guy spray-painting his ceiling to look like Iron Man

> so the normies finally won.

I think I get your general point and I think I agree with it; but I have to point out that when I compare "food ASMR" and "a guy spray-painting his ceiling to look like Iron Man," to what was broadcast back when we only had three channels, it makes me think the "normies," have either most definitely not won, or that I'm way, way out of touch on what "normal," is now.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#72

Post by zo1 »

Retr0id wrote: post #49
the_doctah wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Death of Twitter" why are people so deluded and so eager for Twitter to fail? You were a big fan of the previous regime's censorship?

"Twitter Has Complied With Almost Every Government Request For Censorship Since Musk Took Over, Report Finds" - https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/27/tw...

Call me when we've had a verified audit and report and detailed breakdown of all censorship. I want database dumps, SQL statements, verifiable guids and URLs, etc. Until then that's just a grey blob of hearsay and may very well be "true" but doesn't represent reality. We need to see the raw data.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#73

Post by keybored »

haswell wrote: post #60
keybored wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been telling sci-fi stories about society evolving/devolving into people locked into their individual pleasure boxes for decades, friend.

And for the first time in the history of those stories, reality is extremely close to that fiction. The reasons those stories are told over and over is because we're highly susceptible to things that use our pleasure centers in ways that lead to maladaptive outcomes. You could reframe this to say we've collectively warned ourselves about this for decades, and we're still plunging headlong towards this future despite…

> The reasons those stories are told over and over is because we're highly susceptible to things that use our pleasure centers in ways that lead to maladaptive outcomes.

That’s an outdated and primitive view. People who are rich aren’t fat simply because they have easier access to food. Non-illicit addictions (like smoking) don’t happen to people uniformly simply because nicotine is at the same supermarket that everyone goes to. If people are about to “amuse themselves to death” then that is because they are leading an unbalanced life in some way, like being overworked or not having their needs met (like “social needs”, which I hear is a thing (cannot confirm or disconfirm)).

And if a lot of people have those problems? Yeah, then it becomes a societal problem.

But to talk about that you would have to look beyond the symptoms. But I guess worrying about Zappaesque sex robots is more fun.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#74

Post by JohnMakin »

JohnFen wrote: post #62
JohnMakin wrote: post #8

> The very idea of popularity is up for debate: Is that trend really viral? Did everyone see that post, or is it just my little corner of the internet? This is exactly it. Consider a scenario that's likely fairly common given experiments I've done in the last several years. Say a site people still use to talk to/keep in touch with friends sometimes like IG/FB decides a user is "toxic" and either shadowbans them, or s…

> It'd look like their friends were ignoring them, weren't interested in them, etc., possibly leading to depression If my friends seemed to be ignoring my tweets, I'd certainly ask them what's up with that through a different mechanism (in person, through texting, whatever). If the only interaction I have with a person is through Twitter, then it's a real stretch to call them "friends" in the first place.

Ok, sure, but the parent comment doesn't really mention twitter at all. It's entirely normal for friends to communicate mostly via IG/FB, especially when separated by distance.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#75

Post by s1artibartfast »

lloydatkinson wrote: post #26

Reddit is a good way of knowing

Reddit is a good way to know what is happening on Reddit, but this feeds into the point.

there are lots of things happening online but off reddit, and also lots of people that actively don't care what is happening on Reddit.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#76

Post by hotpotamus »

Pxtl wrote: post #28

The paywall on the article is ironic since the collapse of free reputable news is likely another aspect of that. I keep hoping the Fediverse will win. After what's happened to Twitter and Reddit and Facebook, it seems self-evident that our main means of public discourse needs to be something decentralized. But the Fediverse is struggling. UX is a disaster, every instance admin is holding on by their fingernails to st…

Why would reputable news be free? Would you expect anyone reputable to just give away their product? I have no doubt propaganda will remain free at least.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#77

Post by segasaturn »

cbozeman wrote: post #44
segasaturn wrote: post #4

Maybe that's a good thing? I remember a few years ago when journalists were outsourcing their reporting to Twitter and we had headlines like "The Internet is Freaking Out About X" when it was really a dozen nobodies on Twitter. The death of Twitter and the re-fragmentation of the internet sounds like a breath of fresh air compared to the purple haze of the last decade's centralized web.

X isn't dead, nor is it dying. Elon Musk took away a bunch of people's status, people who thought they were important somebodies because some nerds in an office met them in person and/or they paid some money to get a verification mark. That's what happened. It's the election of Donald Trump all over again. One of the few people who actually understood what happened in the 2016 election - and was able to articulate it…

I feel like you may be overvaluing the importance of the blue checkmark icon.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#78

Post by Dig1t »

kurthr wrote: post #59
Dig1t wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traffic is up on X 22% YoY Not quite death, but certainly agree about news outlets no longer seeing it as okay to say that “The internet is freaking out about X” https://advanced-television.com/2023/12/18/research-x-twitte... >Using the data available on Google Trends as well as SEO tool Ahrefs, domain and hosting provider Fasthosts investigated the online presence of X since the announcement of Musk’s takeover and h…

Man, those are some terrible statistics... 142.86% of nothing is still nothing. For starters, searches for just the term ‘X’ have increased by 19.4 per cent, while searches for ‘Twitter’ have fallen by 26 per cent in the same period. While plenty of peopke still refer to X as its former title and news outlets still often follow mentions of X with “formally Twitter”, it’s clear from this data that interest in the term…

Yeah I had the same thought about the account creation metric, I agree that X is such a new name that increased searches about its name don't really mean much.

The overall usage stat does line up with X's own claims about traffic though. i.e. X is saying that traffic is higher than it has ever been and this source suggests the same as well.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#79

Post by wharvle »

vGPU wrote: post #67
wharvle wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk said a couple weeks back that the loss of advertisers will “kill” Twitter, but it’s ok because “the world will judge them” (the advertisers) But maybe he was joking. Sure didn’t seem to be, but who knows. Or he’s wrong.

Musk has enough money to single-handedly pay for the costs of running twitter for the next few centuries, and nobody in their right mind would actually let twitter be “killed”.

I dunno. Weird that he said it like it was going to happen, then, instead of saying he wouldn’t let it die. But he says a lot of weird stuff, so maybe this is one of those cases where we’re supposed to assume he’s just saying gibberish that doesn’t mean anything.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#80

Post by maerF0x0 »

keybored wrote: post #52
maerF0x0 wrote: post #24

> Popular content is being consumed at an astounding scale, yet popularity and even celebrity feel miniaturized, siloed. We live in a world where it’s easier than ever to be blissfully unaware of things that other people are consuming. I've long been trying to communicate this trend to anyone who will listen, once needs are saturated the trend becomes building specialization that produces the most hedonism/value for…

People have been telling sci-fi stories about society evolving/devolving into people locked into their individual pleasure boxes for decades, friend.

correct, but few people seem able to grok it.
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