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I'm closing up shop on my Mastodon for the foreseeable future

vkc.sh

11–20 of 89 posts

Re: I'm closing up shop on my Mastodon for the foreseeable future

#11
post #4

[flagged]

Is it "cancel culture"? Article reads like author simply can't handle what anyone who is even remotely relevant has to deal with on a daily basis. It's just reality of being known by more than a dozen people in one chatroom on internet.

There's a reason why most popular people in the world don't run blogposts or personal emails out in the open. They basically have to hire other people to do it for them via company level hierarchies.

The problem is there will always be a certain type of social outcast that will do anything for attention even if that requires doing illegal things to be noticed.

The only way to avoid these things is to be irrelevant, I never received a death threat in my entire life, but I also don't have anything like a blogpost website either.

This has always been the case in life, you also don't say things in public that you'd get beaten over, do you? Whether that's wrong is not my problem though, legal system as it is does not really care and can't prevent these things, the matter of fact is that whether you get beaten is your choice and legal system will only punish in hindsight. On internet, all of that is amplified, but at least noone can beat you up until you go outside.

You should be mindful of what you can or cannot handle before you say anything, if you fear any adversity and god forbid are some sort of pacifist who wouldn't defend their own life to death if necessary, it's probably best to say nothing and go unnoticed by anyone, that's just how things always were and always will be on this animal planet.

Re: I'm closing up shop on my Mastodon for the foreseeable future

#13
Hopefully some time away does them well. I hope they find their way back, in healthier portions

It's a tough knob to dial, attention/engagement. Too much of a thing. Not even going to try to say good/bad/whatever. The internet is what we make of it. I hope they return to strengthen it.

This is something I'm working on now, in a different avenue. Work. I changed jobs last week because I was putting too much of myself in, and not getting enough out.

Re: I'm closing up shop on my Mastodon for the foreseeable future

#14
post #7

I did not hear 'reply guy' before joining mastodon. If you're posting short messages with a reply text box, you can expect to get replies, and the replies are going to reflect how your post was received, no matter how it was sent. It works both ways - I replied to a post from an artist really enraged with AI and pointed out it's no different from a human artist seeing art and incorporating it into their style; that r…

I think it might be good for you to reflect on what this "reply guy" thing actually means, and why it is (IMO) a good idea to use it to judge your comments before replying to someone, if you care in any way about empathic online discourse. For example, the artist: their livelihood is directly threatened by AI, if not now then probably in the near future, and they are responding by posting about their fear. It's trans…

What you're describing is an echo chamber. If that's something you want there are better ways to get it than a public, general purpose venue like Mastodon.

To flip the script a little, would this "Reply Guy" standard also apply when someone with family in Israel posts support for the Israeli government's actions and gets a bunch of replies about how Israel is committing a genocide? I kind of suspect that "Reply Guy" may just be a proxy for saying "you have the wrong politics".

Re: I'm closing up shop on my Mastodon for the foreseeable future

#15
post #5

Any medium where you invite commentary from strangers on the internet is going to be full of ignorant commentary. If this is something that stresses you out, probably best to disable comments from anyone you do not follow. Simple as that. I do not think this is a problem with the tool. I do think over-exposure to internet commentary is toxic. Like alcohol, it is a poison that is only fun if you are capable of moderat…

> Any medium where you invite commentary from strangers on the internet is going to be full of ignorant commentary. [...] I do not think this is a problem with the tool. You think the design of this medium inherently attracts death threats (which the author mentions, and I assume you've generalised into 'ignorant comments') - but it's not a problem with the medium? To me it sounds like a medium that's giving undue we…

Allowing any person to comment is the most freedom you can give people. If people are free to comment whatever they want and they choose to publish crap then that's just a commentary on human nature, not the tool.

Re: I'm closing up shop on my Mastodon for the foreseeable future

#16
What's interesting here is that many of 'us' and the current mainstream say that Internet toxicity is due to The Algorithm, the methods of Facebook/twitter that maximise engagement leading to constant negativity and toxicity.

Mastodon's big selling point during the big move away from Twitter/X was the absence of The Algorithm, it was supposed to be a friendly, geeky thing, free from monetised outrage. But I've seen it for myself, there's an undercurrent of Twitter's holier-than-thou outrage, it's just from different sources: part exclusionary crusty geeks who've always used Mastodon ('you use Windows???'), part exclusionary leftists ('you're with the Judean People's Front????').

Perhaps it's not always The Algorithm that's to blame.

Re: I'm closing up shop on my Mastodon for the foreseeable future

#18
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it might be good for you to reflect on what this "reply guy" thing actually means, and why it is (IMO) a good idea to use it to judge your comments before replying to someone, if you care in any way about empathic online discourse. For example, the artist: their livelihood is directly threatened by AI, if not now then probably in the near future, and they are responding by posting about their fear. It's trans…

What you're describing is an echo chamber. If that's something you want there are better ways to get it than a public, general purpose venue like Mastodon. To flip the script a little, would this "Reply Guy" standard also apply when someone with family in Israel posts support for the Israeli government's actions and gets a bunch of replies about how Israel is committing a genocide? I kind of suspect that "Reply Guy"…

> public, general purpose venue like Mastodon.

I guess that's what's wrong with Twitter, and what Mastodon unfortunately copied. The discussion dynamics roughly corresponds to shouting your opinions on a town square - and getting comments from passerbys.

There is little expectation of privacy, and few means to create it (banning indiscreet commenters being one of them). That's why Mastodon is great for niche interests - the town in this case is small, and its inhabitants are well-aligned, but might get frustrating as you touch topics where many people can feel they are entitled to having an opinion about.

Re: I'm closing up shop on my Mastodon for the foreseeable future

#19
post #5

Any medium where you invite commentary from strangers on the internet is going to be full of ignorant commentary. If this is something that stresses you out, probably best to disable comments from anyone you do not follow. Simple as that. I do not think this is a problem with the tool. I do think over-exposure to internet commentary is toxic. Like alcohol, it is a poison that is only fun if you are capable of moderat…

> Any medium where you invite commentary from strangers on the internet is going to be full of ignorant commentary. [...] I do not think this is a problem with the tool. You think the design of this medium inherently attracts death threats (which the author mentions, and I assume you've generalised into 'ignorant comments') - but it's not a problem with the medium? To me it sounds like a medium that's giving undue we…

Let's say I create another website that allows people to share things and other people to comment on those things, pray do tell how do I prevent ignorant comments? Should only people who have Mensa certification be allowed to comment? Does Mensa alone rule out all cases of error possible in human brain? Does any metric in fact? How about the other way, how does having 87IQ prove that this person cannot say something profound sometimes?

Re: I'm closing up shop on my Mastodon for the foreseeable future

#20

What's interesting here is that many of 'us' and the current mainstream say that Internet toxicity is due to The Algorithm, the methods of Facebook/twitter that maximise engagement leading to constant negativity and toxicity. Mastodon's big selling point during the big move away from Twitter/X was the absence of The Algorithm, it was supposed to be a friendly, geeky thing, free from monetised outrage. But I've seen i…

When it's a social problem, it's always people who are to blame. Reddit for example even had(? I think they fixed that one) downvote trolls farming downvotes because any attention works, and if it can be measured long term, it's even better!

You can't blame made up things if people actively choose to engage with rage baits. Every time something like that has occured, I time and time again notice that people could've solved this by doing nothing.

In real social setting, when someone says an unfunny joke, literally nobody laughs, and whoever said it feels very uncomfortable. On internet, when someone writes something stupid, they might sometimes get more replies than an interesting thing...

How can something like "The Algorithm" be blamed for people laughing at incredibly bad jokes?

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