The Horrible Future of Social
1–10 of 159 posts
Re: The Horrible Future of Social
#2Exaggeration to make a point. A worthy point, although one I'm not entirely in agreement with. I enjoy the "lifecasts" of others in some respects because otherwise I wouldn't know anything about what they're up to. I'm lucky if I can have a meaningful, real-world conversation with a single-digit handful of folks over the course of a week. Dozens? Hundreds? No way. But if I can see them post a joke or a beautiful photo or just a kvetch about a bad day, I have a connection with them that I simply wouldn't have otherwise. Yes, it can get absurd. Yes, sex check-ins might be in vogue at some point. But we don't have to throw the baby out because the bathwater has gotten quite murky.
(P.S. That came out a bit too hard on the original author. I really enjoyed the read, thanks!)
Re: The Horrible Future of Social
#3It's a bold step to say that it's bad for people to cheapen their life experiences. While I personally agree with the author, other people choose to live their life in a way that is meaningful to them, in their own ways. Who am I to say their facebook, foursquare, twitter, etc. interactions are meaningless and without value? These are subjective measurements. The real question is: are people getting value out of these interactions because they are told to get value out of them, and if so, is it done disingenuously? Case in point, a gambling company (or certain gaming companies starting with the letter Z... I kid, I kid) tend to focus on the compulsive nature of humans in a predatory way. This is where true marketing responsibility comes into play: am I creating a system of measurably-destructive behavior in my users? You can measure the detrimental impact of a user's addition, you cannot measure the meaningfulness of a tweet to it's tweeter.
Re: The Horrible Future of Social
#4"You were repulsed by the above description of this imaginary site."
No really, no. Everything described already exists (except the sex-cred, and the geo-tagging is rather manual); simply not on the open internet.
Re: The Horrible Future of Social
#5I really don't need to know who's the local Mayor of Anal.
Re: The Horrible Future of Social
#6Here is a whole gamified dating concept video http://designtaxi.com/news/353161/The-Future-Of-Dating/
Such extrapolations rarely come to pass. Yes there might be new crazy services and some people will use them. But will a significant proportion of the population use them often? Will it change the world? Did foursquare? Did Twitter?
No. Some things just stay in their bubbles. There will be new crazed trends that come along and everyone will forget check ins, social networks, gamification and do them.
Reality shows used to be the new thing. So are there run a startup reality shows today? Bitcoins are a new currency. Will people start their own currencies and governments in 15 years? Instead of startups you start governments! Then 3D printers can make military drones and these governments fight each other!
Fortunately most trends just don't get very far. There is a constant stream of new trends to divert people's attention.
Re: The Horrible Future of Social
#7Re: The Horrible Future of Social
#8"You were repulsed by the above description of this imaginary site." No really, no. Everything described already exists (except the sex-cred, and the geo-tagging is rather manual); simply not on the open internet.
Yeah, I was going to say, I know of at least one web site with lots of people on it where people do most of this. There is no explicit rating of people though, but there is certainly implicit: you see how many "likes" they get, how many followers, comments, etc. You know who's "good" at your kink and who's new, etc.
In this particular site, it's actually pretty well done. I think that they accomplish a great "this is a useful service for a portion of the population that areinterested in whips and chains" without crossing into "oh wow, this is totally creepy".
That said... I think that the author's overall point re: the desecration of meaningful things by turning them into cheap online experiences is totally valid. I am also depressed by the direction the world is going, and continually contemplating what I can do about it.
Re: The Horrible Future of Social
#9Meh. This is a touch over-the-top.
You know what Facebook is to me nowadays? It's another flavor of Gmail. Sometimes I send and receive messages there. It's plumbing. Sometimes I turn the spigot on for some updates, then turn it off and go about my day.
I think pro-social and anti-social pundits are both wrong about the upside and downside of social. Social is neither the next giant leap forward, nor is it the downfall of humanity. It's kinda like Gmail.
Re: The Horrible Future of Social
#10[deleted]