The Horrible Future of Social • Hacker News Board

Re: The Horrible Future of Social

#71

Post by coffeemug » Wed, Oct 31, 2012, 12:23 AM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #9

Meh. 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 downfa…

Social is neither the next giant leap forward, nor is it the downfall of humanity. It's kinda like Gmail.

The printing press is neither the next giant leap forward, nor is it the downfall of humanity. It's kinda like hand-copied books.

Re: The Horrible Future of Social

#72

Post by rjbond3rd » Wed, Oct 31, 2012, 12:24 AM UTC

jeremymcanally wrote: post #65

I see this every time I go to Disney World (I live nearby). It's almost impossible to enjoy a single ride or fireworks show without a ton of people videoing the whole thing or taking horrible pictures of it with a smart device of some sort. Rather than enjoying it and capturing some deep memory of a moment with their family, they have their face stuck in a digital device capturing a crude facsimile of the experience…

> I've almost given up on being able to ride Pirates of the Carribbean and being able to experience it the way the Imagineers wanted you to.

I love the way you write, but even more, that you live in Orlando, riding the rides that way. (In Las Vegas, my kids and I used to ride Star Trek: The Experience every day, all day, for the whole 12 hours, for days on end...)

Re: The Horrible Future of Social

#73

Post by icebraining » Wed, Oct 31, 2012, 12:28 AM UTC

lemiffe wrote: post #20

I absolutely loved (and was repulsed by the reality of) this segment: "Our daily existence transformed into database entries in some NoSQL database on some spinning disk in some rack in suburban Virginia."

It's as true as how photographs stole the souls of 19th century Native Americans.

Re: The Horrible Future of Social

#74

Post by slashedzero » Wed, Oct 31, 2012, 12:28 AM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #9

Meh. 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 downfa…

I agree to an extent. I think if you look at the average user (generally not someone on HN), you'll see that it is cheapening their experiences. When preteens can quantify how popular they are based on the number of "likes" they get, it is bound to change "social" behavior.

Re: The Horrible Future of Social

#75

Post by jerf » Wed, Oct 31, 2012, 12:38 AM UTC

RegEx wrote: post #29

mung wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh the irony.

Like rainnnnnn on your wedding day? Because there's no actual irony there.

It's time to pack in the comments defending the putative purity of the word "irony". I've seen numerous people get up in arms about some incorrect use of the term, followed by them giving the "correct" definition. I'm yet to see two "correct" definitions that match each other. How...

... ironic.

Re: The Horrible Future of Social

#76

Post by brandoncapecci » Wed, Oct 31, 2012, 12:46 AM UTC

rsl7 wrote: post #56

grellas wrote: post #49

That which is shallow but useful can have its legitimate place in life, though it lacks character: a daily commute on the freeway might suck, and might not match the joy and invigoration of a brisk walk on a beautiful day, but it has its place if you need to get to work miles away and if your area lacks public transportation to get you there efficiently; living in the suburbs might suck compared to the excitement of…

The gameification angle is a fad though. checking in and leaderboards for everyday bullshit will get old.

That's like saying gambling is a fad. The novel implementations may change but integrating markers for performance will only come more common in time. Expect to be able to passively track how long you brushed your teeth in the near future.

Re: The Horrible Future of Social

#77

Post by Reebz » Wed, Oct 31, 2012, 12:46 AM UTC

This article is hugely exaggerated. Once all is said and done, you're simply attaching more relevant data to a photo which helps remember important moments. My grandparent's photo albums and scrapbooks have now been replaced by my TimeHops and SnapJoys.

Re: The Horrible Future of Social

#78

Post by rhizome » Wed, Oct 31, 2012, 12:57 AM UTC

mtraven wrote: post #15

This is pretty much Jaron Lanier's argument in You Are Not a Gadget (reviewed here: http://omniorthogonal.blogspot.com/2010/02/review-you-are-no... ). They both have a point; systems which reduce human relations to very simpleminded database formalisms cheapen them. But they ignore that the human spirit is (or so we should hope) strong enough to survive Facebook if it is strong enough to survive the other insults and…

Jaron Lanier is a cynical charlatan. It takes a pretty negative worldview to say that the relationships people have on Facebook are the sum total of the nature of human relations, that the entire social phenomenon is a lowest-common denominator operation. The human spirit doesn't have to be strong enough, even without hope. "Facebook killing the human spirit" is an instance of a phenomenon that has never happened.

Re: The Horrible Future of Social

#79

Post by theorique » Wed, Oct 31, 2012, 1:01 AM UTC

coffeemug wrote: post #67

I was more amused than repulsed by the description, and I thought quite a few people would probably end up using this product if it existed. To paraphrase George Costanza, if I were a different person, I could see myself using it. What is truly horrifying about sex.ly is that it so utterly and absolutely cheapens the experience of something very important. It doesn't cheapen anything. Making love is just for fun for…

Good points.

What is truly horrifying about sex.ly is that it so utterly and absolutely cheapens the experience of something very important.

Translation: I see other people doing something in a way that I don't like. This is wrong and their values are wrong. This makes me feel funny. They should not do as they do. Instead, they should do as I do. Then they will be right, like me.

Re: The Horrible Future of Social

#80

Post by theorique » Wed, Oct 31, 2012, 1:05 AM UTC

You were repulsed by the above description of this imaginary site. But not because of some prudish reasons, not even because it had to do with sex. No. You were repulsed because sex.ly violates something very deep and fundamental about humanity. But what, in particular?

Mind read much?

My feeling upon reading this was hardly the horror that the writer anticipated. Probably more of a "meh, it takes all kinds".

I can see this being a private, niche site for swingers or exhibitionists. Most people probably wouldn't go for it. But that doesn't make it wrong or horrible or the emblem of what is, in the author's mind, wrong with social media.

Reduction ad absurdum fail.