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Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

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Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#201

Post by airstrike »

naravara wrote: post #186
whatshisface wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between outlier actors and outlier Wikipedia editors are that outlier actors are better than everyone else at acting, but outlier Wikipedia editors need only be superhumanly obsessive. It used to be that the way in which you were an outlier had to be somewhat related to being good at the task you were competing for the honor of completing, but on social networks the only qualification is that you spend…

>but outlier Wikipedia editors need only be superhumanly obsessive. Yup. The way the internet works is it privileges the perspectives and opinions of people who have an abundance of time to spend on the internet (either because their jobs are online or because they just have a lot of free time). So you wind up seeing the perspectives of bored office workers overrepresented and manual laborers underrepresented, you se…

> And any system that relies on majoritarianism to do curation just amplifies these defects.

This is such an important point it needs to be repeated.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#202

Post by tokyodude »

airstrike wrote: post #199
gniv wrote: post #157

Most of the comments here are either elaborating on the OP, or justify lurking. I am a mostly-lurker myself, but I felt the need to comment here, since I was hoping to see the discussion go into a different direction. The OP uses the word "insane", not outlier. It's clickbaity, and used in jest, but I think it better captures a subtlety of this phenomenon: The prolific commenters are molding every discussion in their…

A related phenomenon I've been thinking about is the impact of traditional entertainment media (TV, Movies and Music) and the inherent bias in the sample of worldviews that the people who work in those businesses espouse. In other words, we only hear and watch stories from those people who chose storytelling as their career, and if you assume we are inevitably influenced by their views then we're effectively taking a…

It certainly feels plausible and yet we have that issue. All our media tells us we should all carry guns and shoot people and yet gun violence is down.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/03/weve-...

We have some of the sexyist media around telling us we should all be sleeping around and yet apparently sex is down too.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex...

Are we sure it's any different for other topics?

Also, as for media and marriage I feel like more media is about bad marriages than good ones. A common theme might be falling in love and getting married but a movie about people already married seems rarely about things going well. Or maybe I just have a selective memory.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#203

Post by winter_blue »

gniv wrote: post #157

Most of the comments here are either elaborating on the OP, or justify lurking. I am a mostly-lurker myself, but I felt the need to comment here, since I was hoping to see the discussion go into a different direction. The OP uses the word "insane", not outlier. It's clickbaity, and used in jest, but I think it better captures a subtlety of this phenomenon: The prolific commenters are molding every discussion in their…

I don’t know if these people are really “outliers”. Many thought that an extreme outlier would not “win” the 2016 election, but it turned out there were 62 million who supported and loved his extreme outlierism.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#204

Post by commoner »

r0m4n0 wrote: post #189
chongli wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does this mean I could write a Wikipedia article about my grandmother if I can dig up articles on her from two different newspapers?

Interesting... and along the same lines as the parent comment, if two independent blogs had written about the file format in detail, I wonder if that’s enough.

Most tech blogs have just one author, and their posts don't go through a high-quality editorial process. Wikipedia calls these blogs "self-published sources", and they usually aren't considered reliable sources.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability#Self-p...

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#205

Post by airstrike »

tokyodude wrote: post #202
airstrike wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A related phenomenon I've been thinking about is the impact of traditional entertainment media (TV, Movies and Music) and the inherent bias in the sample of worldviews that the people who work in those businesses espouse. In other words, we only hear and watch stories from those people who chose storytelling as their career, and if you assume we are inevitably influenced by their views then we're effectively taking a…

It certainly feels plausible and yet we have that issue. All our media tells us we should all carry guns and shoot people and yet gun violence is down. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/03/weve-... We have some of the sexyist media around telling us we should all be sleeping around and yet apparently sex is down too. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex... Are we sure it's an…

> apparently sex is down too.

There are lot of confounding variables, though. Sex could be down because both men and women have to join the workforce, people live with {their parents for longer, with roommates} because rent is expensive, technology lets parents keep tabs on kids better, etc.

EDIT (to reflect your edit, I believe):

> Also, as for media and marriage I feel like more media is about bad marriages than good ones.

I think that's exactly her point. We only ever talk about "falling in love" and "break up". How many songs can you think of that talk about a resilient relationship? Better yet, how many songs can you think of that talk about a relationship in the past tense and say it was great?

I was thinking about this yesterday. An interesting project would be to filter every top 100 song in the past century for love songs, then look at how many stories are predominantly in the past vs. future tense, and then how many of those say good vs. bad things about the other person in the relationship. My hypothesis is there's most forward-looking of those songs talk about the wonders of love, and the past-looking songs talk about how shitty the relationship was and how they're glad it's over.

Extra credits for whoever buckets the data by decade to see if the trend has shifted.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#206

Post by gniv »

isoskeles wrote: post #184
gniv wrote: post #157

Most of the comments here are either elaborating on the OP, or justify lurking. I am a mostly-lurker myself, but I felt the need to comment here, since I was hoping to see the discussion go into a different direction. The OP uses the word "insane", not outlier. It's clickbaity, and used in jest, but I think it better captures a subtlety of this phenomenon: The prolific commenters are molding every discussion in their…

> a lack of diversity in general -- discussions are driven by the worldview of a few Are you saying that internet commenters have a monolith "worldview" that could be referred to as "the worldview of a few"? I'm not saying you're saying this, but that's what I read.

> Are you saying that internet commenters have a monolith "worldview"

No. I'm saying that each person has a worldview, which is the aggregate of their life experience. If a small set of people drive most discussions, then the discussions are (mostly) a reflection of their perspective only. Maybe these perspectives are diverse enough, but it's hard to know.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#207

Post by codazoda »

gniv wrote: post #157

Most of the comments here are either elaborating on the OP, or justify lurking. I am a mostly-lurker myself, but I felt the need to comment here, since I was hoping to see the discussion go into a different direction. The OP uses the word "insane", not outlier. It's clickbaity, and used in jest, but I think it better captures a subtlety of this phenomenon: The prolific commenters are molding every discussion in their…

You are in the demographic you're talking about. You've posted 5 comments in the past 31 days and more than that the month prior. Yours was the top comment when I looked at the thread and you are therefore driving this discussion with your own worldview of the few.

Me too, I suppose.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#208

Post by samdoidge »

tokyodude wrote: post #202
airstrike wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A related phenomenon I've been thinking about is the impact of traditional entertainment media (TV, Movies and Music) and the inherent bias in the sample of worldviews that the people who work in those businesses espouse. In other words, we only hear and watch stories from those people who chose storytelling as their career, and if you assume we are inevitably influenced by their views then we're effectively taking a…

It certainly feels plausible and yet we have that issue. All our media tells us we should all carry guns and shoot people and yet gun violence is down. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/03/weve-... We have some of the sexyist media around telling us we should all be sleeping around and yet apparently sex is down too. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex... Are we sure it's an…

> All our media tells us we should all carry guns and shoot people

This has not been my observation, at all.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#209

Post by dang »

gniv wrote: post #157

Most of the comments here are either elaborating on the OP, or justify lurking. I am a mostly-lurker myself, but I felt the need to comment here, since I was hoping to see the discussion go into a different direction. The OP uses the word "insane", not outlier. It's clickbaity, and used in jest, but I think it better captures a subtlety of this phenomenon: The prolific commenters are molding every discussion in their…

You're right about the title. We've put the insane people back up there.

It still amazes me how deeply titles shape discussion. Most of what you read on the internet is by insane people reacting to titles.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#210

Post by [deleted] »

n_e wrote: post #147
DanBC wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an administrator will prevent you from editing until you choose a new username, and you can continue afterward. No, an admin may instantly block you permanently, or may temporarily block you until you change your name, or may temporarily block you while they discuss it with you, or may not block you but apply one of two templates, or add your name to a username for discussion board where you'll have to try to justi…

> Reads some stuff about his company. He knows that information is factually incorrect. It's not harmful to his company, but it is misleading to people reading Wikipedia. He signs up for an account. The only interactions I had with Wikipedia are reading articles. Even I know it is frowned upon to edit your own articles.

[deleted]
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