I think it’s something like group solipsism. Nothing can be trusted except what “I” decide. Which is only helpful in so far as maybe we can address this internet backed societal problem with rhetoric similar to how we would address solipsism.
The Internet of Beefs
211–220 of 342 posts
Re: The Internet of Beefs
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every generation would always talk about the destructive increase in entertainment in their time. My grandfather said his parents told him he listened to the radio too much when he was a kid.
Your great-grandparents were right, it's just hard to imagine listening to radio with family being "destructive", when today people have less friends than ever and are literally choosing Netflix, video games, and pornography over having a social life.
I think entertainment is a lesser issue to the real problem which is car centric urban design. We all live so far apart that it is very time consuming, expensive and tedious to meet other people. Rather than just stepping outside and walking/cycling to someone you have to own a car, spend 30 minutes driving and then 30 minutes back. Or you could just play a video game with them over the internet in the few minutes it takes to set up.
Re: The Internet of Beefs
#213This is an excellent analysis of the state of the modern internet, though I don't entirely agree with his diagnosis of the cause; I think it's more down to two main things: 1. We are all, at heart, covetous xenophobic apes, and we've been doing the same basic thing (arbitrarily define an in-group and an out-group and proceed to wage total war on the out-group) since before we were even human. This is just the latest…
>conflict is the most engaging kind of engagement This doesn't feel right. I ask myself, do I go places to look for people to fight with? Emphatically no. Do you? Probably not. I just read this great|hateful book|movie|thing. I want to talk about it with people who have experienced this book|movie|thing, would be great if they saw it the way I did, also great if they disagreed but we could discuss it with a shared la…
>> conflict is the most engaging kind of engagement
> do I go places to look for people to fight with? Emphatically no. Do you? Probably not.
People seem to love information that ridicules and hates on "the other side" (e.g. in politics). They like seeing the other side being put down, and the feeling of superiority they can get from that.
Re: The Internet of Beefs
#214In the same way that Spark turns a program into a plan for cluster computation, there's some sort of process by which an idea and a bunch of talking points gets compiled into a big distributed staged media campaign through all channels and institutions that forces culture change that no one asked for. The canonical and somewhat "innocent" example of this is a major advertising campaign for a new pharmaceutical like P…
> then becomes a law where you get put in prison for using the wrong pronoun You were going so well until this point, because I guarantee you won't be able to find the story to back this up; it will turn out that the "wrong pronoun" was part of a sustained campaign of harassment or part of a death threat or suchlike. > how is the social justice "ideological pipeline" constructed and operated? I could talk about how t…
Not yet, but the slippery slope turned out to not be a fallacy after all.
Re: The Internet of Beefs
#215I hesitate to criticize this person, because they're presumably writing for an audience that already knows them, and probably are following for this style of writing, but I have to ask: What is it with think-pieces that state obvious and widespread conclusions while using jargon and jokes to obscure how basic of conclusions they really are? I can't fault people who do this because they're paid by the word and taking…
Agree. Out of context, this takes a ton of effort to understand. Some examples - Great Weirding morphs into the Permaweird - underground Internet that I’ve previously called the CozyWeb - unflattened Hobbesian honor-society conflict - Mookcoins are mined by knights through acts of senpai-notice-me - retreat into what I call waldenponding or to the CozyWeb Several of these link to other essays which, in turn, use ever…
A good test of jargon is whether a full translation of it makes the written work too laborious to read. These terms do not have brief, complete definitions in English.
If that is accepted, the question becomes whether the audience understands the jargon. Ribbonfarm readers do or are willing to learn what they might mean.
Re: The Internet of Beefs
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your great-grandparents were right, it's just hard to imagine listening to radio with family being "destructive", when today people have less friends than ever and are literally choosing Netflix, video games, and pornography over having a social life.
I think entertainment is a lesser issue to the real problem which is car centric urban design. We all live so far apart that it is very time consuming, expensive and tedious to meet other people. Rather than just stepping outside and walking/cycling to someone you have to own a car, spend 30 minutes driving and then 30 minutes back. Or you could just play a video game with them over the internet in the few minutes it…
There are certainly a number of factors, but the prevalence and addictiveness of entertainment technology is without a doubt a major factor.
Plenty of hikikomori in the safe, walkable Tokyo. What's keeping them inside?
Re: The Internet of Beefs
#217This is an excellent analysis of the state of the modern internet, though I don't entirely agree with his diagnosis of the cause; I think it's more down to two main things: 1. We are all, at heart, covetous xenophobic apes, and we've been doing the same basic thing (arbitrarily define an in-group and an out-group and proceed to wage total war on the out-group) since before we were even human. This is just the latest…
>conflict is the most engaging kind of engagement This doesn't feel right. I ask myself, do I go places to look for people to fight with? Emphatically no. Do you? Probably not. I just read this great|hateful book|movie|thing. I want to talk about it with people who have experienced this book|movie|thing, would be great if they saw it the way I did, also great if they disagreed but we could discuss it with a shared la…
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Re: The Internet of Beefs
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree. Out of context, this takes a ton of effort to understand. Some examples - Great Weirding morphs into the Permaweird - underground Internet that I’ve previously called the CozyWeb - unflattened Hobbesian honor-society conflict - Mookcoins are mined by knights through acts of senpai-notice-me - retreat into what I call waldenponding or to the CozyWeb Several of these link to other essays which, in turn, use ever…
It reads LessWrong's cooler brother.
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Re: The Internet of Beefs
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
TBH, the 280-character limit (and of course, the attention economy) doesn't really encourage deep and balanced discourse...
Yep, which in turn contributes to this behavior unfortunately... The social media tools are setup perfectly for this - esp twitter.
Fast pace insult flinging matches between famous people has better engagement rates than slow, well thought out debate. People can consume insults faster and it brings about more emotion.
Re: The Internet of Beefs
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're taking for granted how twitter is used as a global cafe by communities that would otherwise be disjointed and isolated. For every controversial tweet or tweet of drama, theres thousands of enriching conversations happening that could otherwise not occur. I think it's ironic that negative takes on the twitter model tend to be as shallow and polarizing as they claim the platform to be. As for me, I think…
You could say the same about IRC. GP's point is that not that many people are even on the platform. Twitter has less than 350 million monthly active users. It's about tied with Reddit. MSN had more unique monthly visitors than that in 2004.
Those numbers brought about something I'm surprised I haven't noticed before.
I don't know a single person who actually uses twitter regularly. Where as I know loads of people who use reddit/discord/facebook. And yet twitter is where all of the media attention goes.