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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

#241

Post by username90 »

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…

> In a recent interview, Michelle Obama said...

I always wondered why USA places so much focus on the Presidents wife? I'm not an American but I know more American leaders wives than I know spouses for all other country leaders together... Isn't that insane? I've never heard anyone talk about spouses of leaders in other countries. Do you know who Merkels husband is? Did you ever hear about David Cameron's wife?

So who is pushing that story? Why is Michelle still in the spotlight? Why was she ever in the spotlight? Why does anyone cares what she thinks?

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

#242

Post by stcredzero »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #240
stcredzero wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, we only hear and watch stories from those people who chose storytelling as their career There has been a transition from culture being produced by members of one's community/village/family to culture being produced by professionals for money. Stories and songs of the past were just as unbalanced and insane as stories and songs of the present. (Both in terms of being fantastical and showing only one si…

I'm kind of confused here- you mentioned Plato, but wasn't Plato a professional culture generator?

I'm kind of confused here- you mentioned Plato, but wasn't Plato a professional culture generator?

Note, I didn't say that everything professional culture generators produced was fundamentally wrong and poisonous and would instantly result in your mental and spiritual death.

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

#243

Post by XCabbage »

maldusiecle wrote: post #239
XCabbage wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with you, the complaint of the particular critic you're replying to isn't even about the contents of the site. It's that some of Gab's staff have, individually, said bigoted things. Even assuming that's true (and I don't know or care if it is), it's unclear to me why it should reflect on the community. If tomorrow somebody were to leak a tape of Paul Graham or Joel Spolsky ranting about their hatred of…

Not employees, representatives. These are things which employees of Gab have said in their official capacity representing the company (for instance, on Gab official social media accounts).

Okay. Still doesn't change anything. Stack Overflow has officially made plenty of official announcements on political issues that I oppose, despite being an active user.

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

#244

Post by nostrebored »

username90 wrote: post #241
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…

> In a recent interview, Michelle Obama said... I always wondered why USA places so much focus on the Presidents wife? I'm not an American but I know more American leaders wives than I know spouses for all other country leaders together... Isn't that insane? I've never heard anyone talk about spouses of leaders in other countries. Do you know who Merkels husband is? Did you ever hear about David Cameron's wife? So wh…

The first lady is expected to pursue social projects in the US and serve an almost head of state like position.

Those who actively pursue the role do a good job of staying in the limelight. For example, Michelle spearheaded a number of projects like her shift to require more nutritional school lunches.

It's an interesting position, and I wonder how things will be for the first first husband, if it happens and it's not Bill.

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

#245

Post by schrodinger »

username90 wrote: post #241
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…

> In a recent interview, Michelle Obama said... I always wondered why USA places so much focus on the Presidents wife? I'm not an American but I know more American leaders wives than I know spouses for all other country leaders together... Isn't that insane? I've never heard anyone talk about spouses of leaders in other countries. Do you know who Merkels husband is? Did you ever hear about David Cameron's wife? So wh…

That’s a really interesting point. It does seem that we’ve (the US) got a long tradition of the First Lady (and First Gentleman once the time comes) taking a big role in politics.

At the risk of sounding ignorant, do most other countries require their president-equivalent to live in a government building? If not, perhaps that’s a contributing factor?

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

#246

Post by gniv »

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…

> 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.

Agree, to the extent that we consume that media for purposes other than entertainment. I would argue that most of what entertains us is created by "insane" people, and that's ok. Same about art.

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

#247

Post by bostonpete »

username90 wrote: post #241
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…

> In a recent interview, Michelle Obama said... I always wondered why USA places so much focus on the Presidents wife? I'm not an American but I know more American leaders wives than I know spouses for all other country leaders together... Isn't that insane? I've never heard anyone talk about spouses of leaders in other countries. Do you know who Merkels husband is? Did you ever hear about David Cameron's wife? So wh…

You could say the same about many people in positions of influence -- sometimes they just kind of luck into it. It's like asking why anyone cares what the queen of England thinks -- because she has power and influence. Some first ladies choose to do more with that platform than others though...

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

#248

Post by carom »

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…

>The prolific commenters are molding every discussion in their image.

This is actually why disinformation works so well. Many people are consumers. A handful of people create content. Everyone has an expected behavior in a rather fragile system. If an organized group comes in and acts in a way that is outside of the system norms, they can very much control the dialog.

I did a project on this during my Masters. [1] Reddit has an option to display your upvotes and downvotes publicly. About 2% of users have this option enabled. I scraped a random sample that I found from the torrent of all Reddit posts and comments. I looked at pairs from that set that shared common votes and the highest pair was from /r/the_donald. This behavior is what allowed it dominate the front page for so long. When most users are just voting on 1 or 2 things per page, and someone else comes along and votes for every post they see, it can greatly affect what is displayed.

When you have a small set of people controlling a conversation, they can manipulate what a huge number of people consume. Social media is an incredibly effective propaganda machine!

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/82ylpv/_/d...

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

#249

Post by astine »

winter_blue wrote: post #203
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.

Or rather 62 million preferred him enough to the alternative to vote for him in the national election. Among that 62 million were probably very many genuine supporters, but I think that a lot of them chose to read what they wanted into his rhetoric. So it's a bit more nuanced than that.

On the other hand part of the reason he seemed like such an outlier might be because the consensus he seemed to deviate from was itself driven by outliers.

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