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Don't let social media think for you

disgustinglyoptimistic.com

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Re: Don't let social media think for you

#241

Post by cindarin »

SamBam wrote: post #198
cindarin wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the actions that we need to address, just the number of people doing them?

I'm confused how this comment relates in any way to the question of whether my existing on Hacker News is the "same thing" as participating in an online mob against a person.

Oh, are you simply existing here? Nothing else?

I am positive you are not blind to the parallels between your current actions and the actions of which you claim to be ashamed.

I imagine the distinctions matter more to you than the similarities, but I honestly cannot tell why. Are you now better than the twitter user because less people use hacker news? Or are you better because the people you shame are faceless rather than a specific individual? Or is it simply because you reached the top of the comments section rather than being the 10000th voice?

I don't condemn you. I believe you should be allowed to speak your opinion. I just don't support your condemnation of others, especially the fallacious comparison to a violent, physical mob.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#242

Post by nszceta »

SamBam wrote: post #42

The mob is a huge problem with Twitter (and adjacent social media), and the issue with a mob is purely that of its size. It's the size that makes the mob, and everyone who has ever considered chiming in to add their voice why so-and-so was bad should stop to think about whether the world really needs that additional voice. Each individual voice may be perfectly right . So-and-so may really have done wrong. But did th…

> Next thing he knew, the crowd had put tires over the alleged thief and set him on fire.

Ah, yes. Necklacing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necklacing

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#243

Post by dataviz1000 »

0x737368 wrote: post #232
dataviz1000 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" from secondary school? [0] Fundamentally these coordinated social media attacks are witch hunts. When the 'good feminists' viciously attacked Margret Atwood accusing her of being a 'bad feminist' as she strongly supported due process defending a male professor being accused of sexually impropriety is the moment when these modern witch hunts went too far. More so than when Reddi…

I can't speak for the people who downvoted you, but I'll bet you a USB stick that the reason you got downvoted is because of "When the 'good feminists' viciously attacked Margret Atwood accusing her of being a 'bad feminist'". Some people have reached a point where not even disagreeing with them, but simply mentioning someone they don't like in a positive light or mentioning someone they do like in a negative light,…

Heaven forbid someone challenges a persons ideas without directly attacking that person. Making objective observations is not far from threatening everyone in the office by only focusing on and being talented at a job. On this topic, Plato pointed out millennia ago in his Socratic way -- how do we know we understand something if we don't discuss it with someone else?

> Lauren being accused of trans/biphobia (Lauren herself identifies as gay)

In the context of OP's link, it is fair to respond with reference to the attacks on Margret Atwood that accused her of being a 'bad feminist'. Atwood directly addressed the issue of a failed legal system but also asked the still unanswered question, what should replace it, swarms on the internet? [0] Sadly, I probably agree with most of the people frustrated downvoting me. Moreover, I'm adding to the conversation that Lauren is having about due process not in a legal court but rather in the court of public opinion and personal attacks on the internet as it has hurt not only Margret Atwood but Al Franken or closer to home, Douglas Crockford which at the time paradoxically hurt young women with computer science degrees finishing school looking for work more than it hurt Crockford.

This morning I was thinking about making a Reddit / Hacker News clone with one small change to the algorithm. Can't downvote a post or comment without making a response. It used to be fun to have debates on the internet.

[0] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:J8YvMk...

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#244

Post by chmod600 »

mariodiana wrote: post #195
aeturnum wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The man who pulls the lever that breaks your neck will be a dispassionate man. >And that dispassion is the very essence of justice. >For justice delivered without dispassion is always in danger of not being justice. Based on the reporting I've read on the internal cultures of police departments and the wider "law enforcement" community (federal law enforcement, prison administration, etc) I am pretty skeptical that…

Maybe the essence of justice is its effect, and by effect we're not talking about its effect on the accused but on the rest of society. The political science class I took back in college (over 20 years ago now) began with the Oresteia trilogy, by Aeschylus. The issue there is between "frontier justice" (actually, blood feuds) and civil justice (justice of the polis ). The message there is that there can be no civiliz…

Justice is a process. It's much easier to agree on a process than the right outcome in a specific case. So society agrees on some reasonable process -- judges, juries, lawyers, and witnesses -- ahead of any specific crime.

When the process is followed in a specific case, people can accept it even if they don't like the outcome, because they had a hand in the process that produced the outcome. Over time you can improve the process. That's justice.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#246

Post by tester34 »

jiofih wrote: post #172
tester34 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally: a) Through friends b) It's so big that's almost everywhere and you cannot escape it c) I don't get informed (but may later in time) Of course it's not perfect approach

a) and b) just mean you’re relying on someone else who watches the news, so the same drawbacks apply…

but all the bad stuff is "outsourced" :)

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#247

Post by betwixthewires »

dionidium wrote: post #73
SamBam wrote: post #42

The mob is a huge problem with Twitter (and adjacent social media), and the issue with a mob is purely that of its size. It's the size that makes the mob, and everyone who has ever considered chiming in to add their voice why so-and-so was bad should stop to think about whether the world really needs that additional voice. Each individual voice may be perfectly right . So-and-so may really have done wrong. But did th…

When the mob can literally set you on fire, then you should be worried about the mob, but, crucially, the mob on social media can't actually hurt you ; they can only convince other people to hurt you. It's those other people , the people who hold positions of responsibility and authority -- your boss, your dean, anybody with the power to hire or fire you -- who are really responsible here. The shame of cancel culture…

I see your point. I'd like to ask you just out of curiosity, what do you think of "cyber bullying?" Is it real? Are participants culpable?

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#248

Post by brailsafe »

nszceta wrote: post #242
SamBam wrote: post #42

The mob is a huge problem with Twitter (and adjacent social media), and the issue with a mob is purely that of its size. It's the size that makes the mob, and everyone who has ever considered chiming in to add their voice why so-and-so was bad should stop to think about whether the world really needs that additional voice. Each individual voice may be perfectly right . So-and-so may really have done wrong. But did th…

> Next thing he knew, the crowd had put tires over the alleged thief and set him on fire. Ah, yes. Necklacing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necklacing

This is some liveleak shit I'm maybe glad I didn't see.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#249

Post by sklearncowboy »

colechristensen wrote: post #230
cableshaft wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, if you end up having to announce your take on every "bad" thing that happens, your feed becomes nothing but commentary on the bad takes, almost always identical to everyone else, and you dillute or lose what makes you interesting in the process. I've seen this in my own feed. Any time some "bad" person is exposed, I'm almost guaranteed to scroll past 30 almost identical takes on it by the same 30 people on my f…

I have been thinking about this and related things for a long time now, while I haven't quite got the hang of putting it all together into words, this is my take on the current subject: Humans have a need for a certain kind of emotional high, that in whatever way, people find a source. Some people find it in competition, drugs, sex, music, art, creation, fear, ... there's probably a whole taxonomy in there. One of th…

To me the easiest way to understand social media is to read Freud's Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. It is a brilliant book as it is really just Freud commentating on The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind by Gustave Le Bon.

The most basic idea is once you join a psychological group you stop being fully rational and mostly act on emotions driven by the group.

Everything just makes sense after digesting parts of that book.

The part you mention about organized religions is also just the group.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#250

Post by ttonkytonk »

colechristensen wrote: post #230
cableshaft wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, if you end up having to announce your take on every "bad" thing that happens, your feed becomes nothing but commentary on the bad takes, almost always identical to everyone else, and you dillute or lose what makes you interesting in the process. I've seen this in my own feed. Any time some "bad" person is exposed, I'm almost guaranteed to scroll past 30 almost identical takes on it by the same 30 people on my f…

I have been thinking about this and related things for a long time now, while I haven't quite got the hang of putting it all together into words, this is my take on the current subject: Humans have a need for a certain kind of emotional high, that in whatever way, people find a source. Some people find it in competition, drugs, sex, music, art, creation, fear, ... there's probably a whole taxonomy in there. One of th…

...And some of the "sweetest" emotional highs come at the expense of other people, sort of like the most savory food seems to be derived from animals.

I want to be careful not to "speak something into existence", as I heard someone say recently, but it occurred to me this morning that if someone is your enemy, you probably derive pleasure from their pain. I kind of feel like our society is in denial that many of its members are "soft mutual enemies" of a sort. It seems if things went wrong (e.g. food shortages etc.) it could become a serious problem. (Personally I "pray for my enemies" when I'm in my right mind, but I have doubts as to whether it makes up for the vitriol when I'm not.)

As for the parent's post's concern for global warming, using less can be emotionally satisfying.

And if big oil is standing in the way, maybe they should be offered the position of producing solar energy systems. (Similarly if drugs were legalized it might make more sense to offer the cartels the position of distribution.)

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