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Dead Internet Theory

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Re: Dead Internet Theory

#241

Post by Ericson2314 »

hayleox wrote: post #219
makingstuffs wrote: post #120

Think the notion that ‘no one’ uses em dashes is a bit misguided. I’ve personally used them in text for as long as I can remember. Also on the phrase “you’re absolute right”, it’s definitely a phrase my friends and I use a lot, albeit in a sorta of sarcastic manner when one of us says something which is obvious but, nonetheless, we use it. We also tend to use “Well, you’re not wrong” again in a sarcastic manner for s…

It is so irritating that people now think you've used an LLM just because you use nice typography. I've been using en dashes a ton (and em dashes sporadically) since long before ChatGPT came around. My writing style belonged to me first—why should I have to change? If you have the Compose key [1] enabled on your computer, the keyboard sequence is pretty easy: `Compose - - -` (and for en dash, it's `Compose - - .`). T…

Also on phones it is really easy to use em dashes. It's quite out in the open whether I posted from desktop or phone because the use of "---" vs "—" is the dead give-away.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#243

Post by Ericson2314 »

kimixa wrote: post #188
makingstuffs wrote: post #120

Think the notion that ‘no one’ uses em dashes is a bit misguided. I’ve personally used them in text for as long as I can remember. Also on the phrase “you’re absolute right”, it’s definitely a phrase my friends and I use a lot, albeit in a sorta of sarcastic manner when one of us says something which is obvious but, nonetheless, we use it. We also tend to use “Well, you’re not wrong” again in a sarcastic manner for s…

As a brit I'd say we tend to use "en-dashes", slightly shorter versions - so more similar to a hyphen and so often typed like that - with spaces either side. I never saw em-dashes—the longer version with no space—outside of published books and now AI.

I think that's just incorrect. There are varying conventions for spaces vs no spaces around em dashes, but all English manuals of style confine to en dashes just to things like "0–10" and "Louisville–Calgary" — at least to my knowledge.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#244

Post by cal_dent »

GMoromisato wrote: post #153

Most of this is caused by incentives: YouTube and others pay for clicks/views, so obviously you can maximize this by producing lots of mediocre content. LinkedIn is a place to sell, either a service/product to companies or yourself to a future employer. Again, the incentive is to produce more content for less effort. Even HN has the incentive of promoting people's startups. Is it possible to create a social network (…

Exactly. People spend less time thinking about the underlying structure at play here. Scratch enough at the surface and the problem is always the ads model of internet. Until that is broken or is economically pointless the existing problem will persist.

Elon Musk cops a lot for the degradation of twitter to people who care about that sort of thing, and he definitely plays a part there, but its the monetisation aspect that was the real tilt to all noise in a signal to noise ratio perspective

We've taken a version of the problem in the physical world to the digital world. It runs along the same lines of how high rents (commercial or residential) limit the diversity of people or commercial offering in a place simply because only a certain thing can work or be economically viable. People always want different mixes of things and offering but if the structure (in this case rent) only permits one type of thing then that's all you're going to get

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#245

Post by nitwit005 »

imglorp wrote: post #34
lizknope wrote: post #5

Bots have ruined reddit but that is what the owners wanted. The API protest in 2023 took away tools from moderators. I noticed increased bot activity after that. The IPO in 2024 means that they need to increase revenue to justify the stock price. So they allow even more bots to increase traffic which drives up ad revenue. I think they purposely make the search engine bad to encourage people to make more posts which i…

> allow even more bots to increase traffic which drives up ad revenue Isn't that just fraud?

I doubt it's true though. Everyone has something they can track besides total ad views. A reddit bot had no reason to click ads and do things on the destination website. It's there to make posts.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#246

Post by thot_experiment »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #162
LexiMax wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the former type is all but obliterated now. Discord is the 9,000lb gorilla of this form of social media, and it's actually quietly one of the largest social platforms on the internet. There's clearly a desire for these kinds of spaces, and Discord seems to be filling it. While it stinks that it is controlled by one big company, it's quite nice that its communities are invite-only by default and largely moderated by…

> Discord is the 9,000lb gorilla of this form of social media, and it's actually quietly one of the largest social platforms on the internet. There's clearly a desire for these kinds of spaces, and Discord seems to be filling it. The "former type" had to do with online socializing with people you know IRL. I have never seen anything on Discord that matches this description.

Yeah same as sibling comments, I'm in multiple discord servers for IRL friend groups. I personally run one with ~50 people that sees a hundreds of messages a day. By far my most used form of social media. Also as OP said, I'll be migrating to Matrix (probably) when they IPO, we've already started an archival project just in case.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#247

Post by D-Machine »

fsckboy wrote: post #168
Fr0styMatt88 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the sound is a dead giveaway for most AI videos — the voices all sound like a low bitrate MP3. Which will eventually get worked around and can easily be masked by just having a backing track.

that sounds like one of the worst heuristics I've ever heard, worse than "em-dash=ai" (em-dash equals ai to the illiterate class, who don't know what they are talking about on any subject and who also don't use em-dashes, but literate people do use em-dashes and also know what they are talking about. this is called the Dunning-Em-Dash Effect, where "dunning" refers to the payback of intellectual deficit whereas the i…

Thank you for saving me the time writing this. Nothing screams midwit like "Em-dash = AI". If AI detection was this easy, we wouldn't have the issues we have today.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#248

Post by Refreeze5224 »

quantummagic wrote: post #201
seiferteric wrote: post #116

My parents were tricked the other day by a fake youtube video of "racist cop" doing something bad and getting outraged by it. I watch part of the video and even though it felt off I couldn't immediately tell for sure if it was fake or not. Nevertheless I googled the names and details and found nothing but repostings of the video. Then I looked at the youtube channel info and there it said it uses AI for "some" of the…

As they say, the demand for racism far outstrips the supply. It's hard to spend all day outraged if you rely on reality to supply enough fodder.

[flagged]

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#249

Post by leoc »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #208
crimony wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft Word automatically converts dashes to em dashes as soon as you hit space at the end of the next word after the dash.

That's the only way I know how to get an em dash. That's how I create them. I sometimes have to re-write something to force the "dash space space" sequence in order for Word to create it, and then I copy and paste the em dash into the thing I'm working on.

Windows 10/11’s clipboard stack lets you pin selections into the clipboard, so — and a variety of other characters live in mine. And on iOS you just hold down -, of course.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#250

Post by kimixa »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #243
kimixa wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a brit I'd say we tend to use "en-dashes", slightly shorter versions - so more similar to a hyphen and so often typed like that - with spaces either side. I never saw em-dashes—the longer version with no space—outside of published books and now AI.

I think that's just incorrect. There are varying conventions for spaces vs no spaces around em dashes, but all English manuals of style confine to en dashes just to things like "0–10" and "Louisville–Calgary" — at least to my knowledge.

The Oxford style guide page 18 https://www.ox.ac.uk/public-affairs/style-guide

> m-dash (—)

> Do not use; use an n-dash instead.

> n-dash (–)

> Use in a pair in place of round brackets or commas, surrounded by spaces.

Remember I'm specifically speaking about british english.

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