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The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

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Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#261

Post by __blockcipher__ »

throwitaway1235 wrote: post #249
giantrobot wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most vulnerable voices It's really sad you apparently posted this seriously.

I'd like your thoughts on why their political beliefs are not vulnerable.

Indeed. Being able to lose your source of income for posting something that contradicts the mainstream narrative counts as vulnerability in my book. I wanted to post a few examples of potential comments that would very plausibly get one removed from one's job, but that might risk becoming trollbait etc, so I won't give specific examples and just trust that we all have a decent pulse of the kinds of things that you can't say publicly without risk of losing employment or some other punishment.

Indeed, if someone can post their more-or-less unfiltered thoughts on a big social media platform like Facebook, Twitter, etc without ever getting banned, that's a great indication that that person is not part of a "vulnerable" faction, at least in the sense of being part of a counterculture.

So - I guess I'll risk giving one example - if you post a gross exagerration of the risks of SARS-CoV-2 with respect to death or serious illness, or recklessly speculate that recovery from infection does not produce immunity, you're allowed to do that as much as you want. But express the opposite opinion (even if you're literally echoing WHO recommendations such as [far too late] lockdowns being too blunt an instrument or that immunity passports shouldn't be a thing), and you'll be quickly suspended or banned with only a vague reference to "community guidelines".

And then of course you have the irony of platforms like Parler and Gab, which arise in large part due to the phenomenon of deplatforming voices of (primarily) a certain side, and then the mainstream will turn around and criticize these platforms for having a lot of "extremists" or supposed "crazy people", despite the fact that by definition such a platform is going to be populated by those who got booted explicitly or implicitly from the mainstream systems. As a further irony, it's commonly said that "nobody is preventing your ability to speak, you're just not allowed to speak on [insert platform]", and then when you go to that other platform that permits largely unrestricted speech, that platform is yanked from AWS and there's tons of news headlines about how they shouldn't be allowed to platform voice X or faction Y, etc.

So...yeah, the dismissive "how dare you declare these people vulnerable" is very naive and myopic IMO. I think we all know more or less what the current zeitgeist is and roughly what happens when you run afoul of it, and it's not pretty.

I hope I made something close to a coherent point there, I was mostly going stream of consciousness mode :)

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#262

Post by morlockabove »

zxexz wrote: post #250
claudiawerner wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's genuinely ridiculous; academics working on really important topics for the current age, from society, to legal theory, to anthropology, to novel engineering are gatekept by publishers. I've wanted to read the full text to a paper I thought I will gain a lot from, something I can cite in an argument, something to enrich me and make me think. I can't do that, because I don't have access to the paper/book/w…

In a sense some may find this more of a band-aid than anything else, but I've found 95% of the book I want to read are available through libgen[0] and close to 99% of papers through sci-hub [1]. Sure enough, the book referenced in the great-great grandparent to your post is on libgen and I now have a PDF. It really is unfortunate though, that there are a great many books one can only get a physical copy of for many t…

I wonder if you could take payments in bitcoin to print out epubs/pdfs of books in high quality, bind them, and ship them to people. The bitcoin's to avoid the copyright ninjas; you could try to silk-road the whole operation. It'll be easier once we have better drones and automated cars.

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#263

Post by __blockcipher__ »

partyboat1586 wrote: post #38
helen___keller wrote: post #18

I think this is the biggest takeaway for me: > We saw this dynamic metastasize in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, when well-intentioned claims of “silence is violence” (recalling the powerful 1987 ACT-UP “Silence = Death” campaign) spiraled into calling out individuals with even a small following who hadn’t come forward with a timely public statement of solidarity or remorse. Yet public posts were subject to popul…

>spiraled into calling out individuals with even a small following who hadn’t come forward with a timely public statement of solidarity or remorse. >timely public statement Being a public figure sounds exhausting.

It is, but to be clear I think the point there was not about public figures per se but about everyday people. Everyday (albeit obviously left-leaning) people would post the black squares out of a sense of obligation, and then the responses would be split between praising them for standing up for "black lives", versus half the people criticizing the poster of the black square for making a silly symbolic gesture. (I view it as the latter - a stupid symbolic gesture - BUT the context of the whole "silence is violence" meme is why these NPCs were in a double-bind: damned if you do, damned if you don't)

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#264

Post by swirepe »

claudiawerner wrote: post #225
seniorgarcia wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can ship a 30 year old paperback of it for my personal use to my home for 60$, that is true. I'm not sure what else you are trying to tell me. Do you personally think that is a good offer?

I think it's genuinely ridiculous; academics working on really important topics for the current age, from society, to legal theory, to anthropology, to novel engineering are gatekept by publishers. I've wanted to read the full text to a paper I thought I will gain a lot from, something I can cite in an argument, something to enrich me and make me think. I can't do that, because I don't have access to the paper/book/w…

How do you feel about crime?

http://library.lol/main/7C31067F2CA96B8CB3F8661CA680B656

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#265

Post by claudiawerner »

swirepe wrote: post #264
claudiawerner wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's genuinely ridiculous; academics working on really important topics for the current age, from society, to legal theory, to anthropology, to novel engineering are gatekept by publishers. I've wanted to read the full text to a paper I thought I will gain a lot from, something I can cite in an argument, something to enrich me and make me think. I can't do that, because I don't have access to the paper/book/w…

How do you feel about crime? http://library.lol/main/7C31067F2CA96B8CB3F8661CA680B656

I'm great with it! Thanks for pointing me, though my point was more general, I suppose - unfortunately libgen doesn't have everything, hence my 'five years' remark :)

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#266

Post by zxexz »

morlockabove wrote: post #262
zxexz wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a sense some may find this more of a band-aid than anything else, but I've found 95% of the book I want to read are available through libgen[0] and close to 99% of papers through sci-hub [1]. Sure enough, the book referenced in the great-great grandparent to your post is on libgen and I now have a PDF. It really is unfortunate though, that there are a great many books one can only get a physical copy of for many t…

I wonder if you could take payments in bitcoin to print out epubs/pdfs of books in high quality, bind them, and ship them to people. The bitcoin's to avoid the copyright ninjas; you could try to silk-road the whole operation. It'll be easier once we have better drones and automated cars.

Honestly, I'm more inclined to just mail someone some cash in exchange for their services printing/binding/mailing the book back. Seems a little more straightforward than transferring bitcoin and having a noisy drone drop a book on my lawn. Plus, why would I want all my transactions on a public ledger? ;)

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#267

Post by lamp_book »

oceanplexian wrote: post #135
lamp_book wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think that's an important distinction - you need a critical mass of people sharing in countercultural behavior/practices in some way to get an actual counterculture. Many people have eschewed social media for one reason or another but not in some unified way that I know of.

There’s 40% of the population you’re missing that doesn’t participate in social media because their ideas have been banned. Sure, they might have a Facebook or a Twitter but nothing substantive happens there. They believe in things like gun rights, freedom of speech and religion, and they often go to meeting places called a “church”, which these days could be considered “counter-culture”. Their values don’t come from…

> From my experience people from US costal states seem to think these people are a small minority (5%) and tend to be shocked every time an election comes around.

I'm from the Midwest and grew up going to church just like everybody else I knew. Much of my family and friends are conservative and I still have views that I might not readily share in NYSFLA but probably would after a couple of beers because I'm not going to get crucified over them. If you honestly think conservatism isn't anything but mainstream then you are the one living in the bubble. (We literally just had trump as president!)

I had a longer comment written out before chrome crashed but the gist is Hollywood and Silicon Valley don't dictate the entirety of mainstream culture.

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#268

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

throwitaway1235 wrote: post #116
TameAntelope wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying is and isn't true. One example of a countercultural movement that's been in the news recently is the DDoSecrets leaks/hacks (they get upset if you aren't clear that they're hackers). They've got a strong Twitter presence that helps them get their message out, but they conduct no "real" business on Twitter. So a counterculture can use the mainstream platforms, but they choose to do so only as a micr…

DDoSecrets targeted the most vulnerable voices in society, people banished to Gab for their political beliefs. They literally work for the liberal ruling system.

[flagged]

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#269

Post by toyg »

partyboat1586 wrote: post #38
helen___keller wrote: post #18

I think this is the biggest takeaway for me: > We saw this dynamic metastasize in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, when well-intentioned claims of “silence is violence” (recalling the powerful 1987 ACT-UP “Silence = Death” campaign) spiraled into calling out individuals with even a small following who hadn’t come forward with a timely public statement of solidarity or remorse. Yet public posts were subject to popul…

>spiraled into calling out individuals with even a small following who hadn’t come forward with a timely public statement of solidarity or remorse. >timely public statement Being a public figure sounds exhausting.

With great power comes great responsibility.

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#270

Post by __blockcipher__ »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #37
helen___keller wrote: post #18

I think this is the biggest takeaway for me: > We saw this dynamic metastasize in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, when well-intentioned claims of “silence is violence” (recalling the powerful 1987 ACT-UP “Silence = Death” campaign) spiraled into calling out individuals with even a small following who hadn’t come forward with a timely public statement of solidarity or remorse. Yet public posts were subject to popul…

> From well-compensated marketing teams, to hordes of self-interested proselytizers (see: bitcoin), to propaganda teams looking to influence public opinion, mainstream dark forest sites simply shift the balance of power from the platform itself to the most motivated and well-funded members of the platform This is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Also, voting systems take care of a lot of this, because naked…

> because naked propaganda spam gets downvoted by the users

This is simply not true, although I suppose it depends on the definition of naked. Here's some random examples - although like anything, whether it qualifies as propaganda depends on one's beliefs:

- When the previous US president wanted to pull out of Syria, or at least scale down the activities there, a bunch of headlines to the effect of "[President's name] abandons the kurds, leaving them to die" were written, and went straight to the top of Reddit. (This is a classic war propaganda technique where there's always an excuse as to why you can't end a certain war, while failing to account for the negative effects of continuing wars, or the facts that many of these "problems" only exist because of previous foreign policy blunders and doubling down on those blunders simply doesn't help)

- Without going down the COVID rabbithole too much, there would routinely be articles that either (a) spread Chinese-state-originated propaganda videos of stuff like "man randomly collapses in the middle of the street", (b) articles that would credulously take China's metrics at face values, (c) scientific publications that immediately denied the possibility of non-naturalistic origins of the virus, (d) articles intended to shame those who don't believe in masking as an intervention, etc

- (This is a fun one since many won't agree) Many articles raced to the top which made just completely wrong statements about the portfolios of firms like Melvin Capital and basically depicted the WSB gamestop fiasco as a classic david vs goliath narrative, instead of the reality which was for a brief period of time it was a real short squeeze and then almost immediately became a classic bubble/pump and dump scenario that had no connection to fundamental asset valuation. (To be clear, in a short squeeze stock prices can easily be pushed past the "intrinsic value", but so long as there's still a squeeze it is not irrational to buy the asset. However, once it's no longer actually a short squeeze and is now just a normal bull-run / bubble, an article selling the david v goliath narrative is now propaganda)

- Here's a headline that's #2 on /r/politics, which I just visited to find the first headline that counts as propaganda in my book: "Conservatives Are Furious Biden Delivered a Non-Insane Presidential Speech" (regardless of what you feel about the speech or conservatives, it should be trivially obvious that they are not furious about a "non-insane" speech)

- Any of the dozens of articles about the "Capitol Hill Insurrection" which grossly exaggerated what occurred as an attempted coup instead of the reality which was a bunch of (largely deluded) self-styled patriots who changed and prayed and took stupid selfies inside the capitol building (note: me saying that it was grossly exaggerated is not the same as saying that there was no wrongdoing, etc)

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I do think it is true though that "articles which are clearly propaganda to the average user" i.e. one thats go against the status quo of a cite will be downvoted. But propaganda in the other direction won't because they will never think of it as propaganda

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