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Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

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Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#291

Post by tekla »

grvdrm wrote: post #107
everdrive wrote: post #3

Social media is now exactly what cable television used to be, but worse; it exists solely to coerce you. You make you feel insecure, you leverage your emotions for someone else's aims. Due to the changes in technology, social media is far more effective at this than cable TV ever could be, but the concept is the same. It's some remote person attempting to manipulate you by also packaging something enticing along with…

HN has plenty of social media components. Think a better version is: HN is not an advertising-controlled social media website. That specific version makes most sense to me.

HN is literally an ad.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#292

Post by icepush »

everdrive wrote: post #3

Social media is now exactly what cable television used to be, but worse; it exists solely to coerce you. You make you feel insecure, you leverage your emotions for someone else's aims. Due to the changes in technology, social media is far more effective at this than cable TV ever could be, but the concept is the same. It's some remote person attempting to manipulate you by also packaging something enticing along with…

This is so different from my personal experience that I feel like one of those kids being told chickens used to be dinosaurs.

I have an account on facebook, on which I am pretty active. If I attend some infrequent event (Which I do fairly often) I will take a picture of it and post it there, with a description of what it's about. That's pretty much the extent of what I put on facebook. Sometimes I see similar posts from people in my friends list, or videos about whatever facebook thinks I am interested in this month (Right now it's showing me lots of people taking apart pumps and motors). What sites are you using, and what exactly are they showing you ?

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#293

Post by snowwrestler »

nailer wrote: post #224
supertroop wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re just learning how small minded people are? In the US there was an attempted insurrection filmed live. We elected the guy who led it who then pardoned 1600 jailed criminals. Now he is trying to creat a slush fund to give them millions as reparations. 33% of the country is delighted by this. These are Plank sized brains.

[flagged]

The legal and political theory was that the Congressional vote count was a moment of power that could be interrupted and seized with relatively few people. No need for tanks in that case.

Most people attacking the Capitol were unorganized protestors, who were gathered as cover for the real effort, which was quite well organized. It was well described in Congressional hearings; people were convicted of conspiracy; lawyers have been disbarred, etc.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#294

Post by nailer »

caseyohara wrote: post #282
nailer wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I think you're downplaying it too much. Of course comparing the event to better organized insurrections makes it look more innocent. But don't forget, the rioters erected makeshift gallows and chanted "Hang Mike Pence" because he refused to overturn the election. I don't doubt the mob would have hanged him given the chance.

Comparing a child throwing their toys out of their pram to better organized insurrections makes it look more innocent. But that's not an insurrection either.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#295

Post by downsplat »

haunter wrote: post #245
frantathefranta wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm probably a heavier user of reddit than most but I recently deleted the reddit app on my phone because it's just too much. I still use the site though, but now I use an iPad with old.reddit to make using it as difficult as possible.

I follow dozens of subs through RSS and that’s pretty good. You just need a reader which has features to filter out certain users and words (like Newsblur what I use)

Yep, if you haven't lost the will to put a bit of curation work upfront, RSS never stopped being the right answer. Substack has been a pretty good addition to the landscape, bringing lots of people into blogging (without calling it that). But for the skimming/reading interface, RSS beats the app.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#296

Post by [deleted] »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #279
stickfigure wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question - how many times a day do you load HN? Is it already getting enormous amounts of your attention?

I don't have the data to quantify it, but M-F, 6a-4p, maybe once an hour or so just to check the headlines. If I have comments, I might check my threads to see if I need to respond. On the Weekends, though, I might check it in the morning and again before bed just to see if anything interesting happened. But it isn't like YT (which is running in the background nearly 24/7) or Reddit, that I habbitually check. Those f…

[deleted]

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#297

Post by Terr_ »

dottjt wrote: post #260
malfist wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. It's a very thin line to go from "just pointing out a problem" to "everything is a problem" to "everything is broken" to "nothing I can do will change anything" and then people disengage in the process and politics and everything else becomes the domain of whoever can shout the loudest with volume, rhetoric, or money. To quote Mon Mothma in Andor: I stand this morning with a difficult message. I believe w…

I think the "nothing I can do will change anything" is actually a predominant theme that's emerged over the past decade. I don't know if you've watched any of Adam Curtis' documentaries, but his documentary HyperNormalisation explores this in great detail (most of this documentaries have a similar theme I've found). Edit: Apologies, I think I mean his documentary: Can't Get You Out of My Head. Essentially it asserts…

Night Watch (2002), by Terry Pratchett.

> People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.

Additional context: The city is being (mis-)ruled by a paranoid dictator, whose brutal secret police don't care too much about if you're innocent. The cynical protagonist is frustrated that some of the resistance is also extremist or at least overly-optimistic about what's going to happen next.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#299

Post by andrepd »

carlosjobim wrote: post #149
malfist wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your theory about cable television is fascinating. I never really watched TV growing up, but every time I visit my parents now that they're retired, one of them always has a 24 hour news going and it's just non stop "you should be afraid" and "you should be angry" told to you by pretty faces smiling the whole time. Social media is totally that today too. I quit facebook in 2016 and reddit in 2023 over similar fears.…

News are for news worthy things - which are things that deviate from everyday life. Wars, disasters, crime, in short things of concern. As well as political struggles, economic struggles, and any kind of conflict. So all is well in that aspect. That's how news have always been, since the first pyres were constructed to light fires to alert neighbouring communities of enemies arriving. But the sickening aspect of cabl…

> But the sickening aspect of cable news is the way the presenters talk.

"Só para as pessoas perceberem lá em casa" is the standard phrase TV pundits use back in $home_country. Translates to something like "just so that you there sitting at home can understand". It's incredibly condescending, truly the gall of these mfs with zero credentials and maximal confidence, speaking assertively about every single topic always with the tone that implies everybody else is a moron.

I haven't watched actual TV for many years so this passes me by except on occasion, but when I see that there are people that watch hours of this garbage every day, part in the TV and part regurgitated on social media... By god it explains many things rotten with the world.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#300

Post by popupeyecare »

I miss when social media was mostly about my friends’ lives. It actually helped us stay in touch.

So much of social media now feels built around whatever is trending that week, not the relationships you actually want to keep up with.

That’s why I’m building Dearest (https://dearest.co) : a private, email-based Sunday photo digest for families and friends. Everyone sends a photo and a short update by Saturday night, and contributors get the group’s digest on Sunday morning. Hopefully this keeps us social and in touch.

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