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Everyone’s offended these days

eev.ee

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Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#31

Post by davidism »

jerf wrote: post #26
jimrandomh wrote: post #9

I think this is a property of the way voting/distribution work on some sites, but not others. On Twitter or Tumblr, if you want to reply to something, you have to increase its visibility in the process. So if something is really wrong and everyone wants to correct it, it creates these horrible positive-feedback spirals where mass-outrage explodes out of nothing. This doesn't happen on Hacker News, partly because the…

I've made a minor hobby of studying how communities are formed by the technical structure of the community, and what interactions they enable. The control of visibility is actually a subtle art, and a lot of things like Twitter or Facebook start with an initial design that is quite unsubtle that works at first, but scales poorly. I'm not convinced Twitter is fixable as-is. The most obvious technical solution is to do…

Even sub-communites don't solve the problem. There are certain subreddits notorious for dogpiling on posts in other subreddits. The article mentions this indirectly by observing that what starts out on one platform can easily migrate across communities, even to communities you're not aware of.

Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#33

Post by krig »

This is a complete misunderstanding of what that quote from Stephen Fry is saying. Of course people get offended. Everyone get offended all the time! So what? He's doing exactly the right thing: He isn't having fun using Twitter, so he stops using it. He's not claiming that getting offended is somehow beneath him, he's saying that getting offended is no big deal.

It's everyone else who is making a big deal out of him leaving Twitter, which (again) kind of proves his original point. Stephen Fry leaves Twitter. Well, so fucking what.

Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#34

Post by allenskd »

gambiting wrote: post #13

Well, the author's suggestion that everything is fine, trolls can be ignored and Fry is somehow hypocritical with being fed up with trolls and offended people is really something that I cannot agree with. Twitter, by its very own format, encourages the worst in the human behaviour. Those who shout loudest get the most visibility, and it has the very real potential to destroy lives and encourage mob justice which is j…

I agree. I feel like people amplify their emotional reasoning to the extreme with social networks enough to jump into whatever moralistic "shoulds" or anything that can get them behind the "right", sort of like putting your morals on the line in a popularity contest, a hell of a emotional rollercoaster.

People seldom take perspective and context in account. Especially if they all go into the angry mob mentality as you mention which I'm pretty sure we have seen plenty of times.

Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#35

Post by Joeboy »

krig wrote: post #33

This is a complete misunderstanding of what that quote from Stephen Fry is saying. Of course people get offended. Everyone get offended all the time! So what? He's doing exactly the right thing: He isn't having fun using Twitter, so he stops using it. He's not claiming that getting offended is somehow beneath him, he's saying that getting offended is no big deal. It's everyone else who is making a big deal out of him…

It's kind of legitimate news because he was an early Twitter star and did a lot to popularize it, and now he's decided it's not working out for him anymore. This somewhat interesting angle seems to be getting buried under more clickworthy and dramatic narratives.

Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#37

Post by Loughla »

theseatoms wrote: post #19
Shog9 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you ever know? You can judge actions, moderate actions, reward actions... But feelings are harder to identify. Which was sorta the point of this article, I guess. There's a good chance that everyone is offended... So, what are we gonna do about that? If everyone is offended - and if we stop trying to sort out who has a "right" to be and who doesn't - then these notions that some bad behavior is justified ki…

Yes, I agree that other people's feelings are hard to know. (Possibly unknowable.) I just can't recall ever in my life having been offended, so I'm skeptical.

What you're doing is translating your experience to the human experience. With 7,000,000,000 of us, there's more than a fair chance that someone else's experience is different than yours.

Put simply, (but not meant as an insult) you're not thinking about anyone but yourself.

Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#38

Post by krig »

krig wrote: post #33

This is a complete misunderstanding of what that quote from Stephen Fry is saying. Of course people get offended. Everyone get offended all the time! So what? He's doing exactly the right thing: He isn't having fun using Twitter, so he stops using it. He's not claiming that getting offended is somehow beneath him, he's saying that getting offended is no big deal. It's everyone else who is making a big deal out of him…

As an aside, I was stunned to see that "Stephen Fry leaves Twitter" qualifies as national news in Sweden [1]. I don't know how this could get any more ridiculous. Can't wait to get the non-stop 24-hour coverage of Stephen Frys Twitter account: Is he going to start using it again? Will he start posting on Google+? Twitter CEO refuses to comment!

[1]: http://www.svt.se/kultur/film/stephen-fry-lamnar-twitter

Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#39

Post by s_kilk »

> The subtext here is that cretinism is acceptable, but being a target is not.

> If you’re a total dick who only uses the Internet to seek out strangers and ruin their day for kicks, you are absolutely welcome. If you happen to be one such sought-out person, there’s the door.

Sums it up perfectly.

Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#40

Post by cconroy »

krig wrote: post #33

This is a complete misunderstanding of what that quote from Stephen Fry is saying. Of course people get offended. Everyone get offended all the time! So what? He's doing exactly the right thing: He isn't having fun using Twitter, so he stops using it. He's not claiming that getting offended is somehow beneath him, he's saying that getting offended is no big deal. It's everyone else who is making a big deal out of him…

I dont know Fry but he isn't handling things as well as Dawkins does it seems. Dawkins has a hilarious video of him reading the most hateful tweets.

You have to be careful. Some of the people who complain about others being offended all the time are the biggest babies.

[Edit] If he is leaving bc it is no fun anymore that is an excellent reason.

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