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The Internet of Beefs

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331–340 of 342 posts

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#331
post #12

This article resonates with me and my experiences online to a startling degree. Specifically: “We are not beefing endlessly because we do not desire peace or because we do not know how to engineer peace. We are beefing because we no longer know who we are, each of us individually, and collectively as a species.” I think we are seeing a genuine lack of strong family, social, and organizational ties among most people,…

If you or anyone else is interested in this topic I strongly suggest the book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger.

That book really made me think pretty hard about this stuff. It's also a short 180 pages.

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#332
post #317
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've experienced plenty of that dangerous unquestioning extremist fervor from progressive/LGBT circles too.

Right now I am talking about aligning oneself with party that openly threaten violence and celebrates it and openly talks about abusing power if they win (as if that would be cool thing). And whose leadership is very friendly with dudes who have swastica tatoos. And which have very similar ideological arguments. "Unquestioning fervor" is not there yet. They are scary, because their appeal and promis is "I am gon na b…

> party that openly threaten violence and celebrates it and openly talks about abusing power if they win (as if that would be cool thing)

I read this entire sentence and still wasn't sure which side you were referring to because this applies equally to "the left" in my experience.

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#333
post #12

This article resonates with me and my experiences online to a startling degree. Specifically: “We are not beefing endlessly because we do not desire peace or because we do not know how to engineer peace. We are beefing because we no longer know who we are, each of us individually, and collectively as a species.” I think we are seeing a genuine lack of strong family, social, and organizational ties among most people,…

If you or anyone else is interested in this topic I strongly suggest the book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger. That book really made me think pretty hard about this stuff. It's also a short 180 pages.

I just ordered a copy and am looking forward to it. Thanks for the recommendation.

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#334
This was one of the most entertaining and insightful pieces I've read in a long time. In general, I think it seems like a pretty accurate understanding of the state of the world/internet. But I think it stops short at the end where it talks about moving on from the beefs into new ways of being that will be significant to the future. I think plenty of people have rejected the beefing and moved on to new, positive ways of being. Many people are focusing their energy and lives on science, art and lifestyles that are completely removed from the constant conflict of the modern internet and instead focused on human progress. While plenty of beef can be thrown around about humanism, humanitarianism, the human progress movement and sustainable development goals, those focused on those things seem to have removed themselves entirely from the internet of beefs. I'd suggest Bill Gates as one prominent example.

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#335

This is an excellent analysis of the state of the modern internet, though I don't entirely agree with his diagnosis of the cause; I think it's more down to two main things: 1. We are all, at heart, covetous xenophobic apes, and we've been doing the same basic thing (arbitrarily define an in-group and an out-group and proceed to wage total war on the out-group) since before we were even human. This is just the latest…

>conflict is the most engaging kind of engagement This doesn't feel right. I ask myself, do I go places to look for people to fight with? Emphatically no. Do you? Probably not. I just read this great|hateful book|movie|thing. I want to talk about it with people who have experienced this book|movie|thing, would be great if they saw it the way I did, also great if they disagreed but we could discuss it with a shared la…

You may not go looking to participate in fights, but as a spectator event, fights certainly draw the largest viewerships, whether it's a fight on the street, or the Super Bowl, or a war.

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that hippie generation forbade all sex & drugs so successive generations have to do something. We have become over domesticated chimps that have been conditioned to think having sex with a lot of people is a bad thing and anything other than alcohol is a no no. Good a more open minded sentiment is starting to develop but let's not blame technology when cultural heritage is sufficient to explain trends. If everybo…

I don't think so. The hippie movement was a reaction to extremely stiff social norms that are not at all applicable today. We have a lot to thank them for their disobedience to that. Today, outside of your family and maybe some friends nobody really cares about your drug use or sex life. There are some prohibitions by law, but I doubt these are too relevant. I often ask myself from which cult people have escaped or h…

The norms haven't changed, but society is more atomized and thus the norms can't exert the pressure that they once did.

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#337
post #158
post #99

Throw in Nadia Eghbal's Tyranny of Ideas ( https://nadiaeghbal.com/ideas ) and you'll realize it's not humans beefing, but ideas. Posting is praxis, and the internet is a series of tube battlegrounds for the best ideas. I'm a multitour veteran of the scarred hellscape where modern and historic ideas struggle - 4chan, TEDx conferences, irc, VC conference rooms, local candidate door-knocking campaigns, reddit, and of c…

Sometimes I love arguing just to argue. I wonder how many other people there are like me?

In my own experience:

1. everyone starts out like that

2. some realize that and (sometimes having thought of it for a while) make a decision to persist/stop that

3. some years have passed by since, and now you can't get that reaction out of me, only understanding

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#338

Is it though? or is it the disenfranchised finally are able to have their opinion heard? We also get to see the emperors now and we realise they have no clothes - they're just like us. My hope is this is a brief period of education of everyone to see each others opinions and something better can come of it. As always there are those at work trying to maintain their positions. For myself I have learnt a lot about the…

Anything that indeed has an 'end of beef' to it might be the battle of the ideologically possessed, a battle of ideas in J. Peterson terms. Because this is the end goal, the consumption and annihilation of other doctrines.

But mostly what I gauge out there is indeed IoB. The article is so on-point for me that could just as well have written it myself.

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#339

I'm not quite sure what to make of this, but I think I agree with this conclusion: > We are not beefing endlessly because we do not desire peace or because we do not know how to engineer peace. We are beefing because we no longer know who we are, each of us individually, and collectively as a species. Knight and mook alike are faced with the terrifying possibility that if there is no history in the future, there is n…

I have to say that in my own experience nothing foretells me of an end to IoB. Which is just a new conceptualization of "Eternal September", as far as I understand.

Let me contrast my own world-view perturbations with what we see attributed to "meeks and knights" in the article:

I remember my internal world-view and thinking and feeling from about the age of 4. I am 36 now.

So most people don't.

I was either raised to understand or had that built-in that I was bread and born into a world that is set up by multiple interested parties, and I had a place in the machine. Or had to build my own processes that mined the value-system and become a part of that machine.

Most people don't. Many think they're special. Many feel entitled.

I did not easily get on with people at first, but did make an effort to understand what Russian is meant to imply, Jew meant to imply, Boy meant to imply; in terms of where my place is and who my enemies are and what I am supposed to think and do about them.

Most people pick that up from their surroundings (not being ADD like me), take it in as a given, and embody it throughout and henceforth. Which is a point that I needed to research to understand.

"Most people" is ME, at one point in time or another. That is, people change, people react before assessing their position, people get represented by something or someone for the purpose of this fight or that fight. I learned that all the human "evil" and the moral good could be teased out of my own life experience, given enough time and argumentative power. Any action or inaction or inattention can reflect on me, put me in that "most people" category for a moment.

That makes me an individual, and a part of a larger humanity.

But no associations exist in-between. No shared interest that persists. No values that don't change, no long game that plays out this way or that.

I have no permanent in-group, no close associates with a shared vision, not even some permanent foe group that is always opposed to the way I think or am. And I am starting to think that this is exactly how most people are most of the time now. And that this is a marked change from how even my own parents used to be.

I think I am ill-equipped biologically to handle that kind of thing. The shifting of values, the arbitrariness of goals, the loneliness of most people most of the time.

Mayhap, in this constant endeavour to minister the masses and disperse their attention from focusing on the imperial divide of workers and benefactors that resulted in the world that I find myself in, that resulted in me being how I am; humans have finally hit the ball out of the park? Perhaps the game can not continue. Maybe, we are currently lost, all of us, individually.

The way we used to align and declare ourselves, the shared goals and values, the in-group and the out-group used to be larger categories of things. I think today it all has devolved into very petty squabbling.

I live in the land of Israel (or Palestine if you prefer), and it's pretty quiet, if you ignore the news media ruckus. It used to be much bloodier before my time, I understand.

I'm not sure that it was better the way all that has been resolving itself before. But it sure was less lonely.

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing on their post that implies age or student status, unless you think staying with your parents is something that only college students do and is not possible after graduation.

There also isn't anything in their post to say that they're not . But you're assuming it was illegal, based on... what? Why assume the worst rather than the more charitable assumption?

and you're assuming it was legal, based on... what? Why assume the best rather than the more realistic assumption?
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