351–360 of 511 posts
If this subject interests you, and you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend the book Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death
Its a breezy novella you can finish over a lunch break
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Reddit is fun for a while but there is a strong “lowest common denominator” problem that plagues almost every subreddit.
There's a very strong hive mind there. It takes very little to grassroots a subreddit. Just like at the biking subreddits and tire recommendations. It's almost always the GP 5000 that is recommended. Which, don't get me wrong, it's a great tire. But it isn't always the best, and there are tires out there that beat it. The community has just latched on to the one true tire and that's all you'll ever see recommended. M…
9 times out of 10 somebody who perceives a huge amount of anti Semitism online wrapped up in criticism of israel will absolutely categorically refuse to condemn the genocide.
When they refuse, this is how you can tell that it is simply projection and disguised islamophobia.
Israel is also pretty open about funding bots to spread that kind of message both offline and online.
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Because the people who think HN is social media and avoid social media aren't going to see this and respond. It's a selection bias.
> OP: The pedantry involved in that comparison is extremely tiresome.
Social media was never really “social” in my opinion. Reading updates from hundreds of people you have shallow interactions with offers the illusion of having a social life. So I’m not sure if this change to “fads” makes it meaningfully less social than it already was.
Curious how old you are? There was definitely a sweet spot if you were in highschool or college in like 2004 - 2010 (so born something like 1986 - 1994?) where online social media was almost painstakingly manicured to mirror real-life social dynamics. Many people remember the drama of deciding who your "top friends" were on MySpace.
At least I got to experience irc, forum boards and other early group chat apps - that was some of the best internet experience. Early Reddit was incredible as well.
It's sad that today's youth will likely never get anything remotely similar to this.
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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.…
I know this works on YouTube Premium, but I have my watch history turned off and use the desktop app with UnTrap for YouTube so that it turns off all of the distracting nonsense I don't use (Shorts and recommendations)
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> The next time you catch a TV news anchor, picture them being with you in your living room instead of in the TV studio. You will instantly conclude that the person is mentally and spiritually unwell to talk and act like that. They're two different scenarios so it's not exactly a surprise they sound different. Same goes for anyone giving a public speech, their cadence and tone would sound bizarre if they were just sa…
Some are absolutely better than others when it comes to this. But I was shocked and instantly repulsed when hearing and seeing CNN at an airport after having been away from televisions for a few months. > Same goes for anyone giving a public speech, their cadence and tone would sound bizarre if they were just say in a room with you. Then imagine these newscasters giving a public speech in that same way. You'd think y…
You recognize that you're the outlier here... has it occurred to you that maybe your reaction is the unusual one, not everyone else's? There's literally a podcast called My Favorite Murder that has millions of subscribers. A lot of people go to live shows for it. They literally do invite people in flesh and blood to sit in front of them and talk about murders. It's not necessarily my kind of thing either but there's no doubt it's popular.
This article has struck a nerve in the comment section. It's describing how traditional social media sites like Facebook and Instagram are not used for social features anymore, but for content discovery. The descriptions of how people are using Facebook to find new content anonymously are not that different from how we use Hacker News, which has reignited the debate about whether Hacker News is social media. I had to…
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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.
Reddit is fun for a while but there is a strong “lowest common denominator” problem that plagues almost every subreddit.
A new game: determine when you meet someone if they use tik-tok or not without asking them. People's opinions are groomed and programmed. It's pretty hilarious how small minded people are.
I could very quickly sus out what was on FOX news last night by the conversations my coworkers have.