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The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

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Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#91

Post by czechdeveloper »

EcoHobbies wrote: post #70
czechdeveloper wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This actually paralyses me a bit. Nice vacation? All I think is footprint I'm making and how I'm destroying that very beautiful nature I wanted to visit. Start enterprise? I'll just add another CO2 to provide people with service they don't really need to survive. Like this new gadget? I can't buy it, I don't need it and again, just another item in vicious cycle or consumption. But what can I do. I want my enjoyment o…

Your conclusions are rational. If sustainability is important, we'll have to rethink our actions. Imposing constraints inevitably reduces choices, but there remains plenty of options: * local vacation (this is a tough one, I realise) * enterprises that are sustainable: either marginal negative emissions (e.g. durable goods) or carbon neutral (perhaps via credits) * sustainable activities: hiking, sailing, stand up co…

I did some changes (work from home, smallish energy efficient house), but it seems like not enough in any sense as I still travel by car, I buy a lot of plastic packaged stuff and overall if everyone (whole planet) lived like me, we would likely be in way worse trouble than we are.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#92

Post by tim333 »

Social media is kind of awful but the regular news services are too, in their own way, always focusing on what's gone wrong. I try to counter it a bit by following people like Pinker who look at the reality that most things are getting better. Though I still follow the latest bad stuff going down.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#93

Post by czechdeveloper »

Nition wrote: post #66
czechdeveloper wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This actually paralyses me a bit. Nice vacation? All I think is footprint I'm making and how I'm destroying that very beautiful nature I wanted to visit. Start enterprise? I'll just add another CO2 to provide people with service they don't really need to survive. Like this new gadget? I can't buy it, I don't need it and again, just another item in vicious cycle or consumption. But what can I do. I want my enjoyment o…

I know what you mean, and you didn't even mention the thing that makes it extra stressful: The fact that other people keep doing all that stuff anyway. So you either disadvantage yourself against them while having no real effect as an individual, or you do the same as them while always feeling bad about it. Although some of those things don't necessarily make life better anyway. Sometimes I'm happier having a break a…

Yes, I can either be social or ecological. As my family lives in different parts of country, it dictates car travel (public transport is really bad). Even just volunteering usually requires me to travel by car somewhere.

I try to live simply, it always gave me great pleasure, or at least less stress to own little. But I moved away from this a bit recently as I have family and also I feel like I should be less dependent on surrounding (ie. have good tools, have some backup items etc.).

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#94

Post by maxerickson »

eksemplar wrote: post #24
sonnyblarney wrote: post #7

" you know that you could leave at any time and you know that you will not." I have no problem. The press needs to take more responsibility for this as they are the primary enablers of Twitter. Tweets are presented all the time in articles as expression of legitimate opinion, and often used as the basis for some kind of rally bad straw-man argument the author wants to make. I think Twitter will wane but it won't go a…

The only people I know with twitter accounts are journalists. One friend in particular has a hard time understanding how you can function without twitter. I tried using it, like most people, but when you work a job that doesn’t involve trolling the internet for news, it’s really hard to use twitter in any meaningful manner. You’ll post something and a few days later you’ll have time to post a reply. Or you’ll follow…

An awful lot of people on Twitter don't keep up with their feed. They just take a look at what is current.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#95

Post by severine »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #39
GW150914 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I connected quite a bit earlier, mostly Usenet and BBS’, and when EFnet came along a lot of that. People like to talk about Eternal September and other depredations of communities, but the truth is that while things functioned more smoothly earlier on, it was always a bunch of people and people more or less act like warring groups of primates. If someone had come back from the future and only told us about the extent…

some of the richest, most powerful and brightest people are actively trying to sweep people away for money. This is a big part of the problem IMO. General loss of moral values. I'm not religious at all, and criticize religions all the time, but one has to admit that when Christianity was the driving force in the western world, there were at least some values that were kind of universally accepted. Yes, there was lots…

Now? Really?

Francisco de Quevedo, some 400 years ago: https://lyricstranslate.com/en/poderoso-caballero-es-don-din...

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#96

Post by DoreenMichele »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #39
GW150914 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I connected quite a bit earlier, mostly Usenet and BBS’, and when EFnet came along a lot of that. People like to talk about Eternal September and other depredations of communities, but the truth is that while things functioned more smoothly earlier on, it was always a bunch of people and people more or less act like warring groups of primates. If someone had come back from the future and only told us about the extent…

some of the richest, most powerful and brightest people are actively trying to sweep people away for money. This is a big part of the problem IMO. General loss of moral values. I'm not religious at all, and criticize religions all the time, but one has to admit that when Christianity was the driving force in the western world, there were at least some values that were kind of universally accepted. Yes, there was lots…

Perhaps you have heard of the Spanish Inquisition:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition

Perhaps the point of Jesus dying on the cross was to try to give some push back in the world against how truly horrifying things were two millennia ago, but it wasn't that long ago that personal duels were socially acceptable in the US and even more recently lynchings of people of color were a thing.

I'm not convinced that there is actually some lost golden age of wonderful morality somewhere in our past. I'm highly skeptical of such claims.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#97

Post by eksemplar »

watwut wrote: post #90
eksemplar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly stupid/unsuccessful people. The elite is very good at disagreeing with each other on a polite manner. I work in the public sector, as a manager who is on a board that designs suggestions for our national digitization strategies. I know how to play the game now, but the most eye opening thing to me when I was starting out was how people disagree at those levels of society. If you want to say that you think some…

Unfortunately, this is also how elite enables those who abuse power as long as those mistreated are not part of elite. This how and why bullies and abusers keep and gain powerful positions. This is how sexual assault becomes sex scandal and this is why Jerry Sandusky could abuse so many boys. This is how outright self-serving lies become part of consensus. This works the way you described because those people have li…

I think it’s the last bit. That people don’t participate.

I can’t remeber how many hearings we’ve done on changes that got nothing but crackpot replies because no regular folks want to spend time participating in the society they live in anymore.

Only in one area do people actually take action, schools. If we close down a school, for various reasons but typically efficiency (money), parents will open a new private school in its place. I’m Danish so the laws are a little complicated, but basically a private school gets as much funding as a public school and that means we save no money by closing a public school that gets replaced by a private one.

So our school system is extremely democratic, because you can’t make changes without the parents. Now, our school system isn’t the only system that works like this, most of them do really. But almost every other system is run mainly by professional bureaucrats who make the plans, because they are never opposed by anyone, because nobody participate.

I mean, crackpots participation has probably gone up over the years, but real involvement from real people with realist plans are almost nonexistent. I consider crackpots people too by the way, but you can’t power a city with special unicorn rays or by having a voulanteer threadmill. Which are the only two responses we got to a recent hearing on which power plant to build.

Want actual influence or real change? Then get involved.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#98

Post by eksemplar »

Angostura wrote: post #79
eksemplar wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only people I know with twitter accounts are journalists. One friend in particular has a hard time understanding how you can function without twitter. I tried using it, like most people, but when you work a job that doesn’t involve trolling the internet for news, it’s really hard to use twitter in any meaningful manner. You’ll post something and a few days later you’ll have time to post a reply. Or you’ll follow…

There are many ways to use Twitter that aren't social media per se and which are useful. I work with a school and they Tweet out stuff bout what is happening at the school, photos of student activities, etc which parents love. They tweet out thanks to organisations that they are working with or who have come to visit. People working there follow the Twitter accounts of education specialists, regulators, other schools…

I’m European, so using twitter in that way would be really illegal. Having children of my own, I’m really happy they weren’t shared on an American social media-platform for the entire world to see.

We do have digital platforms for sharing stuff like that, but they are operated by the schools and the data is encrypted, access locked to the correct parties and the data is t kept forever. That way, you can actually also share meaningful information directly linked to your child.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#99

Post by eksemplar »

pjc50 wrote: post #88
eksemplar wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only people I know with twitter accounts are journalists. One friend in particular has a hard time understanding how you can function without twitter. I tried using it, like most people, but when you work a job that doesn’t involve trolling the internet for news, it’s really hard to use twitter in any meaningful manner. You’ll post something and a few days later you’ll have time to post a reply. Or you’ll follow…

Don't use twitter for general news. Mute the news sources if you have to. If it's big enough it will bleed over into your feed anyway. Often I can work out what the news is by reverse-engineering the jokes about it. It's much more interesting for highly specific news. I've got some accounts I follow for local news, some for gamedev news, people doing interesting tech, art, jokes, and a few "commentators" who are exce…

HN is my only form of digital news, so I’m a little old school. In fact the only news I read regularly is a national paper that only comes out once a week, that way all the journalists have had time to digest the weeks events and I get a compiled list of what was actually important.

I tried following HN styled things on twitter but it just never worked out for me.

Re: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media

#100

Post by eksemplar »

wingerlang wrote: post #53
eksemplar wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only people I know with twitter accounts are journalists. One friend in particular has a hard time understanding how you can function without twitter. I tried using it, like most people, but when you work a job that doesn’t involve trolling the internet for news, it’s really hard to use twitter in any meaningful manner. You’ll post something and a few days later you’ll have time to post a reply. Or you’ll follow…

Or you’ll follow a few interest points and miss everything they post because you don’t visit every hour and it’ll drown in the feed if you don’t. As long as you don't feel the need to see everything they post you should be fine. I honestly think all the regular people on twitter are either unemployed or spending so much work time on social media that they ought to be fired. I'm a regular that finds some value in Twit…

I probably should have said Danes. Americans have taken to twitter in a different way than we have, I still don’t get how you have time for it though, or how you get value from your time there, but that might just be me,
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