[HN Gopher] The new silent majority: People who don't tweet
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The new silent majority: People who don't tweet
Author : laurex
Score : 472 points
Date : 2022-03-08 18:30 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| Atlas667 wrote:
| This is almost exclusively the fault of media trying to engage
| viewers through culture war.
|
| These people [one random, average person passionate about
| something they know little about] are saying these things[taken
| out of context by reporter or site] about you[random attribute
| you will identify with].
|
| Media demographics are killing harmony. These people feed our
| brains. They are our eyes beyond what our real eyes can see.
| Which is not very far. That's how people come to hate people
| they've never met. Or how wars are started.
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| Can someone explain why they would ever put something on Twitter
| that is not marketing related? (I get it for business, but why
| for personal use?)
| Miner49er wrote:
| Probably for the same reasons you just posted this comment.
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| But I only post here because this community is worth
| interacting with.
|
| Twitter's community is the entire world. (as far as I know)
| 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
| According to the article, Twitter only makes up 25% of
| America, let alone the world.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Many artists use it as a platform to show their art. I'm
| betting it's more popular than DeviantArt for this purpose, for
| example.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Wouldn't that be marketing? Private, but marketing still. At
| least if those artist also provide commercial services.
| CodeMage wrote:
| This question needs to be asked more often. It took me quite a
| while to realize why I'm more engaged on Twitter than I used to
| be.
|
| In my case, it's to have a conversation. Before I moved to the
| United States, I could have all sorts of conversations with
| people at work, no matter how controversial or stupid or weird.
| But in the US, the culture is different. There are things that
| you can't discuss with your coworkers, for various reasons.
|
| When the pandemic hit and I stopped going to the office, that
| made the problem even worse. Sure, I didn't have any real
| friends here, but at least there was more randomness and
| diversity in my social life. I love my family, but it's an
| extremely limited pool of people to talk to.
|
| So I found myself participating more and more on Twitter, on
| Imgur, and on certain game forums. Which, in turn, had the same
| impact on me as Facebook used to before I closed my account.
|
| My own, very personal conclusion, is that the society in the
| United States suffers from a "disease" of alienating people
| from each other and isolating them, making them turn to social
| networks to fill the void left by the absence of what used to
| be normal, every day way to socialize.
|
| Then again, I'm just a sample of one, so my conclusion is
| almost certain to be wrong.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > the society in the United States suffers from a "disease"
| of alienating people from each other and isolating them
|
| Is that unique to the US? It feels like something broadly
| true if I believe what I see in the news and online forums,
| but in my personal life it does not feel true at all.
| CodeMage wrote:
| I can't say whether it's _unique_ to the US, because I 've
| only lived in two other countries before moving here. Also,
| I've spent all these years since I moved to the US living
| in the same county of the same state, a state so notorious
| for how hard it is to make friends, that there's a name for
| the phenomenon: Seattle Freeze.
|
| On the other hand, I've talked to a lot of other immigrants
| who lived in different states before this, and the general
| consensus (in that admittedly small sample) is that the US
| is definitely different from South America or Europe in
| that sense.
|
| For context, I lived in Chile before I moved to the US, and
| Chile is the country in South America that tries the
| hardest to be like the US. Even in Chile, it's easier to
| have a richer social life than here, despite longer working
| hours and longer commutes, which both result in having much
| less free time. My own theory is because you get to
| socialize more at work and, if you have a kid that goes to
| kindergarten or school, with other parents. Here? "Not so
| much" would be an understatement.
| rektide wrote:
| so much salt in the comments. why risk putting yourself in the
| world? why risk opening your mouth? i dunno, why do you leave
| your house? a lot of you probably dont really have to.
|
| do you not want to engage in the world? are you not curious about
| other people, interested in heearing them think? does having
| direct access to incredibly high grade people not excite you for
| some reason? do you not want to grow and get better, do you value
| being safe & secure so much as to pass up exchanging &
| interacting with so many? where else do you go to engage in
| cereberal, vast conversations? do you have world class thinkers,
| developers, journalists & researchers that you pow-wow with
| regularly? are you entirely uninterested in seeing some of their
| lives, participating together with them?
|
| getting to join the global consciousness has been an incredible
| privilege. having a place for my thoughts in public, being open
| to reflection, getting to share & hear others open streams of
| communication, getting to engage in all manners of debate &
| discovery... this is 100% the cyberspace i signed up for. when
| twitter comes up as a topic tbis grousing & moaning about it, how
| everything that happens there is all shit &, from only bad edgy
| people... do you not look in the mirror when you cast such bitter
| hateful negative accusations at all? do you not see yourself
| enacting the bad acts you decry? this is such enormous slanted
| bias, rules out, out of hand, the possibility of positive use &
| engagement.
|
| is anyone at all interested in the absurdly high value, in the
| incredible all connectedness, in the ability to throw wide your
| doors of perception here? this moaning & whining about this
| incredible global public shared hypermedium, this Fear
| Uncertainty & Doubt about putting yourself into the world, none
| of it makes sense to me. opt in, go online, share, grow!
|
| as for thr topic at hand, well. i do think a lot of people,
| frankly, dont have much to contribute. honing a sense of insight
| & perspective & exploration, or engaging deeply in some worldly
| endeavor; these are not totally common attributes, and you need
| something to bother to be tweeting about, something that has
| value. im not surprised so many opt for quiet. i want to think of
| how to make valuable so many's participation, how to refine &
| grow intellects in this online social program, but i havent
| come.up with a lot of strong ideas for it.
|
| and sure here's definitely plenty of pointless blathering about,
| from people who would do better to go offline & become someone
| first, absolutely. personally i stayed in generally smaller
| circles where i was not as subject to the endless peanut gallery,
| and was able to use the tool effectively to understand who was
| adjacent to my circles & interesting & who was wasting everyonecs
| time. part of the whole experience of twitter is establishing
| better internal filters, getting quick & fast at finding value,
| honing in on the interesting, the gems, the things with hooks or
| shininess, amid a lot of kind of ambient/experiential bits of
| background information about your contaxts, a connectivity maybe
| not valuable very often but which does kind of stitch us a bit
| closer to those we come to regard as in our circles.
| lvass wrote:
| Are you seriously comparing the world to consent manufacturing
| machine?
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| > do you not want to engage in the world? are you not curious
| about other people, interested in heearing them think?
|
| Everything seems the same. Everyone is complaining about the
| same 10 things over and over.
| psyc wrote:
| Let's see if I can get to 11:
|
| 1. fire in a crowded theater
|
| 2. freedom of speech isn't freedom from consequences
|
| 3. correlation != causation
|
| 4. extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
|
| 5. your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins
|
| 6. private companies can do what they want
|
| 7. success and health imply either rich parents or pure luck
|
| 8. Paul Graham is the worst, writes terrible essays, 1-hit-
| wonder got lucky with viaweb
|
| 9. blackball ex-FBers
|
| 10. whataboutism, whataboutism, whataboutism, whataboutism,
| and ... hold up ... yep, whataboutism
|
| 11. outlaw proof-of-work
|
| 12 (bonus track). FSD == AGI and will take 100 years / never
| happen
|
| 13 (baker's dozen). we live in a society (as a justification
| for any prohibition du jure)
| nikolay wrote:
| 2022 feels like the pre-1989 era in Communist Bulgaria - people
| only shared what they think in their closest circles.
| vmception wrote:
| > As polarized as America seems, Independents -- who are
| somewhere in the middle -- would be the biggest party.
|
| Yes! I love this stat, I hope it holds in other polling.
|
| All your friends (that you haven't blocked) are lying to you!
| ar_lan wrote:
| Twitter is the fastest way for me to feel like I'm a completely
| worthless human being, especially in the tech sector.
|
| It overwhelmingly emphasizes the following, from my experience:
|
| 1. If you are not famous, you don't matter. 2. Front-end
| engineers are invariably the most important and skillful, and
| backend engineers really aren't valuable. 3. If you hold any
| position that's even accidentally politically incorrect, you will
| be publicly shamed for it, and some people are quite relentless
| at bringing up tiny past mistakes.
|
| Overall, it seems like a fairly useless space unless you can take
| advantage of the above 3, or if you want to have the lowest self-
| esteem possible as rapidly as possible.
| kzrdude wrote:
| I'm not a fan of twitter either, mainly for reason (3). It is a
| platform where it's very easy to be publically shamed in an
| unproportional manner.
|
| In comparison, forums like hacker news and reddit don't focus
| on the person writing, but focuses on the conversation. People
| can respond in a mean way (unfortunately) to a comment, but not
| "to the person", it doesn't have the same dynamic. The
| potential for huge reach of any single tweet is a big factor in
| giving twitter this bad dynamic.
|
| That we feel relatively safe to have conversations, to try
| arguments and to sometimes be wrong about stuff is healthy.
| Maybe I'm confused and wrong about what I'm writing in this
| comment. Someone will tell me, but I'll live. :)
| polynomial wrote:
| the point you are making here is spot on but woefully under
| acknowledged imo
|
| the conversational semantics of twitter and hn/reddit are
| completely different; the underlying models can be seen as
| formally -and sharply- distinct.
| alecbz wrote:
| > Front-end engineers are invariably the most important and
| skillful, and backend engineers really aren't valuable.
|
| Heh, that's interesting. I didn't see a _whole_ lot of that on
| Twitter (though I kinda see what you mean), but I did know a
| senior engineer that referred to front-end engineers as
| "finger-painters".
|
| I think both camps probably kinda looks down on the other a
| bit. (But I guess the frontend camp is louder on Twitter?)
| mekal wrote:
| Regardless of what they think I'm still thankful for front-
| enders. CSS / UI-design/layout...people that enjoy that sorta
| thing are great because it means I don't have to do it. Maybe
| they feel the same way about backend work. Whatever, it all
| works out!
| jelling wrote:
| > 3. If you hold any position that's even accidentally
| politically incorrect, you will be publicly shamed for it, and
| some people are quite relentless at bringing up tiny past
| mistakes.
|
| A friend got disinvited from speaking at an NLP convention, not
| because of something he said or did, but because his employer
| was tangentially related to national security contracts. Of
| course, the person that organized the dis-invite also used it
| as an opportunity to get themselves ahead.
| Clubber wrote:
| >2. Front-end engineers are invariably the most important and
| skillful, and backend engineers really aren't valuable.
|
| As mainly a back end developer, I find this statement the
| opposite of reality. :) Good thing I don't post on Twitter.
| donatj wrote:
| I've been using Twitter for something like 12 years now. I can
| count on one hand the number of actual _positive_ interactions I
| 've had in the last couple years. I'm my experience you can't
| even ask people mildly pointed questions anymore without getting
| blocked.
|
| You can't even try to start a conversation anymore. It's just
| person makes grand sweeping statment. You cheer them on, ignore
| them, or get blocked. It's not a healthy environment. It's just
| grandstanding.
|
| It used to feel really democratizing, anyone could comment on
| anything. Now between people only allowing people they follow to
| reply and the percentage of harmless to innate comments that get
| hidden behind "Show additional replies, including those that may
| contain offensive content" it really doesn't feel like it once
| was.
|
| In their attempts to make it more "friendly", they both made it
| less friendly _and_ killed the value proposition. It 's just a
| place to build a cult of personality these days.
| EastSmith wrote:
| I don't think twitter was made for interactions, but
| interactions drive engagement metrics, so twitter optimizes for
| interaction.
|
| I am using twitter since 2008, and I have like 5 interactions
| per year. I unfollow noisy people. 3 tweets a day? You are too
| noisy. I also do not hit the like or retweet buttons a lot.
|
| Around events I follow some extra accounts (Ukraine) that are
| noisy. Then unfollow at some point.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| People that regularly use social media seem to think they know
| everything or can know everything. Seems myopic from an outside
| perspective.
| znpy wrote:
| Hello, i'm part of the twitter majority that doesn't tweet,
| despite being on the platform since ~2008.
|
| Before anybody asks:
|
| - twitter is trash
|
| - you just can't have proper conversations (let alone,
| discussion) with such limits (140 and now 280 characters)
|
| - there are basically two types of people on twitter
|
| - one is: people doing self-promotion / self-marketing (this
| includes engineers tweeting about tech stuff and journalists
| forced to entertain readers)
|
| - the other is: toxic people that have an empty life and need to
| fill it by having arguments with other people and are going to
| attack anyone on anything (and make no mistake: these people can
| be anywhere from the far right to the far left).
|
| - most people's opinion don't matter anyway
|
| - I realized years ago that my life just isn't enriched by social
| media
| xhevahir wrote:
| This is more of a general comment on the subject, but I don't
| agree with the emphasis on the Internet's role in American
| political polarization. The Internet definitely has exacerbated
| the problem, but I think the writing was on the wall in the mid-
| nineties (i.e., before most Americans had access), when Newt
| Gingrich got to practice this style of politics as Speaker of the
| House.
| upofadown wrote:
| It would be good if mainstream media outlets would read this
| article and understand the points made in it. All to often news
| ends up being something that someone said on Twitter. It's like
| going down to the local pub to troll for quotes...
| StopDarkPattern wrote:
| Its almost like there is a disinformation campaign from a Russian
| play book. Its almost like there is a corporation that gets paid
| for user counts and bot clicks. Its almost like the sovereign
| discourse of our nation is under assault.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
| ayngg wrote:
| I thought this was fairly well understood that these communities
| follow some sort of Pareto ratio where a minority of people churn
| out most of the content, or are responsible for sending content
| to the top of feeds. I recall reading about it with regards to
| Twitter and Reddit, and it probably applies in some form or
| another with every social network that allows for passive
| participants.
| nomdep wrote:
| And yet, companies and conference organizers seem to think the
| Twitter mob represents everyone
| rambambram wrote:
| I heard some nice tweets today. It was sunny, I was in the park,
| and the birds tweeted just beautiful!
| [deleted]
| hprotagonist wrote:
| We perpetually rediscover this, and we're perpetually astonished.
| [deleted]
| newsclues wrote:
| Twitter is a cesspool and it seems like the people who are
| disproportionately influential are all on Twitter.
|
| I think it's a bubble that should not have any political power,
| because it's a cesspool!
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| American political discourse involving the uneducated is a
| cesspool. Social commentary often leads to political discourse
| which makes that type of speech sadly often one step away from
| a cesspool. Twitter is simply facilitating it.
|
| Stop following people who post political things or opinions
| about social issues and the toxicity is much, much less.
| sriram_sun wrote:
| It can be a wellspring of knowledge too. It works for me. I
| follow knowledge generators in fields I'm interested in.
| subpixel wrote:
| I don't Tweet. My mother, bless her, already comments on every
| one of my Instagram posts.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| I disagree with the wording of the article or its title's
| wording.
|
| Not being on Twitter is being called "silent"? Is that the
| yardstick for not being silent?
|
| I'd rather communicate outside of giant echo chambers and text
| length limitations and engagement optimized (a)social spying
| media, with real people and speak out there. With family,
| friends, the neighbors or the neighborhood, for example. Outrage
| about whatever on Twitter will not help anyone much, except
| Twitter.
|
| I would also guess, that more than 25% of people in the US vote
| in elections. Surely that is not "being silent".
| cgrealy wrote:
| The "silent majority" is a specific reference. It was
| popularised by Nixon during the Vietnam war. It doesn't
| literally mean they are silent, just that they are not the
| focus of the media.
| typeofhuman wrote:
| I don't engage on Twitter out of fear.
|
| I sometimes see posts that I like and want to retweet but I don't
| because it means I'm endorsing everything the author has ever
| said or ever will say. It's not worth the risk.
|
| People in my demographic face significant exposure to
| "cancelling" or ambushing for wrongthink. So it's best for me to
| avoid it entirely.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| >People in my demographic face significant exposure to
| "cancelling" or ambushing for wrongthink.
|
| I don't use Twitter or pretty much say anything publicly for
| the same reason, but note that this is definitely a risk for
| people of all demographics.
| whathappenedto wrote:
| Maybe instead of demographic, it's about people whose public
| image is part of their job. Like startup executives,
| academics, athletes, politicians (even "low-level"
| politicians like city councilman), product managers, or
| venture capitalists. That's a lot of people who are juicier
| targets than someone earlier in their career, like a student,
| an associate, or entry-level software developer.
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| It is far more risk for some than others.
|
| If you have a minority viewpoint, you get attacked far more
| easily.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I would even say viewpoint of not the vocal minority. That
| is even near majority viewpoint, but if it is one not
| popular on twitter it is risky...
| aksss wrote:
| Isn't the whole dynamic of twitter that it can make a
| highly vocal minority viewpoint seem like an oppressive
| majority viewpoint, where reality is that it's like a
| heckler's veto on amphetamines with a megaphone?
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > but if it is one not popular on twitter it is risky...
|
| Right now or at any point in the future. People have been
| canceled for things they said many years and opinion
| changes ago.
| ryandrake wrote:
| That's the minefield of posting online. People measure
| your comments from 20 years ago with today's sensitivity
| yardstick. I know I made wisecrack jokes decades ago that
| would get me fired today. Who knows whether some
| innocuous thing you say today will be horrendously taboo
| 20 years from now?
| [deleted]
| analyst74 wrote:
| Totally agree, being attacked for your viewpoint used to be
| just a problem for minority viewpoints/identities. But now
| even those who were previously safe are seeing increasing
| risk in backlashes.
|
| We have gone from silencing the minority to silencing the
| majority, this is terrible, but silver lining is that now
| maybe more people are invested in solving the problem.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I post publicly on forums with my real name and don't endorse
| everything I have said.
|
| Just evict such absolutist moral nonsense people from your life
| and don't allow them to control you. When you see them do it to
| others, block them.
|
| It's exactly the same thing as when it was a certain sort of
| church people controlling much of society with fear of
| "canceling" which was just done by different people with
| different means in the past, fundamentally nothing changed when
| people left religion because they thought religion was the
| source of this kind of toxicity.
| scintill76 wrote:
| When you get "canceled", it doesn't matter who you've
| personally "evicted" or not. If people with power over you
| either agree with the absolutists or are afraid of offending
| them, you're going to have a bad time.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| I think you're failing to account for the specifically viral
| nature of Twitter. Even a forum like reddit is a relatively
| isolated space for opprobrium by comparison.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Is it accurate to label that fear, or simply a modicome of
| intelligence.
| Clubber wrote:
| >I don't engage on Twitter out of fear.
|
| It seems in their effort to ban people for wrong think, they
| banned the wrong group. They should have been banning the
| cancellers. "I don't engage on Twitter out of fear," is not a
| good sign for retention or growth numbers. Twitter seems to be
| killing itself by allowing this cancer to grow.
|
| Have you ever been on a pretty great message board / forum and
| a bunch of spittle people join and makes the board suck to
| converse on? Eventually that board is nothing but spittle
| people, then the board dies. Twitters seems like it is going
| this way.
|
| FWIW, I cancelled all my social media accounts after the
| Snowden revelations in 2013. I'm just an outside observer, but
| I'm certainly glad I'm not inside.
| [deleted]
| echelon wrote:
| > I don't engage on Twitter out of fear.
|
| > it means I'm endorsing everything the author has ever said or
| ever will say.
|
| > People in my demographic face significant exposure to
| "cancelling" or ambushing for wrongthink.
|
| I totally get that this is the zeitgeist now (and I'm starting
| to behave this way now on HN since I don't really do other
| social media), but this is a horrible place we've worked
| ourselves into.
|
| People taking pop shots and then getting algorithmically
| amplified has reduced the surface area for having safe dialogue
| and has led to increasing tensions and polarization.
|
| In an ideal world, people talk about and discuss things they
| disagree about frequently and are at least respectful in
| dealing with those they don't see eye to eye with. We all have
| a different frame of reference, and that's not something to
| fight against.
|
| I think the pandemic increased stresses for a lot of people
| (myself included), but these trends really took hold with
| algorithmic amplification. It isn't just a passing fad, sadly.
| And it isn't just rooted in just the technology. There are real
| needs and causes for social angst that need to be met.
|
| Imagine if we also amplified inspiring and hopeful things.
| Nourished ourselves with stories of hope and overcoming
| difficulties. Science and technology, opportunity, a look to
| the future. (Especially for kids!) I know life isn't all
| sunshine and roses, but this would give us balance and
| perspective and wouldn't chip away at a person's inner drive
| and passion by replacing it with skepticism and
| dissatisfaction.
|
| I think we can swing back. People are noticing this and feeling
| displeasure.
| jquery wrote:
| You're getting cancelled for your views? Which views are those,
| exactly?
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Your comment implies that surely any cancellation of someone
| for their views must be justifiable.
|
| That's an insane premise, but even if we presume it to be
| true, it still doesn't cover the case of _future_
| cancellation when someone finds your tweets 10 years later
| and decides they aged like milk.
|
| There are many comments I would have made 5-10 years ago,
| that I wouldn't make today. Sure, that's mostly due to
| maturity, but I've also adjusted my self-filter to account
| for a changing environment and audience.
|
| At this point, I write all political comments under
| pseudonyms. It's not because I'm scared of getting cancelled
| -- on the contrary, I wish I could argue my positions from my
| real name. But there is a lot of risk, for little benefit -
| I'm not a "journalist" or blogger or anyone with a career
| that depends on my political viewpoints. So why bother?
|
| In general, online political comments gain me nothing, and
| there is no way to predict how those comments might look in a
| week, month, or even years from now. I do still write plenty
| of them, under pseudonyms (like this one), but it's more of a
| hobby to practice my writing. But I'm also not ashamed of
| anything I've written under any of the accounts - I would
| gladly defend all my opinions in person (to those close to
| me, who already know my feelings, and - btw, because they're
| sane - have never "cancelled" me).
|
| Who knows, maybe one day I'll even tweet my pseudonym
| usernames so I can show everyone how right I was five years
| ago.
| colordrops wrote:
| Supporting free speech and support equal hiring practices
| will get you cancelled these days, or at least bucketed with
| right wing extremists.
| ggm wrote:
| or supporting radical feminism. or socialism. it's easy to
| be in an out-group very quickly
| typeofhuman wrote:
| The point I was making was the risk exists. Consider the
| scenario: Author says something interesting; I retweet;
| Author later says something awful which I don't even know
| about; My retweet is still present and can make me guilty by
| association.
|
| This is very common on Twitter. It's not a place I can
| haphazardly navigate. I can't stay up to date on the latest
| outrage or who has fallen from glory.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most
| honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang
| him." - Cardinal Armand Jean du Plessis
|
| It doesn't matter what their views are. If someone decides
| they don't like them and that person have enough followers,
| they will find something.
| rvz wrote:
| > So it's best for me to avoid it entirely.
|
| Good decision.
|
| To win the social media game it is to not play it at all.
| jamesfe wrote:
| This exactly. I once tried the twitter game, I thought it was
| important to have a big following or say clever things,
| whatever.
|
| I was lightly burned by a tweet (of my own authoring) once, and
| I thought "I make $XYZ per year, twitter pays me nothing, this
| joke tweet caused me a lot of stress, the odds that being on
| twitter will get me cancelled will cost me $XYZ are non-zero
| and I don't control them"
|
| Then I deleted all my tweets and my twitter account (8 years
| ago) and life has been really nice without it!
| vasco wrote:
| Exact same story except recently I created an empty account
| with private lists that I follow (so not even the people I
| "follow" is public), and I can still keep up with some topics
| from a source of information that generally is on the
| bleeding edge. Usually I find things in twitter / discord
| first, then they hit Reddit, then mainstream media. If you
| only follow reddit you have a slight delay currently, and for
| some of my interests, fresh information is helpful.
| alphabetting wrote:
| This is the way
| massysett wrote:
| I'm so afraid of Twitter that I even created a distinct account
| with a default username--"user12345" or something of that
| nature. My old account had my photo and maybe my name.
|
| I can't even risk having people see who I follow, and on
| Twitter who you follow is public.
| tayo42 wrote:
| It's really easy to not be "canceled", just be a good person.
| What genuinely OK opinion are people being canceled for?
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Define "good" and "ok" first.
|
| A good person who doesn't use Twitter (someone who might fix
| cars, or works on a fishing vessel for example) who is having
| this little discussion about what is "good" and "ok" might
| very easily use the wrong words and offend someone.
| tayo42 wrote:
| Really? This is easy, don't hurt other people.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Now define "hurt".
|
| It's not easy as "hurt" is not objective, is relative to
| others and no longer connected to intention.
| tayo42 wrote:
| This isn't some clover got you, if someone tell you your
| offended them then that's it, you offended them. You
| don't get to redefine it
| tdrgabi wrote:
| You offended me.
| MrPatan wrote:
| I find your words offensive, please stop posting in HN
| forever.
| [deleted]
| mtizim wrote:
| Your comment offends my intelligence, therefore you've
| hurt a person, therefore you're not a "good person"
| anymore.
|
| But you might not care about that. You might say that I'm
| arguing in bad faith, or that your words couldn't
| possibly have offended me. But you don't get to redefine
| it.
|
| Obviously, you might just not care that you've just
| offended me. That's what bad people do. You aren't a bad
| person, right? Could you please apologize?
| cgriswald wrote:
| That's an unreasonable standard. If I chose to see your
| use of the phrase 'clover got you' as some slur against
| Irish people and was offended, would you have offended
| me?
|
| This is an unfair question, not because it's not a
| reasonable one given your argument, but because if you
| say 'yes' I can't take you seriously.
|
| Of course, that's not really the issue. The issue is what
| the response is when people are offended. I can certainly
| modify my language and behavior to reduce the chances of
| offending someone. I can even apologize when I've
| accidentally put my foot in my mouth.
|
| Twitter lacks the tolerance and nuance for either of
| those scenarios, though. If something 'not ok' is said,
| what was intended or meant doesn't matter (and any
| nuanced is typically ignored). An apology isn't seen as
| an apology for a mistake, but as an admission of guilt of
| being a terrible person who doesn't deserve oxygen.
| [deleted]
| PeterisP wrote:
| It's definitely not sufficient, we've seen people being
| cancelled who did not do anything bad.
| panzagl wrote:
| You're literally talking down to someone right now-
| that's not hurting other people?
| voakbasda wrote:
| That's not possible. People take offense at everything.
| Or they will tomorrow.
|
| That's the real problem: the standards of "good" and
| "decent" shift from time to time. What is fine today may
| get you canceled tomorrow.
|
| Thus, it is not safe to put your opinions out there in
| any form that could come back to bite you. If you want to
| take that risk, fine. But do not pretend that it is safe.
| tayo42 wrote:
| It really isn't changing that much though. Maybe if you
| think someone might be offended by what you say in 10
| years, maybe don't say it now. It's probably offensive
| now
| [deleted]
| brimble wrote:
| Has it slowed down? The change over the last 10 years,
| and over the 10 before that, was _fast_. Just watching
| mass media from the early parts of those two spans should
| make that clear.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Are there any of your own beliefs which you don't express
| because they might be considered offensive in the future?
| tayo42 wrote:
| I don't think i hold offensive beliefs (controversial
| maybe, as we see here, but no ones getting their feelings
| hurt), if I did and learned about I'd change them. It
| seems easy to not be offensive though, what kind of
| beliefs are people having trouble with?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| There are some issues where it seems impossible to hold a
| non-offensive belief. You can't support abortion or
| oppose abortion or claim abortion is unimportant without
| genuinely hurting a lot of people's feelings. (I wouldn't
| deny that you can avoid being offensive by simply
| avoiding all controversial issues, and in some contexts
| that's a perfectly reasonable approach.)
| recursive wrote:
| You can't physically hurt people on twitter, as it's all
| information. So whether or not you hurt someone is (at
| least partly) dependent on how people react. That can be
| hard to predict.
| nickstinemates wrote:
| Who's the arbiter of an OK opinion?
| namelessoracle wrote:
| A good person does not use Twitter. If you use Twitter
| therefore you are a bad person and deserve to be cancelled.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| >It's really easy to not be "canceled", just be a good
| person.
|
| I think you've really highlighted here why there's so much
| backlash against the latest wave of political correctness.
|
| To many people, myself included, a "good person" is someone
| who can be counted on to help a friend in need, goes out of
| their way to make the day of the people they interact with
| that little bit more special (this is something I need to
| work on), and works hard to provide for their family in
| whatever way they can.
|
| In my experience at least, a lot of the people who say the
| right words and hold the right opinions will flake on a
| friend in their hour of need, or avoid speaking with certain
| kinds of people lest they say the wrong thing. On the
| contrary, I can name several people who have dark senses of
| humour or right-wing beliefs, but will always go above and
| beyond to help out their community and the people they care
| about (yes, LGBT people and ethnic minorities too!).
|
| I'm not saying that PC people are worse than non-PC people
| (if anything, it's probably uncorrelated), but the fact that
| you've binned people into "good" and "bad" based on how PC
| their opinions are is just, at least in my opinion,
| completely out of step with the view of general society.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Here is a good example:
|
| "You just used 'OK' in your comment, only white supremacists
| use 'OK'."
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I mean, it's an example...
| themaninthedark wrote:
| I would ask you to think back to 2019 when a large
| majority on Twitter and from the mainstream media took a
| picture of some high school boys in Washington DC and
| brandied them about as the face of racism in America.
|
| "He has a racist smirk"
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Do you have a link to this? I Googled the quote at the
| end and just found this weirdo tweeting under the hashtag
| #RealNiggas4Romney.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Here is a medium article that preserved a bunch of the
| tweets and a wiki article.
|
| I remember(maybe mis-) some reddit comments at the time
| about the kid's smirk. There was also a buch of comments
| about "punchable face"
|
| https://medium.com/@RevolutionaryId/twitter-
| democratizing-mo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January
| _2019_Lincoln_Memorial_...
|
| >In the wake of the publication of the longer video, CNN
| Business reporter Donie O'Sullivan described the twitter
| video uploaded by "2020fight" as the one that "helped
| frame the news cycle" of the previous days, and
| characterized the video as a "deliberate attempt" to
| mislead and "manipulate the public conversation on
| Twitter"--a violation of Twitter rules.[76] According to
| Molly McKew, an information warfare researcher, the tweet
| had been boosted by a network of anonymous Twitter
| accounts to amplify the story.
|
| To add to my point of 'OK': On January 22, shortly after
| tweeting it, comedian Kathy Griffin deleted a Twitter
| message in which she accused Covington basketball players
| making an OK gesture of "throwing up the new nazi sign".
| Manuel_D wrote:
| There was massive coverage over this incident: https://en
| .wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2019_Lincoln_Memorial_...
| jstream67 wrote:
| https://nypost.com/2020/07/24/washington-post-
| settles-250m-s...
|
| heres one link. search term is covington kid.
|
| basically just another case of left aligned news stations
| casually labelling everyone they don't like as 'racist'
| [deleted]
| blockmarker wrote:
| It's really easy to not be burned at the stake, just don't be
| a witch.
| aksss wrote:
| ha, beat me to it! :D
| tayo42 wrote:
| Being canceled isn't even a real thing. It's just a phrase
| people use because they have to have consequences when they
| show their true selves. Some group of people don't agree
| with you? Show me an example of being canceled then
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| recursive wrote:
| If you really think it's not a thing, here's an early
| cancellation. Pretty much everyone involved lost their
| jobs, and it was all over social media for a cycle.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/how-dongle-
| jokes...
| shankr wrote:
| My earliest memory of getting "cancelled" predates
| twitter where Dixie Chicks were "cancelled" by their own
| fans because they criticized the Iraq war.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Chicks_controversy
| cgriswald wrote:
| The show _Soap_ was (literally) canceled for positive
| representations of homosexuals by people complaining to
| employers, issuing death threats, and _etc_.
|
| https://tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/soap/
|
| > Though the show's ratings were still good in season
| four, ABC cancelled the series because of continued
| pressure from the so-called "moral majority." By the end
| of the series, Vlasic pickles was the only advertiser
| interested in advertising on the series. In They'll Never
| Put That on the Air, executive producer Paul Junger Witt
| said, "We weren't killed by a fearful network. The
| network had been incredibly supportive. We had been doing
| this long enough to understand that they were in a
| business, and they sat down and showed us -- dollar for
| dollar -- why they couldn't afford to do it anymore."
|
| The people who are part of cancel culture now are
| literally using the same scare tactics that were used to
| suppress and oppress homosexuals and other minority
| groups.
| shankr wrote:
| > The people who are part of cancel culture now are
| literally using the same scare tactics that were used to
| suppress and oppress homosexuals and other minority
| groups.
|
| More like people who complain about being victim of the
| cancel culture are the ones who were oblivious to it
| until they became the victim. Currently the cancel
| culture is being associated as some kind of PC culture
| outcome but it originated way before. The push back or
| critisim against it seems to be only happening now.
| cgriswald wrote:
| You've already made up your mind, so if you're not
| interested in actually understanding why cancelling both
| exists and is a problem, you can probably sit this
| conversation out. You want an example, fine.
|
| In many scenarios canceling is completely arbitrary,
| based on misquotes, lack of context, or total fabrication
| simply because someone, somewhere was offended and can
| get other people to act on their behalf.
|
| In the best case scenario, the person being canceled is
| _actually_ a shitty human being. I know such a person. He
| said some really stupid stuff online, was called out on
| it, doubled down on it, was doxxed and canceled. He 's
| not the type of person who considers the consequences of
| his actions in any scenario. He's also _actually stupid_
| and not a friend of mine. I think he 's as close to hot
| garbage as a human being can get without actually abusing
| or murdering other people.
|
| However, this person still did not deserve death threats
| for the words he wrote. This person did not deserve
| people calling his employer threatening to burn down
| their building. The employer certainly didn't deserve
| that. His coworkers didn't deserve it. This person did
| not deserve his house to be vandalized; nor did the
| _actual owner_ of the house. His roommates didn 't
| deserve to live in fear and to have to deal with angry
| people maybe thinking they were him.
|
| These behaviors are not justifiable. They are, in fact,
| _less_ justifiable than someone saying awful things
| online. Writing them off as "consequences" is simply
| twisted.
| aksss wrote:
| just believe in our gods and you won't get burned at the
| stake, how hard is that, people? I mean really? /s
| causi wrote:
| The problem is that you can have a not-ok opinion and still
| be a good person who has a positive effect on the world, but
| we have no tolerance for that. We demand public perfection.
| bena wrote:
| While I don't think most of the people engaging with you are
| doing so completely in good faith, I don't think you
| understand the "fickleness" of the tweeting masses either.
|
| Just like you're getting downvotes and a lot of blowback for
| your opinion on this matter here, it's way worse on twitter.
|
| I've heard someone say that twitter is a game where the goal
| is not to be the main character of the day. And that kind of
| holds. Twitter is a bit geared for outrage. Small snippets
| with no context. Say you don't like The Batman and you could
| find yourself under a barrage of hate and vitriol. It's not a
| left thing or a right thing, they both have their mobs on
| twitter, in addition to all the other random mobs floating
| about. Hell, say something shitty about the wrong product
| will have that mob after you.
| tayo42 wrote:
| are people using cancel to refer to the pile on mobs or
| what they consider unfair escalation in consequences? i
| mentioned in another post, im on the receiving end on a
| pile on I think, but i wouldn't say i'm being canceled.
|
| if you say internet communities have an issue with pile on
| mobs and harassment, id agree but i think that's different
| then canceling, which i don't think happens to the average
| person or they even need to worry about
| recursive wrote:
| What's "good"? I think it's at least OK to suggest that covid
| vaccines are generally good, and most people who are eligible
| should get them. But it's a social media shit-storm. I'm not
| interested.
| colordrops wrote:
| Got attacked by dozens of people and eventually a twitter
| account ban for suggesting that free-speech is important and
| Chappelle's latest special shouldn't be removed from Netflix.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| If you got banned by Twitter, it was probably more than
| merely "suggesting" that free speech was important.
| colordrops wrote:
| No, this is exactly what happened. My tweet suggested
| nearly verbatim what I said above, and in response I got
| verbally abused and insulted by literally dozens of
| people from the trans community. They scrubbed through my
| tweet history, replying to old tweets and reporting
| anything they could. They reported a very old tweet where
| I promoted pacifism (I'm a pacifist), but it was
| sarcastic, stating that if we are gonna punch Nazis, we
| might as well punch mujahideen, ISIS, pro-lifers,
| Zionists, etc. They took advantage of the fact that
| sarcasm can be read both ways, and I was banned for
| promoting violence. Nevertheless I was cancelled due to
| my comments on free speech.
|
| Choose to believe it or not, that's your business, but
| this is exactly what happened.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| >Choose to believe it or not, that's your business, but
| this is exactly what happened.
|
| (I do believe you. By comment was in response to your
| original one, which lacked a lot of the context you just
| provided.)
| candlemas wrote:
| Good people are boring.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| People change. Your "edgy" tweets and shitty jokes from when
| you were young and stupid can still haunt you in your adult
| life.
|
| Case in point: James Gunn ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jam
| es_Gunn#Firing_from_Disney_... )
|
| This is why I rarely interact on Twitter and I have a script
| that deletes all my tweets that are over X days old. If I say
| something truely insightful, I'll just make a blog post out
| of it.
| tstrimple wrote:
| > "Firing from Disney *and reinstatement*"
|
| Yep, he's super cancelled. Great example.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I used to think this way. Saw too many legitimately-good
| people get brigaded to believe it anymore.
|
| There's enough pile-on mobs on Twitter now with enough
| disagreement on what's acceptable that you can trip over any
| of them.
| tayo42 wrote:
| I wouldn't consider canceling and pile on mobs to be the
| same thing. I'm getting piled on here, I wouldn't say I'm
| getting canceled lol
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The golden rule of using Twitter is: everything said is said to
| everyone, in public.
|
| Turns out, there's a lot of stuff people just probably
| shouldn't broadcast.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Twitter is a massively multiplayer video game that is
| culturally overvalued and entrenched because journalism and
| other influential fields got sucked in. It is absolutely insane
| that it is taken so seriously. It's also super weird that
| everyone is so addicted to this game they play it out in
| public.
|
| To illustrate this: imagine your ideal day. It could be on
| vacation, or hanging out at home, anywhere really. The key:
| imagine you are happy, or at least content. Now, do your
| imaginings ever have you reading angry tweets by people you
| hardly know for longer than you'd like?
|
| I'd guess not.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I saw a post once for a journalism job with local media here.
| 4-6 articles a day.
|
| Not sure how you could do that job without Twitter.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Sing up for all the companies that provide press releases?
| Not sure if that is enough though...
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Never joined the game, never will, see absolutely 0 reason. I
| don't care what he and she and he said, I guess you can say I
| am way more impressed by deeds than endless blabbing. Anytime
| I open it due to being embedded in news articles and wanting
| to see detailed photo being shown, I see basically
| news/youtube/whatever shallow and pathetic comment section.
| Echo chambers. Weird dynamics which don't happen in real
| life.
|
| Why would you do this to yourself? I mean if you are a
| balanced adult who knows what they want in life and are not
| affected by massive mood swings and insecurities for whatever
| reason.
|
| It is of course not black and white, it seems that ie right
| now Ukrainian defenders have a very good platform to inform
| whole world, no need to have BBC/CNN guys embedded in the
| heart of bombed city. That's cool and all. I just really
| don't like the rest of the whole society evolved around it.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| > if you are a[n]...adult who knows what they want in life
|
| Twitter feeds directly into the modern impulse to define
| oneself. It becomes sticky by coupling that with social
| validation. Say the right thing and you get a few Internet
| Points. Do it enough and people may follow you, which gives
| you a different type of Internet Points. Get enough of
| those, and you might get a blue checkmark, denoting you as
| a Very Important Person.
|
| It is much easier to lean on externally mediated processes
| of identity formation (like Twitter) than it is to go at it
| alone. I almost don't blame people, except for the fact
| that I don't believe this outsourcing of identity even
| works on an individual level. It's as if everyone present
| is playing along with a game that they don't fully believe
| in, but the game goes on despite that.
|
| It's quite modern and tragicomic in a way.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I don't think this is a healthy way to live. There was another
| conversation thread started about an hour ago that dives into
| this really well:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30602611
|
| I would reiterate my comment on that thread, verbatim:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30603008
| fantod wrote:
| You can get the best of both worlds. Stop worrying too much
| about what you think and say, like you mentioned; and also
| stop engaging on Twitter.
| blowski wrote:
| On the contrary, this seems to me a very healthy way to live.
| Until the last 15 years, very few people had their views
| expressed beyond a narrow circle. Standing on a public stage
| and shouting your every thought would have seemed crazy.
| cpach wrote:
| Without hesitation I dare say there is prior art in this
| question. I'm thinking of the Speakers' Corner in Hyde
| Park.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-32703071
| blowski wrote:
| I don't think Speakers' Corner is remotely comparable to
| how social media works today.
|
| Very few people spoke there, and very little of what they
| said was distributed beyond Hyde Park or recorded for
| posterity. I'm lucky enough to have seen a couple of
| people speak there, and they were both rather...
| eccentric. And even they didn't stand there all day,
| every day giving their opinions on everything that
| happened.
| cpach wrote:
| I think that's great.
|
| I don't believe in living in fear of how people _might_
| react.
|
| Of course I choose my battles; and I don't walk up to
| strangers and tell them their baby is ugly. But that's not
| being suppressed, IMHO.
|
| And I don't keep narrow-minded people among my close friends.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Unless u have a lot of followers, there is a 99.9% chance no
| one will even see your tweet. Almost all twitter engagement is
| just bot engagement. there are entire industries devoted to
| getting social media posts seen by humans. it isn't easy.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| FpUser wrote:
| I do not tweet. Neither do my friends and few programmers I know.
| FailMore wrote:
| So lovely to read a short article that's straight to the point
| cabaalis wrote:
| This just means there is a stabilizing force trying to maintain
| peace and status quo while figures on either sides of issues sway
| the long game.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| "and they don't try to pick fights at school board meetings." And
| that's where I stopped reading. Because, you know, voicing
| disagreement at a public forum with people tasked with educating
| your kids is the same as going on a Twitter rant.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Is it not? Someone going on a "Twitter rant" is voicing
| disagreement in a public forum about important issues of the
| day, sometimes even including the topic of educating your kids.
| I don't think either activity is bad or wrong, but they seem
| substantially equivalent to me.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| 0xedd wrote:
| Don't use Twitter. It's rigged to piss you off. Use federated
| microblogging and join a like minded instance. I don't know about
| web 3.0 but the former is very appealing and works ok.
| pxtail wrote:
| How to discover these instances? I would imagine that downside
| of this approach would be the danger of existing only within
| certain bubbles and never being exposed to different point of
| view.
| [deleted]
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| I have lost a lot of respect for certain very accomplished people
| because they tweet their hot takes on current issues
| _constantly._ I follow you because you're an awesome musician
| /writer/entrepreneur/whatever, not because I need your extremely
| uninformed opinion on geopolitics or social issues.
| ineptech wrote:
| Twitter looks like a sunk-cost fallacy run amok. The pitch was
| that it would become ubiquitous, and it clearly isn't and doesn't
| seem like it ever will be, but the people who are most heavily
| invested in it act as if it was, presumably out of self-interest.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Now that I think about it. I wonder if those heavily invested
| think it as part of their job while it generates them hits of
| dopamine like drugs... So they can easily justify their
| addiction...
| Pooge wrote:
| The 1% rule[1].
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule
| omoikane wrote:
| Can we also get some stats on number of users/lurkers who don't
| comment on Hacker News?
| omgmajk wrote:
| Not that many people I know use Twitter at all, the place seems
| overly toxic and whenever I see a thread or tweet it's usually
| terrible stuff with terrible comments attached to it.
| ghaff wrote:
| Twitter is to a significant degree what you make of it and who
| you follow.
| iambateman wrote:
| The problem with Twitter is simple.
|
| If someone agrees with a post, they "like" it. If someone
| disagrees, they tweet in response. This was the ONLY option until
| a few weeks ago with the rollout of the downvote button, so we
| will see if downvoting changes this dynamic.
|
| Suppose a tweet gets 90 likes, and 10 negative responses. That's
| 90% positive response. But if someone clicks on the tweet,
| they'll see the one original tweet followed by 10 disagreeable
| posts, which can make it seem like fringe ideas are actually much
| more mainstream.
| kkjjkgjjgg wrote:
| "and they don't try to pick fights at school board meetings."
|
| wtf - way to pick a political side in an article. So "normal,
| nice" people are people who never question the government,
| especially not if Democrats are in power?
|
| These people were picking fights about the government
| transitioning their kids. Or rather, I guess from their
| perspective, the government picked the fight.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| I think Twitter has disproportionate influence because all the
| journalists are on Twitter, and end up amplifying it.
|
| How many times have a seen TV hosts just basically read Twitter.
|
| Twitter is an easy way for journalists/TV personalities to
| generate stories.
| arbol wrote:
| 25% of Americans sometimes tweet? That seems very high. I only
| know a couple of people who use Twitter...
| [deleted]
| Sir_Son_Son wrote:
| The actual poll seems to ask "ever used". I believe that 25% of
| Americans have every used Twitter. I believe the number is
| probably much higher since "ever used" could mean anything from
| tweeted to seen a tweet.
| mftb wrote:
| It is. The statistic the article is actually referencing is
| that ~25%, "use twitter"[0]. That most likely indicates they at
| least open Twitter. Another post from the same site, the
| article references, has the headline that about 10% of those
| create 80% of the content[1]. Bottom-line a fraction of 25%
| sometimes tweet.
|
| [0]https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/social-
| media...
|
| [1]https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-
| tw...
| kbelder wrote:
| Yeah, I have to use twitter sometimes to check for immediate
| status bulletins from certain companies. I just hold my nose,
| check their stream, and immediately exit.
|
| And, of course, sometimes I accidently click on a link on HN
| that points to Twitter without realizing it, and I have to
| NOPE back out as fast as possible.
| moltke wrote:
| I had one ten years ago when I was a teenager. I wonder if I'm
| part of that "sometimes tweets" category.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| If that Pew Research survey is there only source (it's the one
| they link when they make the claim) it looks like 25% of
| Americans use twitter. But that doesn't mean that 25% actually
| makes tweets. It's probably possible to cross that with public
| twitter numbers on active tweeters, but I've heard 1% make 99%
| of the tweets before, and in my own experience that seems
| accurate.
|
| Most people I know who use twitter use it to stay up to date
| with creators they care about.
| keb_ wrote:
| I tried being a Twitter user for a bit last year, mostly because
| a lot of engineers I admire use it to communicate about
| interesting topics and also their work. But after a while, I
| realized even _they_ will pollute my feed with politically
| divisive topics, whether it be from them retweeting something, or
| liking a tweet, or even entering into the fray themselves --
| Twitter will _find_ a way to get me to see it. For a while, I
| resolved "OK, if anyone retweets this stuff, I will simply
| unfollow them" but eventually this felt self-defeating.
|
| I know a lot of folks in my field side by the stance that
| _everything_ is political, even code. Call me irresponsible, but
| I 've honestly led a much happier and stress-free life living in
| the fantasy world where that is not the case, and I can enjoy my
| hobby in open-source without Github issues becoming a shouting
| match that spans 200 comments from people who aren't even
| invested in the codebase.
|
| EDIT: typos
| datavirtue wrote:
| I'm only a douchebag if I'm anon. No idea where people are
| getting that it's OK to be authentic while attached to your
| real name.
| partisan wrote:
| Excellent points and completely agreed. Social media has turned
| the private into the public. The old adage, don't talk politics
| and don't throw stones has been completely abandoned. We used
| to discuss these divisive topics within the contexts in which
| it was appropriate to do so. Now, it's literally everywhere.
|
| I am not sure what the solution is. It's a societal pandora's
| box and it's open.
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| >I realized even they will pollute my feed with politically
| divisive topics, whether it be from them retweeting something,
| or liking a tweet, or even entering into the fray themselves
|
| Sorting by "Latest" rather than "Home" makes it so you don't
| see their likes and replies. I would recommend it to anyone.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| And you can disable retweets.
|
| I don't use twitter anymore but when I did I used these
| features to make it less toxic.
| protomyth wrote:
| _For a while, I resolved "OK, if anyone retweets this stuff, I
| will simply unfollow them"_
|
| You can also turn off retweets for those people. Twitter does
| seem to have some idiotic take on what I want to see.
| dheera wrote:
| I don't Tweet because Twitter never promotes my post to
| hashtags and people who might be interested in my content.
| People I respond to with questions never reply. Basically,
| nobody reads my stuff. It's a waste of time if you're not
| already famous.
| [deleted]
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| Yeah. A few years ago I revisited a Twitter account I had
| registered and not used. And I posted for a while.
|
| And then I realised I hated the trajectory I was on, and I
| deleted every single post and the account.
|
| I now have an account and, like the article says, I don't post.
|
| Twitter is a bonfire of nastiness.
|
| You either give in to it or you have to commit to spending an
| awful lot of time ignoring the cesspit of general awfulness,
| and pretending bad faith is good faith for the purposes of
| dialogue with sealions who learned their chops through
| Gamergate.
|
| If you tire of all that (or if you are a woman and tire of the
| astonishing, violent sexualised nastiness that you
| disproportionately attract) and make use of the conversation
| controls so you can continue to peacefully discuss things only
| with people you want to, everyone else accuses you of being
| "aFrAiD oF dEbAtE" or censorship, everywhere else. (Including
| here.)
|
| Stuff that.
| hjanssen wrote:
| Im not sure that the apolitical stance many people believe to
| hold is such an apolitical stance. In fact, living in any state
| and taking part in any kind of society is political in and of
| itself.
|
| You do not get to take part in any community without having a
| political stance - being part of a community is communicating
| that you agree with the morals and values of the community and
| wilfully accept them - thats the basis and general agreement of
| a community, it's what differentiates a _group of people_ from
| a _community_.
|
| Now, Im not sure that turning a blind eye to the consequences
| that this has is inherently wrong, that surely depends on what
| impact the concrete political/moral/ethical stance has, but I
| disagree with the notion that, really, _anything_ is
| apolitical. In context, everything is political, and we have to
| live with the notion that anything we do has impact on other
| people, as long as the consequences of the the thing we are
| doing is visible to other people.
| wpietri wrote:
| > pollute my feed with politically divisive topics [...] led a
| much happier and stress-free life living in the fantasy world
|
| That is an intensely political take.
|
| Some people get to ignore "politics"; many are in one way or
| another targets of it. Your notion is that you should be
| entitled not even to hear about the problems of others. Which I
| get, and which you're entitled to argue for. But "my life as a
| member of group X should be better than that of other groups"
| is a political position. Your comment here is the sort of
| political advocacy you disdain in others. It's just that
| because you're arguing for the status quo and your willful
| ignorance of the problems of it, you can kinda pretend you're
| being apolitical.
| civilized wrote:
| > "my life as a member of group X should be better than that
| of other groups" is a political position.
|
| This isn't at all what the GP said, and that fact is one of
| the biggest reasons we don't like engaging in these types of
| conversations: a hostile stranger is liable to stop in and
| hammer you with a comment that reeks of contempt and disdain,
| and egregiously distorts what you said.
|
| "I don't want to experience all the worst experiences that
| anyone on the planet is having" is an extremely different
| statement from "my life _should_ be better than anyone who is
| less fortunate than me ". If you fail to distinguish these
| two, you're definitely just as guilty of the latter as anyone
| else.
|
| So, sorry, we're not here for it. And if you want to persuade
| us into being here for it, distortion-loaded shaming
| definitely isn't the way to accomplish that.
| throwaway1492 wrote:
| > distortion-loaded shaming definitely isn't the way to
| accomplish that.
|
| I'd go further and say the poster you're responding to is
| non charitable and down right hateful, violating at least
| two community guidelines:
|
| > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation;
| don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't
| sneer, including at the rest of the community.
|
| > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation
| of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith.
| wpietri wrote:
| It isn't what he said, but it's apparently what he meant.
| There are many groups who can't escape politics. For
| example, look at the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation they're about
| to pass in Florida. That's politics, and it is coming for
| millions of Floridians whether they like it or not. They
| can't live an apolitical life because their very existence
| has been politicized.
|
| A straight person can argue for their right to not have to
| hear about it. But it's inescapably a political argument.
|
| > "I don't want to experience all the worst experiences
| that anyone on the planet is having"
|
| If you think "reading occasional 'political' tweets" is the
| worst experience anyone can have, I'm not sure what to tell
| you. I'm not saying anybody has to immiserate themselves
| with eternal negative content. I'm not even saying anybody
| has to leave a 100% pure bubble of ignorance about what's
| happening to others. But to get up and argue for a safe
| space for people whom the status quo benefits? That's a
| political argument.
| civilized wrote:
| I just don't think anyone has to be on Twitter to learn
| about (for instance) bad legislation that affects
| marginalized people so they can oppose it. It tends to
| bubble up into other media sources. And nowadays, those
| media sources will cite the big influential tweets
| anyway, so it's not even like you can escape from
| Twitter.
|
| It seems like you're reading the original comment as
| saying "I feel justified in never thinking about
| marginalized people and systematically preventing myself
| from seeing anything that might prompt that thinking"...
| and I think that's a _really_ big leap to make. There are
| ways to be informed without exposing yourself to the
| firehose of everyone 's random opinions and feelings,
| which can be a complete lose-lose proposition, damaging
| your own mental health and relationships _without helping
| anyone._
| wpietri wrote:
| Sure. I'm not saying anybody has to be on Twitter. I'm
| not even saying everybody has to pay attention to what is
| happening to groups with less social power than them,
| although I think that's the neighborly thing to do.
|
| But I am saying that publicly expressing the desire to
| live in "a much happier and stress-free [...] fantasy
| world" is taking a political stance, one enabled by being
| in groups with high social power. Especially so when one
| has a "hobby in open-source" that they want to keep
| unsullied despite people who would "pollute" it.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| _It isn 't what he said, but it's apparently what he
| meant._
|
| Again with the mind-reading. Maybe people don't want to
| talk politics because so many people debate in bad faith
| and not only put words in peoples mouths, but thoughts
| into their heads.
| civilized wrote:
| There's a reason they call Twitter the hell-site.
| Arguments like this _run_ the place.
|
| Like covering all your food in a bottle of Sriracha,
| political Twitter can be fun at first, but eventually
| you're going to get sick with diarrhea and need a break.
| In my case, a permanent one.
|
| I am happy to do _real_ things for marginalized people,
| like vote, hire fairly, support progressive policies,
| etc. but exposing myself to that place does no one any
| good.
| wpietri wrote:
| All listening is mind-reading. People squirt air at you
| through their meat-flaps; you try to determine what the
| mind behind the air-squirts might have been trying to
| convey.
|
| If you think I've got it wrong, feel free to offer a
| better explanation. This is my best-faith attempt to
| understand. But I think I get it because I used to make
| the same mistake I think see him making.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Why do you automatically assume _wanting_ to ignore politics
| translates to support of the status quo?
|
| I've heard this argument before a lot, and it just seems like
| a massive assumption. You can't read peoples minds.
|
| There are several plausible reasons to ignore and not discuss
| politics:
|
| - You don't want to argue
|
| - You don't think it will change anything
|
| - You don't want to lose friends and acquaintances
|
| - You don't want to find out someone you respect is "one of
| them"
|
| - If the aggregate political beliefs of your industry does
| not match your own, you don't want to "out" yourself
|
| - You want to change the status quo, but not in the way other
| people want it changed
|
| - Your political beliefs are not strongly held
|
| - You don't feel knowledgeable enough (I wish this was more
| common and people would share their opinions less when they
| know close to nothing).
|
| I personally don't want to discuss politics much even if
| people agree with me - it either turns into a weird
| intellectual circle jerk, or gripe session about how evil the
| "other" is. Neither of which I really enjoy.
|
| In short there are a lot more reasons to try and avoid
| politics than there are to seek them out. Being happy with
| the status quo is one needle in a haystack of other reasons.
| wpietri wrote:
| Because things that get labeled "political" and "divisive"
| almost always relate to changes to the status quo.
| Regardless of intent, insisting on silencing or refusing to
| hear challenges to the status quo is in effect supporting
| the status quo.
|
| There's also a big difference between someone who happens
| to "not discuss" politics and somebody who wants to never
| be exposed to discussions of politics. Many of your items
| are good reasons to not bring up politics in some
| particular moment, a choice I often support. But I'm
| responding to his unhappiness with what _other people_
| chose to talk about _on Twitter_ , a platform for people to
| say what they want about topics they choose.
|
| And I'd add that anybody who goes out, works a job, pays
| taxes, etc, is actively supporting the status quo. I am one
| of those people and I think there's nothing wrong with
| that; we're all caught up in a system that's bigger than
| us. Some of us, through words and deeds, try to change that
| system. That's politics. Insisting on supporting the status
| quo without changes is also politics.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| So how do you feel about people who want to change the
| status quo in the exact opposite direction you want it
| changed?
|
| Do you want to hear from them a lot? Do you wish there
| were more of them in your twitter feed?
| wpietri wrote:
| I don't get your point. Are you offering to stop arguing
| for your political viewpoints like this if don't like
| your take? If not, then it sounds like you agree with me.
|
| But to answer your question,it depends on the kind of
| "opposite". I'm generally quite interested in people who
| see the same problems but have very different solutions.
| I'm also very interested when people from different
| backgrounds see the problems differently. I can often
| work with people who have differing values but are
| seeking positive-sum interactions. But as you might
| expect from somebody who has done years of anti-abuse and
| anti-hate work, there are some people whose values who I
| oppose implacably.
| mikkergp wrote:
| I don't know if this is true and this gets to the
| reductive nature of how people interpret political
| arguments. We've become so divided, the 'status quo'
| crowd and the 'not status quo' crowd don't even talk to
| each other. If you're conservative, you're mostly seeing
| people argue about what the status quo was, and if you're
| progressive, you're probably seeing people argue about
| what the status quo should be.
|
| Everyone says politics is about values, but it's more
| than that. Politics is values plus an implementation.
| Sometimes I see the worst takes or disdain from people
| who's values I fundamentally agree with, but we disagree
| on the implementation.
| delusional wrote:
| > You don't feel knowledgeable enough (I wish this was more
| common and people would share their opinions less when they
| know close to nothing).
|
| I think it's more common than you think to stay out of it.
| The unfortunate thing about the asymmetrical communication
| afforded by social media is that you don't see the hundreds
| of people that didn't engage with what someone said.
|
| At least that's what I tell myself when i see a bunch of
| comments that are out there. All the people that aren't
| crazy probably just didn't want to engage.
| pvarangot wrote:
| In my experience running joke and pseudonymous Twitter
| accounts most "respectable engineers" talking about politics
| on Twitter are not posting about their real problems as much
| as trying to appeal to signal they belong to a certain
| culture because it's beneficial for their careers or their
| public image. There's a lot of exceptions of course but
| honestly most good engineers will probably be tweeting the
| interesting political stuff that really affects them from
| behind an account for say "Signal", "Tor", "the EFF" or
| whatever and not with their personal name.
|
| I am really into politics and participate in political debate
| on Slack or Discord servers and private Signal or Telegram
| groups with an identity that can be traced back to me with
| zero effort almost daily or weekly. Some are bigger than
| others. I would never ever do it on Twitter unless I was
| trying to start a side-gig as a journalist or a cult-leader
| or whatever. Not caring about what people on Twitter say
| about politics is far from not caring about politics at all.
| deanCommie wrote:
| > are not posting about their real problems
|
| I'm a cis/het white male. I'm a highly paid highly
| respected engineer. My problems are not interesting because
| I already know how to solve them. The problems that are
| interesting to me are the ones of others - more junior
| engineers - so I invest in mentoring. And those in
| disadvantaged groups of various kinds.
|
| So I'm posting about the problems I see in society and what
| I can do try to magnify smaller voices. It's not all that
| it takes to be an ally but it's a part of it.
|
| I post about these problems to make it clear that
| LGBT/Women/Black/Asian/etc issues are relevant to me as
| well.
|
| It's deeply cynical that people think this is "virtue
| signaling" because it's beneficial to my public image. I
| care about my public image only so far as how I can use it
| to help others. It's pretty sad to realize that there are
| people who go through life only doing things based on how
| what they do will benefit their image or perception by
| others.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| _I care about my public image only so far as how I can
| use it to help others._
|
| Letting everyone know this is probably really good for
| your public image. You sound so selfless.
|
| _It 's pretty sad to realize that there are people who
| go through life only doing things based on how what they
| do will benefit their image or perception by others._
|
| Some people have the the ability to do it subconsciously,
| perhaps without even realising it.
| wpietri wrote:
| For sure. It's the same deal with me. I am in enough
| politically favored groups that the status quo works in
| my favor. I could just coast. But I think that sort of
| unfairness is bunk, and the more I learn about the
| history, the more opposed I get.
|
| The notion I'm doing that for my career is laughable.
| Every time I speak out, I'm aware that there's a chance
| I'm reducing my employability, that somebody might see
| that tweet or this Hacker News post and say, "Gosh, let's
| go with the candidate who is less likely to be
| difficult." But I'm willing to make the trade because I
| have an unearned employability surplus that I would
| rather be shared equally.
| mikkergp wrote:
| > Your notion is that you should be entitled not even to hear
| about the problems of others
|
| Everyone believes this. There are too many people in the
| world to hear about all the problems. The problem with
| twitter is not that you hear about peoples problems, it's
| that you hear about too many to grok. The most political
| people I know are still periodically taking breaks from
| twitter because it's too much.
| rcoveson wrote:
| > Some people get to ignore "politics"...
|
| No, they don't, because they invite this exact reply whenever
| they try to do so.
| delusional wrote:
| Bazinga.
|
| Seriously though. When he says "ignore politics" it doesn't
| mean you get to live without them happening. It means you
| get to decide not to care. Getting the reply doesn't mean
| you don't get to ignore it.
| wpietri wrote:
| I doubt that's the case, but I'm glad to help move the
| world ever so slightly in a direction where every person
| gets to ignore politics an equal amount.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| there are filter plugins that will kill off 90% of the garbage
| if you're dedicated enough to add filter words and tags. You'll
| never get rid of all of it though. I personally don't tweet,
| but I do follow people that I admire/enjoy their thoughts. Also
| a few news feeds just to stay abreast of stuff.
| kaitai wrote:
| I think everything is political, even code.... But the
| conversation Twitter fosters is not useful. I see people
| jumping on others for small mistakes or imagined slights,
| searching for inconsistencies ("On March 3 you said this about
| apples, on March 7 you said this about oranges -- why don't you
| have a CONSISTENT STANCE ON FRUITS YOU HYPOCRITE"), etc. And
| yes, it's so easy to comment from the sidelines; I see people
| sitting comfortably in Minneapolis or Miami criticizing a
| journalist tweeting about the refugee situation in Moldova.
|
| Folks try to have nuanced discussion on Twitter but it's not
| possible when it's so reactionary and atomized. I no longer
| tweet either. I go on Twitter to find interesting people to
| follow in other forums, not to talk to anyone. I am a silent
| tweeter, heh.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| For what it's worth, you can disable retweets for people (and I
| think your entire feed).
| themanmaran wrote:
| Not for everyone unfortunately. But there is a ruby script
| that does it for you.
|
| https://gist.github.com/robinsloan/a045d26c513681f13680f319f.
| ..
| vorpalhex wrote:
| One of my pet theories for why social media is such a cesspool
| is that it exposes us to the whole of someone else.
|
| If I play boardgames with Sue, that's enough. We meet, enjoy a
| beer and play some Catan and go our separate ways. That's a
| fine relationship.
|
| If I follow Sue on social media, now I know her politics,
| religion, sex life, drug usage, opinions on every little
| thing.. and frankly, I don't care or want to. I'm happy just
| playing some Catan once in a while.
|
| Historically you didn't need to know everything about everyone.
| Your friends will always have opinions or lifestyles you will
| find disagreeable - that is the nature of human existence.
|
| Humanity either needs to "agree to disagree" on wide swaths of
| things we care a whole bunch about (abortion, firearms, lgbtq,
| etc) or we need to go back to not discussing those things in
| public or polite company.
|
| My $0.02 is that it's easier to fall back to rules of polite
| conversation than fix our compulsive need for agreement.
| wanda wrote:
| Yes, social media is essentially a wall of noise. It's
| someone throwing their ego into sharp relief. Instead of a
| handshake and an opportunity to judge a book by its cover,
| you're greeted by a literal and loud book cover of the person
| along with blurb.
|
| Except... is it their ego? Or is it some surrogate persona?
|
| It has always struck me as more of a performance. And that's
| the problem with social media. Rather than encouraging an
| individual to be themselves and arrive at their own values
| independently, it on the contrary encourages inauthenticity
| -- perhaps not intentionally by the developers of the
| websites in the beginning, but it emerges through behaviour
| of the users.
|
| Rather than accepting of all people, people with deviant-
| discourse views are vilified very publicly, and either remove
| themselves from the platform or instead surround themselves
| with supporters from the deviant side. Social media does
| bring people together, but it doesn't bring everyone
| together, it just promotes the formation of ideological
| tribes.
|
| This effect of uniting and dividing people into tribes isn't
| constrained to social media. Marketing, advertising, indeed
| many aspects of how capitalist society has evolved has a
| similar effect of forming tribes. Adverts and marketing tell
| people that they should do a thing, and then those who agree
| gravitate to that product, and those who disagree gravitate
| toward an opposing product or a steadfast disapproval of any
| product in the space, and they come to define themselves by
| that approval or disapproval.
|
| Ask a person to define who they are. They will tell their
| name, their age, their occupation, where they were born
| and/or live, and then they'll most likely move on to what
| they like and dislike, what they believe and don't believe.
| They define themselves according to details they think are
| important to others and in relation to other things, usually
| things made by corporations or governments/bodies of power.
|
| - A name doesn't define a person, it's simply how you refer
| to them in conversation or get their attention without
| ambiguity in the presence of other humans.
|
| - Age also doesn't define a person. People look older and
| younger than they actually are all the time, and in my
| experience it has little bearing on the person's wisdom or
| intrigue.
|
| - Occupation matters not. All you need is the understanding
| that your occupation is what you do to pay for food, water,
| shelter and your hobbies/downtime. It can also be what you
| actually want to achieve with your life, but this isn't
| essential as long as you have awareness.
|
| - What a person likes and dislikes is not a defining feature,
| it's at best an expression of a person's taste. It is a
| description of a relation between a person and other things.
| Tastes are easily feigned to please others, easily changed
| and highly likely to change over time, and while they can be
| used to stereotype people, I'm pretty sure stereotyping
| people is considered a bad thing to do.
|
| - Belief and disbelief aren't defining and also don't make a
| great deal of sense, since to believe is to hold that
| something is true without data -- holding that something is
| true OR false without data is nonsensical, and thus pointless
| to communicate to others, because they'll either have the
| same nonsensical belief or an opposing one, and probably
| won't be very amenable to having their belief(s) changed
| since there is no data to argue from.
|
| Ultimately, people don't know who they are, they know what
| their profile page(s) should say, and these "defining"
| characteristics are most likely things for which they are a
| willing standard bearer, things that they want to shine out
| like a lighthouse to attract or ward off the types of people
| they will get along with and _not_ get along with. There are
| people that do have a notion of who they are, but I suspect
| they are likely too scared to reveal it, precisely because
| people are polarised, capricious, and unforgiving.
|
| Perhaps that's what it is, social media actually encourages
| people to both fall in line with a stereotype and to
| stereotype others. Certainly, I think social media also
| distorts the personality of the user as well. I avoid social
| media like the plague, primarily because the content social
| media sites generate is of little interest to me. I have
| absolutely no understanding of why anyone would want to do
| social media stuff -- so I cannot speak from any personal
| experience.
|
| I've created a profile on some of them for the sake of
| communicating with someone who refused to communicate by
| other means, but never have I felt inclined to use the
| platforms because... it's just not for me, I don't understand
| it. I prefer to toil in the shadows and live my life, without
| sharing it.
|
| Anyway, something I _have_ observed throughout my life is
| that the personality is performative, i.e. most people will
| act differently if they have an audience. It either causes
| them to withdraw and hide features of who they are, or it
| will encourage them to reveal as much of themselves as
| possible and even to fabricate features of their persona that
| aren 't authentic.
|
| This kind of behaviour is easy enough to observe in work
| contexts, and my intuition tells me that social media must
| surely have a similar effect on people. With thousands of
| people watching out for what banal thought you share next.
|
| The result is that not only are you exposed to the whole of
| _the other_ , but you're exposed to _the super-other_ that
| forms (depending on the subject type) through audience demand
| and expectations, or through the subject 's desire to provoke
| a certain reaction in their audience, or indeed to attract a
| certain audience to serve their agenda.
|
| Much of the social media landscape is essentially just
| memetic. Probably quite fascinating to study if you're
| interested in how utterly twisted and inauthentic people can
| become by living an observed and performed life, rather than
| simply living according to their own principles, resolute and
| only subject to observation when necessary to achieve, say,
| professional or academic goals.
|
| * * *
|
| I'd like to bring up something Douglas Adams wrote about in
| the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. He imagined an
| alien race called the Belcerabons, who enjoyed peace and
| success, no doubt in part thanks to their being a wholly
| _quiet_ civilization. A Galactic Tribunal of other races,
| envious of their success and perceived smugness, infected
| them with a disease that gave them the curse of forced
| telepathy -- every thought would be broadcast from each
| Belcerabon to the rest of their kind. The only way that they
| could silence the artillery of communicating their every
| thought to each other was to constantly talk to each other
| instead, probably preferable just to retain some control over
| communicating private or awkward thoughts and instead talking
| about the weather etc.
|
| While Adams was undoubtedly poking fun at the sorry state of
| the human race when it comes to those nauseating
| conversations about the local weather conditions and what was
| eaten for lunch on a previous day, I do find it amusing that
| constantly bombarding one another with banalities ought to be
| considered a curse, and yet we have somehow managed to
| develop our civilization around technological platforms for
| that very purpose.
| dogman144 wrote:
| > us to the whole of someone else.
|
| I think this hits on a critical aspect of cyberspace's impact
| but phrased in a new way for me.
|
| My view has been that it allows individuals to split their
| personalties and actions into discrete entities based on a
| blend of the account/platform/information environment and
| relative cause the account/platform exists in support of.
|
| But another way to look at it is what you've said - the whole
| person comes out through the various personalities they have
| online.
|
| There is a niche but famous sci-fi book called True Names*
| about a similar idea: people have their true name in real
| life, and a digital nym that's just as valid per the impact
| of the nym's existence as the name. Operating the balance,
| and making a choice which to embrace (name vs. nym) is the
| big question.
|
| The novella was written prior to cloud computing and
| twitter/reddit/VR, and reading it now with all that tech in
| place is really something.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| >Humanity either needs to "agree to disagree" on wide swaths
| of things we care a whole bunch about (abortion, firearms,
| lgbtq, etc) or we need to go back to not discussing those
| things in public or polite company.
|
| The original American Experiment allowed this sort of thing.
| Big Important Nationwide things happened at the federal
| level; everything else was done by the States. It's a pretty
| good idea.
|
| All social media suffers from the "talking to nobody/talking
| to everybody" aspect. A post on a social media site is really
| just you talking to yourself out loud. But it's a public
| place, and therefore everybody can hear you. So they talk out
| loud to themselves, but at you.
|
| If this sounds like a gaggle of homeless people shouting at
| each other about everything and nothing, that's because it is
| exactly that, only with a $25B market cap and a P/E ratio
| that looks more like the onset of hypertension.
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| > One of my pet theories for why social media is such a
| cesspool is that it exposes us to the whole of someone else.
|
| We are naturally inclined to be negative. Or, said
| differently, it takes a LOT less effort to be negative than
| positive. On social media it's just way too easy for people
| to pile on.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| people are negative on social media for the same reason
| that most news is horrifying: it gets attention. social
| media is socializing made into a game. show people their
| score and they'll want to make that number go up.
| timClicks wrote:
| I'm sort of the opposite. I'm attracted to Twitter because a)
| I get to learn the whole person and b) even "heroes" are very
| accessible. We're all humans trying to figure it out.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > One of my pet theories for why social media is such a
| cesspool is that it exposes us to the whole of someone else.
|
| The common theory is roughly the opposite of this: people
| disproportionately share their better moments on social
| media. Its users project the impression of having a much
| better life than they actually have. This bias is one of the
| reasons social media is so awful for 'FOMO'.
|
| _edit_ Of course, that 's not a direct contradiction of your
| point. The positive/negative dimension is different from the
| which-aspect-of-your-life dimension.
| itronitron wrote:
| I think your comment and the parent's comment can be in
| agreement if you think about people in your social media as
| now sharing an office with you. You get to be stuck in a
| room with them for eight hours a day while they share their
| personal drama, monger gossip, and boast about their work
| accomplishments.
| 0xedd wrote:
| Wrong. Facebook whistleblower says company made profits from
| making people suffer. People suffer from reading cesspool
| produce. Facebook used big data insight to expose users to
| cesspool produce.
|
| Twitter isn't dumber.
|
| (Assume this was written with kindness)
| conductr wrote:
| What's kind of scary to me is that newly minted adults never
| knew a single Sue before social media.
| vikaveri wrote:
| I feel that if you're expecting your 'whole friend' to be
| exactly compatible with your opinions, you're not really
| looking for friends, you're looking for confirmation for your
| own opinions. I fully expect to disagree with a lot of things
| my friends say or think, and that there will be arguments.
| When we do argue, sometimes they change their mind, sometimes
| I change mine but mostly we agree to disagree. What makes a
| difference between a friend and a non-friend is that even if
| we disagree on some fundamental things and a lot of trivial
| things, our core values more or less align, and both sides
| respect the other and realize that there is no way you're
| right about everything. If you are, you don't have friends.
| You have followers and sycophants.
| Fr0styMatt88 wrote:
| Maybe part of it is just that typing text into a post doesn't
| viscerally feel like standing in front of a group of hundreds
| of people and shouting over a megaphone. I noticed that in
| myself when I first got into Facebook way back - when it was
| still novel, I tended to post 'stream of consciousness' type
| stuff. You intellectually know that your post is going to be
| seen by a lot of people, but _in the moment_ it doesn't
| _feel_ like that.
|
| I imagine that many people have a similar experience. You're
| yelling into a megaphone but it feels more like you're
| writing an entry in your diary.
| emjoes1 wrote:
| Well said. I buy into your theory and $0.02. If we fall back
| to rules of polite conversation than trying to "fix" our
| compulsions then we don't even need a social network with
| filters or circles.
| madrox wrote:
| My favorite theory comes from an HN comment describing it as
| the "toaster fucker problem." I'd attempt to re-explain it,
| but the original comment is great (and easy to search for.
| Not many mentions of the phrase "toaster fucker" on HN.)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25667362
| wanderer_ wrote:
| Ironically enough, that thread devolved into an irrelevant
| political argument.
| ear7h wrote:
| The original thread is literally about the the riots from
| Jan 6.
| sjmm1989 wrote:
| Such is the way of the internet.
| salawat wrote:
| ...Wow.
|
| That resonates hard with some stuff I'm seein' now.
| rackjack wrote:
| Fun fact, this theory actually comes from a 4chan post.
| deanCommie wrote:
| It's a funny analogy, but there is a spectrum, no? Surely
| you could acknowledge that there is a spectrum somewhere
| between Black, Gay, Trans, and Toaster Fucker?
|
| It's extremely easy to dismiss all of these as equally
| irrelevant. In fact many do (not saying you are) - "I don't
| care if you are black, white or purple. I treat everyone
| equally". "I don't care if you're straight, gay, or curvy -
| what you do in the bedroom is no business of mine". These
| attitudes SEEM like they are non-judgemental and
| egalitarian, but they tend to miss all the implicit ways in
| which the dominant society does NOT treat people equally in
| these circumstances. And being asked to be treated equally
| gets perceived as asking for special treatment until it
| becomes ridiculous: "Gay people want special treatment by
| asking gay marriage - they're not being discriminated -
| they can already marry someone of the opposite sex".
|
| It's easy not to care about race or sexuality when society
| treats yours as irrelevant.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| Same author, further down in the thread:
|
| > All these twitter/facebook/youtube bans are trying to put
| a genie back in a bottle, Parler is gaining steam
|
| Did not age nearly as well.
| seneca wrote:
| Why? Parler was gaining steam until a consortium of
| megacorporations aligned to erase it from the internet.
| sjmm1989 wrote:
| My roommate basically put it in his project for university
| as a similar theory to Toaster Fucker. I too have a
| personal similar theory where I just refer to the 'village
| idiot'.
|
| They all basically revolve around one truth I think.
|
| The internet doesn't radicalize people. People radicalize
| people. The internet is just full of people who are already
| radicalized in their daily life, and they are using the
| internet to radicalize others. Whether it be for the left,
| right, or even some weird alt thing.
|
| Penny Arcade even has their own comic strip theory called
| "G.I.F.T of the Internet".
|
| Theirs is more simplistic though in that it stipulates that
| the anonymity of the net is the problem insofar that it
| gives people a fake sense of security to be who they really
| are on the inside. For better or worse. Usually worse.
|
| I think all of our ideas on the matter basically resonate
| on the same singular issue. That people were already nuts
| to begin with. The internet is just making easier to
| identify which are fucking screwballs and ... the rest.
|
| But then that poses a new problem. Mob mentality even of
| righteous people is still just as toxic as the mob
| mentality of fucking idiots.
| TZubiri wrote:
| You are underestimating the effect that the speed and
| range of message transmission have on the kinds of
| ideologies that people can carry.
| lazide wrote:
| I don't think so - my impression is that it's feed
| algorithms pushing the most incendiary topics to people
| because they get the most engagement.
|
| Nothing gets people going like someone saying something
| divisive or controversial after all.
|
| So pretty soon most of the feed is divisive bullshit.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| _> The internet doesn 't radicalize people. People
| radicalize people. _
|
| I tend to agree but it's an oversimplification of the
| problem. There is a fantastic book about the psychology
| of radicalization by _Robert B Caldini_ "Influence"[1]
| that has apart from the more common scenarios like
| exploiting reciprocity etc the idea about saying things
| out loud. There are 3 stages, you get people to read it,
| then you get them to say it then you get them to sign it.
| Once they say it it will be hard for them not to sign it
| since it means walking back on their argument and society
| likes consistency and hates flip-flopping. After you get
| them to sign, it's now recorded in history like something
| that can compromise you in future. Even you delete it you
| have said it before. This is relevant on especially for
| things that go viral or have a large audience. How does
| that relate to social media?
|
| Especially on platforms that enforce a real name policy
| you get shallow thoughts because people are careful
| (LinkedIn is a good example). But even on things like
| twitter / reddit people will have followers and a karma
| that they attach themselves (their ego) to.
|
| We do not communicate by saying things but we immediately
| jump to the stage of writing it down. Now these are
| usually not well thought out opinions since they haven't
| been argued in a group and tested against our peers. We
| blurt out not opinions but brain-farts that we test
| against an audience but at this stage they are already
| written down.
|
| If the message shared is popular you get the likes
| flooding in where every person is likely not to read this
| message more than once before liking / sharing. But the
| effect on the author is different because they end up
| reading what they wrote several times as a way of
| congratulating themselves and reliving the moment of
| gratification. So it's actually a form of self-
| radicalization on half baked thoughts (than
| radicalization by others). An important step is missing
| where the author of a message can verbalize the idea with
| real people f2f before jumping to "the writing it down"
| stage. That makes it harder not to double down once
| critic is expressed by an audience. Add to this tribal
| culture of in/out groups those who will oppose the
| message can be drowned out with a click of a button (I'm
| not arguing for letting trolls take over and abolishing
| mute/block button, but these don't exit IRL. Anyway I'm
| only trying to deconstruct the process)
|
| There are very few people on social media humble enough
| not to drink their own kool-aid. The majority of users
| are absolutely eaten by the system and spat out again
| without realizing what happened. the concept of writing
| it down is so powerful that we have even built a legal /
| trust system around it where we require people to
| scribble their name under something they have read to
| make it binding.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influence:_Science_and_
| Practic...
| HideousKojima wrote:
| 4channers made a comic of this concept a few years ago, but
| it was something like "gay dragonkin neonazis" instead of
| toaster lovers.
| thrwawy283 wrote:
| This is an interesting idea: I wish you could Follow a
| combination of a person and the #topic they post to. You
| could choose to follow "all of" a person, but more
| realistically the default behavior would be to attach to
| posts from a particular topic that person is generating. This
| would be similar to your example of playing a game of Catan
| with someone and enjoying just that limited bandwidth you
| have with them. Knowing and seeing all of who they are is not
| common in our business relationships, or friendships.. I
| think you're right, and I appreciate how you articulated it.
|
| Someone below this mentioned this was how Google+ was
| intended to work.
| username3 wrote:
| That is the obvious solution, but Twitter may lose revenue.
|
| Twitter needs to incentivize using hashtags.
|
| John Carmack can add hashtags to his tweets.
|
| Someone can create an account that hashtags and quote
| retweet John Carmack's tweets.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I think circles were too tied to privacy. Public posts
| ended up mushed together just like twitter.
| thrwawy283 wrote:
| Now I'm annoyed that in 2022 I'm understanding Google+
| better. I want to follow the /intersect/ of "Jane Smith"
| and "Catan". Both of these are topics. I might be broadly
| interested in "computers", and "board games", or
| interested in just my friend "Jane Smith". I likely don't
| want to know everything Jane is posting - or those
| posting things about her - but when I choose to Follow
| her, I should be prompted with a list of topics I've
| subscribed to that would narrow the posts I see which
| intersect with Jane. Also - G+ or Twitter - would be
| working to autotag posts into topics/subjects to help me
| identify how I want to intersect with those posts. (If
| the author themselves don't apply tags)
|
| I can see why limiting what you're presented with never
| took off from a marketing point of view. I think this is
| rad though.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The problem is I don't think Google+ ever worked that way
| either. You used circles to decide who to send to, but
| there wasn't a good way to filter as a receiver.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I thought I saw someone proposing that Twitter do something
| like this, basically allowing sub-accounts. For example, I
| speak some Spanish and would love to tweet in Spanish, but
| those who follow me and don't speak Spanish may feel
| annoyed for it to pop up all the time. So I'd love to have
| sub-accounts, where I have my main account and people can
| choose which sub-accounts to follow.
|
| I'd love the same for a podcast. I don't want to create 5
| separate podcast channels, I want to have a main one and
| then have sub-channels that people can subscribe to.
|
| It doesn't have to be this structure, it can be another way
| to allow us to have more power over the feed that we're
| seeing, giving us filter/search/sort/algorithm options.
|
| So, in short, I love your suggestion and wish the next
| generation of social network implements it in some shape,
| whether that be from the incumbents or new ones.
| sefrost wrote:
| This is what I believe family/friend group chats on
| platforms such as WhatsApp are.
|
| They are great in my experience, but if people started
| posting politics news I could see how they could turn bad.
| taurusnoises wrote:
| "If I follow Sue on social media, now I know her politics,
| religion, sex life, drug usage, opinions on every little
| thing.. and frankly, I don't care or want to. I'm happy just
| playing some Catan once in a while."
|
| I have a slightly different view of this. People's opinions
| on things are always in flux, even if they sway heavily
| toward one side. What we see on social media is a person's
| opinions without the context of a human interaction. On
| social media, we see Sue's emotional response to politics
| without her having to negotiate that emotional response in
| relationship to another person sitting in front of her. She
| may "believe" what she says in the moment she types it, but
| put her in a room with a friend who disagrees and you can
| watch how her views shift, push back, concede, change,
| challenge, etc. On social media, there's very little of this
| taking place, because there's zero human intimacy at work. It
| belief in a vacuum not in relationship.
| davesque wrote:
| This only seems true for the people who share TMI on social
| media. Still seems like a pretty specific subset of the
| population.
| MonaroVXR wrote:
| My conclusion (without any scientific verification) is people
| make assumption about my social media use. (I feel I've
| written this somewhere else)
|
| I use Facebook for my entertainment, reacting on car memes,
| sarcastic memes and genuinely car things and sports. Oh and I
| watch TV on Facebook. meeting people real life in this city
| has been.... ehhh special. (But I think the things I do on
| Facebook isn't special, there isn't that much politics.)
|
| I don't forget the times that I laughed so hard some posts,
| because it so funny.
|
| But at the end of the day... it's people and nothing is going
| to fix that.
| darkerside wrote:
| I think you bring your whole self to an in person encounter
| much more than you do to a social media presence. The
| difference is, there's no concept of proximity. Everything
| you say on social is shouted to the entire room, so if you
| want to say anything, you have to say it to everyone. In a
| personal encounter, you react to the people near you. If they
| recoil, you might explain. On social, many people are
| reacting in different ways and even more not reacting at all.
| So how do you react to all of those reactions? (You don't)
| polynomial wrote:
| It's Sue's decision whether to share the full range of her
| ideas and personality or not.
|
| It's the algorithm's decision to serve up the choicest bits
| with the highest polarization scores bc that seems to have
| the highest correlation with overall engagement.
|
| And feeding the compulsive need for argument seems to be the
| more profitable strategy over providing a framework for truly
| polite conversation.
| DEADMEAT wrote:
| What's funny here are that the example issues you listed are
| exactly the issues that the vast majority of Americans
| actually do agree on. Those are wedge issues that were
| carefully crafted by political parties to try and create a
| division in popular opinion when there isn't one. It's a
| fairly common political strategy nowadays.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| You think the vast majority of Americans agree on abortion?
| I'm pretty sure that, no, they do not. The division is
| real, not just a political strategy.
| DEADMEAT wrote:
| Since 1975 the percentage of Americans that think
| abortion should be illegal in all cases has hovered
| around 15-20%
|
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Abortion isn't an either or position. There are quite a
| few position and this stat only shows a single one:
| 15-20% believe it should be illegal in all cases. What
| about the subset who believe it should only be legal for
| rape victims. Or only plan B style drugs (I'm not sure
| how the linked data classifies the responses, but some
| people do consider such drugs on the same level as
| abortion). Or only by first trimester. Or only by second
| trimester. Or until birth? Or some other position that I
| am not able to remember off the top of my head?
| [deleted]
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| > (abortion, firearms, lgbtq, etc)
|
| > exactly the issues that the vast majority of Americans
| actually do agree on.
|
| cite?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| That is probably a sign you are trapped in an echo chamber.
|
| Those three issues are polling in the 50-60% range on Pew
| research, and tend to fluctuate heavily based on recent
| events and question wording.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| not saying it is, but what happens if polling is an echo
| chamber too?
| swayvil wrote:
| I have a similar theory. That, in social media, we touch a
| different part of a person, than, say, irl.
|
| I think that when we read, or we're on the computer, we are
| in a kind of trance. Our unconscious self is exposed.
|
| It expresses itself, we all harbor a lot of dark feelings.
| And we are reactive. It's not a rational self. It's a self
| that gropes for the good stuff and kicks against the bad
| stuff and that's about it. Like an animal.
|
| It is also exposed and vulnerable. So when the flame hits we
| feel it deeply.
|
| I imagine us all to be like that demon in The Exorcist. A
| raging ego trapped in a world of words. Playing mind games.
| And when we are told that it's holy water, it burns just
| fine.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| > If I play boardgames with Sue, that's enough. We meet,
| enjoy a beer and play some Catan and go our separate ways.
| That's a fine relationship.
|
| > If I follow Sue on social media, now I know her politics,
| religion, sex life, drug usage, opinions on every little
| thing.. and frankly, I don't care or want to. I'm happy just
| playing some Catan once in a while.
|
| > Historically you didn't need to know everything about
| everyone. Your friends will always have opinions or
| lifestyles you will find disagreeable - that is the nature of
| human existence.
|
| This hits the nail on the head perfectly, IMHO.
| Unfortunately, even the activities you describe have become
| politicized. For example, Settlers of Catan rebranding to
| just Catan.
| phillryu wrote:
| I will say in this case Catan is cool and feels natural,
| like what people would call it if they're still playing the
| game a hundred years from now. So maybe it was politically
| sparked but the rebrand feels solid.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| Living in the hole I am living in seems to shield me from
| this. I had no idea that "Settlers of Catan" has been
| rebranded to just "Catan" or why. In my circles we call it
| "Settlers", "Settlers of Catan" or just "Catan"
| interchangeably all the time. The "controversial" one is
| "Settlers" if you talk to someone you might also play a
| round of Settlers the computer game with (as in these guys:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Settlers)
| nonameiguess wrote:
| What is politicized about that? I had no idea the name had
| ever changed, but thanks to your comment, just spent the
| last 20 minutes trying to figure out why and no Internet
| sources citing the fact that a rebrand happened give a
| reason at all. The only somewhat "political" theory seems
| to be a Reddit thread citing a Dutch publication claiming
| the rebrand happened because of pressure from Palestinians
| complaining that it supported Jewish West Bank settlements.
| Apart from that being ridiculous in the first place, that
| theory was quickly debunked in the same thread by both the
| maker of the game disavowing that and they and players
| pointing out the rebrand had actually happened in Germany
| years earlier and was only then being reflected in the
| Dutch version.
| isleyaardvark wrote:
| It is being politicized, just not by the makers of Catan.
| ratww wrote:
| Yeah. I have a semi-recent copy and the box says "Catan -
| Trade Build Settle", so that definitely seems like a
| regular rebranding. And people who see politics
| everywhere are projecting that it is political.
| ratww wrote:
| I had noticed the name change myself, but never consider it
| was politically motivated until you brought it up
| (especially considering mine is called "Catan: Trade Build
| Settle"). You're Sue in this case.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| I, in turn, unfortunately had to listen to fellow players
| complain about the name change throughout a whole game
| the other week.
| enobrev wrote:
| I agree with this. I've found that in order to maintain my
| relationships with some good friends, I've had to stop
| following them on twitter (and other social media).
|
| On twitter, it's really easy for my to ignore all the insane
| and stupid things that complete strangers blather about on
| there all the time. There's a ton of noise, but just enough
| signal for me to check in regularly.
|
| But then suddenly I see a ridiculous post from someone I
| truly care about. Someone who I've known for years and know
| their spouse and kids and families. I can read their post in
| their voice as if it were said to me, personally. And now I'm
| angered and incensed and putting up maps and charts and pins
| in my head preparing a response that this person whom I care
| about deserves.
|
| But they weren't talking to me. They were shouting something
| crazy into a cacophony of crazy strangers. If we were at
| dinner we would have a long, deep, and nuanced conversation
| on the subject and we'd listen to each other's points and
| respond accordingly. But in 240 chars they're wrong and now I
| will reserve two hours of mental capacity to argue with
| myself about why.
|
| Nope. Just block them, knowing I'll see them next time
| they're in town, and we'll have a real conversations about
| real things in a forum more befitting two people trying to
| understand each other.
| cgrealy wrote:
| While I agree in general, there are plenty of circumstances
| where people don't get to not have an opinion about things.
|
| For example, you can't "agree to disagree" on LGBTQ rights if
| you belong to one of those categories. See also pregnant
| people and abortion rights.
| kerneloftruth wrote:
| I know LGB people who balk at the TQ.* additions to the
| acronym. Their arguments are cogent and logical. There
| seems to be plenty of room to disagree, because not all the
| constituents of the acronym are really fighting the same
| cause, or even see the groups as all being one team.
| paganel wrote:
| A close friend of mine is, well, gay (as in man gay), and
| he doesn't have the fondest opinion of lesbians. He's also
| quite critical about trans people. He does like other
| (especially beautiful) men a lot, so that gay part is
| definitely covered, he's not in the closet by any means or
| anything like that.
| everdrive wrote:
| > For example, you can't "agree to disagree" on LGBTQ
| rights if you belong to one of those categories. See also
| pregnant people and abortion rights.
|
| Why can't you? Is it impossible to imagine civil friendly
| people who simply do not share one's views on these issues?
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| Whenever one group is deciding on what rights another
| group has, it seems inevitable that civility and
| friendliness will at some point get left behind.
| math_denial wrote:
| Should tha baker have the right to refuse baking a gay
| wedding cake or some group has the power to decide what
| rights another group has? As a gay man the LGBT groups
| keep declining in the quality of their fights and, having
| survived their own usefulness, they invent fights that
| inevitably clash with others liberties and belief. No, I
| do need that cake, there are other bakeries.
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| Should a baker have the right to refuse to bake cakes in
| case it's an interracial couple?
| watwut wrote:
| Afaik, that baker went out of way to harass them.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| neither group decides anything, they're just a few
| thousand people talking online.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Texas just unveiled a law that proposes putting parents
| who support their children's gender transition in jail
| for child abuse.
|
| That means one side thinks the other side is a child
| abuser, and the other side thinks that bigots are going
| to throw them in prison for being a supportive parent.
|
| This is not something you can be "polite" about.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| neither side decided anything though, the governer did.
| so all the talk aboit it online is just moving air
| around.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| 1. It was an order, not a law
|
| 2. It was a clarification of existing rules
|
| 3. It does not make "supporting your child's gender
| transition" a jailable offense.
|
| The order says subjecting a child to invasive medical
| procedure can be abuse, and that doctors and teachers
| have a legal requirement to report abuse.
|
| Here is the order for your reading pleasure:
|
| https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-directs-
| dfps...
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| "As OAG Opinion No. KP-0401 makes clear, it is already
| against the law to subject Texas children to a wide
| variety of elective procedures for gender transitioning,
| including reassignment surgeries that can cause
| sterilization, mastectomies, removals of otherwise
| healthy body parts, and administration of puberty-
| blocking drugs or supraphysiologic doses of testosterone
| or estrogen."
|
| Where "subject" appears to be the most general form
| possible, as far as I can tell from context.
|
| Even puberty blockers are on this list! You're not
| supporting a gender transition if you can't touch
| hormones at all.
| cgrealy wrote:
| Because in general, those conversations are about
| important things that affect your life.
|
| It's not as polarised these days, but it was within my
| lifetime that consensual homosexual sex between adults
| was illegal in many parts of the world. It still is in
| some countries. You cannot "agree to disagree" when
| someone believes you are broken or sinful or whatever and
| wants to put you in jail.
|
| That's just one example.
|
| I'm straight, white dude. It's very easy for me to ignore
| issues like this, because most of the time, they're in my
| favour. That's just the world.
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| I think part of the problem is the circumstances of two
| people meeting on social media. It's like one of those
| break-the-ice prompts for new coworkers, but instead of
| lighthearted nonsense, the card says "the gays are evil,
| discuss!".
|
| In the real world, two very different people might meet
| and start to build a history and a good deal of rapport
| and trust with each other before ever getting anywhere
| close to a divisive issue. When they do eventually get
| there, without a mob watching, without the fear of every
| word going in the permanent record, the conversation
| would likely be far less of a dumpster fire, and minds
| might actually be changed.
|
| As it is, a lot of the discourse you see online is
| indescribably bad, and I think a lot of it is down to
| throwing two strangers into a conversation that they
| would never naturally arrive at upon first meeting.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| > Because in general, those conversations are about
| important things that affect your life.
|
| the conversations are about important things that effect
| your life, the conversations themselves aren't important
| and don't actually effect your life.
| COGlory wrote:
| I find this argument compelling, but the counter-point
| is: what change is politicing everything going to affect?
| Will political comments on a codebase make it safer to be
| homosexual in Saudi Arabia? If not, combining those two
| things feels like an exercise in futility.
| herbstein wrote:
| It's generally quite hard for a trans person to be civil
| with a transphobe. Just as it's hard for e.g. black
| people to be civil with a racist. The bigot will, whether
| conscious or not, make the life of the minority
| absolutely terrible.
|
| With LGBTQ it is therefore not just a difference of
| opinion on taxation, or a few percentage points
| difference in a tariff. For trans people it's about
| whether the other person even acknowledges that you can
| be trans.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Let's throw in a more complex example. Is someone who
| identifies as a "trap" trans? Is that self identification
| trans-phobic? Is it a valid self identity? What if
| someone identifies as a "trap" but not trans?
| progman32 wrote:
| Could you clarify your point? Not sure I follow.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| If given a topic like "lgbtq" issues, the debate is not
| "Do gay people get basic rights?". Nobody is actually
| having that debate anymore and you're fighting straw men.
|
| Ie, these debates are not between "pro-lgbtq" and "anti-
| lgbtq".
|
| Instead most of these debates are more nuanced and
| complicated. I picked the "trap" debate because it's
| hotly contested, with both sides swearing up and down
| they are pro-lgbtq and both sides would even claim to be
| more pro-lgbtq than their opponents.
|
| Which is to say, you can probably ignore the debate and
| not care, still be pro-lgbtq, and go back to playing your
| board game, even with friends who have a different
| ideological position on that particular debate.
|
| A lot of social media fights are about this scale.
| progman32 wrote:
| Thanks for the clarification.
|
| I think mutual respect also plays a part here. My
| respect, demeanor towards, and willingness to play
| Settlers with someone who believes LGBTQIA+ people are
| sinners depends a lot on whether or not that person
| engages in honest, consensual debate and respects the
| human on the other side. That is how we form good
| relationships and strengthen our collective
| understanding. I wish to underscore the importance of
| consensual debate, especially when there's a power
| gradient.
|
| I will say though, "Do gay people get basic rights" is
| _very much_ still a subject of debate. Sadly.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| > the debate is not "Do gay people get basic rights?".
| Nobody is actually having that debate anymore
|
| On the contrary: https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-
| politics-and-policy/texa...
| ladyattis wrote:
| >If given a topic like "lgbtq" issues, the debate is not
| "Do gay people get basic rights?".
|
| Eeh, it's still "do gay people get basic rights" for many
| even in the United States. I've seen folks have last
| wills overturned by family through insidious legal
| maneuvers. I've seen doctors refuse to contact patients
| with biopsy results because their patients were trans.
| And I've seen folks even withhold paychecks from LGBT
| folks because of their religious nonsense. So, basic
| rights are still a matter of contention until it becomes
| not merely a legal formality that LGBT folks are equal
| under the law but that the entire population does not
| even think that they have a chance to violate those
| formalities and that they feel bad about thinking of
| doing such a thing. Until that happens, LGBT discussions
| will always go back to "do gay people have basic
| rights?".
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That's more a problem of vagueness and guessing than real
| complexity, because it's slang with unclear/multiple
| meanings. Some people use "trap" to mean transgender,
| some people use it to mean transvestite. Everything
| beyond that is based on intent.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I've never heard of anyone identifying as a "trap"
| unironically. This sounds like a straw man.
|
| I would equate a trans woman calling themselves a trap to
| being the same as a black person calling themselves the N
| word. It's a way of taking back a slur.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| This was such a hot debate on a set of subreddits it
| caused a collapse of a huge subreddit, the ousting of a
| powermod, and several spinoff subreddits. Admittedly it
| was a few years ago, but it was an interesting fight to
| watch from the sidelines.
|
| My preference here is to refer to people however they
| want to be referred to. When I adopted that view, I
| thought it was very safe but it has actually landed me in
| hot water many times. I still stand by it though.
| gedy wrote:
| Issue is usually in defining terms like 'transphobe' -
| I've encountered folks who define that as someone who
| wouldn't be willing to sleep with or be attracted to a
| trans person in the same way as a biological female. I
| think that's an example of an area people are just going
| to have to agree to disagree.
| ratww wrote:
| That's a bit of a strawman. That's not transphobic.
| Nobody is obligated to have sex with anyone, trans or
| cis, period. That's not even up for discussion.
|
| If one, however, goes _out of their way_ to harass
| transexual people when stating this preference, then
| yeah, it 's a bit transphobic. Intention matters.
| mecha_ghidorah wrote:
| I did just literally get into an argument with an
| acquaintance last week because she was insisting that it
| was not an ok or valid thing for someone to not want to
| date trans women as a category if they were ok with
| dating women. So I wouldn't call it a strawman.
|
| I'd say it is a probably a minority position but it is a
| genuinely held one
| RC_ITR wrote:
| 'Let's agree to disagree that you deserve the same rights
| as me' is just a really hard pill to swallow for LGBTQ+
| people.
|
| You can choose to hold that opinion if you want, but most
| LGBTQ+ people and their loved ones will choose not to
| interact with you as a result.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| but actually, they do. thus, social media as it exists
| today is a bunch of people all trying to own the other
| side. they live to interact with people they disagree
| with, the harder the disagreement the better.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| I can't really parse what you're saying. Who is 'they'?
| watwut wrote:
| > Why can't you? Is it impossible to imagine civil
| friendly people who simply do not share one's views on
| these issues?
|
| For gay, it means keeping secret over pretty large and
| important parts of life. As was explained to me by gay
| who was super civil, but did grumbled and complained
| about a lot of stuff that was said when it was safe to
| talk more openly.
| [deleted]
| ladyattis wrote:
| Not when their opinion means I can't bequeath my prized
| personal possessions to my partner without burdensome
| legal complications. I've seen wills being disregarded
| when it comes to same-sex partners all the time because
| the surviving family disagreed with their dead loved one
| so such an extent as to try to find a legal loophole to
| get out of following their last wishes.
| xena wrote:
| As someone who is on the LGBTQ spectrum, people that
| actively advocate for me not being able to exist in civil
| society without doing anything but trying to be authentic
| about myself are really not people I want in my life.
|
| I absolutely hate that my ability to participate in
| modern society without harassment for things that are
| inherent to my existence is limited and I hope that one
| day we can move past this kind of foolishness as a
| species.
| echelon wrote:
| I'm LGBT and I don't consider the other side evil. I also
| grew up in the south and know that by yelling at them, you
| only make them turn their heads away. Sitting down and
| talking with someone is not impossible. We have more in
| common than not.
|
| Oftentimes a position, belief, or disagreement is a
| projection of other underlying fears and discomforts. Or
| maybe it's simply rigidly structured views that need
| additional time to process new shapes.
|
| If an intergalactic enemy suddenly showed up on our
| doorsteps and started attacking us, we'd all band together.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| The bulk of the Left wing has moved past the whole
| "coddle them" method where the comfort of the other side
| is prioritized above all, while the entire time they are
| passing laws to marginalize and harass people and rolling
| back the Voting Rights Act.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| > pregnant people
|
| I see what you did there, on international women's Day as
| well.
| cgrealy wrote:
| Trans men can get pregnant. That's just reality. IWD has
| nothing to do with it.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| So what word would you use to describe people who have
| the biology to bare children? Because we need to have the
| language to differentiate the two.
|
| In the past we used the word "women", but that has been
| commandeered... Hence my comment about "person" and IWD.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| But the topic can never come up in organic conversation
| altogether.
| cgrealy wrote:
| Maybe, but you have to imagine at some point, things that
| are in the news will get discussed over a beer.
|
| And again, I'm talking about fairly fundamental things
| here. If someone is pregnant, that's pretty conversation
| worthy. I also can't imagine someone not discussing
| seeing a new partner.
|
| Ironically, the things you can "agree to disagree" on
| tend to be the ones that might not come up.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Since when has "I'm pregnant" been a socially-acceptable
| cue to start ranting about your views on abortion in
| either direction?
| cgrealy wrote:
| Generally, no, one does not respond to someone saying
| they're pregnant by suggesting an abortion. That's
| usually considered rude :D
|
| But not all pregnancies are wanted. I have had friends
| talk to me about their decision wrt an unwanted
| pregnancy.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Within LGBTQ communities there are mass disagreements.
| Should women-only spaces include trans people? Is the word
| "transsexual" a valid identity even when self chosen?
|
| There are even Ls and Gs who think Bs are "faking it".
|
| The trick is that it's not a boolean question. Someone can
| be gay and anti-trans and this is trivially true.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > There are even Ls and Gs who think Bs are "faking it".
|
| I've seen a shirt that says "Bi now, gay later"
| foldr wrote:
| > Humanity either needs to "agree to disagree" on wide swaths
| of things we care a whole bunch about (abortion, firearms,
| lgbtq, etc) or we need to go back to not discussing those
| things in public or polite company.
|
| There's a third option, which is that discussion can lead to
| actual moral progress where society decides that certain
| views are just beyond the pale. A few decades ago people
| might have 'agreed to disagree' on whether interracial
| marriage was ok. Now society has formed a consensus on this
| issue and anyone who's opposed to interracial marriage is
| part of an isolated fringe. It seems likely that this
| progress happened in significant part because a growing
| number of people refused to acc
|
| Saying that we should agree to disagree on controversial
| issues sounds superficially reasonable - especially when
| you're exhausted from reading some awful twitter thread. It
| won't sound so great in retrospect if you end up on. It's
| also a luxury that people directly affected by the relevant
| issues don't always have.
|
| The real problem isn't people debating controversial issues,
| which is fine and healthy and necessary for progress. The
| problem is the way that platforms like Twitter incentivize
| hot takes, rapid response, bullying, and other behavior
| that's not conducive to rational discussion.
| travisporter wrote:
| Excellent theory. I think it's more than that - you now have
| tidbits of her opinion on every little thing without the
| benefit of nonverbal communication, empathy and nuance that
| you would if you actually talked to her for the same amount
| of time.
| djKianoosh wrote:
| these two comments put together are so on point. it's
| almost as if we as a species are still learning how to
| communicate in this internet age
| CountSessine wrote:
| This was one of the ideas behind Google+ - "circles". You
| could put other people in different broadcast "circles" and
| then you wouldn't end up announcing your weird fetish
| preferences or drug use to your grandma or your coworkers -
| at least not intentionally.
| jafoi wrote:
| Wouldn't work in practice - no one is going to pass an
| opportunity to broadcast their political views to as many
| people as possible.
| robryan wrote:
| Presumably people are losing a lot of followers on
| Twitter broadcasting their political views when they are
| mostly followed for some other reason. These people might
| be motivated to correctly categorise their Tweets.
| mdoms wrote:
| I disagree. I think the types of people this article is
| about - the silent majority of non-tweeters - are happy
| to compartmentalise different aspects of their lives
| within different circles. It's the tweeting minority who
| feel like they need to broadcast their every righteous
| thought to as many people as possible.
| nradov wrote:
| Google+ also relied on users to correctly categorize
| their posts to the right stream or interest. Software
| developers tend to be good at dividing things into near
| little categories. Other users not so much.
| CountSessine wrote:
| Yeah - you're probably right
| superfrank wrote:
| I don't know. I definitely think some people would just
| mass broadcast to everyone.
|
| Using the example above, there's nothing stopping that
| person from bringing their whole self to board game
| night. They're choosing to avoid certain topics with a
| certain group of people, so I would expect some of that
| behavior to cary over to social media.
|
| If I think about something like the "close friends"
| feature on instagram, I have some friends who just share
| way too much with everyone, but I've got others who use
| that feature pretty heavily.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Tweetdeck. It's the "pro" Twitter client that has strict chrono
| ordering and won't show likes or trending items. You can also
| set it to not show any retweets, at all.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Even vanilla Twitter allows you to get strict chrono order by
| switching your home-page. It does not show "likes" and
| reduces the use of "trending" iirc.
|
| It does show retweets, though.
| fotta wrote:
| I switched to this view a few days ago and it's infinitely
| better. Originally when Twitter rolled out the toggle I
| figured I'd give the algorithmic feed a chance but
| eventually it got to the point where 80% of my feed was
| algorithmically recommended tweets from people I wasn't
| following and I got fed up.
| delecti wrote:
| You can turn off seeing retweets from accounts you follow on a
| per-account basis, and more people (including yourself, if
| you're ever curious to go back to Twitter) should more
| aggressively use the option to make the site far more
| enjoyable. Lots of accounts are fine to follow on their own,
| but complete spam-fests if your feed is full of everything they
| retweet. Just go to their profile, hit the three dots, and then
| click "Turn off retweets".
| dvtrn wrote:
| Does Twitter respect this toggled option and persist the
| state?
|
| I'm a little burned out fighting over user preferences across
| social media that seem to always toggle themselves back to
| whatever default the platform wants that day.
| delecti wrote:
| I'm not going to promise it _never_ forgets that option,
| but I 've never noticed it forgetting across dozens of
| accounts I follow, and several years and multiple
| logins/devices/browsers. It's not like the usual per-
| device/session timeline options, it's more along the lines
| and persistence of a mute/block toggle.
| [deleted]
| dwighttk wrote:
| One thing that helps (a tiny bit) is to go to newest tweets
| first instead of the algorithm. This cuts out all of the likes
| (which are 99% noise for me... I wish I could make it so people
| didn't see my likes, that is what retweets are for!)
|
| Still gonna get the retweets, but you won't get the most
| "engaging" stuff brought to your attention which tends to be
| the worst.
| ripper1138 wrote:
| Predictably, when I changed my feed back to newest tweets, I
| spent wayyyy less time on Twitter. Which is great.
| onion2k wrote:
| _I know a lot of folks in my field side by the stance that
| everything is political, even code._
|
| Twitter isn't code. Why would you expect someone to limit what
| they publish to code topics just because _you_ want to limit
| what you read to just code things? Their Twitter account is
| _their_ domain. There 's no reason why someone shouldn't tweet
| about code _and other stuff_ if they want to.
|
| I honestly have no idea why people think they should have any
| say over what someone tweets, and even suggest that people _are
| wrong_ to tweet the way they do. That level of entitlement is
| baffling.
|
| Please don't follow me on Twitter. You'll hate my account.
| fleddr wrote:
| Nobody said that people can't tweet about any and all aspects
| of their lives. The point was that some followers may only be
| interested in one particular part. This would dramatically
| cut the noise from Twitter, as well as its divisiveness and
| general unpleasantness.
|
| You can still tweet whatever you want, but Twitter would be
| more usable for many people if you could cherry pick the
| signal and get rid of the noise.
| jahewson wrote:
| > the stance that everything is political
|
| Which is itself a political stance. It's not a universal truth
| but a very narrow political ideology. Never mind that
| "political" is not a well-defined thing to begin with.
|
| If we can't agree to neutral territory then one of the sides is
| going to have to win. Because you can't bully your way to
| victory.
|
| We need more meetings of the mind and fewer meetings of
| unfalsifiable rhetoric. Fewer crusaders and more peacemakers.
| kyrra wrote:
| 100%, great take. I tried following some tech people I admire
| and hit the same issue and just unfollowed them. I now only use
| twitter for the sole-purpose of getting political/world news
| when I want it. But using it for anything technically
| interesting is dead to me.
| TZubiri wrote:
| It's almost as if they become infected with a bianry search
| parasite and the vector is any 50/50 divide
| alias_neo wrote:
| I kept Twitter to "advertise" when I write technical blogs which
| I do very little of these days due to time.
|
| I follow a bunch of tech type stuff I'm interested in, but
| honestly, it's become more of a place to vent and whine about
| this or that.
|
| When I step back and look at it from afar, it's kinda what
| Facebook was when I left it a decade or so ago; people whining,
| and any subject worth commenting on is too controversial to do on
| the likes of Twitter where nuance is easily lost in so few
| characters.
|
| I see no real need for me to be on Twitter anymore. I'm not on
| any other social networks aside from linkedin, which also seems
| to have lost its professional focus.
| [deleted]
| AitchEmArsey wrote:
| It is a sign of the trying times we live in that I saw the
| extra "z"s in your post and instead of assuming a typo, I
| immediately think of Russian hackers infiltrating this
| platform.
| alias_neo wrote:
| Hehe the truth is much less nefarious; I was typing this on
| mobile, my 2 year old was climbing on me as I type and my
| wife was calling us both to hurry up and get to the dinner
| table, or else!
|
| Edit: and to explain why z's, it's exactly above the comma
| "," on my Android phone (Gboard), and it's easy to miss when
| you can't see!
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| While we're on the subject of things with horrible UX
| (Twitter), why is there no forward slash on GBoard as a
| long-press alternative but there is a backslash?!
| thenerdhead wrote:
| I always think of the ratio of 90% consume, 9% contribute, and 1%
| create. This is a phenomenon on wikipedia, GitHub, twitter, and
| other places.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule
|
| The big question is...what side do you want to be on?
| datavirtue wrote:
| Nothing gets you high like creating.
| mwt wrote:
| Is there a link to a podcast or article that I'm missing? The
| authors throw out this big claim
|
| > It turns out, you're right. We dug into the data and found
| that, in fact, most Americans are friendly, donate time or money,
| and would help you shovel your snow. They are busy, normal and
| mostly silent.
|
| then follow it up with a couple disjointed statistics and then
| ends with
|
| > The bottom line: Every current trend suggests politics will get
| more toxic before it normalizes. But the silent majority gives us
| hope beyond the nuttiness.
|
| What?
|
| The entire premise around how often people _send_ tweets also
| doesn't seem like a good foundation. Misinformation (to pick only
| one relevant thing about social) comes from _consuming_ media.
| The median user story is probably people skimming endless content
| (memes, news, etc.) not tweeting everything out.
| HNHatesUsers wrote:
| riffic wrote:
| Twitter, as a service, is incredibly user-hostile[0]. It's not
| all that surprising to see a quote like this:
|
| > 75% of people in the U.S. never tweet.
|
| [0] Check it:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=user+hostile+twitter+site:ne...
| nluken wrote:
| It's frustrating how tough it is to stick to topics you're
| interested in seeing on Twitter. Even after trying to actively
| disengage with a lot of the news-based stuff on the site to stop
| myself from doomscrolling, I still get shown a ton of news and
| politics on my feed because some of my friends on Twitter like
| and retweet that kind of stuff.
|
| I think it's also kind of strange how much variance there is in
| the content on the site. Something about the fact that stupid
| jokes take up the same space and appear in the same way as very
| serious news feels harmful to me.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| Many people whose articles and projects get regularly posted here
| only have Twitter listed as the means of contact on their
| personal webpages. Wish they offered another contact as well.
| bena wrote:
| I'm in mostly read-only mode on most social media. I only post in
| response to people I personally know for the most part and
| occasionally a few small-ish, independent creators whose work I
| support.
|
| I sincerely believe we, humans as a species, do not handle scale
| well at all. There's just a limit to what we can fathom or
| process. And social media has scaled beyond our ability to
| comprehend how to socially interact with it.
| gm wrote:
| Among the best mental health decisions of my life is to get rid
| of Twitter from my everyday life. I still have an account (the
| only reason to delete it would be as a sign of protect, but I
| don't care, and Twitter doesn't care that I don't care). I do not
| visit the site on my own. There's just so much negativity,
| cruelty, and stupid thoughts. How can anyone post anything
| insightful, nuanced, and worth reading with such a character
| limit?
|
| I realized that interesting tweets (or rather, Twitter threads)
| have a way of finding me through other means. That's the only
| time I visit Twitter.
|
| I'm ok on missing out on ideas that do not find me through other
| means. The vomit to caviar ratio on Twitter is way too high.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Doesn't seem it would be an issue worth discussing except in the
| marketing department of twitter if the media would get over their
| addiction to sitting at their computers and interpreting the
| world through tweets they see posted. There's no good reason why
| Twitter should be considered the default human communication
| medium but this "silent majority" is only seen as an aberration
| because of this assumption that Twitter is where one should go
| when seeking a representative sample of society. There's also a
| silent majority of people who don't use tiktok but no one outside
| of tiktok thinks that's a problem.
| [deleted]
| Miner49er wrote:
| > Independents -- who are somewhere in the middle
|
| This seems factually wrong? Maybe most independents are in
| between the two parties, but not all. Look at Bernie Sanders for
| example, I would say he's to the left of the Democratic party.
|
| I thought maybe the Gallup poll they are referencing had a weird
| definition of an independent requiring it to be between the two
| parties, but I'm not seeing that either.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Aren't independents people who haven't declared any party
| affiliations? They are _usually_ in the middle, but could have
| extreme Democrat or Republican views.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > They are usually in the middle
|
| Is there any evidence for this, or even definition of this?
| I'd define it as swing voters who tend to mix up their ballot
| between the two parties, and I'd be surprised if the
| percentage of people who did that broke double digits.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Many of the people I know who are independent (like myself)
| have strong views, and largely lean one way or the other, but
| hate the party anyway. I feel this way about the party I most
| closely align with. We share a lot, but I really don't care
| at all for how they go about things, or what they consider is
| the highest priority. So I'm an independent, but I don't want
| to be associated with them.
| Miner49er wrote:
| That's my point, but the article says they are in the middle
| between Democrats and Republicans. They could be anywhere on
| the political spectrum, however.
| _ttg wrote:
| Your hunch is right. The "moderate middle" trope is a product
| of lazy pundits and independent voters are actually all over
| the ideological map - https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-
| moderate-middle-is-...
| hirundo wrote:
| Editor: "Erica, Mike, I need that story right now."
| Erica&Mike: "Sorry boss, it isn't written yet, all we have are
| notes with topics, bullet points and numbered lists."
| Editor: "Time's up. Publish the notes."
| 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
| I really wonder whether any of the political establishment even
| has a clue as to the political makeup of the Independents.
|
| The two-party system keeps dominating all the news cycles, so
| it's got to be pretty difficult for all of the marketing
| analytics companies to keep up with the noise.
| JSavageOne wrote:
| I never understood why Twitter has a character limit. It reduces
| discussion to tiny empty soundbites. People get around it via
| "Twitter threads", which are a giant pain in the ass to create
| (vs. writing a simple post) and navigate through.
|
| Does Twitter just hold on to the character limit for nostalgia
| purposes? I mean if they really wanted to keep that limit, at the
| least why not create a separate Twitter without a character limit
| as an experiment, and see what the demand is?
| jameskilton wrote:
| "Never pass up a chance to keep your mouth shut"
|
| Words my Dad taught me as I was growing up, but only really sank
| in the last 5 or so years ago.
| cylinder714 wrote:
| "Silence is a friend who will never betray you."
|
| --A Russian (or Italian) saying
|
| (works either way, as it turns out)
| dmingod666 wrote:
| It can have a twisted meaning that could imply a silenced
| friend will never betray you.. :)
| watwut wrote:
| That also means, don't protest. It is safer. It means that
| especially in the context of Russian history and present.
| duxup wrote:
| I once worked for a company where several groups were VERY
| vocal about their complaints about each other. It seemed like
| bitching about the other team(s) was part of the job. Lots of
| walls built here and there between teams.
|
| I kept quiet. I decided bitching was too tiresome / nobody was
| getting anything done, nobody was getting better by having
| complainants flung at them.
|
| After I established relationships with various folks across the
| groups, I had folks from every team come to me / were available
| to me in ways they never would for each other.
|
| My job was 2x easier as far as getting help / information /
| cooperation compared to the folks complaining non stop.
|
| There were groups I agreed with / disagreed with (one group was
| straight wrong about nearly everything), but throwing a fit
| just made for worse relationships.
|
| I still made suggestions to folks whose job it was to manage
| these groups, politely, gently, often quietly, but if they did
| or did not fix it / repeating myself wasn't a big focus for me.
|
| I've long since given up on right and wrong (well outside real
| moral issues) and more about how to get to the end as best as
| possible with the relationships / people available.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| > right and wrong (well outside real moral issues)
|
| Even moral issues don't have objective right and wrong. The
| idea that there are base moral facts is ridiculous, and
| without fully understanding each others priors arguments
| about ethics are rarely productive.
| duxup wrote:
| Oh yeah moral issues are within a context and so on.
| dogman144 wrote:
| I call this employing tactical empathy and it is the single
| most important soft skill I learned. It's the only, only
| effective way to do cross-team coordination, arguably all the
| way up to C-level to C-level.
| kaetemi wrote:
| Familiar story. Worse when the group that's wrong on nearly
| everything gets a cozy position from people in charge, where
| they can get by with minimum effort.
| davio wrote:
| "What I should have said was nothing"
| m-i-l wrote:
| When I was young someone told me something similar (but not
| exactly the same) - "imagine you have a zip on your mouth and
| you have to unzip it before speaking". The point was not the
| zip, but to take the time to think before speaking rather than
| just saying the first thing that pops into your head.
|
| Social media not only removes that moment of reflection, but it
| actually spreads explosive verbal diarrhoea. The commercial
| platforms are incentivised to encourage conflict and
| divisiveness because it drives traffic therefore profits. If
| everyone was encouraged to be nice and friendly on social
| media, people wouldn't spend as much time on it, so less
| eyeballs on ads and less profit.
|
| I don't think that is the complete picture though. Having spent
| some time on alternative platforms that don't have the profit
| motive, I have noticed there is still a tendency for many
| people to be slightly outrageous, presumably simply because it
| attracts more engagement, and those sort of people like the
| attention. Say something sensible and you're not going to get
| loads of people replying "I agree", so after spending a lot of
| time writing sensible comments you end up wondering if anyone
| has actually even read them and you start to think - what's the
| point?
|
| I wonder how (or even whether) you could design a platform that
| encourages sensible and penalises outrage.
| [deleted]
| tombert wrote:
| Similar quote by Mark Twain
|
| > It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think
| you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
| daptaq wrote:
| Takes one to know one.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| It kind of seems like you are trying to pick a fight with
| Mark Twain.
| chasd00 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URWLnOJ25uA
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Swish! (That's amazing.)
| Zababa wrote:
| I don't really like this quote. Lots of smart people often
| explain that they ask "stupid" questions and that it's
| important to get over your shame of being stupid. Questions
| change you from having a passive role to an active role in
| understanding. Maybe making the difference between
| "questions" and "commentary" would be a useful start?
| anotherman554 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that quote is an insult and not good faith
| advise.
| fantod wrote:
| Personally, I always read it as "advice" rather than as an
| insult. Unfortunately, can't seem to find much context for
| that quote so it's hard to determine what was intended.
| anotherman554 wrote:
| Apparently Mark Twain never said it.
|
| If the quote stated "If you are ignorant on a topic it's
| better not to discuss it" that would be advise. (Though
| less quippy).
|
| But I read the quote as essentially saying:
|
| "You are so incredibly stupid you should never, ever
| attempt to speak to another human being ever again, on
| any conceivable subject".
|
| But maybe some people don't take it that way.
| useragent86 wrote:
| > Apparently Mark Twain never said it.
|
| The advice has been written and uttered in various forms
| for millennia.
|
| > If the quote stated "If you are ignorant on a topic
| it's better not to discuss it" that would be advise.
| (Though less quippy).
|
| Your quote would be different advice; it doesn't have the
| same meaning nor implications.
|
| > But I read the quote as essentially saying: "You are so
| incredibly stupid you should never, ever attempt to speak
| to another human being ever again, on any conceivable
| subject".
|
| How many of your personal experiences are you reading
| into a context-free aphorism of the ages? Friendly
| suggestion: you may be making this same mistake when
| interpreting words in other situations.
| tombert wrote:
| Heh, I certainly didn't mean to insult anyone...I've always
| thought it was advice, though I realize that I could easily
| be wrong on that.
| pharke wrote:
| It reads more like a humorous and self-deprecating aphorism
| to me. He was a comedian after all.
| psyc wrote:
| This seems like a riff on Proverbs: "Even fools are thought
| wise if they keep silent, and discerning if they hold their
| tongues."
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| This is why people like Queen Elizabeth (specifically, not
| the rest of the royal family) are widely held in such high
| regard. She rarely makes any comments about _anything_ that
| could be discerned as political, and as a result she has
| stayed largely neutral. Even people like my dad, who is
| highly conservative and vocally dislikes all celbrities,
| still thinks she 's a saint. I'm not convinced--she keeps
| her mouth shut because she's done for if she makes a fuss
| about anything.
| singingboyo wrote:
| I generally agree, though I don't think the "saintliness"
| even matters. The queen as seen by the public is probably
| a persona, sure, but so long as the persona stays put,
| she's a symbol of stability, and that is the whole point
| of the monarchy.
|
| This even shows up in tech - Bill Gates isn't exactly
| known for widespread political opinions, and while we all
| know he was probably not a great person early on, he's
| now generally contributing to universally approved
| causes, and otherwise just there, so to some extent he's
| a symbol of the possibilities available through tech.
|
| Meanwhile, you've got Elon, who I think would be
| reasonably similar - if he could stay the hell off
| Twitter and stop overpromising so goddamn often. He could
| have ended up as a symbol for the commercial space
| revolution and the surge of EV popularity, but instead
| he's polarising and often hated.
|
| Generally, polarisation isn't great for authority
| figures. Even in politics this is sort of true -
| relatively centrist parties often have broader appeal
| than extreme views. (Though because politicians are our
| means of changing things, there's also an aversion to
| politicians with no opinions at all.)
| Clubber wrote:
| >he was probably not a great person early on, he's now
| generally contributing to universally approved causes,
| and otherwise just there, so to some extent he's a symbol
| of the possibilities available through tech.
|
| You probably haven't been following Gates lately. His
| reputation has tarnished in the last couple of years.
| trhaynes wrote:
| Do you have a source or examples?
| [deleted]
| psyc wrote:
| 1. Some kind of relationship with Epstein
|
| 2. Divorce
|
| 3. Melinda hinting that 1. had something to do with 2.
| phasersout wrote:
| goes together with the realization that a lot of discussions
| are really not that interesting to begin with.
| fleddr wrote:
| Most online discussions regarding divisive political topics
| are unwinnable (mind made up, bad faith discussion) and more
| importantly...inconsequential.
|
| The outcome doesn't matter, so it's time wasted.
| hathawsh wrote:
| Counter-advice: never suffer in silence. Don't keep quiet when
| there's help available.
| est31 wrote:
| Definitely, these two things are about two different kinds of
| statement though. One which directly affects you, where
| voicing will dramatically improve your situation. The second
| type of statement is where you discuss something as a hobby,
| which might not affect you or your close ones, and where you
| are under informed, and have little to gain personally, while
| running the full risk of offending someone.
| hathawsh wrote:
| Agreed, but it seems to take a lot of maturity to know the
| difference. Very few kids know the difference and some
| adults never learn.
| wanderingmind wrote:
| This is all cute, but the most important quality for getting
| jobs and moving up the ladder is self promotion, which requires
| opening your mouth.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Not really. Anyone can open their mouth. The challenge of
| "moving up the ladder" is in leveraging your resources (which
| might include your voice) to provide value to people who can
| help you. Most of these value exchanges do not happen on
| Twitter or even in public. Besides, how do you even quantify
| the series of events that leads someone to (for example) an
| Ivy League university, a job at McKinsey, a private equity
| firm, and eventually the top echelon of a company? There is a
| lot more to this than "opening your mouth" - in fact,
| "closing your mouth" is probably a better representation of
| the soft skills required for corporate success than "opening"
| it.
|
| I bet if you tallied the executives of F500 companies, you
| would find a vast majority of them do not have a blog, or
| even a Twitter. And of those that do, you'd find most of them
| using it as an explicit asset (e.g. a VC tweeting for
| "thought leadership" that increases dealflow, a CSO building
| an audience to sell to, etc.). You will not find many of them
| tweeting personal political opinions, certainly none outside
| of the orthodoxy.
|
| IMO, it's a miscalculation even to post thoughts aligned with
| the orthodoxy -- you don't know how the environment will
| change. Five years from now, maybe we'll be cancelling all
| the people doing the cancelling today.
| wanderingmind wrote:
| How do you think recruiters will find you if you dont self
| promote. How do you think you will compete with others in
| the same org when you dont talk about your achievements.
| Even best products and services needs great marketing to
| suceed. When you can talk about F500 executives, you should
| know that the auto company valued most in the world is run
| by a twitter troll thriving on attention and promotion.
|
| What you talk about is what I would prefer the world to be,
| but the reality is everything depends on marketing and
| especially marketing in social media.
| Ekaros wrote:
| As Finnish pro-verb goes: Silence is gold, speaking silver...
| deanCommie wrote:
| Cowardly and anti-intellectual take. How inequality and
| discrimination perpetuates for generation in society. The
| opposite of what I will raise my child to do.
|
| Don't speak without thinking - yes. Learn about the subject
| before you speak - yes. But if you know something about what is
| being discussed? If you think there is an opportunity to
| improve the world - for yourself - or for others - dear god
| please speak up.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| > If you think there is an opportunity to improve the world
|
| That's a big if :)
|
| Most of us usually forget to think about that before opening
| our mouths.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Choosing Twitter in particular as vehicle to say "most people
| aren't public online" has an odd logic to it.
|
| Twitter has a reputation as one of the most toxic of social
| networks. Stories of Tweets that exposed someone to tremendous
| harassment or embarrassment are rife. I make quite a variety of
| posts and comments online, occassionally publishing article in
| blog and so-forth. But I avoid Twitter in particular "like the
| plague", which it seems resemble.
|
| Yet it also seems to be true that Twitter is taken as the
| standard of "being public" by much of the press. And it seems
| like this standard comes from both journalists operating by the
| instant-answer, instant-gratification standard of Twitter and an
| overall, "you have to be willing to take the heat to be credible"
| attitude of those in high government, private industry,
| bureaucracies and so-forth. And this expresses a toxicity to not
| just Twitter but our entire society.
| civilized wrote:
| I would guess that the representation of public figures on
| Twitter is pretty high, maybe 70% or more (absolutely no data
| behind this, just my guess based on personal experience and a
| subjective definition of "public figure").
|
| That said, the vast majority of those people just use Twitter
| to announce their various public events, professional
| accomplishments, media releases, etc.
|
| IMO this is the way to go, unless you enjoy and get something
| out of the rough-and-tumble of direct Twitter engagement. I
| used to for a little while, but got over it. It definitely made
| me a more contentious person, for better and worse.
| hexo wrote:
| Yea, I don't tweet. I have a twitter but don't see any point to
| tweet anything. That also means I have 0 followers. Made like 3
| comments max.
|
| I don't really think about twitter as a social network. For me
| it's more like complete shitfest which is sometimes informative
| and/or funny.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| I've tried to curate my activity, followings and topics to have
| a nicer experience. Like Google News, the curation works well,
| but slowly degrades in a few weeks until I'm seeing thing I'm
| not interested in, but their algorithms say people tend to
| engage with (mostly sports, celebrities, politics).
|
| Twitter is specially annoying because it constantly probes you,
| be it with irrelevant posts to see if you like them, and asking
| you to confirm what topics you like or dislike. At least it
| includes a disclaimer when it's doing that.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| I got my twitter account MyfirstnameMylastname somewhere early in
| the site's existence, probably around 2009. But never really got
| the appeal of Twitter so I never used it for anything, I'd check
| it once every six months or so.
|
| I eventually learned I share a name with a tech journalist who is
| very active on Twitter, and occasionally I would get tagged
| instead instead of him. Every time, I would respond with the Navy
| Seal Copypasta, broken into eight twitter sized parts. Eventually
| they banned me for this.
|
| And thus ended my Twitter adventure for good.
| dogleash wrote:
| >Navy Seal Copypasta, broken into eight twitter sized parts.
| Eventually they banned me for this
|
| Fucking killjoys.
|
| If twitter is moderating for people who can't even figure out
| not to take that copypasta seriously[1], then they're showing
| their hand. There's no end state. No goal. There is no cultural
| equilibrium point that even perfect moderation could ever
| achieve.
|
| Therefore, visible attrition is the end state. Twitter has to
| satisfy the normies who want to be on the internet but don't
| understand the internet. The moderation is a con _because it
| can 't be anything else_. Lying "we're working on it, see?" to
| the monied/powerful normies who's continued use keep Twitter's
| stock price out of the dumpster.
|
| [1]: It's not that people should recognize copypasta, it's that
| people should recognize the words of an idiot. This meme became
| a meme because how well everyone recognized the earnest
| original author of that post couldn't be taken seriously.
| manmal wrote:
| IMO it's not unreasonable to ban users who are outliers in
| terms of complaints from other users.
| [deleted]
| polynomial wrote:
| everything is to be taken seriously (ie at face value) bc
| anything more than that would require agreement between those
| who disagree. (considered to be somewhat of a hard problem.)
| manmal wrote:
| Is there something else to learn from this story besides not
| insulting people?
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Yeah, actually a fundamental rule of comedy: always get the
| audience on your side. If they don't know you, aren't rooting
| for you, or think you're on the "wrong side", they will
| misinterpret your joke as a real insult. Comedians directly
| insult people all the time and get laughs, but only because
| the audience believes they're on the same side as the
| comedian.
| manmal wrote:
| I didn't expect such a constructive reply, thanks!
| buryat wrote:
| > Every time, I would respond with the Navy Seal Copypasta,
| broken into eight twitter sized parts. Eventually they banned
| me for this.
|
| yeah, people like you should be banned
| mdoms wrote:
| User who is receiving unsolicited messages from strangers
| should be the one banned because he decides to respond with a
| little joke?
| Graffur wrote:
| I think he spammed the same text every time. Definitely
| worthy of a ban for any community online or offline.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| Yeah I mean realistically, if I did challenge the ban and
| get them to unban me, I'd just immediately do the same
| thing again the next time I mistakenly got tagged lol
| gameman144 wrote:
| Is this sarcasm? If not, I'd love to hear the rationale
| behind this, as to me this seems _far_ less objectionable
| than lots of things which happen on mainstream Twitter.
| rNULLED wrote:
| Consider that so many people do not care to preserve the
| environments of online public spaces. While the pollution
| of digital environments with semiotic trash is less
| tangible and persistent than the beer cans, cigarette
| butts, and used needles on the streets of our cities, can
| you really defend its production? What kinds of cultures,
| mindsets, and personalities would this breed?
|
| Yes, there are far worse things. But let us hold ourselves
| to our own high standards and be proud.
| gameman144 wrote:
| One man's semiotic trash is another man's humorous
| treasure.
|
| Note that I'm not saying that I'm a _fan_ of low-quality
| posts like this, just that I feel that the lion 's share
| of Twitter is low-quality posts, so it seems odd to
| single out a copy-pasta meme as being unworthy while
| allowing... well, the rest of Twitter.
| Wojtkie wrote:
| Should have pulled a KenM and just replied with extremely
| geriatric answers and explanations to everything
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| On the topic of geriatric twittering, the one time I did
| not respond with the navy seal copypasta was when some
| older high school sports coach tagged me instead of his
| student athlete with the same name (whose twitter handle
| was completely different). I felt like that would have
| been too confusing an experience for him.
| newsbinator wrote:
| I suppose the charitable argument for banning would be: it
| pollutes Twitter without extending any conversations or
| bringing anybody joy per se. Basically it's spam.
|
| Certainly on HN that person would/should be banned right
| away (which is part of the reason HN is the best place on
| the internet).
|
| But Twitter is a different animal. So are Reddit and 4Chan.
| Sarcastic copypasta is par for the course.
| erichocean wrote:
| LOL, similar for me (2008, @FirstnameLastname) but I got banned
| early 2020 despite not tweeting.[0] I followed lots of CS
| people that I now have lost.
|
| At least you got banned for doing something to annoy The
| Twitter.
|
| [0] I appealed and was told I had evaded a previous ban!
| Obviously...no, no I didn't.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| I suppose I could have just been randomly banned as well lol.
| I just assumed that was the reason because I never used it
| for anything else. They never gave me a reason and I never
| bothered to challenge it.
| hereforphone wrote:
| There is another silent majority: those who have their opinions
| cancelled by social media outlets. This includes Twitter.
| Finnucane wrote:
| twtter has about 70 million US users, out of a population of 330
| million (does twitter have an age cutoff for users?). One would
| presume that twitter is like other services, where a small
| percentage of the user base is producing a larger percentage of
| the content.
|
| So 'most people don't tweet' isn't really that much of a stretch.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The shocking story is that 25% of Americans tweet. As a non-
| tweeter, I would have assumed that number was more like 1-5%.
| 25% sounds pretty representative to me.
|
| I'm annoyed by how this story seems to be jamming together
| unrelated things to paint a picture. Are people under the
| impression that twitter users are big political donors, or that
| twitter users don't mostly self-identify as independents? Are
| [capital-I]ndependents "somewhere in the middle," or is that
| just editorial trying to turn 42% of people into centrist
| charity-givers?
| Finnucane wrote:
| Most independents are not really 'in the middle', however
| much they may be disillusioned with existing party
| structures. They tend to lean one way or the other. I'm
| fairly liberal, but strongly anti-partisan (I've never
| belonged to a party). I think shrinking party affiliation is
| a good thing.
| erehweb wrote:
| StevePerkins wrote:
| While I did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016 or 2020, I AM a
| political independent who doesn't _always_ vote for the
| Democratic candidate, either. And this notion that roughly 50%
| of voters are quasi hate criminals is abhorrent.
|
| It's always, _" Oh, I suppose it's okay if you vote for the
| wrong party, as long as your candidate is no actual threat to
| my own ideology. But <most recent Presidential nominee> is just
| going too far."_ Except that partisans have been saying this
| same thing about "<latest Presidential nominee>" for at least
| 50 years now.
|
| This mindset is absurd, and only proves the author's premise
| about suggesting an isolated bubble.
| moltke wrote:
| Comments like this remind me of the political speech scene in
| "Around the World in 80 Days." America has been extremely
| partisan pretty much forever.
| johnNumen wrote:
| distrill wrote:
| coolso wrote:
| > But a lot of them voted for a really terrible President
|
| In fairness, the media did a really good job making the low gas
| prices, low inflation, low taxes, record low illegal border
| crossings, well-handled foreign policy, and record breaking
| speedy vaccine development of the last administration somehow
| seem like the most evil thing ever, so a misled public can't
| really be blamed too much for who they voted into office now.
|
| I think more than anything they were just tired of hearing
| about it so they voted for the current guy for a little media
| break.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| This was never new. Only about 1 in 5 Americans even use Twitter
| [1].
|
| 1. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/02/10-facts-
| ab...
| aarondf wrote:
| [Deleted]
| throwmeariver1 wrote:
| I don't want to take away from your post but you are copy and
| pasting it all over the place in every thread that mentions
| twitter or social media... That's against the rules of the
| site.
| aarondf wrote:
| Ah good call, I didn't know that.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Did you really need someone to tell you it would be
| annoying? Now I know a twitter account I'm definitely going
| to look askance at.
| jscheel wrote:
| I know this isn't the main takeaway from the article, but I'm
| highly suspect of the "independence" of voters claiming to be
| independent. This is merely anecdote, but many people I know who
| claim to be independent are really just "aspirationally-
| independent". The like to think of themselves as open-minded and
| independent, but when they vote, they vote one way, and one way
| only. Looking into it a bit, this is not uncommon:
| https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/few-americans-who-ident...
| and https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-
| cage/wp/2014/01/0....
| calumetregion wrote:
| Highly online life leads to instability. It's like living your
| life in a packed subway car. Stress response. This is why cities
| are less healthy for you as well.
| dlp211 wrote:
| > This is why cities are less healthy for you as well.
|
| This is news to me.
| calumetregion wrote:
| http://schizophrenia.com/prevention/country.html
| vecinu wrote:
| > This is why cities are less healthy for you as well.
|
| Is there a citation for this? First time I've heard this said.
|
| If that were true wouldn't _all_ the ultra wealthy avoid living
| in cities at all?
| calumetregion wrote:
| I definitely chose my phrasing by design: "less healthy"
|
| I have no doubt there are vigorous academic arguments
| happening whether there are ways to mitigate the stress of
| population density and be healthier than would be expected.
| I'm open to that concept and ideas.
|
| Yet the research on urban living and mental health is
| overwhelming - your chances of schizophrenia, mood disorders
| and anxiety skyrocket in cities. I was born in a large metro
| and lived on both coasts in huge urban areas, and I wish this
| weren't true because I like the energy of a city.
|
| But you get a couple of whiskeys in me at dinner and I'll
| flat out say there's almost zero way to make a city healthy.
| People on top of each other, tremendous noise, light
| pollution and bad air quality leads to poor health for many
| people, as well as conflict.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| driving is much more stressful to me than subway-riding
| calumetregion wrote:
| Driving in a city, absolutely.
|
| (Although I rarely had a stress-free morning on the DC
| Metro)
|
| Driving in rural areas or across the western US - piece
| of cake and even relaxing.
| slingnow wrote:
| In your opinion do _all_ of the ultra wealthy also avoid
| _all_ behaviors that might be considered unhealthy? Seems
| like a weird conclusion to make.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| This isn't a new silent majority, is it? Has there ever been a
| majority of people who tweet?
|
| Twitter is a social media platform with it's own character and
| culture, and it is a tool for being informed on niche topics in
| realtime, similar to subreddits. It's not for everyone.
| izzygonzalez wrote:
| In analyzing my personal motivations and looking at "common
| sense" knowledge and psych research on the topic, I've come to
| the conclusion that we gain a lot of motivational energy from
| others. We live in worlds of stories and narratives, and those
| narratives are strengthened when mirrored and shared by others.
| If someone notices or sees my work or praises me for my work, it
| is a strong signal to my brain that it's on the right track.
|
| It was embarrassing for me to admit this, but I've found it to be
| a running thread throughout my educational and work career. I
| suspect it dominates my brain more because of early childhood
| experiences more, but I'm unsure because it seems taboo to admit
| to craving acceptance or acknowledgement.
|
| Once I began admitting it to myself, it became a big part of what
| drives my growth. I now know the impact that accountability has
| on my success. I'd rather feel slightly embarrassed for wanting
| people to see my toy projects than limit my personal trajectory
| out of fear. I am mindful of depending on others for validation,
| and I try to strike a healthy balance between wanting to impress
| others and wanting to impress myself.
|
| Apropos to the topic at hand, I'm using Twitter and Observable to
| "learn in public". I don't expect or intend to become an
| influencer. I just know that I can leverage the dopamine hits of
| upvotes and likes and retweets for my personal growth. I'm a
| social animal that needs to have his efforts directed through
| shared structures of meaning. So far, I've leveraged that in
| multiple areas to great effect.
| tlarkworthy wrote:
| BTW, your observable profile link is broken
| izzygonzalez wrote:
| Woops! Fixed. Thanks for taking the time to let me know :)
| karaterobot wrote:
| I'm kind of the same way, but I don't have a Twitter account,
| and haven't really ever had one. I have a private chat server
| with other people who make things and share them with each
| other. It's tacitly understood that we support each other's
| work and provide constructive feedback. Not to mention emojis.
| It's nice, gives me the brain chemicals I need, and I don't
| need to get exposed to Twitter. So, if you are hesitant about
| Twitter for any other reason, I'm here to say that you can
| learn in public without it.
| izzygonzalez wrote:
| That's a great lower-stakes way to approach it. I turned to
| Twitter because of the threading and big computer science
| community.
|
| I think the vital part is the aspect of accountability. Even
| just committing to updating a friend on progress and asking
| them to keep you to your word helps. I've found it hard to
| get people to do that work because it sometimes requires
| shifting from "friend" to "boss" mode. I don't really think
| it's fair to put my loved ones in that position lol
| jhoechtl wrote:
| I am one of those. For a simple reason: It had no effect.
|
| As a sidenote back in the days I worked for a university and we
| did research in public policy making. How social media would make
| a difference as it empowers the underprivileged. In my opinion
| almost none of that came true. Those which make an effect are the
| ones in power. The rest is cats video and advertisement disguised
| as influencers.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| The most active social media users are usually people lacking in
| real life.
|
| Think about it, if you have a great job, a great partner and a
| great life, are you on Twitter arguing 20 to 30 hours a week.
|
| The type of person to argue with strangers all day has none of
| the above.
|
| It's also a matter of recognizing how insignificant we all are.
| No one cares what I think.
|
| Hopefully no one ever will. I do want to create games and music
| for people to enjoy, but if I then start mouthing off about how
| taxes are evil I hope I'm ignored.
| pohl wrote:
| The lurkers have been the majority in every kind of online
| forum, from usenet to slashdot to HN comment threads to reddit
| to twitter.
|
| Are you and I lacking in real life for engaging with each other
| here?
| asiachick wrote:
| this is not my experience at all. All the people who were
| popular in high school and who have a very active social life
| are also the most prolific twitter users.
|
| The aren't generally arguing though.
| bradenb wrote:
| This feels oddly specific. I'm not sure why you can't engage on
| Twitter and still not be "lacking in real life." Who even gets
| to define "real life?" And while I'm sure some people spend
| 20-30 hours per week on Twitter I'm guessing it's such a small
| percentage of the world that it might as well be statistically
| insignificant.
| [deleted]
| borroka wrote:
| At the very least is a workable hypothesis. To be active on
| Twitter one needs the right personality, which means being
| very upset when other people reply/engage or being
| indifferent and playing one of the games adults are playing.
| In the first case, the person is not able to avoid engaging.
| In the second case, they engage because they have the usual
| "motives".
|
| Twitter is a very dangerous social media. I consider myself a
| wordly and experienced person, but I admit I tend to over-
| value what is shared on Twitter (momentarily, because I look
| back occasionally at bookmarks and I have very little or no
| memories of those tweets or I cannot understand why I
| bookmarked them). I over-value (and not properly value)
| because I have no clue who is the person who's tweeting (case
| 1, why should I listen to them? Who are they? Would the same
| observation "hold" is a face to face conversation?) or I know
| them/they are public figures (case 2), and they are playing a
| game of popularity or relevance in which I am, as part of the
| audience, the sucker.
|
| Just to make an example, the other day someone wrote that
| "the US should ramp up oil production now". I read it and I
| told myself "Ok". A reply-guy replied "what are you talking
| about, this is not like software, when you can "easily" scale
| up the number of servers". And I thought, man, I was really
| not thinking, my first reaction when reading a twitter should
| be "this is bs, who is this person, where is the competence
| coming from, what it the game they are playing now", but it
| was not my first reaction, which was instead of passive
| acceptance. Dangerous game.
| veganhouseDJ wrote:
| Not to mention, you can't even express this thought on
| twitter. Way too many characters.
|
| I think the character limit creates a blunt form of
| communication that leads to this toxic environment. It is
| practically designed to create misunderstandings and
| dismissive short responses to those misunderstandings.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| > I'm guessing it's such a small percentage of the world that
| it might as well be statistically insignificant.
|
| Exactly! The vast majority of content on social media is
| produced by a vanishingly small slice of the world's
| population. The views expressed should not be understood as
| representative.
| filoleg wrote:
| > _This feels oddly specific. I 'm not sure why you can't
| engage on Twitter and still not be "lacking in real life."_
|
| It all depends on your definition of "engaging on Twitter".
| People reading their compiled follow lists and occasionally
| posting a thing or two are one thing, and that's definitely
| doable without "lacking in real life". But I struggle to
| imagine how one can spend 20-30 hours a week engaging in wild
| debates on twitter and not "lack in real life".
|
| I've noticed similar tendencies in myself recently, but with
| Discord instead of Twitter. After doing some prolonged soul-
| searching, I found that to be one of the main reasons.
| paxys wrote:
| There are two groups - people you describe (who have no life
| and spend 8 hours a day on Twitter) and people who have made a
| career out of being a social media personality. Most online
| spaces today are simply a series of weird interactions between
| these two groups with the "normal" user stuck in the middle.
| [deleted]
| irrational wrote:
| What about people who don't use Twitter, at all? Or does "tweet"
| encompass both viewing Twitter and posting on Twitter?
|
| Anyway, so the bottom line, is the squeaky wheel gets the grease?
| brailsafe wrote:
| Like others have mentioned, even if you just want to use twitter
| to follow other engineers or designers etc.. Twitter will
| invariably find a way to show you their annoying political takes,
| and other from people they liked or are even vaguely connected. I
| was on Twitter for a little while about 10 years ago now for the
| same reason, but then ditched it in 2015/16 when I started seeing
| this happen more. Everyone wanted social points for shitting on
| whoever was deemed to be on the wrong side of history or whatever
| it was then. I used the t ruby cli for twitter and backed up my
| lists of follows and followers, then unfollowed everyone without
| deactivating my account. Interestingly, even while following
| nobody, I still got the same shit in my feed. I eventually did an
| official twitter backup (which is admittedly quite a good offline
| webapp), and deleted the account, because fuck that place. My
| approach was the digital version of tossing all your _potentially
| useful_ possessions in a bag and putting it in a storage locker;
| if you don 't think to go and get it for a year, toss it in the
| garbage.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| So, this article states that 42% of Americans identify as
| politically independent. This beats the next largest political
| identity (Democrats, 29%) by 13%. Yet, the political system has
| been rigged - obviously so, for anyone who cares to look - so
| that an independent party fails to get the 5% necessary to get
| onto the ballot and future funding for the next election cycle
| for presidential running.
|
| How is it that there is nothing that can be done to alleviate
| this type of obvious voter suppression and electoral corruption
| on a national scale?
|
| I understand this is tertiary to the title, but makes up a large
| part of the article, so I thought I'd bring it up.
| MrYellowP wrote:
| Nothing can be done, because the system is owned by the
| corrupt, which means that the system is corrupt.
|
| The _only_ solution against this problem is violence. Despite
| what a lot of completely delusional and clueless morons
| believe, _voting_ solves nothing as long as all parties are
| basically run by rich people and or paid career politicians.
|
| And I'm not even going to dive into the details. They're not
| necessary. You have not just the politicians against you, you
| also have the media against you, which means that you have most
| people against you.
|
| Unless you manage to get people to realize what's going on,
| things will only change when those in charge want things to
| change.
|
| Then it'll happen on _their_ terms, they will provide solutions
| to problems _they_ created and _we all are going to pay for
| it_.
| vlunkr wrote:
| I don't know what your political leanings are, but do you
| realize this is the position of the people who stormed the
| capitol building?
| Ekaros wrote:
| Ever wondered how that was even possible? Like how bad must
| the security be for bunch of unarmed random civilians to
| enter and have access to rather important location? Almost
| seems like manufactured. Or lot of people should be fired
| for incompetence...
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| It happened because much of the establishment, especially
| in policing, were sympathetic to the goals of the 1/6
| attackers. Everyone know about "Stop The Steal" in
| December when it was being mentioned frequently in places
| like Facebook. When we compare how BLM and Native
| pipeline protests are dealt with by the police, it's
| clear that they were essentially acting as accomplices.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Most of the independents are not voting most of the time. The
| ones that do swing between parties because we have clearly
| demonstrated that there is no organized independent party. Like
| workers without a union.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Ranked choice voting has been implemented for presidential
| elections in 2 states. Which isn't much, but it's a start, and
| it seems like there's popular demand for it. That would help to
| fight the annoying "A vote for [third-party] is a vote for
| [party-i-dont-like]" argument.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Did you follow the link to the actual poll?
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/388781/political-party-preferen...
|
| 42% may identify as "independent," but only 9% are independent
| without leaning Republican or Democrat. Not registering
| officially with the party, but still always voting for them, is
| quite a bit different from actually not having a preference or
| wanting a third party.
| jollybean wrote:
| It's much more complicated than that those ostensible
| 'affiliations' indicate. Many Trump voters do not identify as
| 'Republicans'. Don't assume elections are 'rigged' because of
| some uneasy data. There are obviously specific issues with
| voting but even then it's more nuanced.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| First past the post, plus two dominant parties, has such
| severe negative effects that "rigged" is a reasonable way to
| talk about it.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| I just think of Perot, after which the voting rules, or
| rather the percentages for for entry were changed. Also the
| association running the debates went from the League of Women
| Voters to the Commission on Presidential Debates:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_deb.
| ...
|
| That's when it changed from 2% to 5%, and on and on. It was
| the Perot incidents that make me lean towards a "rigged"
| system, more than anything, really.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| There are very few true independents. They may label themselves
| such, but they don't vote that way.
|
| https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/few-americans-who-ident...
|
| They just want to avoid the label of being one or the other.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| What is a "true independent"?
|
| Are they allowed to have any opinions about political
| parties?
|
| At a federal level, based on how strongly everyone toes the
| line, voting is basically just picking a party. So even if
| 100% of the way you choose is based on the individual
| candidate's actions, and your vote varies widely in more
| local elections, at a federal level the end result is
| probably the same party over and over for many years.
| emerged wrote:
| So glad my toxic/addictive social network experiences were years
| ago on old style forums. It's been wild watching the rest of the
| world go through the same thing but completely public not on some
| niche forum nobody reads.
|
| If these networks are here to stay we very clearly need to at
| least train people from a young age how to mentally handle social
| networks.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| This article or ones like it are, IMHO, long overdue. There is a
| bias online for people who are always online. It sounds obvious
| but "tech" companies and people online ignore or have a blind
| spot for people who remain offline. "Tech" companies and avid
| internet users generally see the world through their computers.
| If something is not represented online, then it is unlikely to
| register with them as being relevant. For example, as alluded to
| this by this Axios article, the opinions of people who do not
| express their opinions online.
|
| It is rare to find someone online advising readers to ditch their
| pocket computers and disconnect their laptops. It would be like a
| newspaper pre-internet advising readers to stop buying
| newspapers. Therefore, everything read online must be weighed
| against this self-serving bias. Web traffic is the lifeblood of
| Google, Facebook and their ilk. If people go offline, the losses
| would be substantial. The civilised world can survive offline, as
| it did when many of us were born, and for centuries before, but
| Big Tech and their wannabes cannot. This is because, generally,
| they are only internediaries (middlemen). They sit on a computer
| network, observe and manipulate traffic of the people who use it.
| These companies want people online 24/7. As the article states
| only a minority of people have complied. Contrary to the title,
| this offline majority is neither new nor silent.
| mabub24 wrote:
| It's an evolution on the Chattering Classes:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chattering_classes
| amluto wrote:
| I have a different problem with Twitter: the mechanics of using
| it keep getting worse. Once upon a time you could read Twitter
| without logging in. This meant that one could communicate via
| Twitter to anyone without much friction. Now Twitter is barely
| functional logged out, and even making an account just to read
| Twitter is a hassle: you need to give an email address and then
| get persistent nagged. Twitter wants verification and phone
| number, it sends spam (I mean helpful links to content), and it
| generally tries to drive engagement in a way that drives away
| users.
|
| In short, people who want to have readers want a platform that
| makes reading easy. Twitter is no longer that platform.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Nitter.net is a life saver for this.
| dqpb wrote:
| I assumed most tweets aren't by real people anymore.
| TZubiri wrote:
| Haha, that's me
| egberts1 wrote:
| that would be me. I go elsewhere where the grass is greener.
| ryder9 wrote:
| dogleash wrote:
| I wish someone would go around interviewing reporters like this
| writer and ask "How long did it take for you to realize that
| Twitter is not real life? Why do you think you were mislead for
| so long? How do you plan to avoid similar errors in judgement in
| the future?"
|
| Except the social status journos have make this like of inquiry
| uncouth. It is someone both one of the most pressing issues of
| our media landscape, yet seen as a simple-minded and undignified
| perspective that sophisticated media won't touch.
| RobRivera wrote:
| whats twitter?
| shireboy wrote:
| I'm in that group. I've consciously cut out Facebook and Twitter
| in part because of the toxic echo chambers they've become. HN is
| about the only place I'll wade in sometimes because the level of
| discourse seems higher.
|
| A little rabbit trail though: Looking at the graph in the
| article, I'm wondering if US isn't ripe for a party system
| change. It's not _always_ been Republican vs Democrat in our
| history. Both sides are incentivized away from supporting a 3rd
| party out of fear it will help the "other side" and primary
| systems etc. have entrenched the current 2 party system. But with
| such great and growing discontent, I wonder if a switch like from
| Whigs or the handful of other parties won't eventually happen.
| javajosh wrote:
| I suspect that there are a LOT of disaffected Republicans who
| are conservative but not Trumpian authoritarians. In the same
| way, there are a LOT of disaffected Democrats who are liberals
| but not woke/cancel culture social justice warriors. So, yeah,
| I agree - there's room for a new party.
| jahnu wrote:
| As a European, comments of this nature confuse me a little.
| This comments suggests an equivalency. But from this side of
| the pond I haven't seen the Democrats you describe actually
| in power and implementing policy. Can't say that about the
| other side. So why would any Democrats who are liberal but
| not "woke" be frustrated since those elements of their party
| wield little if any influence.
| erichocean wrote:
| As an American, I'll try to explain how our two parties
| (and their voters) work in practice.
|
| The Left (voters) have two main platforms: economic and
| cultural.
|
| The Right (voters) have two main platforms: economic and
| cultural.
|
| The Left votes for the Democratic Party. The Right votes
| for the Republican Party. Independents mostly vote one way
| or another, and a small percentage vote for whoever seems
| most moderate that particular election.
|
| When governing, the Democratic Party works with the
| Republican Party to implement:
|
| 1. The cultural platform of the Left.
|
| 2. The economic platform of the Right.
|
| The cultural platform of the Right and the economic
| platform of the Left are not implemented.
|
| The Left calls the Democratic-Republican Establishment the
| "corporate" party and believes the country has moved
| strongly to the Right over the last 40 years. (They are
| focusing on the fact that the economic platform of the
| Right is being implemented.)
|
| The Right calls the Democratic-Republican Establishment the
| "uniparty" and believes the country has moved strongly to
| the Left over the last 40 years. (They are focusing on the
| fact that the cultural platform of the Left is being
| implemented.)
|
| This is a stable political system because neither a Left
| voter nor a Right voter wants to vote for the other party,
| because then they wouldn't even be getting _half_ of what
| they want! The Democratic-Republican Establishment doesn 't
| care who people vote for, because it wins either way. The
| important thing is for voters to _believe_ their vote
| matters--even though it actually doesn 't.
|
| The key result is that neither the Left's economic platform
| nor the Right's cultural platform are ever implemented. (A
| few legacy cultural issues on the Right, e.g. 2nd Amendment
| gun rights, still exist. Same with pre-WW2 economic issues
| on the Left.)
|
| Hope this helps!
| fleddr wrote:
| Razor sharp analysis, well done.
|
| From my European perspective, I've always considered the
| Democrats to be a right wing party. Things implemented in
| other advanced economies decades ago, the very basics of
| progressive policy, are just nowhere to be seen: a
| livable minimum wage, universal healthcare, affordable
| schooling, employment protection, the like.
|
| In other countries, this isn't even called progressive,
| just "basics". Not even right wing parties try to abolish
| or undo this foundation.
|
| We do see that media is far more left than the actual
| population, which is typically center to center-right.
| The way I see it, the population of almost any developed
| country is center-right. It makes sense when you think
| about it. Due to the population pyramid, most people are
| middle-aged or older. They're already planning for the
| exit so they want to protect whatever they got. No funny
| stuff.
|
| The young want to change everything but that's easy when
| you have no responsibilities or stake in the game. As
| soon as they acquire the basics of life, they'll join the
| rest, and try to protect it.
|
| That is the gigantic failure of the left, the inability
| to connect with the vast majority of the population. Here
| in Europe, the left has abandoned the (white) working
| class somewhere in the late nineties, and they've been
| failing ever since.
| chaircher wrote:
| This is really helpful thanks, you've articulated it so
| well it seems like it was obvious the whole time
| jahnu wrote:
| Thanks for taking the time to reply. Interesting points.
| I'm still confused about what cultural policies the
| "woke" left implemented that would encourage other dems
| to vote for a third middle way part should one exist. I
| can see the other side easily.
| demthrow6429 wrote:
| Perhaps evidenced by my use of a throwaway, let me give a
| personal example
|
| For most of my life, I identified and voted largely
| democrat. Over the last 5-10 years I've found myself far
| more independent aligned due in part to the issues
| mentioned of the parent poster. Some of the points of
| conflict include affirmative action. I am fully
| supportive of helping underprivileged groups, dedicated
| funding and corrective policy changes to remove things
| keeping them down, but do not think explicit affirmative
| action is the right way to go about that, and in fact
| feel it weakens ones position and seems clearly
| hypocritical from one ostensibly seeking equality.
|
| I also take a broad issue with the sheer amount of effort
| the democrats have focused on issues of identity as
| opposed to class. Not that one should ignore the former,
| but I find the latter to be a far more central,
| immediate, and critical issue that needs addressing, and
| that the way the democrats are implementing their
| approach to the former, like their position on
| affirmative action, is instead driving a wedge and
| fighting against their best intentions.
| erichocean wrote:
| > _I 'm still confused about what cultural policies the
| "woke" left implemented that would encourage other dems
| to vote for a third middle way part should one exist._
|
| I don't think there are any, but a lot of "independents"
| are fundamentally moderate and Democrats typically have a
| lower party-id than Republicans, so they need more
| independents to break their way to win a national
| election, hence "distancing" from far-Left/woke positions
| at election time.
|
| Biden, for instance, made "equity" his priority literally
| Day 1 in office, and that's a "woke" position. It has
| only hurt him with voters on the Right, who don't like
| the Left's cultural platform anyway and can be ignored.
|
| Both the Right and Left frequently talks about 3rd
| parties because literally half of what they want is never
| implemented. The Left is far more active in politics, so
| they tend to actually do something about it (DSA, Green
| Party, etc.). Republicans mostly just occasionally vote
| Libertarian, but there's also the occasional Tea Party if
| the Left gets anything that even _looks_ like a win on
| economics.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It has only hurt him with voters on the Right
|
| Unless you are referring to the Democratic neoliberal
| center-right, which has been and remains Biden's main
| base of support (and I don't think you are), Biden didn't
| have any support on the Right to start with.
|
| > Both the Right and Left frequently talks about 3rd
| parties because literally half of what they want is never
| implemented. The Left is far more active in politics, so
| they tend to actually do something about it (DSA, Green
| Party, etc.).
|
| That's why the strongest minor party in the US is...the
| right-libertarian (with candidates frequently ex- and/or
| future-Republican candidates) Libertarian Party. The DSA
| isn't a third party, and the Green Party is smaller (in
| both membership and, at 0, elected state-level or higher
| representation, than the Libertarian Party (also the
| Independence Party of New York, and the Independent Party
| of Oregon, and on at least one and possibly both than the
| Vermont Progressive Party; it is also recognized in fewer
| states than the Libertarian Party.
|
| The Right is more active in politics in general in the
| US, more active in major party politics in the US, and
| more active _outside_ of major party politics in the US.
| willcipriano wrote:
| The most recent example I think is when prompted to
| nominate a supreme court justice, the Democratic
| president openly said that he would do so with a
| particular skin tone and gender in mind. That is to say
| even if he found a better candidate, if they didn't have
| the type of skin or genitals he preferred, he would not
| nominate them on that basis.
|
| What was the one before that? Free crack pipes for racial
| equity, I think.
| [deleted]
| kerblang wrote:
| Personally I was encouraged by
|
| > In Gallup's 2021 polling, 29% of Americans identified as
| Democrats ... 27% as Republicans ... and 42% as independents.
|
| Politics is a dirty but necessary business, and for many of us
| it's far better to keep parties at arm's length. Of course you
| can still donate to your favorite candidates regardless. In
| open-primary states like texas it isn't even necessary to join
| up, should you feel a need to contribute to certain lesser
| evils.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Politics is a dirty but necessary business, and for many of
| us it's far better to keep parties at arm's length.
|
| Studies of voting behavior pretty consistently show that
| self-identified independents are, on average, either equally
| or very nearly equally reliably partisan in voting as those
| who identify with one major party or the other.
| overkill28 wrote:
| The problem is that "first past the post" voting systems
| inevitably lead to two party dominance.
|
| Change the voting system across a super majority of elections
| and we will likely get additional parties. But until then third
| party votes are wasted, and the Republican and Democratic
| parties are against changing the system
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