"I dunno" by Brad Frost http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/i-dunno/
I think one phenomenon of social media is that many blog posts are written for a particular purpose: either marketing (pro-something) or a hatchet job (anti-something). When people read your writing, they might try to lump it into one of these categories, and then use it as a totem to start arguing for one position or the other.
I've experienced this many times: the feeling of being made a caricature for the benefit of someone else's argument.
The marketing posts exists because, well, that's the business model of social media. The hatchet job posts exist because controversy is a reliable way to get eyeballs, which is the business model of most of the web. Corral both of these groups into an angry thread where they take a swing at each other, and you've also got a recipe for keeping eyeballs on the social media site itself.
In short, it feels like conflict is endemic to social media.
The irony here is that I'm on Mastodon (a social media platform) largely because I dislike social media. Mastodon is the only one I use.
I like to believe we're building something better here, but something I look around at the way people treat each other and I'm not so sure.
All I can do is try to boost/write the kind of stuff I would like to see more of on social media. Be the change you wanna see, yada yada. Fin.
@nolan so far most of the drama on Mastodon has been because people care about making a better platform. That's not ever happening on Twitter.
@rigelk I think it's self-defeating though. You can't make peace by waging war. The medium is the message. I realized this on Twitter when I saw the futility of promoting non-Twitter options by using Twitter itself.
@rigelk Well, maybe I'm wrong about that. I found out about Mastodon because of Twitter, after all. But I strongly feel that if you care about compassion and tolerance, you should practice it in the way you treat others.
@nolan I can only agree with that. But that only works when you want to build something *together*. If two groups don't want to share the same space whatever the reason, it's not gonna happen. Mastodon at least provides way to split the space for saner discourse to happen. Twitter feels more like a Battle royale where.
@rigelk I totally agree. Twitter feels like one big stadium where everybody dukes it out. The fediverse allows people to splinter off and form their own sub-communities. I think the value of this model is underrated.
@ocdtrekkie @nolan @rigelk (100% not replying to start a fight, honest) I was one of the people saying that about tech and CWs. tbh, it's probably a mix of my fumbling the user controls around filtering things out, plus old dramas (many of which are rooted in twitter migration) going back to april 2017 or before.
I can make a case for it (and did), the problem with forcing that case is that it's very likely...not helping anybody to do that, tbh. So I'm not, and have no plans to, either.
@nolan @rigelk there needs to be better education about the tools available. i wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of people have never tried to use regex, for example. same might go for hiding boosts from <user>, because of it being relatively new.
there probably needs to be more refined user control, but that gets into hacking ActivityPub, which is already happening, but it's a process.
@sullybiker Yeah one thing I realized about FOMO on Twitter is that it was often "fear of missing out on today's hot drama."
I like the vibe of the fediverse at the moment, hence why I'm comfortable using my own face. I don't know if it will stay that way, but for now it's good.
@sullybiker I like to imagine that people don't really have a "need" to yell at one another, and that it's only a byproduct of the business model of commercial social media. But maybe you're right, and as Jon Ronson said, "A day without a shaming began to feel like a day picking fingernails." https://youtu.be/wAIP6fI0NAI
For proof look at all the Cambridge Analytica stuff. This has been the business model of Social Media for the last decade; when it backfired on them they acted as if it was some terrible act of explotation by an outside agency, despite most of the valley being up to their neck in it.
@sullybiker @nolan While FB and TW feels like a city. Mastodon is more like a village where everyone knows everyone. Or should I say a community of villages.... so I don't think we can compare social media with social media in that respect. Mastodon is also non-commercial.
The yelling/arguing is unavoidable and has part in the evolution of every organization or group. Tuckman's stage theory. This is something I've seen in pretty much every org I been a member of (incl. work).
@sullybiker It's exhausting being plugged into something that tries to engage all your most extreme senses all at once. Like going into a candy shop and eating something super sweet, super sour, and super bitter every morning.
@nolan I have a feeling your mild frustration can be explained by substituting "social media" with "people"…
@nolan unfortunately people are people. There's also the problem that once a social network get big enough it stops being a party with your friends and a few new people and turns into a stadium filled with football (soccer) hooligans.
@nolan This is why I run my own; I might not be as active a moderator for it as I should be, but what I want is a community of people who are considerate of others. I think I've been succeeding decently well.
@nolan As Fred would say, "Won't you be my neighbor?"
@nolan @pixelpaperyarn admittedly, it doesn't play well with most crowds
I think that's true, and I think that emotions like anger and outrage, when dialed up, simply increase in intensity. But subtler emotions like sincerity and humility, when dialed up, register as fake. It seems like the speaker is over-compensating and so we perceive it as covering up for a lack of real sincerity.
To really communicate deep emotion in writing is a skill that takes a lifetime to master and there's a bunch of fancy prizes we give to people who can do it. It doesn't come naturally to us like facial expressions do. It's not realistic to expect every single person expressing themselves on social media to meet that bar. That will always be an inherent limitation of text based media, and why real-life interactions will always be necessary.
@extropic These are really interesting points. I'll have to go read that post! :)
@extropic Nice find! I couldn't find it myself. :P
(i also feel like at least my particular social circle has gotten pretty good at communicating sincerity and humility, that we've found an effective idiom for it, so i'm optimistic)
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@extropic @nolan Your comment about facial expressions coming naturally, and that being a very necessary tool for effectively communicating emotion, really hit home for me.
It's the root of why, in 2016, I decided never to talk politics with anyone unless anymore I was literally communicating face to face.
@nolan Much more possible here, thankfully.
@nolan I know of one board where by and large this stuff does, but it's super-short on anything political. The mods, er... tolerate it in small doses, but it's understood that making it the main focus of the space is bad form.
It's the longest-running relationship I've had with any online space, which fuels both optimism and pessimism at about the same rate.
You rang? @sullybiker @nolan
I've been banging on about #JoeEdelman's talks about #TimeWellSpent, and #AralBalkan's awesome talk about shitting unicorns (https://2017.ind.ie/excuse-me/). The theory that corporate platforms are dumb maximizers because *corporations* are dumb maximizers ("growth is good!") makes sense to me. Just another example of #ConwaysLaw. To change this, we need to change our organizational culture. Which is why I keep pimping #Loomio and #Enspiral as models
Stuff that doesn't play well to a social media crowd:
- Fred Rogers-like compassion and sincerity
- nuance and subtlety
- admitting you're wrong
- humility
- having a debate where the goal is to make progress rather than win
- communicating that an idea may be more complex than just black-and-white
- longform writing that isn't broken up into short quips