Note: This essay is a work in progress, a way to think through some ideas I have about social interaction, reality testing, worldviews and what not. Introduction "Von Neumann would carry on a conversation with my 3-year-old son, and the two of them would talk as equals, and I sometimes wondered if he used the … Continue reading Principles of Interaction
Tag: social media
The Value of Social Media
"Avoid politics and the multitude of irrelevant struggles designed to channel your energies into someone else’s agenda." The key tension of social media is that there are a lot of bad ideas, but there are a few really good ones mixed in with them. The good ideas have the potential to give you insight, to … Continue reading The Value of Social Media
Everywhere Connected, Yet Unable To Connect
"Just as we need certain things to suck in order for others to register as cool (Beavis and Butthead, 1994, MTV), so too must we experience resistance or difficulty in order to understand the nature and depth of our own desires......Frictionless exchange almost always involves an unseen toll. One of the most insidious features of … Continue reading Everywhere Connected, Yet Unable To Connect
Teens Are Not Soothsayers
"Teens are strange and magical. To us they seem a little like Precogs from Minority Report—soothsayers of a mysterious, social-media-powered hyperdrive future, because this is the realm they’re already living in. Who saw Facebook coming? Teens. Same with Twitter, Vine, and now Snapchat. This puts them in a curious position. It makes them one of … Continue reading Teens Are Not Soothsayers
Mass Movements & Affinity Groups
"You don’t have to have a deep and intimate knowledge of the left or any of its manifestations to be part of its future. If you disagree with my values, if you think the left should change from what it has been, the path is simple: do the work. Convince people. Convince me. Organize. Get … Continue reading Mass Movements & Affinity Groups
Troll Taxonomies
"The internet doesn’t turn people into assholes so much as it acts as a massive megaphone for existing ones, according to work by researchers at Aarhus University.-Tom McCay, "Online Trolls Actually Just Assholes All the Time, Study Finds." Gizmodo. August 27, 2021. I think there is a troll gravity online, where the megaphones of a … Continue reading Troll Taxonomies
Full Disclosure
https://www.twitter.com/batshaped/status/1411444781864022018 Nothing to add beyond I think this is great.
The Social Obscene
"In certain young people today...I notice what I find increasingly troubling: a cold-blooded grasping, a hunger to take and take and take, but never give; a massive sense of entitlement; an inability to show gratitude; an ease with dishonesty and pretension and selfishness that is couched in the language of self-care; an expectation always to … Continue reading The Social Obscene
Silence & Wanting to Be Heard
"Is it necessary that every single person on this planet expresses every single opinion that they have on every single thing that occurs all at the same time?” he asks. “Can anyone, any single one, can anyone shut the fuck up about anything, any single thing? Can any single person shut the fuck up about … Continue reading Silence & Wanting to Be Heard
The Misinformation Virus
"Online media has given voice to previously marginalised groups, including peddlers of untruth, and has supercharged the tools of deception at their disposal. The transmission of falsehoods now spans a viral cycle in which AI, professional trolls and our own content-sharing activities help to proliferate and amplify misleading claims. These new developments have come on … Continue reading The Misinformation Virus
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