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I’m also tired of the “global” culture. Reddit is a terrible offender of this. The same opinions always prevail, and dissenting ideas are pushed out of sight. T

by vlunkr 8y ago

I’m also tired of the “global” culture. Reddit is a terrible offender of this. The same opinions always prevail, and dissenting ideas are pushed out of sight. This applies to politics, religion, humor, pop culture, everything. It rewards conformity and it’s so boring. Smaller subs are usually lots better, simply because there are fewer people there to perform their predicatable voting.

anonu 8y ago
These social media platforms can't win (not that they should...). Either their AI is so tailored to feeding you exactly what you want to see, giving you a myopic view of the world --- or, you get fed the same memes and articles that everyone sees, leading to "mono-culture" and global conformity. Is there a happy middle ground?
- yakshaving_jgt 8y ago
  Yes. A non-algorithmic feed. Twitter was better when it just displayed posts from accounts you follow, in chronological order. Exactly the same goes for Instagram. I have since closed my Twitter account. I had it for 10 years, and I had over 5k followers. The algorithm constantly forced SJW lunatics into my feed no matter how aggressively I muted keywords. I still have my Instagram, but the same problem exists. It’s become super low-quality content, and lots of ads. Instagram was great because the community felt real. Now in my case it’s either soft-porn, or travel-porn. The travel-porn is probably worse. People taking unoriginal photos, with all the same filters, with a completely disingenuous question posed in the caption in an effort to generate comments, and subsequently more network effects by pleasing the Instagram algorithm. Even the adverts displayed to me are often just people’s personal profiles. Is this the real life? People are paying a platform to promote their selfies? It’s madness. Instagram will collapse eventually.
dougmwne 8y ago
I have an odd image that I think provides a good mental model of this. Bear with me... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWR0AS2rW48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWR0AS2rW48 These metronomes start out tick-tocking in their own time, but each affects the other until they are all locked in perfect sync. This is what global digital media culture is doing to us, subtle nudges to conform to a single global monoculture, so gradual that it's hard to see it happening until it's happened.
- antidesitter 8y ago
  Very cool demonstration! You might be interested in this interactive demo of social networks: https://ncase.me/crowds/ https://ncase.me/crowds/. It explores how the connectivity structure of social networks impacts the spread of ideas.
  - chestervonwinch 8y ago
    That demo is just so neat!
  - jhwhite 8y ago
    What field of study is this?
    - stardek 8y ago
      I expect it's covered in several areas but the field of opinion dynamics often investigates these sorts of situations.
    - esfandia 8y ago
      Social Network Analysis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_analysis
  - spin 8y ago
    Thank you for sharing this demo (and to the GP for the video with the metronomes). Very interesting; very cool.
  - brokenmachine 8y ago
    That was an awesome demo.
  - prince005 8y ago
    This was such a good demo!
- bicubic 8y ago
Mediterraneo10 8y ago
Even Reddit subs for niche interests can suck now, precisely because of Instagram culture. I follow some subs for certain outdoor hobbies, and while in the past we would discuss gear or the specifics of various routes, now all most people want to do is post selfies in impressive locations. Reddit has killed off many of the old forum websites, so it is not as if one can just go back to those to get substantive conversation. Indeed, substantive conversation seems to be dying out overall, because just posting selfies gets one more social appreciation.
- Implicated 8y ago
  I've experienced the same things with the same communities. The forums for the outdoor/backpacking community seem to have seen a dramatic slow down in the last few years (I run a used backpacking gear 'for sale' post aggregator and have seen a decline in # of posts over the years - with reddit/subreddits being the only venue that's growing) and the subreddits seem to be 'growing' but their post quality (obviously, this is my opinion and it's not necessarily shared with everyone involved) is suffering greatly.
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    Yeah, there's a reason HN is text only. The medium dictates the message. If a medium has images, then that medium becomes dominated by images because images are much more captivating that text.
  - smileysteve 8y ago
    I think we're seeing a dramatic slowdown in the people actually participating as well. I'm seeing club participation down for a lot of activities.
    - forsakenkraken 8y ago
      I've noticed this as well. Even activities which are widely popular eg, Football, American Football are apparently struggling. The niche sport that I do isn't doing too badly, but the clubs aren't attracting new members and many of the new participants aren't staying in the sport long term.
cle 8y ago
I've been thinking a lot about this lately. We have under-appreciated the costs of hyper-connectivity. See for example this paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=832627 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=832627 By modeling communication in the context of problem solving and running simulations with that model, the authors show that less efficient communication can have better long-term results. I'm afraid that the speed, ease, and low cost of communication is increasingly encouraging us to look outwards instead of inwards when faced with problems to solve. Which means humanity will tend to quickly converge on the first "solution" instead of spending more time searching the solution space for better solutions. This really bothers me, and I don't know what we can do about it (or if we should do anything about it).
- agumonkey 8y ago
  space (not cosmos, just open gaps) is the future then
- VRay 8y ago
  I've also been bothered lately by the tendency for people to look for/latch on to the first easy answer they find online It's especially bad among coders.. There seems to be a lot of people who got sucked into software work for financial reasons, but never really learned the basics of how to research something and apply their knowledge. Instead of treating software development as a form of engineering, they treat it like a puzzle and kludge their way through with a hodgepodge of copy-pasted snippets they don't ever try to understand. I'm also not sure what (if anything) to do about the issue, though.. I don't run into those people in the belly of big OS/platform vendors I've worked for, so maybe it's really just a minor annoyance in the grand scheme of things
malloryerik 8y ago
When you guys say "global" culture, what do you mean?
- village-idiot 8y ago
  I think “monoculture” might be a less loaded term for what others are trying to communicate.
api 8y ago
"Borgsongs" is what I've started calling it. I recall the term from STTNG for the omnipresent chatter experienced by members of the Borg collective.
narrator 8y ago
One weird problem that's similar to this is that Quora is starting to get a lot of answers from India and Pakistan about relationship questions. So I'm reading these Quora questions and people are talking about their horrible arranged marriages in Pakistan or wherever. Sure, there are people who speak English outside of the U.S, but they don't have to show up in my feed.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- brokenmachine 8y ago
  I've noticed that as well, not about arranged marriages specifically but a ton of of ultra naive questions about relationships like, "Why do guys change their mind about a girl that they liked?", and "How do I know a girl is right for me?" (sic). Those were literally the first two from my feed just then. I used to find Quora interesting but it just has so much of this low-quality spam on it now. For my feed it's all that or military stuff, which I do find interesting on occasion, so I do see why that's there. I wonder if it's just our feeds or if the whole of Quora is like that.
  - rootkea 8y ago
    > I used to find Quora interesting but it just has so much of this low-quality spam on it now. I am an Indian and I concur. I honestly don't remember the last time I visited Quora since then.
  - random_kris 8y ago
    right?!?! I found quora quite interested. But latetly seems like spammers kinda gamed the system. I same same people answering questions. Most of the answers and questions are probably fake / oversexualised. Stopped visting that site
techopoly 8y ago
This is really true -- on Reddit if you post a dissenting opinion, you're usually downvoted.

by vlunkr 8y ago

anonu 8y ago

These social media platforms can't win (not that they should...). Either their AI is so tailored to feeding you exactly what you want to see, giving you a myopic view of the world --- or, you get fed the same memes and articles that everyone sees, leading to "mono-culture" and global conformity. Is there a happy middle ground?

yakshaving_jgt 8y ago
Yes. A non-algorithmic feed. Twitter was better when it just displayed posts from accounts you follow, in chronological order. Exactly the same goes for Instagram. I have since closed my Twitter account. I had it for 10 years, and I had over 5k followers. The algorithm constantly forced SJW lunatics into my feed no matter how aggressively I muted keywords. I still have my Instagram, but the same problem exists. It’s become super low-quality content, and lots of ads. Instagram was great because the community felt real. Now in my case it’s either soft-porn, or travel-porn. The travel-porn is probably worse. People taking unoriginal photos, with all the same filters, with a completely disingenuous question posed in the caption in an effort to generate comments, and subsequently more network effects by pleasing the Instagram algorithm. Even the adverts displayed to me are often just people’s personal profiles. Is this the real life? People are paying a platform to promote their selfies? It’s madness. Instagram will collapse eventually.

dougmwne 8y ago

I have an odd image that I think provides a good mental model of this. Bear with me... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWR0AS2rW48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWR0AS2rW48 These metronomes start out tick-tocking in their own time, but each affects the other until they are all locked in perfect sync. This is what global digital media culture is doing to us, subtle nudges to conform to a single global monoculture, so gradual that it's hard to see it happening until it's happened.

antidesitter 8y ago
Very cool demonstration! You might be interested in this interactive demo of social networks: https://ncase.me/crowds/ https://ncase.me/crowds/. It explores how the connectivity structure of social networks impacts the spread of ideas.
- chestervonwinch 8y ago
  That demo is just so neat!
- jhwhite 8y ago
  What field of study is this?
  - stardek 8y ago
    I expect it's covered in several areas but the field of opinion dynamics often investigates these sorts of situations.
  - esfandia 8y ago
    Social Network Analysis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_analysis
- spin 8y ago
  Thank you for sharing this demo (and to the GP for the video with the metronomes). Very interesting; very cool.
- brokenmachine 8y ago
  That was an awesome demo.
- prince005 8y ago
  This was such a good demo!
bicubic 8y ago

Mediterraneo10 8y ago

Even Reddit subs for niche interests can suck now, precisely because of Instagram culture. I follow some subs for certain outdoor hobbies, and while in the past we would discuss gear or the specifics of various routes, now all most people want to do is post selfies in impressive locations. Reddit has killed off many of the old forum websites, so it is not as if one can just go back to those to get substantive conversation. Indeed, substantive conversation seems to be dying out overall, because just posting selfies gets one more social appreciation.

Implicated 8y ago
I've experienced the same things with the same communities. The forums for the outdoor/backpacking community seem to have seen a dramatic slow down in the last few years (I run a used backpacking gear 'for sale' post aggregator and have seen a decline in # of posts over the years - with reddit/subreddits being the only venue that's growing) and the subreddits seem to be 'growing' but their post quality (obviously, this is my opinion and it's not necessarily shared with everyone involved) is suffering greatly.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  Yeah, there's a reason HN is text only. The medium dictates the message. If a medium has images, then that medium becomes dominated by images because images are much more captivating that text.
- smileysteve 8y ago
  I think we're seeing a dramatic slowdown in the people actually participating as well. I'm seeing club participation down for a lot of activities.
  - forsakenkraken 8y ago
    I've noticed this as well. Even activities which are widely popular eg, Football, American Football are apparently struggling. The niche sport that I do isn't doing too badly, but the clubs aren't attracting new members and many of the new participants aren't staying in the sport long term.

cle 8y ago

I've been thinking a lot about this lately. We have under-appreciated the costs of hyper-connectivity. See for example this paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=832627 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=832627 By modeling communication in the context of problem solving and running simulations with that model, the authors show that less efficient communication can have better long-term results. I'm afraid that the speed, ease, and low cost of communication is increasingly encouraging us to look outwards instead of inwards when faced with problems to solve. Which means humanity will tend to quickly converge on the first "solution" instead of spending more time searching the solution space for better solutions. This really bothers me, and I don't know what we can do about it (or if we should do anything about it).

agumonkey 8y ago
space (not cosmos, just open gaps) is the future then
VRay 8y ago
I've also been bothered lately by the tendency for people to look for/latch on to the first easy answer they find online It's especially bad among coders.. There seems to be a lot of people who got sucked into software work for financial reasons, but never really learned the basics of how to research something and apply their knowledge. Instead of treating software development as a form of engineering, they treat it like a puzzle and kludge their way through with a hodgepodge of copy-pasted snippets they don't ever try to understand. I'm also not sure what (if anything) to do about the issue, though.. I don't run into those people in the belly of big OS/platform vendors I've worked for, so maybe it's really just a minor annoyance in the grand scheme of things

malloryerik 8y ago

When you guys say "global" culture, what do you mean?

village-idiot 8y ago
I think “monoculture” might be a less loaded term for what others are trying to communicate.

api 8y ago

"Borgsongs" is what I've started calling it. I recall the term from STTNG for the omnipresent chatter experienced by members of the Borg collective.

narrator 8y ago

One weird problem that's similar to this is that Quora is starting to get a lot of answers from India and Pakistan about relationship questions. So I'm reading these Quora questions and people are talking about their horrible arranged marriages in Pakistan or wherever. Sure, there are people who speak English outside of the U.S, but they don't have to show up in my feed.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
brokenmachine 8y ago
I've noticed that as well, not about arranged marriages specifically but a ton of of ultra naive questions about relationships like, "Why do guys change their mind about a girl that they liked?", and "How do I know a girl is right for me?" (sic). Those were literally the first two from my feed just then. I used to find Quora interesting but it just has so much of this low-quality spam on it now. For my feed it's all that or military stuff, which I do find interesting on occasion, so I do see why that's there. I wonder if it's just our feeds or if the whole of Quora is like that.
- rootkea 8y ago
  > I used to find Quora interesting but it just has so much of this low-quality spam on it now. I am an Indian and I concur. I honestly don't remember the last time I visited Quora since then.
- random_kris 8y ago
  right?!?! I found quora quite interested. But latetly seems like spammers kinda gamed the system. I same same people answering questions. Most of the answers and questions are probably fake / oversexualised. Stopped visting that site

techopoly 8y ago

This is really true -- on Reddit if you post a dissenting opinion, you're usually downvoted.