7 ms·

>In our study of gender nonbinary people of color, women of color, and online commentary, participants talked about having to constantly run a cost-benefit anal

by olah_1 7y ago

>In our study of gender nonbinary people of color, women of color, and online commentary, participants talked about having to constantly run a cost-benefit analysis on participation in any online conversations, based on the likelihood that they would be attacked, merely for participation. 4chan solved this problem a decade ago. Put your content before your identity rather than the other way around. In many spaces today, being a straight white man is far more inflammatory than being a non-binary person of color. This is especially true in the open-source community. The solution is to stop pushing your identity onto people when it's completely irrelevant. I'm not saying hide who you are. But it's simply not relevant to the vast majority of discussions.

adamsea 7y ago
You are literally saying “hide who you are, whenever I decide that who you are does not matter.” EDIT: OP literally says: “ I'm not saying hide who you are. But it's simply not relevant to the vast majority of discussions.” Again, who gets to make that decision? Who gets to set the criteria for making that decision?
- olah_1 7y ago
  >Again, who gets to make that decision? Who gets to set the criteria for making that decision? The people you're talking to. These are all just social mores, but you are the one that deals with the fallout. There's pushback on identity first discourse because it's often seen as distasteful.
lapnitnelav 7y ago
Exactly, the main thing about 4ch and the likes is that you can't satiate your need for validation through likes / upvotes and a profile. Much like what Instagram is trying now (hiding other people's likes count) or this very platform, doing away with those metrics should help foster better conversations.
- adamsea 7y ago
  > you can't satiate your need for validation through likes / upvotes and a profile. The concern mentioned in the excerpt from TFA was a perception by the people it spoke to that they had to self-censor in order not to be personally attacked in online discussion. You make a good point but it seems like it is about something other than what the TFA excerpt describes. TFA quoted by OP: > participants talked about having to constantly run a cost-benefit analysis on participation in any online conversations, based on the likelihood that they would be attacked, merely for participation.
  - lapnitnelav 7y ago
    Yeah, I agree with you but I think removing a way to feed the ego might have side effects that could help, namely killing any mean behaviour fueled by the need for points.
    - Kaiyou 7y ago
      Are you suggesting there's no mean behavior on 4chan?
      - lapnitnelav 7y ago
        I find 4 chan to be an interesting experiment. Yes it mostly is a cesspool. Yes folks there are pretty much awful. But it's also extremely egalitarian. Everyone is on the same, whether you be an old* or a new*. I don't partake but I like to dive in and observe them. Fascinating, because as much as we'd like to deny it, 4chan is the whole spectrum of humanity.
        Kaiyou 7y ago
        4chan is unfiltered and there are a bunch of people that aren't able to handle this, so it's a self-selected pool of people that are capable of participating in unfiltered discussion. In other communities heavy filtering is going on. Comments get removed and accounts banned, so that the people that cannot handle unfiltered content won't leave. Personally I think all content should be unfiltered and the people who cannot handle this, should learn it. Open discussion is difficult when you have to self-censor all the time. We have it so bad, there's even a bunch of words we're forbidden from using in filtered communities and it's sold as a good thing. Lots of ideas and opinions are also banned, which is really unfortunate. We tend to criticize China for exactly the same things that are completely normal for most of us. It's just that China bans different ideas.
gdubs 7y ago
Did they, though? The only demographics I could find on 4chan are their advertising stats, and according to that the site is 70% men under 35, mostly from the US and a handful of European countries. [1] Doesn’t really sound like a thriving wellspring of diverse opinions. 1: https://www.4chan.org/advertise https://www.4chan.org/advertise
- dTal 7y ago
  Bear in mind that a perfectly equal sex distribution would be 50%; 70% is skewed, but hardly a sausage party. And I don't think you need to be from a diverse set of locations to have a diverse set of opinions.
- davesmith1983 7y ago
  You are working under the fallacy that diversity of opinion will be correlated somehow to arbitrary characteristics such as Race, Gender and Sexuality. This is patently not true.
  - gdubs 7y ago
    Those characteristics aren’t arbitrary; they equate to an entirely different life experience. That means a more diverse set of viewpoints. “People who are different from one another in race, gender and other dimensions bring unique information and experiences [...]” https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-smarter/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-mak...
    - davesmith1983 7y ago
      Sorry assumptions about how an individual thinks based on their race, gender or sexuality is clearly a nonsense. You cannot point at any individual and know their thoughts. The best you can do is say "This demographic in this place tends to agree with this statement". As for the the actual article you linked, the author herself has nice race-bait titles of work such as "The White standard: Racial bias in leader categorization", you can't seriously tell me that this is an objective body of work? There is also the piece she wrote called "Office Holiday Parties Highlight Racial Dissimilarities and Fail to Promote Team Unity" ... apparently the office party isn't safe from race based politics. Sorry but this sets of alarm bells in my head. The piece itself doesn't cite any evidence for anything it claims.
antihero 7y ago
Ah yes, 4chan, the bastion of respectful and productive online discourse.
- Kaiyou 7y ago
  I hear they've recently been pushing racist and edgy themes like family cohesion, Christianity and a fatphobic healthy lifestyle with exercise. \s
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - krapp 7y ago
    And "ironically" inspiring white supremacists to commit mass murder and shout them out in their manifestos.
  - antihero 7y ago
    Such a fun way to spin calling people "degenerates" (literally nazi wording) and promoting a worldview from half a century ago or whatever where people got treated like shit. I mean yeah if you want to be equivalent to a klansmen, I am sure they also promoted "family cohesion" and Christianity. I was on 4chan many years ago, I went to the Anonymous protests in London. I have thick skin and I know not to take stuff seriously, but in the last few years especially it seems like it's become dominated by /pol/ and people who are legitimately white supremacist traditionalist alt-right scum, because those communities seized upon the edgy culture of /pol/ as it used to be and use it as a channel to push their very real non-ironic toxic politics.
    - Kaiyou 7y ago
      The way I heard the story everyone could say whatever they wanted on 4chan, but all the discussions were always "won" by the Nazis through better arguments and facts, so everyone else got tired on always getting called out on their own delusions, so they left the place, where only reason and facts prevailed. Hence the necessity to ban them on other platforms, because of the impossibility to win arguments against them. The only way they could keep believing in their delusions (like "people are equal" etc.) was to create safe spaces where they could ban everyone disagreeing with them. Apparently in a truly free space Nazis win all arguments, which makes everyone else leave. The other explanation is "those people are mean and I don't want to hang around mean people", but that's really not all that different from the first explanation.
jmcqk6 7y ago
>In many spaces today, being a straight white man is far more inflammatory than being a non-binary person of color. As a straight white man, this is bullshit. I have many close friends who are part of the LGBT community, so I can see their experiences compared to my own. They don't go around "pushing their identity onto people" and neither do I. We're all just normal people trying to build cool things. And I see my experiences are much more positive than theirs.
- olah_1 7y ago
  How good is your experience in tech if you preface a statement with "as a straight white man..."? I'd say the response would be downright aggressive and you would be silenced. Preface a statement with "as a non-binary person of color..." and you get applause.
  - jmcqk6 7y ago
    My previous comment literally started with the phrase 'as a straight white man', and it received several up votes. Does this website count as tech? The trick is: don't be an asshole and recognize that other people have different experiences which are just as valid as your own. Every time I've seen someone talking about how it's terrible to be a white man these days, it's because they want to be an asshole to someone and are being told that's wrong. Straight white men who are actually kind and listen to others, seriously considering their opinions don't get much flak for being straight and white. Is this really that difficult to understand?

by olah_1 7y ago

adamsea 7y ago

You are literally saying “hide who you are, whenever I decide that who you are does not matter.” EDIT: OP literally says: “ I'm not saying hide who you are. But it's simply not relevant to the vast majority of discussions.” Again, who gets to make that decision? Who gets to set the criteria for making that decision?

olah_1 7y ago
>Again, who gets to make that decision? Who gets to set the criteria for making that decision? The people you're talking to. These are all just social mores, but you are the one that deals with the fallout. There's pushback on identity first discourse because it's often seen as distasteful.

lapnitnelav 7y ago

Exactly, the main thing about 4ch and the likes is that you can't satiate your need for validation through likes / upvotes and a profile. Much like what Instagram is trying now (hiding other people's likes count) or this very platform, doing away with those metrics should help foster better conversations.

adamsea 7y ago
> you can't satiate your need for validation through likes / upvotes and a profile. The concern mentioned in the excerpt from TFA was a perception by the people it spoke to that they had to self-censor in order not to be personally attacked in online discussion. You make a good point but it seems like it is about something other than what the TFA excerpt describes. TFA quoted by OP: > participants talked about having to constantly run a cost-benefit analysis on participation in any online conversations, based on the likelihood that they would be attacked, merely for participation.
- lapnitnelav 7y ago
  Yeah, I agree with you but I think removing a way to feed the ego might have side effects that could help, namely killing any mean behaviour fueled by the need for points.
  - Kaiyou 7y ago
    Are you suggesting there's no mean behavior on 4chan?
    - lapnitnelav 7y ago
      I find 4 chan to be an interesting experiment. Yes it mostly is a cesspool. Yes folks there are pretty much awful. But it's also extremely egalitarian. Everyone is on the same, whether you be an old* or a new*. I don't partake but I like to dive in and observe them. Fascinating, because as much as we'd like to deny it, 4chan is the whole spectrum of humanity.
      - Kaiyou 7y ago
        4chan is unfiltered and there are a bunch of people that aren't able to handle this, so it's a self-selected pool of people that are capable of participating in unfiltered discussion. In other communities heavy filtering is going on. Comments get removed and accounts banned, so that the people that cannot handle unfiltered content won't leave. Personally I think all content should be unfiltered and the people who cannot handle this, should learn it. Open discussion is difficult when you have to self-censor all the time. We have it so bad, there's even a bunch of words we're forbidden from using in filtered communities and it's sold as a good thing. Lots of ideas and opinions are also banned, which is really unfortunate. We tend to criticize China for exactly the same things that are completely normal for most of us. It's just that China bans different ideas.

gdubs 7y ago

Did they, though? The only demographics I could find on 4chan are their advertising stats, and according to that the site is 70% men under 35, mostly from the US and a handful of European countries. [1] Doesn’t really sound like a thriving wellspring of diverse opinions. 1: https://www.4chan.org/advertise https://www.4chan.org/advertise

dTal 7y ago
Bear in mind that a perfectly equal sex distribution would be 50%; 70% is skewed, but hardly a sausage party. And I don't think you need to be from a diverse set of locations to have a diverse set of opinions.
davesmith1983 7y ago
You are working under the fallacy that diversity of opinion will be correlated somehow to arbitrary characteristics such as Race, Gender and Sexuality. This is patently not true.
- gdubs 7y ago
  Those characteristics aren’t arbitrary; they equate to an entirely different life experience. That means a more diverse set of viewpoints. “People who are different from one another in race, gender and other dimensions bring unique information and experiences [...]” https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-smarter/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-mak...
  - davesmith1983 7y ago
    Sorry assumptions about how an individual thinks based on their race, gender or sexuality is clearly a nonsense. You cannot point at any individual and know their thoughts. The best you can do is say "This demographic in this place tends to agree with this statement". As for the the actual article you linked, the author herself has nice race-bait titles of work such as "The White standard: Racial bias in leader categorization", you can't seriously tell me that this is an objective body of work? There is also the piece she wrote called "Office Holiday Parties Highlight Racial Dissimilarities and Fail to Promote Team Unity" ... apparently the office party isn't safe from race based politics. Sorry but this sets of alarm bells in my head. The piece itself doesn't cite any evidence for anything it claims.

antihero 7y ago

Ah yes, 4chan, the bastion of respectful and productive online discourse.

Kaiyou 7y ago
I hear they've recently been pushing racist and edgy themes like family cohesion, Christianity and a fatphobic healthy lifestyle with exercise. \s
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- krapp 7y ago
  And "ironically" inspiring white supremacists to commit mass murder and shout them out in their manifestos.
- antihero 7y ago
  Such a fun way to spin calling people "degenerates" (literally nazi wording) and promoting a worldview from half a century ago or whatever where people got treated like shit. I mean yeah if you want to be equivalent to a klansmen, I am sure they also promoted "family cohesion" and Christianity. I was on 4chan many years ago, I went to the Anonymous protests in London. I have thick skin and I know not to take stuff seriously, but in the last few years especially it seems like it's become dominated by /pol/ and people who are legitimately white supremacist traditionalist alt-right scum, because those communities seized upon the edgy culture of /pol/ as it used to be and use it as a channel to push their very real non-ironic toxic politics.
  - Kaiyou 7y ago
    The way I heard the story everyone could say whatever they wanted on 4chan, but all the discussions were always "won" by the Nazis through better arguments and facts, so everyone else got tired on always getting called out on their own delusions, so they left the place, where only reason and facts prevailed. Hence the necessity to ban them on other platforms, because of the impossibility to win arguments against them. The only way they could keep believing in their delusions (like "people are equal" etc.) was to create safe spaces where they could ban everyone disagreeing with them. Apparently in a truly free space Nazis win all arguments, which makes everyone else leave. The other explanation is "those people are mean and I don't want to hang around mean people", but that's really not all that different from the first explanation.

jmcqk6 7y ago

>In many spaces today, being a straight white man is far more inflammatory than being a non-binary person of color. As a straight white man, this is bullshit. I have many close friends who are part of the LGBT community, so I can see their experiences compared to my own. They don't go around "pushing their identity onto people" and neither do I. We're all just normal people trying to build cool things. And I see my experiences are much more positive than theirs.

olah_1 7y ago
How good is your experience in tech if you preface a statement with "as a straight white man..."? I'd say the response would be downright aggressive and you would be silenced. Preface a statement with "as a non-binary person of color..." and you get applause.
- jmcqk6 7y ago
  My previous comment literally started with the phrase 'as a straight white man', and it received several up votes. Does this website count as tech? The trick is: don't be an asshole and recognize that other people have different experiences which are just as valid as your own. Every time I've seen someone talking about how it's terrible to be a white man these days, it's because they want to be an asshole to someone and are being told that's wrong. Straight white men who are actually kind and listen to others, seriously considering their opinions don't get much flak for being straight and white. Is this really that difficult to understand?