3 ms·

He has creative freedom until something crazy hits the media. Though given how exhausted everyone is of these battles these days, I'm not sure anything he could

He has creative freedom until something crazy hits the media. Though given how exhausted everyone is of these battles these days, I'm not sure anything he could do would generate sufficient outrage.

hackinthebochs 6y ago
When widespread outrage is measured simply by twitter likes, I feel there is no end to the outrage machine. The cost of participating is zero while the dopamine hit of lending your support to some presumed moral issue non-zero. And therein lies the problem with adjudicating moral issues through social media. There is zero cost to join in the mob and so these tempests appear to be much stronger than they actually are. If there were a tangible cost to signing on to these outrage mobs, there would be much fewer of them and it would also be a more accurate metric.
- wayoutthere 6y ago
  I think the real problem started in the early '10s, when mainstream journalists got lazy af and just started combing Facebook and Twitter for material rather than doing actual journalism. It started with "crowdsourced" journalism like photos and videos of actual notable events, but devolved into internet drama stuff pretty quickly. Many people saw what was happening and started treating Twitter as a legitimate news source to try and 'scoop' the major news outlets. Once it was obvious that being on Twitter gave you an outsized voice, it attracted all sorts of bad actors. The 2016 election really threw it into overdrive though. Part of me wonders if Trump's whole Twitter strategy is to rile up the left because most of his base is old people on Facebook or Nextdoor. The young edgelords who were already using Twitter didn't take any of it seriously because they were just using it to troll people with 4chan memes about using bleach as eyedrops anyway.

3 ms·

He has creative freedom until something crazy hits the media. Though given how exhausted everyone is of these battles these days, I'm not sure anything he could

by wayoutthere 6y ago

He has creative freedom until something crazy hits the media. Though given how exhausted everyone is of these battles these days, I'm not sure anything he could do would generate sufficient outrage.

hackinthebochs 6y ago
When widespread outrage is measured simply by twitter likes, I feel there is no end to the outrage machine. The cost of participating is zero while the dopamine hit of lending your support to some presumed moral issue non-zero. And therein lies the problem with adjudicating moral issues through social media. There is zero cost to join in the mob and so these tempests appear to be much stronger than they actually are. If there were a tangible cost to signing on to these outrage mobs, there would be much fewer of them and it would also be a more accurate metric.
- wayoutthere 6y ago
  I think the real problem started in the early '10s, when mainstream journalists got lazy af and just started combing Facebook and Twitter for material rather than doing actual journalism. It started with "crowdsourced" journalism like photos and videos of actual notable events, but devolved into internet drama stuff pretty quickly. Many people saw what was happening and started treating Twitter as a legitimate news source to try and 'scoop' the major news outlets. Once it was obvious that being on Twitter gave you an outsized voice, it attracted all sorts of bad actors. The 2016 election really threw it into overdrive though. Part of me wonders if Trump's whole Twitter strategy is to rile up the left because most of his base is old people on Facebook or Nextdoor. The young edgelords who were already using Twitter didn't take any of it seriously because they were just using it to troll people with 4chan memes about using bleach as eyedrops anyway.