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Everyone pays too much attention to Twitter. Social media has produced an environment in which short, highly emotional content reproduces the fastest, thus the
by chronofar 6y ago
Everyone pays too much attention to Twitter. Social media has produced an environment in which short, highly emotional content reproduces the fastest, thus the evolution of information in our society has trended toward memetic oversimplifications and absolutes, driven by vanity and outrage and virtue signaling. We are optimizing for the worst qualities of discussion at the largest scales.
And yet it seems hard to imagine it could be any other way. Our evolutionary biology and inbred tribalism, social proclivities and laziness are what make the platforms so popular, the evolution of our memes is directly tied to our evolutionary biology's feedback mechanisms. It's hard to see just how we could optimize for nuanced, balanced and productive discussion at scale. We have platforms that could in theory optimize in that direction, but the widest audiences trend toward the simplest to consume content (reddit is filled with interesting discussion in the right places, but most of its audience just see the quick reinforcing memes that occupy the front page).
So do journalists pay too much attention to Twitter? Well if we value nuance and balance in our information then yes, any attention on Twitter is probably too much. But of course we don't, not at scale, rather we value audience size. And for that Twitter is a great place to pay attention. Hence much modern journalism is just a glorified retweet, part of Twitter and Facebook even if it is posted elsewhere. In the memes arms race the best weapons are those that can be spread widely and quickly, and for that Twitter provides ample ammunition.
- collyw 6y agoI saw a comment on 4chan recently: "Social media was a mistake and the creators should be tried for crimes against humanity"
- waldoh 6y agoPeople on 4chan say dumb shit like that a lot. I'd avoid that place if I were you
- falsaberN1 6y agoThe funny thing is that 4chan and twitter aren't that different in terms of hate and troll. They were at some point, but the lines keep blurring. Sure you can find places in twitter that aren't toxic cesspools, but you can also find that in 4chan (/m/ for example). The weirdest thing is that people in twitter is doing 4chan tier stuff under their real names and faces, which is just baffling to me. I always thought the whole 4chan loltroll hate machine thing was because of anonymity, but I'm starting to reconsider that stance.
- eropple 6y agoAnonymity wasn't why the 4chan hate machine would fire up--it was because a few people could look like a lot of people. It looked like you had a mob right at hand. Now, there are a lot of people, and bots besides.
- falsaberN1 6y agoHmm, that's an interesting take. I always thought it was the "I can say whatever and they'll never know it was me, mwahaha the perfect crimeeee!" or something.
- eropple 6y agoPeople have never had a problem with their names on atrocities when they had other people at their back. The Salem witch trials are an obvious example, to me.
- fluffernutter 6y agoOther people (or maybe the same people saying dumb shit) also say brilliant things there. Dissuading use of a platform of a certain type over another (like this forum)is irrational. We need better software for displaying said content, not banning the content entirely. Also, freedom of speech isn't what most people think it is.
- collyw 6y agoAgreed, the signal to noise ratio is poor, but there are some really thought provoking comments in there. Wasn't some decades old mathematical problem solved by a random 4chan post? Curious what you mean by the freedom of speech not being what people think it is?
- ericsoderstrom 6y ago""Anime was a mistake" --Hayao Miyazaki" --4chan
- prox 6y agoAlso anyone can fancy themselves in the seat of the journalist, so amateur journalism has scaled as well.
- fluffernutter 6y ago> amateur journalism You mean people talking about people talking about people doing things?
- prox 6y agoProfessional (print) journalism (pre-internet if you wish) vs journalism which now includes bloggers, vloggers, anyone who has a profile and presents him/herself literate in the domain they’ve chosen to write in.