4 ms·

The communities are too big. We're not meant to socialize frequently with people with whom there are rarely repercussions for how we treat them.

by daenz 6y ago

toshk 6y ago
I think part of the reason it's so stressful for teenagers is that there actual repercussions for their group position.
Verdex 6y ago
This seems reasonable to me. Like, if you only have to get along with 120 people, it seems like a problem that an arbitrary person has a pretty good chance of solving. Then everyone else can be the "other". However, I wonder if the simplest strategy that works when you have to get along with everyone is that you have to become an noisy asshole that overreacts to real "enemies" over imagined slights.
offtop5 6y ago
I've noticed this living in bigger cities as well, it was bad enough in one certain place I just left. Kind of estranged my family to do it, but as soon as I was in my new city I had a great girlfriend, and my cost of living was much lower, I was much happier. The old journey kind of took me on a personal discovery. You shouldn't worry about other people criticizing your choices because they aren't going to really affect them, and even if they are they're adults they can sort something else out. In this new city I would notice even though technically the population was large, the communities were very tight-knit. If you're rude to the local bartender her dad might have a word with you. Contrast it to the internet, I spoke to a girl who had to stop using dating apps because guys would just lead with calling her nasty and fat. In real life if you do that there can be immediate consequences to that behavior. Imagine if you will you were at a bar, and the Packers are playing the raiders or something, if you start yelling at random people that raiders fans are disgusting and horrible you can expect to be removed, and banned from returning to that bar. ( Or they might agree with you and buy you a beer who knows). On twitter, Reddit Facebook whatever that doesn't really exist. You can say ridiculously nasty mean things to everyone and nothing's going to happen to you. I had to stop using social media because I would become distraught over some of the stuff I read, almost all the bigotry I experienced was entirely online. Everyone has a right to spend their time in their energy the way they choose, but since I don't want to be called slurs I don't use social media. I've posted here a ton but back in 2019 I went completely offline and I had amazing partners, made tons of friends, traveled. I even increased my income by no small amount, I used that time I was spending making the Zuckerbergs of the world rich into improving myself. but if I've learned one thing in my life, it's that self-improvement is very hard, I'm the only person who can put down the second donut. it's a lot easier to go on Reddit and then complain about how societies out to get you, are to go on Twitter and just spread your own, really just self-hatred to other people hoping to dissipate it. Yet you can't, spreading hate doesn't take it out of you, if anything you're just going to get more hate back and then it builds up like a fuel. Most angry online folks, if you took away their social media and slowly reintroduced them to community, maybe a nice bowling league or something, within a year they'd be so much happier.
Xelbair 6y ago
The size is just the symptom. Those services match you, with other who share similar views/preferences - putting you inside a bubble. Before social media radical views\moronic opinions etc. wouldn't spread so far- because others would point out flaws in your reasoning or outright laugh at it. Now? you have permanent access to enabling group - group who share views, and support each other - entrenching it. Flatearthers would be ridiculed anywhere - but not they have a group that supports them. Not to mention that there are literally no consequences of holding an objectively wrong opinion(back to flatearthers) in online discourse. Don't get me wrong, those people with those view always existed - they just get exposed, via the worst invention of 2000s/2010s, to each other and that let them be more vocal about it.
- tzs 6y ago
  The usual counterargument I see offered to that is that sure, it is great if we can impede the spread of some completely stupid belief like flat Earth, but sometimes those things that are crazy by conventional wisdom turn out to be true. At that point, they usually mention Galileo and maybe some others, and they ask how do we avoid squashing the next Galileo with our measures to limit the spread of flat Earth theories? The answer is that if flat Earth or whatever is actually correct it will eventually prevail as did Galileo and all the others they cite (and they faced much more severe measures than merely being denied use of their society's equivalent of mass media). It will just take longer as it will have to use slower more personal communication channels. That's a good thing. Let's say there are dozens of radical theories circulating, and suppose one of them really is the next Galileo type situation, and the rest really are just utterly insane. If they all have to spread by the slower more personal channels any given person will likely only be exposed to maybe two or three of them. They aren't overwhelmed by them, and that gives them a better chance of figuring out that the stupid ones are in fact stupid. It is usually much more work to refute a theory, even a stupid one, than to come up with it, and the slow spread gives time for the refutations to be developed and put out there. If they were all on the fast mass audience channels, people get exposed to so many of them that they don't have time to really figure out if they make sense, and (2) even if a good refutation is out it is easy to miss it in all the noise.
  - 6y ago
defterGoose 6y ago
"With great power comes great responsibility" -Uncle Ben

The communities are too big. We're not meant to socialize frequently with people with whom there are rarely repercussions for how we treat them.

by daenz 6y ago

The communities are too big. We're not meant to socialize frequently with people with whom there are rarely repercussions for how we treat them.

toshk 6y ago

I think part of the reason it's so stressful for teenagers is that there actual repercussions for their group position.

Verdex 6y ago

This seems reasonable to me. Like, if you only have to get along with 120 people, it seems like a problem that an arbitrary person has a pretty good chance of solving. Then everyone else can be the "other". However, I wonder if the simplest strategy that works when you have to get along with everyone is that you have to become an noisy asshole that overreacts to real "enemies" over imagined slights.

offtop5 6y ago

I've noticed this living in bigger cities as well, it was bad enough in one certain place I just left. Kind of estranged my family to do it, but as soon as I was in my new city I had a great girlfriend, and my cost of living was much lower, I was much happier. The old journey kind of took me on a personal discovery. You shouldn't worry about other people criticizing your choices because they aren't going to really affect them, and even if they are they're adults they can sort something else out. In this new city I would notice even though technically the population was large, the communities were very tight-knit. If you're rude to the local bartender her dad might have a word with you. Contrast it to the internet, I spoke to a girl who had to stop using dating apps because guys would just lead with calling her nasty and fat. In real life if you do that there can be immediate consequences to that behavior. Imagine if you will you were at a bar, and the Packers are playing the raiders or something, if you start yelling at random people that raiders fans are disgusting and horrible you can expect to be removed, and banned from returning to that bar. ( Or they might agree with you and buy you a beer who knows). On twitter, Reddit Facebook whatever that doesn't really exist. You can say ridiculously nasty mean things to everyone and nothing's going to happen to you. I had to stop using social media because I would become distraught over some of the stuff I read, almost all the bigotry I experienced was entirely online. Everyone has a right to spend their time in their energy the way they choose, but since I don't want to be called slurs I don't use social media. I've posted here a ton but back in 2019 I went completely offline and I had amazing partners, made tons of friends, traveled. I even increased my income by no small amount, I used that time I was spending making the Zuckerbergs of the world rich into improving myself. but if I've learned one thing in my life, it's that self-improvement is very hard, I'm the only person who can put down the second donut. it's a lot easier to go on Reddit and then complain about how societies out to get you, are to go on Twitter and just spread your own, really just self-hatred to other people hoping to dissipate it. Yet you can't, spreading hate doesn't take it out of you, if anything you're just going to get more hate back and then it builds up like a fuel. Most angry online folks, if you took away their social media and slowly reintroduced them to community, maybe a nice bowling league or something, within a year they'd be so much happier.

Xelbair 6y ago

The size is just the symptom. Those services match you, with other who share similar views/preferences - putting you inside a bubble. Before social media radical views\moronic opinions etc. wouldn't spread so far- because others would point out flaws in your reasoning or outright laugh at it. Now? you have permanent access to enabling group - group who share views, and support each other - entrenching it. Flatearthers would be ridiculed anywhere - but not they have a group that supports them. Not to mention that there are literally no consequences of holding an objectively wrong opinion(back to flatearthers) in online discourse. Don't get me wrong, those people with those view always existed - they just get exposed, via the worst invention of 2000s/2010s, to each other and that let them be more vocal about it.

tzs 6y ago
The usual counterargument I see offered to that is that sure, it is great if we can impede the spread of some completely stupid belief like flat Earth, but sometimes those things that are crazy by conventional wisdom turn out to be true. At that point, they usually mention Galileo and maybe some others, and they ask how do we avoid squashing the next Galileo with our measures to limit the spread of flat Earth theories? The answer is that if flat Earth or whatever is actually correct it will eventually prevail as did Galileo and all the others they cite (and they faced much more severe measures than merely being denied use of their society's equivalent of mass media). It will just take longer as it will have to use slower more personal communication channels. That's a good thing. Let's say there are dozens of radical theories circulating, and suppose one of them really is the next Galileo type situation, and the rest really are just utterly insane. If they all have to spread by the slower more personal channels any given person will likely only be exposed to maybe two or three of them. They aren't overwhelmed by them, and that gives them a better chance of figuring out that the stupid ones are in fact stupid. It is usually much more work to refute a theory, even a stupid one, than to come up with it, and the slow spread gives time for the refutations to be developed and put out there. If they were all on the fast mass audience channels, people get exposed to so many of them that they don't have time to really figure out if they make sense, and (2) even if a good refutation is out it is easy to miss it in all the noise.
- 6y ago

defterGoose 6y ago

"With great power comes great responsibility" -Uncle Ben