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I think there’s some unspoken stress about building and maintaining a taxonomy of your relationships. Whether someone is an acquaintance or a friend or a good f

by teeray 6y ago

I think there’s some unspoken stress about building and maintaining a taxonomy of your relationships. Whether someone is an acquaintance or a friend or a good friend can be fairly dynamic. Being constantly confronted with rearranging people into different “circles” feels a bit like explicitly deciding if people can sit at the cool kids table today or not.

Jtsummers 6y ago
They can be like tagging. In what context do I know Jack? I met him through church and at work. Maybe we have some other mutual interests. How do I know Joe? Coincidentally also through church and work, but we're both programmers (Jack is an engineer with different technical interests), we play soccer together, we enjoy seeing movies in the theater, and we participate in team trivia at restaurants and bars together. By tagging people (or placing them into circles in the G+ sense), I can select which group to communicate something to based on selecting a tag or set of tags. "Hey soccer peeps, I'm going to take my ball and some cones down to the field at Central Elementary this Saturday if you want to come out and practice with me." directed @soccer_peeps. Maybe throw a few groups together that aren't fully overlapping in general: @soccer_peeps @trivia_teamsters "Party at my place this Saturday, here's a link to RSVP and sign up to bring something." I'm not forced to put everyone into a distinct category or circle, but can use loose taggings effectively.
divbzero 6y ago
And having set up circles, there is also some unspoken stress in making sure you don’t inadvertently “overshare” a post to a broader circle than you intended.
- hunter2_ 6y ago
  > inadvertently Separate icons on ones launcher go a long way toward maintaining intent.
hunter2_ 6y ago
I think many people creating social content mainly just want to choose between two classifications: Option 1 is for content that won't offend anyone or tarnish the author's reputation. The audience can include all contacts including coworkers, family, etc. and the author will often use their real name. Example: Facebook. Option 2 is for risqué content. It could cause issues with employment and other real-life relations. The audience must be carefully controlled, or if not, a pseudonym (that only a carefully controlled audience, if anyone at all, can map to a real name) must be used. Example: Reddit; private group chats. This seems to cover most scenarios without the overhead/stress of trying to shoehorn all of these boundaries in a single platform/app.
- cvwright 6y ago
  I think there's another big one too: Option 3 is for very personal stuff that you don't want to make public. Many of us put photos of our small children in this category. On a more depressing note, this could also include things like grief that a small group experiences over serious illness or death in the family. Not everything non-public is necessarily risque. (FWIW I'm working on something in this space. Hoping to have something to share within another month or two...)

by teeray 6y ago

Jtsummers 6y ago

They can be like tagging. In what context do I know Jack? I met him through church and at work. Maybe we have some other mutual interests. How do I know Joe? Coincidentally also through church and work, but we're both programmers (Jack is an engineer with different technical interests), we play soccer together, we enjoy seeing movies in the theater, and we participate in team trivia at restaurants and bars together. By tagging people (or placing them into circles in the G+ sense), I can select which group to communicate something to based on selecting a tag or set of tags. "Hey soccer peeps, I'm going to take my ball and some cones down to the field at Central Elementary this Saturday if you want to come out and practice with me." directed @soccer_peeps. Maybe throw a few groups together that aren't fully overlapping in general: @soccer_peeps @trivia_teamsters "Party at my place this Saturday, here's a link to RSVP and sign up to bring something." I'm not forced to put everyone into a distinct category or circle, but can use loose taggings effectively.

divbzero 6y ago

And having set up circles, there is also some unspoken stress in making sure you don’t inadvertently “overshare” a post to a broader circle than you intended.

hunter2_ 6y ago
> inadvertently Separate icons on ones launcher go a long way toward maintaining intent.

hunter2_ 6y ago

I think many people creating social content mainly just want to choose between two classifications: Option 1 is for content that won't offend anyone or tarnish the author's reputation. The audience can include all contacts including coworkers, family, etc. and the author will often use their real name. Example: Facebook. Option 2 is for risqué content. It could cause issues with employment and other real-life relations. The audience must be carefully controlled, or if not, a pseudonym (that only a carefully controlled audience, if anyone at all, can map to a real name) must be used. Example: Reddit; private group chats. This seems to cover most scenarios without the overhead/stress of trying to shoehorn all of these boundaries in a single platform/app.

cvwright 6y ago
I think there's another big one too: Option 3 is for very personal stuff that you don't want to make public. Many of us put photos of our small children in this category. On a more depressing note, this could also include things like grief that a small group experiences over serious illness or death in the family. Not everything non-public is necessarily risque. (FWIW I'm working on something in this space. Hoping to have something to share within another month or two...)