8 ms·

It turns out, people can get along in real life, not because we’re exposed to many different ideas and ways of life, but in spite of this fact. Take away the h

It turns out, people can get along in real life, not because we’re exposed to many different ideas and ways of life, but in spite of this fact. Take away the human aspect and look only at tweets or shares or headlines, and you don’t have that magical ability that humans have to connect with each other in spite of tribal division.

sumthinprofound 5y ago
you can learn a lot about a person by sitting down and having a meal with them and miraculously alot of the online vitrol dissipates when you have a chance to see them as a full person.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > alot of the online vitrol dissipates when you have a chance to see them as a full person But remove the physical proximity and the vitriol often re-animates.
- hpoe 5y ago
  Interestingly enough that is what Daryl Davis decided to do to start fighting racism, got over a dozen members, including a grand wizard, to leave the Klan. I'd recommend watching his TedTalk it really helped me understand how to better work with others, and how to bring about understanding. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORp3q1Oaezw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORp3q1Oaezw
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Or are they just hiding it because social norms require that they do? As we have pretty strong social expectations for how people behave at meals.
  - standardUser 5y ago
    We have very strong social expectations when interacting with mixed company in any in-person setting. And zero social expectations when interacting online, where anything up to and including death threats seems acceptable to many. Cars are an interesting in-between, where we're just barely removed from being in-person and as a result we tend to act far more rudely and dangerously than we would to someone's face.
  - mumblemumble 5y ago
    It's a feedback loop. Put someone in an environment where social norms favor civility and respect, and they will generally become more civil and respectful over time. Put them in an environment where social norms favor tribalism and vitriol, and they will tend to become more tribal and vitriolic over time. That said, I think we should be cautious about nostalgia for how things worked before the Internet. 30 years ago, people in socioeconomically homogenous communities might have been adept at being civil to and empathizing with their neighbors, but they perhaps also had a lot less opportunity to become aware of what was going on outside their bubbles.
  - cnity 5y ago
    I don't mean this personally, but I'd like to dive into this take. It is common these days for people to interpret the self-management people perform as a type of filtering (or "hiding" in your words). I find the cynicism in this viewpoint to be distasteful, when equally one could interpret the same behavior much more favorably. When someone, for example, tidies their apartment because they anticipate a guest, they are engaging in exactly the same thing. But this is widely considered a good thing. The connections one anticipates have caused one to "brush up". The same thing is true for outspoken opinions. We aren't just "real" creatures with disgusting opinions walking around wearing "fake" masks to hide them. The treatment of a person is different depending on which lens you opt for. On the one hand, you view society as a collection of people who ought to be unmasked, for their true identity to be uncovered and scorned appropriately. On the other, you view society as a collection of people with a fluid set of opinions that are molded by the company they are with. The unspoken idea becomes the forgotten, abandoned idea.
    - kenjackson 5y ago
      There's a huge difference between tidying an apartment and hiding your real opinion, especially when your real opinion fundamentally runs in opposition to my morals. This is more like having kidnapped people in your house and hiding them so when someone comes over for dinner, no one can see them. I'm not morally opposed to a cluttered counter.
      - kritiko 5y ago
        I think there's some nuance here. I might make sure that any prescription drugs or other sensitive items out of sight for guests even if I'm not ashamed of talking about this with some people... But I think avoiding political conversations is best described by what I've seen called "social cooling" - I don't really care about litigating morality with family at Thanksgiving. We may have fundamental differences in our interpretation of reality and human behavior, but that doesn't make one of us an actual criminal.
        MandieD 5y ago
- andrew_ 5y ago
  A few years back I met a woman at a bar, flirted, got a number, and went on a date. About 30 minutes into the date she brought up politics, and was on the opposite side of the spectrum from myself. That didn't change that I thought she was funny and was interested enough to flirt and set up a date. We just mutually agreed that we had no business dating, had a laugh, and finished out the night together with the understanding that we could have a good time despite the differences that wouldn't allow for dating. Online media attempt to amplify these differences to the point of rage because there's money it in.
FriedrichN 5y ago
Every time I make the mistake of looking at Twitter I am reminded of how much of an absolute cesspool it is. Only the loudest, rudest, dumbest, most extreme opinions seem to get through. Social media only highlights the extremes of the spectrum whatever the subject.
- shreyshnaccount 5y ago
  yes! this! it's a giant problem- social media becomes a collection of only the extremes, leaving out the middle ground where most ppl actually fall, in for the clicks :(
- shoto_io 5y ago
  I hate twitter. Every time I get on I feel much worse than before. So much hate and conflict... > Only the loudest, rudest, dumbest, most extreme opinions I'd add the voice of rich people to this list.
  - dorfsmay 5y ago
    If you restrict to view tweets from people you follow only, twitter can be interesting. If somebody you don't follow tweets something really inspiring then you'll see it either through a retweet or on Reddit. To customize twitter: https://twitter.com/dorfsmay/status/1428712897136533510 https://twitter.com/dorfsmay/status/1428712897136533510
    - ufo 5y ago
      Is there an easy way to stop twitter from showing "recommended" tweets from people you don't follow? I find that those are invariably sarcastic or rage-inducing.
      - dorfsmay 5y ago
        The only way I have found is to follow my customization above and use TweetDeck. I heard people using lists, but I have not explored.
snarf21 5y ago
I think it is just a question of civility. People will post pure hate online, even in response to others. 99.9% of the time the same people would never say the same thing to that person's face, whether for fear of reprisal or social pressure. They would say all those things to the friend or spouse later but the big difference is diffusion. Their anger and vitriol has time to dissipate and they calm down. Hateful Media is an ever increasing ratchet of outrage.
LanceH 5y ago
My opinion of the problem is one specific type of communication. The guilty parties include both the left and right politically, as well as anyone else with an axe to grind about something. These people communicate not like they are having a discussion with someone else. They don't just post a link and ask, "can you believe what happened here?" Instead they post the link and tell you what you should think about it. It isn't a conversation. It isn't even just half the conversation. They are lecturing. It's a behavior that wouldn't happen in person, and if it didn't that person would just be avoided. When I identified this style of post and blocked these people, the only thing really left that annoys is the clickbait ads. In short, treat the people on the other side of your messages like friends you are speaking to, not as an audience you are educating on the proper way of doing thinking.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  I'd say it's worse than that: people aren't lecturing to their interlocutor. They're lecturing or signalling to the wider audience. This, IMO, has been the bane of online forums of all kind. People talk like they're pundits on a discussion panel - they make points for the people watching, not for each other.
  - andrew_ 5y ago
    social media is no longer sharing among peers. it's gaming for attention and numbers.
throwaway769371 5y ago
> It turns out, people can get along in real life, not because we’re exposed to many different ideas and ways of life, but in spite of this fact. My family's pretty conservative. In 2018, my brother's best friend from high school ran for political office as a democrat and won. Every Christmas, my mom bakes cookies and takes them to family friends. She had to look past all the headlines, politics, political disagreements, and that guy is everything FOX News told her to hate, to remember she likes the guy and his family. It's hard enough to look past disagreements normally; it's even harder when your people are telling you that should you hate this guy you've known for 20 years. On one hand, I'm very encouraged that, when faced with this choice, people can cut through the divisions and look at the person. On the other hand, this doesn't scale, and he's still dead to my dad.
- twofornone 5y ago
  It really doesn't help when the institutionally dominant side insists that the only way someone could possibly become conservative/republican/right leaning is by falling victim to Fox news propaganda. There's far more nuance to the discussions regarding, say, border security, entitlement spending, immigration reform, etc beyond accusations of racism and xenophobia. It's quite possible for two people to look at the same set of data and come to different conclusions because of differing value systems, priorities, risk tolerance, etc. Maybe part of the problem is this insistence that our platforms are justified in censoring opinions because of this false belief that if two people differ in political opinion, one side must be mislead by "misinformation".
  - andrew_ 5y ago
    check the username of the parent comment. safe to assume that was meant to enflame.
  - gmac 5y ago
    Not-an-American here. Seems to me there's arguably an important difference between (a) being conservative/right leaning and (b) being Republican. People can, of course, legitimately be found in all sorts of positions on the liberal/left leaning <—> conservative/right leaning spectrum (Jonathan Haidt has some interesting things to say on this [1]). But from this side of the Atlantic it looks rather as if Trump's Republican party strongly prioritises getting and keeping power over basic democratic principles [2]. I find that very worrying, and I also find I can only really give two explanations for people supporting it: either "they're bad people" or "they're misinformed". I prefer to think that in most cases it's the latter. [1] e.g. https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_the_moral_roots_of_liberals_and_conservatives/transcript?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_the_moral_roots_of_... [2] e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/06/republican-party-donald-trump-american-democracy-elections https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/06/republ...
sadfev 5y ago
I am not sure if it’s a good thing that humans collaborate with awful humans. It’s a great service of Social media which exposes how awful humans are. How hateful, vengeful and violent seemingly normal people can be. I think it’s a good thing that humans have fractured and awful people are separated from non awful people. There is only harm towards nature and humans (mostly non awful/non aggressive humans) when there is lots of human collaboration. Instead of de-carbonization, we need a technological and political decoupling of human beings. That’s the only hope for humanity and all the innocent flora and fauna of earth. De-globalization is too far too late. We are on the no point of return from absolute and rapid annihilation of nature and humanity.
- crocodiletears 5y ago
  All these awful people sound dangerous What do we do with them once we've successfully identified and separated ourselves from them?
- merpnderp 5y ago
  Keep in mind that 99.9% of human history is the awful people enslaving everyone else (who would then prove unworthy when they enslaved everyone when they came to power). Maybe our very short history of treating people equally, offering grace to those who fall short, and working towards consensus, is worth salvaging. The old days of tribalism were more horrific than we can imagine.

sumthinprofound 5y ago

you can learn a lot about a person by sitting down and having a meal with them and miraculously alot of the online vitrol dissipates when you have a chance to see them as a full person.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> alot of the online vitrol dissipates when you have a chance to see them as a full person But remove the physical proximity and the vitriol often re-animates.
hpoe 5y ago
Interestingly enough that is what Daryl Davis decided to do to start fighting racism, got over a dozen members, including a grand wizard, to leave the Klan. I'd recommend watching his TedTalk it really helped me understand how to better work with others, and how to bring about understanding. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORp3q1Oaezw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORp3q1Oaezw
MattGaiser 5y ago
Or are they just hiding it because social norms require that they do? As we have pretty strong social expectations for how people behave at meals.
- standardUser 5y ago
  We have very strong social expectations when interacting with mixed company in any in-person setting. And zero social expectations when interacting online, where anything up to and including death threats seems acceptable to many. Cars are an interesting in-between, where we're just barely removed from being in-person and as a result we tend to act far more rudely and dangerously than we would to someone's face.
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  It's a feedback loop. Put someone in an environment where social norms favor civility and respect, and they will generally become more civil and respectful over time. Put them in an environment where social norms favor tribalism and vitriol, and they will tend to become more tribal and vitriolic over time. That said, I think we should be cautious about nostalgia for how things worked before the Internet. 30 years ago, people in socioeconomically homogenous communities might have been adept at being civil to and empathizing with their neighbors, but they perhaps also had a lot less opportunity to become aware of what was going on outside their bubbles.
- cnity 5y ago
  I don't mean this personally, but I'd like to dive into this take. It is common these days for people to interpret the self-management people perform as a type of filtering (or "hiding" in your words). I find the cynicism in this viewpoint to be distasteful, when equally one could interpret the same behavior much more favorably. When someone, for example, tidies their apartment because they anticipate a guest, they are engaging in exactly the same thing. But this is widely considered a good thing. The connections one anticipates have caused one to "brush up". The same thing is true for outspoken opinions. We aren't just "real" creatures with disgusting opinions walking around wearing "fake" masks to hide them. The treatment of a person is different depending on which lens you opt for. On the one hand, you view society as a collection of people who ought to be unmasked, for their true identity to be uncovered and scorned appropriately. On the other, you view society as a collection of people with a fluid set of opinions that are molded by the company they are with. The unspoken idea becomes the forgotten, abandoned idea.
  - kenjackson 5y ago
    There's a huge difference between tidying an apartment and hiding your real opinion, especially when your real opinion fundamentally runs in opposition to my morals. This is more like having kidnapped people in your house and hiding them so when someone comes over for dinner, no one can see them. I'm not morally opposed to a cluttered counter.
    - kritiko 5y ago
      I think there's some nuance here. I might make sure that any prescription drugs or other sensitive items out of sight for guests even if I'm not ashamed of talking about this with some people... But I think avoiding political conversations is best described by what I've seen called "social cooling" - I don't really care about litigating morality with family at Thanksgiving. We may have fundamental differences in our interpretation of reality and human behavior, but that doesn't make one of us an actual criminal.
      - MandieD 5y ago
andrew_ 5y ago
A few years back I met a woman at a bar, flirted, got a number, and went on a date. About 30 minutes into the date she brought up politics, and was on the opposite side of the spectrum from myself. That didn't change that I thought she was funny and was interested enough to flirt and set up a date. We just mutually agreed that we had no business dating, had a laugh, and finished out the night together with the understanding that we could have a good time despite the differences that wouldn't allow for dating. Online media attempt to amplify these differences to the point of rage because there's money it in.

FriedrichN 5y ago

Every time I make the mistake of looking at Twitter I am reminded of how much of an absolute cesspool it is. Only the loudest, rudest, dumbest, most extreme opinions seem to get through. Social media only highlights the extremes of the spectrum whatever the subject.

shreyshnaccount 5y ago
yes! this! it's a giant problem- social media becomes a collection of only the extremes, leaving out the middle ground where most ppl actually fall, in for the clicks :(
shoto_io 5y ago
I hate twitter. Every time I get on I feel much worse than before. So much hate and conflict... > Only the loudest, rudest, dumbest, most extreme opinions I'd add the voice of rich people to this list.
- dorfsmay 5y ago
  If you restrict to view tweets from people you follow only, twitter can be interesting. If somebody you don't follow tweets something really inspiring then you'll see it either through a retweet or on Reddit. To customize twitter: https://twitter.com/dorfsmay/status/1428712897136533510 https://twitter.com/dorfsmay/status/1428712897136533510
  - ufo 5y ago
    Is there an easy way to stop twitter from showing "recommended" tweets from people you don't follow? I find that those are invariably sarcastic or rage-inducing.
    - dorfsmay 5y ago
      The only way I have found is to follow my customization above and use TweetDeck. I heard people using lists, but I have not explored.

snarf21 5y ago

I think it is just a question of civility. People will post pure hate online, even in response to others. 99.9% of the time the same people would never say the same thing to that person's face, whether for fear of reprisal or social pressure. They would say all those things to the friend or spouse later but the big difference is diffusion. Their anger and vitriol has time to dissipate and they calm down. Hateful Media is an ever increasing ratchet of outrage.

LanceH 5y ago

My opinion of the problem is one specific type of communication. The guilty parties include both the left and right politically, as well as anyone else with an axe to grind about something. These people communicate not like they are having a discussion with someone else. They don't just post a link and ask, "can you believe what happened here?" Instead they post the link and tell you what you should think about it. It isn't a conversation. It isn't even just half the conversation. They are lecturing. It's a behavior that wouldn't happen in person, and if it didn't that person would just be avoided. When I identified this style of post and blocked these people, the only thing really left that annoys is the clickbait ads. In short, treat the people on the other side of your messages like friends you are speaking to, not as an audience you are educating on the proper way of doing thinking.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
I'd say it's worse than that: people aren't lecturing to their interlocutor. They're lecturing or signalling to the wider audience. This, IMO, has been the bane of online forums of all kind. People talk like they're pundits on a discussion panel - they make points for the people watching, not for each other.
- andrew_ 5y ago
  social media is no longer sharing among peers. it's gaming for attention and numbers.

throwaway769371 5y ago

> It turns out, people can get along in real life, not because we’re exposed to many different ideas and ways of life, but in spite of this fact. My family's pretty conservative. In 2018, my brother's best friend from high school ran for political office as a democrat and won. Every Christmas, my mom bakes cookies and takes them to family friends. She had to look past all the headlines, politics, political disagreements, and that guy is everything FOX News told her to hate, to remember she likes the guy and his family. It's hard enough to look past disagreements normally; it's even harder when your people are telling you that should you hate this guy you've known for 20 years. On one hand, I'm very encouraged that, when faced with this choice, people can cut through the divisions and look at the person. On the other hand, this doesn't scale, and he's still dead to my dad.

twofornone 5y ago
It really doesn't help when the institutionally dominant side insists that the only way someone could possibly become conservative/republican/right leaning is by falling victim to Fox news propaganda. There's far more nuance to the discussions regarding, say, border security, entitlement spending, immigration reform, etc beyond accusations of racism and xenophobia. It's quite possible for two people to look at the same set of data and come to different conclusions because of differing value systems, priorities, risk tolerance, etc. Maybe part of the problem is this insistence that our platforms are justified in censoring opinions because of this false belief that if two people differ in political opinion, one side must be mislead by "misinformation".
- andrew_ 5y ago
  check the username of the parent comment. safe to assume that was meant to enflame.
- gmac 5y ago
  Not-an-American here. Seems to me there's arguably an important difference between (a) being conservative/right leaning and (b) being Republican. People can, of course, legitimately be found in all sorts of positions on the liberal/left leaning <—> conservative/right leaning spectrum (Jonathan Haidt has some interesting things to say on this [1]). But from this side of the Atlantic it looks rather as if Trump's Republican party strongly prioritises getting and keeping power over basic democratic principles [2]. I find that very worrying, and I also find I can only really give two explanations for people supporting it: either "they're bad people" or "they're misinformed". I prefer to think that in most cases it's the latter. [1] e.g. https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_the_moral_roots_of_liberals_and_conservatives/transcript?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_the_moral_roots_of_... [2] e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/06/republican-party-donald-trump-american-democracy-elections https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/06/republ...

sadfev 5y ago

I am not sure if it’s a good thing that humans collaborate with awful humans. It’s a great service of Social media which exposes how awful humans are. How hateful, vengeful and violent seemingly normal people can be. I think it’s a good thing that humans have fractured and awful people are separated from non awful people. There is only harm towards nature and humans (mostly non awful/non aggressive humans) when there is lots of human collaboration. Instead of de-carbonization, we need a technological and political decoupling of human beings. That’s the only hope for humanity and all the innocent flora and fauna of earth. De-globalization is too far too late. We are on the no point of return from absolute and rapid annihilation of nature and humanity.

crocodiletears 5y ago
All these awful people sound dangerous What do we do with them once we've successfully identified and separated ourselves from them?
merpnderp 5y ago
Keep in mind that 99.9% of human history is the awful people enslaving everyone else (who would then prove unworthy when they enslaved everyone when they came to power). Maybe our very short history of treating people equally, offering grace to those who fall short, and working towards consensus, is worth salvaging. The old days of tribalism were more horrific than we can imagine.