7 ms·

There are actually a huge chunk of the population that just isn't very online, and genuinely don't know these terms. (Even many young people.) It was a real eye

by naillo 4y ago

There are actually a huge chunk of the population that just isn't very online, and genuinely don't know these terms. (Even many young people.) It was a real eye opener to meet some 'terminally offline' people and realize you can actually just escape and things are fine without being here constantly.

thrown_22 4y ago
I can be online constantly and escape whatever the flavour of the month is. The only time it bites me in the ass is when I get banned for not being up to date on whatever everyone good and decent has to agree with to be good and decent.
- athorax 4y ago
  If you are getting banned regularly from online communities you might want to reconsider why that is happening
  - tomc1985 4y ago
    Yeah, online communities reflexively "other" anyone who does not agree with their increasingly robust (aka fascist) political dogma, given that that sort of thing seems to be inescapably creeping into everything How many times have I walked by a table in a cafe to overhear someone complaining that it's impossible to be taken seriously unless you adopt extremeist left or right schools of thought? How many times have I witnessed adherents dismissing moderates or centrists? Accusing them of helping the "enemy"? What about people who think for themselves and have concluded something out of the mainstream? Throwing in some other unrelated political cause and accusing anyone who doesn't agree to be wrong? It's disgusting, and those communities should be ashamed of themselves I'm assuming, of course, that GP is a decent person and independent thinker, as those types tend to get railroaded in this glorious new dawn of political groupthink
    - wpietri 4y ago
      > glorious new dawn of political groupthink [citation needed] I don't see any reason to think that "groupthink", aka societal or subcultural values and beliefs, is at a notably higher level than much of history. In the west, look at the long dominance of the Catholic Church. Even after the rise of the Protestants, it was often more a set of competing orthodoxies, such that large groups were eager to cross oceans to get away from oppression. And when those people got to the US, quite a lot of them were eager to become the oppressors. Looks at the predominance of blue laws across the US. Look at who got tarred and feathered. Who got lynched. Who dealt with segregation and Jim Crow. Look at the Red Scare, the socially narrow dominance of mass media, or how eager and how violent the forces of conformity were in the 1950s. I think today people are generally freer that at any point. But two big things have changed. One, the rise of the internet means the one-way, conformist channels of mass media have given way to everybody talking to everybody. And two, cultural power is no longer concentrated in a narrow slice of society, such that people previously unheard are now having some things to say. I get why some people see that as "political groupthink". When you're in a dominant group, you're not used to getting challenged. But personally, I find it bracing, causing me to rethink a lot of things I took as givens because that's what the people around me believed. The death of old paradigms is always uncomfortable, but personally I'd much rather live in this era of ferment than in one where everybody believes the same comfortable old certainties.
      - tomc1985 4y ago
        The past as you see it here doesn't exist, by my own perception. There were a lot more extremeist groups in the shadows, but that contained them and isolated those that sought to join them. With so much of this extremeism out in the open, people are now seeing social reinforcement where before they would have seen chastisement, and I think this is a bad thing. We were much better as a country as the great melting pot, than we are now as the salad bowl. I think its wonderful that so many oppressed groups are given opportunities at the podium, but the problem is that many of these oppressed groups are oppressed for good reason (like white supremacists), and there needs to be some sort of filter that keeps them sidelined. Unfortunately I don't see how to achieve that without some sort of orthodoxy, and right now the people that are trying to write that are fucking crazy.
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - yaddaor 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - thrown_22 4y ago
jimkleiber 4y ago
Makes me think it might be similar to the "I don't watch TV" or "movies" or "sports" crowds. Just any pervasive cultural activity in which some don't participate but still carry on. I remember before I deleted my FB account (I've since created a new one), my buddy said to me that I'd be ok, just that I might be strongly disconnected from culture—not necessarily to tell me to not do it, but to be aware of the potential ramifications.
- keyle 4y ago
  Agreed partially. You have to question what "culture" are you missing on. I'm still on Facebook and let me tell you, you're not missing much in the culture department.
  - agileAlligator 4y ago
    > I'm still on Facebook and let me tell you, you're not missing much in the culture department. guy above you might have deleted his fb account in the early 2000s. right now, the culture isn't at fb, it's at places like reddit and 4chan.
    - rnd0 4y ago
      > right now, the culture isn't at fb, it's at places like reddit and 4chan The fact that people in 2022 describe 4chan as having any kind of effect on our culture should send shivers down our collective spines. /pol/ is 4chan, 4chan is /pol/
      - agileAlligator 4y ago
        > The fact that people in 2022 describe 4chan as having any kind of effect on our culture should send shivers down our collective spines. 4chan has always been the undercurrent of digital culture. It's just way closer to the surface now. And contrary to popular belief, the entirety of 4chan isn't some den of degenerates and racists. People end up focusing on /b/ and /pol/, when the entire reason they were created was to quarantine that sort of discussion from infecting the rest of the boards. /fit/, /sci/, /mu/ etc are about as toxic as any subreddit.

by naillo 4y ago

thrown_22 4y ago

I can be online constantly and escape whatever the flavour of the month is. The only time it bites me in the ass is when I get banned for not being up to date on whatever everyone good and decent has to agree with to be good and decent.

athorax 4y ago
If you are getting banned regularly from online communities you might want to reconsider why that is happening
- tomc1985 4y ago
  Yeah, online communities reflexively "other" anyone who does not agree with their increasingly robust (aka fascist) political dogma, given that that sort of thing seems to be inescapably creeping into everything How many times have I walked by a table in a cafe to overhear someone complaining that it's impossible to be taken seriously unless you adopt extremeist left or right schools of thought? How many times have I witnessed adherents dismissing moderates or centrists? Accusing them of helping the "enemy"? What about people who think for themselves and have concluded something out of the mainstream? Throwing in some other unrelated political cause and accusing anyone who doesn't agree to be wrong? It's disgusting, and those communities should be ashamed of themselves I'm assuming, of course, that GP is a decent person and independent thinker, as those types tend to get railroaded in this glorious new dawn of political groupthink
  - wpietri 4y ago
    > glorious new dawn of political groupthink [citation needed] I don't see any reason to think that "groupthink", aka societal or subcultural values and beliefs, is at a notably higher level than much of history. In the west, look at the long dominance of the Catholic Church. Even after the rise of the Protestants, it was often more a set of competing orthodoxies, such that large groups were eager to cross oceans to get away from oppression. And when those people got to the US, quite a lot of them were eager to become the oppressors. Looks at the predominance of blue laws across the US. Look at who got tarred and feathered. Who got lynched. Who dealt with segregation and Jim Crow. Look at the Red Scare, the socially narrow dominance of mass media, or how eager and how violent the forces of conformity were in the 1950s. I think today people are generally freer that at any point. But two big things have changed. One, the rise of the internet means the one-way, conformist channels of mass media have given way to everybody talking to everybody. And two, cultural power is no longer concentrated in a narrow slice of society, such that people previously unheard are now having some things to say. I get why some people see that as "political groupthink". When you're in a dominant group, you're not used to getting challenged. But personally, I find it bracing, causing me to rethink a lot of things I took as givens because that's what the people around me believed. The death of old paradigms is always uncomfortable, but personally I'd much rather live in this era of ferment than in one where everybody believes the same comfortable old certainties.
    - tomc1985 4y ago
      The past as you see it here doesn't exist, by my own perception. There were a lot more extremeist groups in the shadows, but that contained them and isolated those that sought to join them. With so much of this extremeism out in the open, people are now seeing social reinforcement where before they would have seen chastisement, and I think this is a bad thing. We were much better as a country as the great melting pot, than we are now as the salad bowl. I think its wonderful that so many oppressed groups are given opportunities at the podium, but the problem is that many of these oppressed groups are oppressed for good reason (like white supremacists), and there needs to be some sort of filter that keeps them sidelined. Unfortunately I don't see how to achieve that without some sort of orthodoxy, and right now the people that are trying to write that are fucking crazy.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - yaddaor 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - thrown_22 4y ago

jimkleiber 4y ago

Makes me think it might be similar to the "I don't watch TV" or "movies" or "sports" crowds. Just any pervasive cultural activity in which some don't participate but still carry on. I remember before I deleted my FB account (I've since created a new one), my buddy said to me that I'd be ok, just that I might be strongly disconnected from culture—not necessarily to tell me to not do it, but to be aware of the potential ramifications.

keyle 4y ago
Agreed partially. You have to question what "culture" are you missing on. I'm still on Facebook and let me tell you, you're not missing much in the culture department.
- agileAlligator 4y ago
  > I'm still on Facebook and let me tell you, you're not missing much in the culture department. guy above you might have deleted his fb account in the early 2000s. right now, the culture isn't at fb, it's at places like reddit and 4chan.
  - rnd0 4y ago
    > right now, the culture isn't at fb, it's at places like reddit and 4chan The fact that people in 2022 describe 4chan as having any kind of effect on our culture should send shivers down our collective spines. /pol/ is 4chan, 4chan is /pol/
    - agileAlligator 4y ago
      > The fact that people in 2022 describe 4chan as having any kind of effect on our culture should send shivers down our collective spines. 4chan has always been the undercurrent of digital culture. It's just way closer to the surface now. And contrary to popular belief, the entirety of 4chan isn't some den of degenerates and racists. People end up focusing on /b/ and /pol/, when the entire reason they were created was to quarantine that sort of discussion from infecting the rest of the boards. /fit/, /sci/, /mu/ etc are about as toxic as any subreddit.