5 ms·

History is written by not the winner, but those who accuire power.

macrolime 3y ago
Or by those who make the headlines that get the most clicks. Often stories are exaggerated or twisted, not for any particular side, but for attention and clicks.
77pt77 3y ago
Potato, potato.
visarga 3y ago
History is written by those who know how to write. For a long time they were a small minority. Even poor monks could leave manuscripts. Not necessarily the "winners".
- nicbou 3y ago
  Although certain writing has a greater chance of being considered important, and of surviving through time.
- echelon 3y ago
  Is this why "defeatist" narratives feel so much more prevalent lately? Those at the bottom are sharing their pain and suffering more widely on social media? Not that their experiences aren't valid, but that there is an overwhelming feeling that "America sucks and is failing" when this isn't a true assessment. Not for the middle class and above, and especially not relative to the rest of the world on average. Social media lumps all voices in together and tends to amplify strong feelings. But if you zoomed out, you'd see a very different picture of what constitutes this collective voice.
  - mxkopy 3y ago
    ...is your solution to have those sharing their pain and suffering made to stop? I seriously don't understand your point, nor the level of mental gymnastics it takes to see a trend of independently dissatisfied people and say - oh, my neighborhood is doing fine, you're just being defeatist. I'd wager that if you "zoom out" what you see is a dangerously reckless societal experiment for some, and a life of modern amenities for others. Both can be true at the same time.
    - echelon 3y ago
      Good news is seldom shared or amplified. It's also seldom relevant, but I'd argue the same is true of the negativity. Online content is overwhelmingly negative. Bad things happen, but in reality the proportionality is much smaller than you encounter online. But negativity is what gets amplified, since that drives engagement. The smallest grievances become threads that take up disproportional space in the attention feed and crowd out the rest. I guess I'm wondering if this isn't just the algorithm, but also an amplification of certain subpopulations over others. The ones that tend to be angry. > ...is your solution to have those sharing their pain and suffering made to stop? I want a mute button. Or a threshold that caps it past a certain point. Or, if this is just some people contributing to most of the problem, maybe just a way to opt out of their noisiest signals. People can say all they want, but it doesn't mean they deserve a place in my limited attention and emotional energy feed. Emotion is contagious. I want my media use to drop to only the most salient bits. And I want it to be more positive.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - mxkopy 3y ago
        Nobody is forcing you to use social media. If you don't want to see something you don't have to. On the flip side you should consider that some people like the affirmation and validity they get out of hearing stories similar to their own. People have their own needs that are met by social media. If yours aren't, maybe consider that you aren't the target audience?
        echelon 3y ago
        > Nobody is forcing you to use social media. If you don't want to see something you don't have to. > People have their own needs that are met by social media. If yours aren't, maybe consider that you aren't the target audience? The internet isn't for me? That's interesting. I was here first and then the platforms came and ripped apart our old methods of high-signal communication. RSS, IRC, and forums are ghost towns or dead. Replaced with anger amplification and marketing money printers. My response to this is that we can perhaps begin filtering out these voices and negative remarks with AI and NLP. That could make social media broadly useful again, even if the platform owners themselves would be opposed.
  - waboremo 3y ago
    There are a couple things happening here: 1) We benefit from social media lumping voices together because it's easier to argue against and internally reason with. They aren't individuals with individual experiences, they're the unwashed entitled masses crying on social media spreading their lies. See how easy that was? We do this a lot for everything we don't agree with. 2) Spend any time anywhere and it's easy to start seeing "narratives". Online bubbles are real: most people do not comment on any given platform. Therefore, commenters are already a bubble in themselves. So we do what humans do and start seeking patterns, and then extract these patterns into narratives. Note: this does not mean that there aren't groups of people who do share whatever "narrative" idea, but the reality is their views on it tend to be more nuanced than the narrative we've imagined in our minds. For example, 'America sucks and is failing' could be a common vague narrative people share, but you would get so many varied explanations that it stops existing as such a simple narrative until you reduce it again into a vague narrative. 3) Social media has its pros and cons, but one of its neutrals is it forces people from entirely different groups to interact with each other. This winds up becoming world shattering a lot of the times, because as humans we tend to create these internal stories that justifies our world views. We seek out things that justify these internal stories. We seek out people who reflect what we want, and this feeds into #2 and makes it harder to break out of. So, if you are optimistic you'll seek others who are also optimistic, and when social media does its recommendation/random thing, you'll encounter people who do not share this view and then it leads right back into #1 turning this into tribes. A beautiful self powering triangle if you will.
- ramblenode 3y ago
  Most records don't survive. Over any considerable timespan, the ones that do have been copied and rewritten dozens or hundreds of times (with the exception of a few archeological gems). Every generation is curating the past based on what they think is important.

Or by those who make the headlines that get the most clicks. Often stories are exaggerated or twisted, not for any particular side, but for attention and clicks.

77pt77 3y ago

Potato, potato.

visarga 3y ago

History is written by those who know how to write. For a long time they were a small minority. Even poor monks could leave manuscripts. Not necessarily the "winners".

nicbou 3y ago
Although certain writing has a greater chance of being considered important, and of surviving through time.
echelon 3y ago
Is this why "defeatist" narratives feel so much more prevalent lately? Those at the bottom are sharing their pain and suffering more widely on social media? Not that their experiences aren't valid, but that there is an overwhelming feeling that "America sucks and is failing" when this isn't a true assessment. Not for the middle class and above, and especially not relative to the rest of the world on average. Social media lumps all voices in together and tends to amplify strong feelings. But if you zoomed out, you'd see a very different picture of what constitutes this collective voice.
- mxkopy 3y ago
  ...is your solution to have those sharing their pain and suffering made to stop? I seriously don't understand your point, nor the level of mental gymnastics it takes to see a trend of independently dissatisfied people and say - oh, my neighborhood is doing fine, you're just being defeatist. I'd wager that if you "zoom out" what you see is a dangerously reckless societal experiment for some, and a life of modern amenities for others. Both can be true at the same time.
  - echelon 3y ago
    Good news is seldom shared or amplified. It's also seldom relevant, but I'd argue the same is true of the negativity. Online content is overwhelmingly negative. Bad things happen, but in reality the proportionality is much smaller than you encounter online. But negativity is what gets amplified, since that drives engagement. The smallest grievances become threads that take up disproportional space in the attention feed and crowd out the rest. I guess I'm wondering if this isn't just the algorithm, but also an amplification of certain subpopulations over others. The ones that tend to be angry. > ...is your solution to have those sharing their pain and suffering made to stop? I want a mute button. Or a threshold that caps it past a certain point. Or, if this is just some people contributing to most of the problem, maybe just a way to opt out of their noisiest signals. People can say all they want, but it doesn't mean they deserve a place in my limited attention and emotional energy feed. Emotion is contagious. I want my media use to drop to only the most salient bits. And I want it to be more positive.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - mxkopy 3y ago
      Nobody is forcing you to use social media. If you don't want to see something you don't have to. On the flip side you should consider that some people like the affirmation and validity they get out of hearing stories similar to their own. People have their own needs that are met by social media. If yours aren't, maybe consider that you aren't the target audience?
      - echelon 3y ago
        > Nobody is forcing you to use social media. If you don't want to see something you don't have to. > People have their own needs that are met by social media. If yours aren't, maybe consider that you aren't the target audience? The internet isn't for me? That's interesting. I was here first and then the platforms came and ripped apart our old methods of high-signal communication. RSS, IRC, and forums are ghost towns or dead. Replaced with anger amplification and marketing money printers. My response to this is that we can perhaps begin filtering out these voices and negative remarks with AI and NLP. That could make social media broadly useful again, even if the platform owners themselves would be opposed.
- waboremo 3y ago
  There are a couple things happening here: 1) We benefit from social media lumping voices together because it's easier to argue against and internally reason with. They aren't individuals with individual experiences, they're the unwashed entitled masses crying on social media spreading their lies. See how easy that was? We do this a lot for everything we don't agree with. 2) Spend any time anywhere and it's easy to start seeing "narratives". Online bubbles are real: most people do not comment on any given platform. Therefore, commenters are already a bubble in themselves. So we do what humans do and start seeking patterns, and then extract these patterns into narratives. Note: this does not mean that there aren't groups of people who do share whatever "narrative" idea, but the reality is their views on it tend to be more nuanced than the narrative we've imagined in our minds. For example, 'America sucks and is failing' could be a common vague narrative people share, but you would get so many varied explanations that it stops existing as such a simple narrative until you reduce it again into a vague narrative. 3) Social media has its pros and cons, but one of its neutrals is it forces people from entirely different groups to interact with each other. This winds up becoming world shattering a lot of the times, because as humans we tend to create these internal stories that justifies our world views. We seek out things that justify these internal stories. We seek out people who reflect what we want, and this feeds into #2 and makes it harder to break out of. So, if you are optimistic you'll seek others who are also optimistic, and when social media does its recommendation/random thing, you'll encounter people who do not share this view and then it leads right back into #1 turning this into tribes. A beautiful self powering triangle if you will.
ramblenode 3y ago
Most records don't survive. Over any considerable timespan, the ones that do have been copied and rewritten dozens or hundreds of times (with the exception of a few archeological gems). Every generation is curating the past based on what they think is important.