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I for one, miss the old, grimey internet. Reddit is/was so good because of the possibility that you might find something disturbing while using it. Just about e

I for one, miss the old, grimey internet. Reddit is/was so good because of the possibility that you might find something disturbing while using it. Just about everyone is represented on there. YouTube was also much better when the sketchiness was easier to accidentally run into.

swah 3y ago
It happens with Youtube sometimes, but you have to search for the exact name of the creator you heard somewhere else. Or you find very "pure creators" when you search how to fix your toilet.
- hnick 3y ago
  Watching YouTubers come up with weird euphemisms to avoid saying "COVID" (to avoid the risk of automatic demonetisation) drove home how much self censorship there must be around content creation in general. I've also seen a few joke about whether they're allowed to swear or not yet since apparently the algorithm cares if they swear in the first 15 seconds, lest an easily damaged listener finds them by mistake.
  - derefr 3y ago
    Apparently you can't monetize a YouTube video that says the word "kill", even in the context of educational videos about wildlife ecology. So you get serious educational content creators saying that a bird "un-alives" a fish.
    - userbinator 3y ago
      If only Orwell was still alive today.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - jrmg 3y ago
      This sounds like an urban legend.
      - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
        I know true crime youtubers tend to avoid the word like a plague, so take that for what you will.
      - bitwize 3y ago
        I've seen it myself. Casual Geographic does this a lot: https://m.youtube.com/@mndiaye_97 https://m.youtube.com/@mndiaye_97 The thing is, the phrase has an origin in a parody of censorship. In one episode of Ultimate Spider-Man, Spider-Man teams up with Deadpool. Deadpool, being fourth-wall-savvy and well aware that he is in an animated kids' show, talks rather frankly about his plans to "un-alive" the criminal they are pursuing. To which Spider-Man responds "Un-alive... you mean KILL him?!" Mr. Pool was applying standards and practices to his own speech that were common on 80s and 90s animated programs, in which characters obviously wielding rifles would assiduously avoid talking about killing or death. And now people are using his neologism to avoid being punished on a video platform ostensibly for adults primarily.
  - RobotToaster 3y ago
    Apparently you can't mention silencers at all? which even as a non American seems weird.
    - flagrant_taco 3y ago
      Assuming you're talking about gun silencers/suppressors, the US has a very confusing history with them in general. The way in which they made it into Congress's list of heavily regulated weapons is an interesting story of inept politicians at work. I've also never understood why suppressors would be seen as anything other than a good thing, if we wanted to regulate them it'd make more sense to require them for carry guns rather than make them hard to get. Shooting an unsuppressed handgun without hearing protection is really bad for your hearing, and carrying a surpressed pistols also much trickier if we're concerned with how many guns are legally carried in public.
      - Nasrudith 3y ago
        You know the abundance of Hollywood bullshit on AI going to kill us all? The same thing happened long ago with silencers as they forget about hearing damage from firearms because it isn't seen in movies but worry about "the dangers" of firearms being suppressed to non-hearing damaging levels by equating it with the classic "mouse-fart" level of volume. Hollywood has a lot to answer for in its damage to epistemology.
        flagrant_taco 3y ago
        As far as I understand it these restrictions on suppressors predate any meaningful impact of Hollywood action films. Suppressors were included in restrictions from the prohibition era largely targeting the fear of the use of automatic weapons by organized crime (the mob). Feds pictured everyone in the mafia carrying military-grade Thompsons (Tommy guns) despite the fact that they were horribly expensive, produced in small quantities, and didn't sell well. There are actually congressional record of the hearings for the weapons law that make clear no justification was given for including suppressors, it just wasn't pressed by anyone involved.
bobsmooth 3y ago
Checkout rdrama.net
Loocid 3y ago
>Reddit is/was so good because of the possibility that you might find something disturbing while using it. Why do you consider that good? There are plenty of places on the internet where you can find disturbing content, why does it have to something you can just stumble upon?
- sli 3y ago
  Because it's a relatively safe level of risk compared to, say, 4chan's /b/. People love to dabble in risk in safe ways. I'd argue that's what many genres of fiction are explicitly for, e.g. horror, violent games, etc.
  - Loocid 3y ago
    But it's only that way because Reddit placed limits which goes against the "let the internet be grimy" hot-take. Back in the day there were subreddits that would rival the depravity of /b/.
    - watwut 3y ago
      They never stayed contained I their own subs. They just needed to go out of their way to subs of their perceived enemies.
  - Tao3300 3y ago
    Yeah, we need something where the risk level is a little lower than the "it's a crime if I don't call the FBI and tell them I saw this" level.
- andsoitis 3y ago
  > Why do you consider that good? There are plenty of places on the internet where you can find disturbing content, why does it have to something you can just stumble upon? Because what's disturbing to me is not disturbing to someone else. Because, just like when I walk in a city, I run into interesting and surprising and occasionally things that test my sensibilities. This is good because nobody can decide on my behalf what I should find disturbing or not.
LexiMax 3y ago
One of the reasons I find myself continuing to use the fediverse is because in many ways it reminds me of the old internet. There are parts of it that are rowdy and salacious like old Reddit and 4chan, but if just want a shared space to nerd out with like-minded people about hobbies and shared interests, you can have the early-2000's hobby forum experience as well. And it's all very brand-unfriendly - there's relatively few celebrities, no advertising space to sell, no algorithm to optimize for, and nothing preventing a possible promotional post from a corporate account from appearing next to something NSFW in someone's timeline if that's who the user is following.
- nefarious_ends 3y ago
  where can I get started learning more about this fediverse?
  - SturgeonsLaw 3y ago
    For the most early-Reddit-like experience, I would recommend Lemmy. I was kinda interested in checking it out for a while but suffered from a bit of choice paralysis not knowing where to start, but since most of them are federated, you see content from a bunch of instances at once, so that removes a bit of the risk. I ended up creating an account on lemmy.world which is (afaik) the largest instance by user count. Beehaw is (afaik) the second largest, and it has more of a "safety"/highly moderated approach - which is one of the reasons I wanted to distance myself from Reddit, so I crossed that one off my list. This map was posted on HN if you want to examine the relative sizes of the instances and see the lay of the land: https://lemmymap.feddit.de/ https://lemmymap.feddit.de/
    - Eavolution 3y ago
      Personally I prefer using kbin, that's another option. Kbin and lemmy both can communicate so it doesn't matter which you use. feddit.de and kbin.social are kbin instances.
    - twic 3y ago
      Great map! Sadly retarded.dev seems to be down, and there's no way i'm visiting cybercrime.zip at work.
Tao3300 3y ago
Can I find out on Threads what happens to a man when his shirtsleeve gets caught in an industrial lathe? Can I find offensive jokes? Or will I just get headlines about someone who got in trouble for an offensive joke? Can I post the raunchy limerick I've never written down for fear of being cancelled, doxxed, etc?
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > Can I post the raunchy limerick I've never written down for fear of being cancelled, doxxed, etc? You can already do that on Facebook. Whether you see any consequences is more of a function of whether someone sets out to get you for something than it is of what you write.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 3y ago
  [flagged]
chromanoid 3y ago
While I agree with the sentiment of the article I can do without link traps that take me to a chainsaw execution gif under the guise of wedding bloopers.

swah 3y ago

It happens with Youtube sometimes, but you have to search for the exact name of the creator you heard somewhere else. Or you find very "pure creators" when you search how to fix your toilet.

hnick 3y ago
Watching YouTubers come up with weird euphemisms to avoid saying "COVID" (to avoid the risk of automatic demonetisation) drove home how much self censorship there must be around content creation in general. I've also seen a few joke about whether they're allowed to swear or not yet since apparently the algorithm cares if they swear in the first 15 seconds, lest an easily damaged listener finds them by mistake.
- derefr 3y ago
  Apparently you can't monetize a YouTube video that says the word "kill", even in the context of educational videos about wildlife ecology. So you get serious educational content creators saying that a bird "un-alives" a fish.
  - userbinator 3y ago
    If only Orwell was still alive today.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - jrmg 3y ago
    This sounds like an urban legend.
    - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
      I know true crime youtubers tend to avoid the word like a plague, so take that for what you will.
    - bitwize 3y ago
      I've seen it myself. Casual Geographic does this a lot: https://m.youtube.com/@mndiaye_97 https://m.youtube.com/@mndiaye_97 The thing is, the phrase has an origin in a parody of censorship. In one episode of Ultimate Spider-Man, Spider-Man teams up with Deadpool. Deadpool, being fourth-wall-savvy and well aware that he is in an animated kids' show, talks rather frankly about his plans to "un-alive" the criminal they are pursuing. To which Spider-Man responds "Un-alive... you mean KILL him?!" Mr. Pool was applying standards and practices to his own speech that were common on 80s and 90s animated programs, in which characters obviously wielding rifles would assiduously avoid talking about killing or death. And now people are using his neologism to avoid being punished on a video platform ostensibly for adults primarily.
- RobotToaster 3y ago
  Apparently you can't mention silencers at all? which even as a non American seems weird.
  - flagrant_taco 3y ago
    Assuming you're talking about gun silencers/suppressors, the US has a very confusing history with them in general. The way in which they made it into Congress's list of heavily regulated weapons is an interesting story of inept politicians at work. I've also never understood why suppressors would be seen as anything other than a good thing, if we wanted to regulate them it'd make more sense to require them for carry guns rather than make them hard to get. Shooting an unsuppressed handgun without hearing protection is really bad for your hearing, and carrying a surpressed pistols also much trickier if we're concerned with how many guns are legally carried in public.
    - Nasrudith 3y ago
      You know the abundance of Hollywood bullshit on AI going to kill us all? The same thing happened long ago with silencers as they forget about hearing damage from firearms because it isn't seen in movies but worry about "the dangers" of firearms being suppressed to non-hearing damaging levels by equating it with the classic "mouse-fart" level of volume. Hollywood has a lot to answer for in its damage to epistemology.
      - flagrant_taco 3y ago
        As far as I understand it these restrictions on suppressors predate any meaningful impact of Hollywood action films. Suppressors were included in restrictions from the prohibition era largely targeting the fear of the use of automatic weapons by organized crime (the mob). Feds pictured everyone in the mafia carrying military-grade Thompsons (Tommy guns) despite the fact that they were horribly expensive, produced in small quantities, and didn't sell well. There are actually congressional record of the hearings for the weapons law that make clear no justification was given for including suppressors, it just wasn't pressed by anyone involved.

bobsmooth 3y ago

Checkout rdrama.net

Loocid 3y ago

>Reddit is/was so good because of the possibility that you might find something disturbing while using it. Why do you consider that good? There are plenty of places on the internet where you can find disturbing content, why does it have to something you can just stumble upon?

sli 3y ago
Because it's a relatively safe level of risk compared to, say, 4chan's /b/. People love to dabble in risk in safe ways. I'd argue that's what many genres of fiction are explicitly for, e.g. horror, violent games, etc.
- Loocid 3y ago
  But it's only that way because Reddit placed limits which goes against the "let the internet be grimy" hot-take. Back in the day there were subreddits that would rival the depravity of /b/.
  - watwut 3y ago
    They never stayed contained I their own subs. They just needed to go out of their way to subs of their perceived enemies.
- Tao3300 3y ago
  Yeah, we need something where the risk level is a little lower than the "it's a crime if I don't call the FBI and tell them I saw this" level.
andsoitis 3y ago
> Why do you consider that good? There are plenty of places on the internet where you can find disturbing content, why does it have to something you can just stumble upon? Because what's disturbing to me is not disturbing to someone else. Because, just like when I walk in a city, I run into interesting and surprising and occasionally things that test my sensibilities. This is good because nobody can decide on my behalf what I should find disturbing or not.

LexiMax 3y ago

One of the reasons I find myself continuing to use the fediverse is because in many ways it reminds me of the old internet. There are parts of it that are rowdy and salacious like old Reddit and 4chan, but if just want a shared space to nerd out with like-minded people about hobbies and shared interests, you can have the early-2000's hobby forum experience as well. And it's all very brand-unfriendly - there's relatively few celebrities, no advertising space to sell, no algorithm to optimize for, and nothing preventing a possible promotional post from a corporate account from appearing next to something NSFW in someone's timeline if that's who the user is following.

nefarious_ends 3y ago
where can I get started learning more about this fediverse?
- SturgeonsLaw 3y ago
  For the most early-Reddit-like experience, I would recommend Lemmy. I was kinda interested in checking it out for a while but suffered from a bit of choice paralysis not knowing where to start, but since most of them are federated, you see content from a bunch of instances at once, so that removes a bit of the risk. I ended up creating an account on lemmy.world which is (afaik) the largest instance by user count. Beehaw is (afaik) the second largest, and it has more of a "safety"/highly moderated approach - which is one of the reasons I wanted to distance myself from Reddit, so I crossed that one off my list. This map was posted on HN if you want to examine the relative sizes of the instances and see the lay of the land: https://lemmymap.feddit.de/ https://lemmymap.feddit.de/
  - Eavolution 3y ago
    Personally I prefer using kbin, that's another option. Kbin and lemmy both can communicate so it doesn't matter which you use. feddit.de and kbin.social are kbin instances.
  - twic 3y ago
    Great map! Sadly retarded.dev seems to be down, and there's no way i'm visiting cybercrime.zip at work.

Tao3300 3y ago

Can I find out on Threads what happens to a man when his shirtsleeve gets caught in an industrial lathe? Can I find offensive jokes? Or will I just get headlines about someone who got in trouble for an offensive joke? Can I post the raunchy limerick I've never written down for fear of being cancelled, doxxed, etc?

thaumasiotes 3y ago
> Can I post the raunchy limerick I've never written down for fear of being cancelled, doxxed, etc? You can already do that on Facebook. Whether you see any consequences is more of a function of whether someone sets out to get you for something than it is of what you write.
Red_Leaves_Flyy 3y ago
[flagged]

chromanoid 3y ago

While I agree with the sentiment of the article I can do without link traps that take me to a chainsaw execution gif under the guise of wedding bloopers.