4 ms·

This article decries social media for creating a monoculture, but honestly I find the same thing on Mastodon, which supposedly lacks the distortions of a for-pr

This article decries social media for creating a monoculture, but honestly I find the same thing on Mastodon, which supposedly lacks the distortions of a for-profit network. Spend time there, and one finds that the community of people claiming to represent neurodivergence tends to post heavily on American (or other Western) politics and trans issues. These even function as shibboleths. Consequently, if you are on the spectrum but not particularly interested in those matters, you can get just as much a feeling of "not fitting in" as in any normie-dominated social network.

kelseyfrog 3y ago
Can you unpack the feeling of "not fitting in" a bit (re those matters)? I'm curious in which circumstances it arises and what are the core components it rests on.
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago
  Consider one of the early internet communities of the 1990s that came to be dominated by, say, Church of the Subgenius fans. Even if the topic of conversation was something else, people would frequently drop Subgenius lore and in-jokes and make Subgenius part of their online presentation, limited as it was in those pre-media days. If you weren’t interested in Subgenius and didn’t represent yourself as a member of that subculture, how much of a connection could you really feel with fellow members? On Mastodon today the particular nerd-culture markers are different, but whatever they are, it remains the case that not every nerd is going to be interested in them. With regard to Western politics, I already get all that from a range of news sources, I have no interest in reading about it on social media. It is also easy to feel left out when people insist that the politics of the USA or their other, Western country is of paramount importance, but no one would care to discuss the politics that concern you. For my own reasons, I am interested in politics in Senegal right now, but that almost never appears on Mastodon. (In fact, it’s easy to feel that most of Sub-Saharan Africa doesn’t even exist for Mastodon.)
zmgsabst 3y ago
I would say this is a broader trend: Activists appropriate the voice of some group, then marginalize people who don’t fit into that prescribed worldview — often telling people they’re a “bad X” for not being obedient. This is part of a broader trend to divide-and-conquer by segregating people into identity based groups, who are permitted only a single view, lest you be denied that identity and ostracized — one that we’ve seen corporations and politicians only too happy to exploit.
adsharma 3y ago
I had the same reaction. Has this person tried Mastodon? It matches everything he's describing.
AussieWog93 3y ago
You're not wrong. The cultural shift you're describing even bleeds into real life these days.
RecycledEle 3y ago
If you dislike monoculture, avoid mass market web sites. Seek the niche web forums.
FireBeyond 3y ago
Have a look at Discord, and the proliferation of "Alter" bots, which supposedly are designed around Dissociative Identity Disorder, but to my mind have enabled a mockery of it... servers where a huge subset of the users utilize the bot, many claiming numbers of identities that, were they so, would merit study in medical journals (I've seen hundreds of users claiming 50+ identities). It could be said "oh, it's harmless, they're just RPing", and if that were the case, so be it. But no, on most servers it is generally considered sacrosanct and that merely questioning these numbers, and the preponderance of supposed DID on Discord (orders of magnitude above the general population) is offensive and insulting.
orwin 3y ago
The communities i follow on mastodon are not talking about politics. Yes, you'll find more trans and out of the closet gay people there, but i only remember reading once about a trans issue that had nothing to do with cybersec.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Trans-haters consider every post by a trans person a 'trans issue'. As if it's the only thing that defines a person. It doesn't matter what they're talking about, just the simple fact that they're trans makes whatever they say a 'controversial political statement' in their eyes. I don't get why there's so much hate on trans people these days. It's even blown over to Holland. It's very sad to see that a country that was once so progressive in embracing homosexuality is now becoming so backwards. It's very sad to see.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - crepple 3y ago
    > I don't get why there's so much hate on trans people these days. Most people were willing to be tolerant when there was a perception of negligible negative impact to others. But now that there are so many well-publicised incidents showing otherwise, such as male inmates attacking women in the female prison estate [1], males invading female-only lesbian events [2], males dominating in women's sports [3], and many, many other transgressions mostly harming women and children, there is an increasingly negative sentiment towards both the trans-identifying and the belief system of gender identity that has enabled all of this. All of this may seem like a surprising outcome to some, but feminists of the radical school of thought predicted most of it way back in the 1970s, when the concept of a 'male-to-female transsexual' was being popularised, making the astute observation that this was just yet another manifestation of patriarchy, a way for men to dominate women. [1] https://womensliberationfront.org/womens-prisons https://womensliberationfront.org/womens-prisons [2] https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/lesbian-speed-dating-event-is-accused-of-transphobia-for-saying-only-adult-human-females-can-attend-would-be-matchmaker-turned-up-in-erection.5352686/ https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/lesbian-speed-dating-e... [3] https://reduxx.info/male-cyclists-take-home-first-second-places-at-womens-cyclocross-cup-in-chicago/ https://reduxx.info/male-cyclists-take-home-first-second-pla...

kelseyfrog 3y ago

Can you unpack the feeling of "not fitting in" a bit (re those matters)? I'm curious in which circumstances it arises and what are the core components it rests on.

OfSanguineFire 3y ago
Consider one of the early internet communities of the 1990s that came to be dominated by, say, Church of the Subgenius fans. Even if the topic of conversation was something else, people would frequently drop Subgenius lore and in-jokes and make Subgenius part of their online presentation, limited as it was in those pre-media days. If you weren’t interested in Subgenius and didn’t represent yourself as a member of that subculture, how much of a connection could you really feel with fellow members? On Mastodon today the particular nerd-culture markers are different, but whatever they are, it remains the case that not every nerd is going to be interested in them. With regard to Western politics, I already get all that from a range of news sources, I have no interest in reading about it on social media. It is also easy to feel left out when people insist that the politics of the USA or their other, Western country is of paramount importance, but no one would care to discuss the politics that concern you. For my own reasons, I am interested in politics in Senegal right now, but that almost never appears on Mastodon. (In fact, it’s easy to feel that most of Sub-Saharan Africa doesn’t even exist for Mastodon.)

zmgsabst 3y ago

I would say this is a broader trend: Activists appropriate the voice of some group, then marginalize people who don’t fit into that prescribed worldview — often telling people they’re a “bad X” for not being obedient. This is part of a broader trend to divide-and-conquer by segregating people into identity based groups, who are permitted only a single view, lest you be denied that identity and ostracized — one that we’ve seen corporations and politicians only too happy to exploit.

adsharma 3y ago

I had the same reaction. Has this person tried Mastodon? It matches everything he's describing.

AussieWog93 3y ago

You're not wrong. The cultural shift you're describing even bleeds into real life these days.

RecycledEle 3y ago

If you dislike monoculture, avoid mass market web sites. Seek the niche web forums.

FireBeyond 3y ago

Have a look at Discord, and the proliferation of "Alter" bots, which supposedly are designed around Dissociative Identity Disorder, but to my mind have enabled a mockery of it... servers where a huge subset of the users utilize the bot, many claiming numbers of identities that, were they so, would merit study in medical journals (I've seen hundreds of users claiming 50+ identities). It could be said "oh, it's harmless, they're just RPing", and if that were the case, so be it. But no, on most servers it is generally considered sacrosanct and that merely questioning these numbers, and the preponderance of supposed DID on Discord (orders of magnitude above the general population) is offensive and insulting.

orwin 3y ago

The communities i follow on mastodon are not talking about politics. Yes, you'll find more trans and out of the closet gay people there, but i only remember reading once about a trans issue that had nothing to do with cybersec.

wkat4242 3y ago
Trans-haters consider every post by a trans person a 'trans issue'. As if it's the only thing that defines a person. It doesn't matter what they're talking about, just the simple fact that they're trans makes whatever they say a 'controversial political statement' in their eyes. I don't get why there's so much hate on trans people these days. It's even blown over to Holland. It's very sad to see that a country that was once so progressive in embracing homosexuality is now becoming so backwards. It's very sad to see.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- crepple 3y ago
  > I don't get why there's so much hate on trans people these days. Most people were willing to be tolerant when there was a perception of negligible negative impact to others. But now that there are so many well-publicised incidents showing otherwise, such as male inmates attacking women in the female prison estate [1], males invading female-only lesbian events [2], males dominating in women's sports [3], and many, many other transgressions mostly harming women and children, there is an increasingly negative sentiment towards both the trans-identifying and the belief system of gender identity that has enabled all of this. All of this may seem like a surprising outcome to some, but feminists of the radical school of thought predicted most of it way back in the 1970s, when the concept of a 'male-to-female transsexual' was being popularised, making the astute observation that this was just yet another manifestation of patriarchy, a way for men to dominate women. [1] https://womensliberationfront.org/womens-prisons https://womensliberationfront.org/womens-prisons [2] https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/lesbian-speed-dating-event-is-accused-of-transphobia-for-saying-only-adult-human-females-can-attend-would-be-matchmaker-turned-up-in-erection.5352686/ https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/lesbian-speed-dating-e... [3] https://reduxx.info/male-cyclists-take-home-first-second-places-at-womens-cyclocross-cup-in-chicago/ https://reduxx.info/male-cyclists-take-home-first-second-pla...