3 ms·

Twitter-style social media has become its own subculture, made of: - people who like to argue online - people who can easily turn any complex topic into a 100

by sph 3y ago

Twitter-style social media has become its own subculture, made of: - people who like to argue online - people who can easily turn any complex topic into a 100-odd character slogans - people who like to put the world into hashtag-sized boxes - masochists who enjoy getting into the ragebait du jour - a vanishing minority who didn't get the memo and somehow the Algorithm has kept them in a bubble of sanity - bots Coincidentally most of these groups, including bots, really love the entire US culture war bullshit. They're the one that are keeping it alive, with the help of journalists, the last category of people that live on that type of social media and then report on some newspaper @oneidiotontwitter's troll post as if it were public opinion, in a perpetual cycle of mental and cultural noise. --- Look outside. People are going about their lives. The sun is somewhere in the sky. Probably not much is going on around you. That's the real world.

madeofpalk 3y ago
Yes, kind of. But each platform's mechanics encourage certain behaviours over others. The Twitter website (not the culture of it's users), as an advertising-funded platform, is highly geared to optimise for 'engagement', which encourages all of these behaviours.
- sph 3y ago
  I would have agreed until the explosion of Mastodon, where it's become apparent that even without engagement algorithms, the culture wars and other nonsense are thriving on that platform as well. We blamed the Algorithm, but perhaps the issue was the users all along.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
    Here's how I see it. Maybe "the algorithm" was the problem initially, but the problem has since metastasised into every aspect of American culture, and so removing the original tumour is no longer as helpful.
  - itsoktocry 3y ago
    >We blamed the Algorithm, but perhaps the issue was the users all along. always-has-been.jpg It's one of the strangest things about the meta-conversation regarding social media. The "left" (I'll use quotes because these things aren't strictly defined) thinks that, for example, anti-immigration sentiment or support for Trump comes from "Russian bot farms" fooling the public. It's unfathomable to some people that smart, good, hard-working people could hold those views.

by sph 3y ago

madeofpalk 3y ago

Yes, kind of. But each platform's mechanics encourage certain behaviours over others. The Twitter website (not the culture of it's users), as an advertising-funded platform, is highly geared to optimise for 'engagement', which encourages all of these behaviours.

sph 3y ago
I would have agreed until the explosion of Mastodon, where it's become apparent that even without engagement algorithms, the culture wars and other nonsense are thriving on that platform as well. We blamed the Algorithm, but perhaps the issue was the users all along.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
  Here's how I see it. Maybe "the algorithm" was the problem initially, but the problem has since metastasised into every aspect of American culture, and so removing the original tumour is no longer as helpful.
- itsoktocry 3y ago
  >We blamed the Algorithm, but perhaps the issue was the users all along. always-has-been.jpg It's one of the strangest things about the meta-conversation regarding social media. The "left" (I'll use quotes because these things aren't strictly defined) thinks that, for example, anti-immigration sentiment or support for Trump comes from "Russian bot farms" fooling the public. It's unfathomable to some people that smart, good, hard-working people could hold those views.