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> She doesn't share her actual thoughts That's where social media has been most damaging. You can't share your thoughts anymore. The 'Redditization' of the wor

> She doesn't share her actual thoughts That's where social media has been most damaging. You can't share your thoughts anymore. The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility. No longer can you just throw something out there, no matter how stupid. These days you have carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say and if you utter anything that isn't deemed 100% perfect by those listening, the social scorn will fall upon you. > It's bizarre. Is it, though? Once you've felt said social scorn enough you no longer see words as a way to make friends, so turning to beauty is the natural progression. People like to be around beautiful people – or at least so it appears to those looking from the outside in, right? If that doesn't work, then you can easily fall into a cycle of thinking "maybe this next surgery is the one that will make me beautiful enough!"

deleted 2y ago
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worldsayshi 2y ago
This is touching on something very important but I feel there's a lot more to it. There's a lot of mystery around this for me. Like why is social media inspiring us to such hostile nit picking on behaviour and ideals?
- Moru 2y ago
  It's sadly not just one thing that goes wrong. But at the base of it, it's the human faults at play. It's just being amplified by social media and the easy communication on Internet.
- lumb63 2y ago
  I think it’s a way of farming status/clout. People who make fun of people who pose fringe ideas are rewarded with likes. People who shut down people on “the other side” are rewarded with likes. People can get likes by pushing the prominent ideology and kowtowing to that majority. It’s for their personal benefit, and being online removes the real-life downside of bullying or disagreeing with someone where you have to actually defend your ideas or deal with someone who is visibly upset by your actions. In conclusion, the upside of nitpicking is amplified by our tribal instincts, and the downside is muted by the nature of being online.
- nervousvarun 2y ago
  JMO, but an enormous part of it is this is the fundamental way teens now learn how to interact with the world. This disconnected, digital interface with other people that is rewarded at tremendous scale (popularity is now for some a worldwide deal...not just your high school). Older folks like myself (GenX) learned the "classic" way...face to face. There were checks and balances. If you said something that skewed hostile you found out it could have immediate direct negative consequences. It could literally leave a mark. Similarly if you went too far some other way...you found out immediately and directly how that could work out (we were just as cringy...we just didn't have it preserved digitally for prosperity). Kids today (even writing that makes me wince) have less accountability for what they write than what we had to have for what we said. Also due to scale the effects are amplified. And also you are in a digital bubble that allows you to ignore anything that isn't positive. If you piss someone off by what you said so what? You'll never interact with them directly and there will be 1000s who agree w/ and encourage you. Also old man shouts at clouds.
  - numpad0 2y ago
    > Kids today (even writing that makes me wince) have less accountability for what they write than what we had to have for what we said. I think that's slightly different to what was said in GP: > That's where social media has been most damaging. You can't share your thoughts anymore. The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility. No longer can you just throw something out there, no matter how stupid. These days you have carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say and if you utter anything that isn't deemed 100% perfect by those listening, the social scorn will fall upon you. IOW, `kids these days` are required full corporate PR level accountability whenever and whatever they express, (and zero when cancelling others following social codes). There absolutely won't be thousands at your side unless you're in a straight up proper conspiracy theory circle full of actually schizophrenic people until the entire circle is going to be cancelled dead. You can't label your opponent as belonging in a category and encourage making harmful gases in a toilet and get 127 upvotes. At least not anymore. Your comment will be deleted, and one below yours that explains why you're automatically doubly stupid will. You can't even say, literally orally voice, the word "die" in some parts of YouTube without algorithmic penalties. Saying "died of injury" can be a soft violation. That is what GP is explaining by "you have [to] carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say", ironically the phenomenon I'm ending up being a contributing factor by typing this very comment, and part of what's making teens sick. I think it has to do with being correct being a cost and having huge unfortunate abuse potentials.
- kombookcha 2y ago
  I think there's two major drivers here - scarcity of attention (1) and social distance (2). 1) Your attention on social media is monetized by others, which means there is always something tugging on it like so many street peddlers, in addition to all the 'organic' content made by other users. When there's a shortness of attention, you're always going to be more snippy and inclined to the short pithy retort, instead of long conversational openings and explorations of topics. Those require a lot of social trust-building and responding to feedback when you do them IRL, which is difficult on social media because... 2) Other people on social media just feel less real than those you encounter in real life, because you can't feel that bad feeling in your gut as strongly when you upset them, or the good feeling when you make them laugh. That same social distancing means you have a much easier time either idealizing them in that parasocial influencer-guru follower style, or feeling comfortable with being very harsh and combative with them. AKA the toxic gamer lobby phenomena, where people say the most heinous things you've ever heard to eachother, all the while being mostly fairly ordinary kids and adults IRL. Both of these are kind of inherently tied up in the way we are ordering more and more of our (para)social life, so it seems very difficult to escape. To paraphrase a point somebody made about content generated by machines purely to tug on your attention - everything feels increasingly meaningless because you have a finite amount of attention, and more and more of the 'social' interactions that your brain deals with in a day ARE meaningless and intended solely to mine your attention and keep you scrolling on ads. I don't know how to fix that.
  - worldsayshi 2y ago
    I think you're on to very good points. One kind of obvious suggestion on how to fix it: We have to grow a culture of more deliberate attention. Just like how we chose to consume healthy food and avoid consuming too much alcohol we must be more deliberate in our choice of media. But this is not an easy solution. Every social media space is saturated with good content as well as bad. It might become easier if we grow such culture around us though.
    - kombookcha 2y ago
      I do think this is one pathway, and it has kind of been happening - we're seeing people increasingly stop participating 'open' social medias and retreating into more sequestered communities with fewer, but enduring participants that you get to know, and who are united around care for some topic but also talk about other stuff. Discord servers are probably the most prominent of these just now. They have more in common with oldschool forums in the sense that you get to know the regulars, but are notoriously impenetrable if you're new and trying to search for information on some topic that's been covered in the past. But it's a start! Now that Discord is apparently opening up to ads, it remains to be seen whether that cultural shift will be able to hold or if people are going to be driven into even deeper hidey holes, like the freed humans in The Matrix who have to hide out deep in the earth from all the robots ;)
- raxxorraxor 2y ago
  I believe the affinity of social media users to cast judgement is a huge factor as well, worse on those that actually do reflect a lot. Although it is perceived vastly more strongly that it is often meant since individual voices overlap. Still it furthers the assumption that many are very judgmental. With that a strongly regulated social media place can be just as hostile as the most vulgar forum you can find. By experience, it can often be even worse. Nit picking is a form of communication as well, perhaps often chosen because users want to share something difficult to do on the medium. That said, nit picking often doesn't carry hostility. Especially on tech platforms it is just meant as a contribution. Maybe there are carry over effects and miscommunication.
- VA0 2y ago
  Social media is designed to make money, whether that be from selling data or conglomerating it and advertising to you. They want the user to be purely a consumer. They are designed to make people reactive and have a short attention span, they are easier to sell to.the users mental reward system is essentially brainwashed to be an easier target to sell to.
  - ryandv 2y ago
    Advertising is one of the main reasons modern social media is experiencing continued enshittification in this era. Noam Chomsky in his "Manufacturing Consent" wrote of three "filters" that determined which content would be presented to viewers, and while he wrote on the mass media in 1988, I believe this framework applies equally to social media in 2024: access to capital; the "advertising license to do business;" and a symbiotic relationship with government, who provides access to authoritative sources of news. Take X, for example: its access to capital allows it to eclipse most other social media and build network effects that are difficult for other startups to disrupt; after the Musk acquisition, advertisers began withdrawing from the platform; and as the Twitter files have claimed, its collusion with the U.S. government in the promotion/demotion of certain viewpoints. If you want to see genuine viewpoints, you'd best seek out media that are largely independent of these three "filters" over what messages are permissible on the medium.
  - red-iron-pine 2y ago
    you left out brand-shaping and consensus-building, which is arguably just very advanced advertising. almost universal overlap with agit-prop as well
  - quest88 2y ago
    I think that's part of it but not all of it. Even here on HN, with no ads, you can find hostility in the comments.
    - HughParry 2y ago
      people are a bit happier here to have an argument and then get on with their lives though
- walthamstow 2y ago
  Lots of good answers to your question already but I'd add one - anonymity. It's a lot easier to be a dick on the internet than it is in real life.
- AtlasBarfed 2y ago
  Because it is INTRUSIVE. The advertising industry is fundamentally about intruding into your lives, and by that measure, the % of attention it can command. The advertising industry (which is social media is that isn't colossally obvious) has relentlessly pursued increasing this percentage, and the smartphone was the physical means to achieve it, and newfound social addiction feedback loops the nitro turbo boost. Even modern/new humans can't adapt to this. Older minds are crumbling into echo chambers, or withdrawing entirely. Paranoia takes hold. Or is it paranoia? Or are your every move, thought, and action collected and categorized into a profile which is currently used simply for "advertising optimization", while in China it produces a worse-than-1984 dystopian system, and likely there are population profiling projects in US three letter agencies? My internet profile is set in stone from my 20 years. Nothing I can do about it now. I'm purgeworthy whenever the totalitarianism grips the USA. Elections are becoming existential now, and that likely isn't paranoia. While I've given a rational probability to all this, most people do not, they respond emotionally, especially to relentless stress and burden of processing unending perpetual advertising. And as we all know, here comes the AI.
- HumblyTossed 2y ago
  Being angry and negative is very much easier for most people than being happy and positive. I'm serious. It's easier to complain about the driver that cut you off as being an asshole driver than to ponder if they truly made a mistake and are feeling like shit right now. "Social" media capitalizes on this and multiplies it for the sake of engagement.
- avensec 2y ago
  There are lots of replies; I'll add my theory. Threads aren't conducive to conversations that build psychological safety and trust. A natural conversation of curiosity/questions, in 1:1 or small group settings, doesn't exist. This leads to talking *at* each other instead of with each other. The reduction in empathy follows. Thanks for asking the question and spawning the conversation threads!
  - evilduck 2y ago
    > There are lots of replies; I'll add my theory. Part of the problem lies here, and I'm doing it right now too. In online public spaces we never have a conversation with another person, and rarely even then within a small group like enthusiast forums of yesteryear, we comment to the lynch mob. We reply to someone's statement with our own thoughts but it is not judged by the original poster if it was a good or insightful reply to what was originally said, it's judged by the mob with upvotes and downvotes and being flagged, misconstrued and nitpicked in fifty different ways. It happens here, Reddit, Facebook, YT, and any popular venue where comments are allowed. Even Github issues and pull requests. I think it's why Discord is a popular alternative choice for many people. If you're not actively present, you can't chime in with your two cents and derail the conversation into some energy draining defense against someone's insane straw man attack. Comments needing to be in real time and the conversation being locked away and lost are a virtue for some folks.
    - avensec 2y ago
      One differentiation I find is that, I typically respond to questions or ask a question. In that way, I don't believe it was part of the problem, but demonstrated a pattern of improvement, I'd love to see (I responded to a direct question). More questions and dialog! :)
  - circlefavshape 2y ago
    Indeed. What happens on social media isn't conversation, it's a performance for an audience
- deleted 2y ago
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- pixl97 2y ago
  >Like why is social media inspiring us to such hostile nit picking on behaviour and ideals? So I'd like to point out something I've not seen mentioned yet. That is what I call 'small down behavior', that is nit picking on those that don't fall into some small group that is acceptable. It seems that social media has not caused any new behaviors, but instead given a new and expansive venue for the behavior to spread.
  - 2devnull 2y ago
    I’d say a lot of that is genetic and or cultural. At the very least there are many of us who do not possess that instinct. We have much lower karma scores but we don’t care.
    - pixl97 2y ago
      >but we don’t care. Just because you don't care about something doesn't mean it doesn't affect you. For example with many websites, high karma posts/users show up at the top of the feed. This means those addicts messages are the ones you're getting subjected too every day.
- ayewo 2y ago
  > Like why is social media inspiring us to such hostile nit picking on behaviour and ideals? Social media is a highlight reel of people’s lives. It’s the best part hand-picked out of our mostly mundane lives. Until these teenagers understand this, they’ll never feel “good enough” to share their own situation. Instead, they’ll remain on the hamster wheel trying to live up to the ideals peddled by influencers.
- yungporko 2y ago
  i don't think social media is inspiring people to act like this, i think the vast majority of people are just pricks in general and the internet lets them act like this without any negative consequences. if there was some way to just start arguments about nothing in real life and then pause them at will to go and cherrypick stuff that supports your argument, then come back and act smug about it (or not come back at all if you don't find anything), people would incessantly do it in person too.
- colloydi 2y ago
  I think it's because when we get to know other people IRL what they say is of secondary importance to how we perceive their intentions and motives. These determine how we feel about a person. They're subjective and hard to ascertain on the basis of written text alone. So as a matter of caution we tend to impute bad motives to people we can't 'feel' clearly which means any textual claims made are subject to unnaturally high levels of scrutiny and demands for evidence/documentation. Also the internet is forever whilst IRL conversation is throwaway.
- hackinthebochs 2y ago
  Social media created a perpetual church gossip culture where every action and statement is endlessly evaluated by the peanut gallery, while also creating a land rush for finding new moral angles to exploit for social status. Why specifically social media? It's a function of communication efficiency. It's why church is associated with this sort of cattiness, everyone knows everyone and is brought together regularly to provide a venue to trade gossip. It also supplies the moral standard by which everyone is evaluated and one's social status is tied to how well one appears to meet this standard. The cattiness is just status games playing out given these constraints.
- squigglydonut 2y ago
  I think the reddit upvote downvote design is just one example of BAD UI that doesn't take into account the human element of the interface. Imagine if when you spoke with someone in real life, you added an upvote/downvote every sentence they said. This is why product designers need to be way more concerned with ethics than they are and companies need to give more respect to the product design role it is not just drawing pretty pictures you are shaping someones psyche.
verisimi 2y ago
People are broken. Perhaps they always were. Perhaps this latest, is the cost of prioritising work over family - it is now common to have both parents working, with child care outsourced to professionals, that may do everything right, but will not love the child. Love is underrated, intangible. I suspect there are very few whole individuals out there at all. Once the child grows, why would it look to family to help? It has already been institutionalised - it believes that government agencies, psychiatrists etc will help - the 'brokenness' is normal. The grown child won't look to those that would normally step in (family) - they have their own issues. In all honesty, its hard to say whether looking to institutions for help that is a bad decision anyway - how much harm do families cause?
- xattt 2y ago
  > People are broken. Perhaps they always were. There’s an unspoken burden of past Child Traumatic Stress that, consciously and subconsciously, tints individuals’ resilience and the way the now-adults view the world. I’ve been fortunate to have a happy, normal childhood. However, based on the number of people that I’ve spoken to, I’m starting to think I am in the minority. Friends have casually talked about facing suicide, complex family dynamics, neglect, and crazy religious experiences in early life like it was nothing, when it was/is a big deal. It’s devastating to hear, and realize that the “silent majority” are likely maladapted individuals who are not even close to unpacking their traumatic past (i.e. things like “the friendly uncle” and “the cool youth group pastor”) that got swept under the rug or repressed.
  - verisimi 2y ago
    Yep. This is exactly how is see it. I don't think people realise the level of love required to grow a human. Whatever is received is that person's normal - what else could it be? But, I don't think all childhoods are equal, despite appearances.
- fireflash38 2y ago
  Why do you think that childcare is incompatible with familial love and care?
watwut 2y ago
> No longer can you just throw something out there, no matter how stupid. Back in real world, I could never do it. If you could, that just means you lived in a bubble of like minded people.
- tim333 2y ago
  In the online world there are a lot of places where you can throw out stupid thoughts and be applauded, although for applause they have to be in line with the particular bubble. "dumbcoin to the moon!" "other party is evil" etc.
- randomdata 2y ago
  There have always been some dimwits who do not see that good ideas come from iteration on dumb ideas, but what is different now is that the societal norm, adopted from forums like Reddit, is an expectation for you to prove that you are a dimwit, incapable of any original thought, only able to repeat ("source", as the kids like to say) what others have said in the past. This is certainly not the only anti-intellectualism, anti-education movement we've ever experienced as humans, but we had progressed forward. This regression leaves a lot of people in bad places.
  - 2devnull 2y ago
    Arguably that’s the meta force behind social media. The platforms are designed to make people think in collectivist terms, which coincidentally (or not) makes things easier for more tyrannical forms of government. Indeed Facebook and old twitter are arguably quasi-federal entities.
rchaud 2y ago
> These days you have carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say and if you utter anything that isn't deemed 100% perfect by those listening, the social scorn will fall upon you. I would expect this to some extent when conversing with strangers IRL too. If it was a chat between friends, a rant here or there is OK because your friends know the real you and understand where you're coming from. Strangers won't be as charitable.
- qzx_pierri 2y ago
  But you can't 'downvote' someone in real life. In real life, you can say what you want, and people have to hear. However, on reddit (and many sites copying its pernicious site design), if your comment goes against the hivemind and gets hit with -5 immediately, your comment gets collapsed (and basically unseen). Imagine being out in public at a party and you say something slightly 'spicy' and someone walks up to you and puts duct tape across your mouth. You can move to another party (or comment thread in this example), but you already were basically told "your input is useless, now leave". I should mention that I don't see it that way, but a lot of people don't know how to separate real life from the internet - Especially Gen Z. The internet is NOT real life. Bonus: Moderators locking threads with a condescending comment like "Locking this comment thread since some of you refuse to behave". Reddit is the new Twitter, only the censorship isn't thinly veiled. It's not veiled at all.
  - hiatus 2y ago
    > I should mention that I don't see it that way, but a lot of people don't know how to separate real life from the internet - Especially Gen Z. The internet is NOT real life People have lost jobs, college admissions, and more based on their posts online. I understand the sentiment but what we do on the internet most certainly has an impact on real life.
    - qzx_pierri 2y ago
      >I understand the sentiment but what we do on the internet most certainly has an impact on real life Because people make the mistake of using their 'real life' identity online. Remove your real life attachments from the internet and you're untouchable. Just because people willingly 'dox' themselves doesn't make the internet anything more than a collection of webpages sitting on a blade server somewhere.
ryandv 2y ago
> These days you have carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say and if you utter anything that isn't deemed 100% perfect by those listening, the social scorn will fall upon you. This is an immense impediment to writing for the academically-inclined, or merely one who still has some shred of epistemic integrity left, and a huge boon to the dogmatic mob of believers eager to strike down anyone who dares question their orthodoxy. For one, it takes time and substantial research to compose a thought that is both "true" and unique, buttressed by citations to other works or accepted facts; for the other, it is much easier to reply with a five-second thought in 280 characters with thought-terminating cliches branding the "other" as a deplorable undesirable whose ideas aren't worthy of an audience or a platform. That is, if you even get that far - these days it's more likely you will simply be downvoted into oblivion, your thoughts swiftly evicted into the memory hole, never to be seen again. > Once you've felt said social scorn enough you no longer see words as a way to make friends, so turning to beauty is the natural progression. Issues of "Redditization" and scorn aside, we are progressing into a post-literate society where the written word and other literary media are being eclipsed by audiovisual media such as YouTube or Instagram. While much of the western world is "literate," in that they understand how to read and write (basic) words and phrases, much of our life - especially online - takes place in a highly visual world of filtered photos and staged videos. It becomes increasingly difficult for one to represent themselves in a written, literary form, when the culture demands "pictures, or it didn't happen." McLuhan in "Understanding Media" has written on how the preference of one sense over another (e.g. sight over sound) in differing societies has profound cultural impacts over the ways we think, act, and what we find permissible: The printed form has quite different im- plications in Moscow from what it has in Washington. So with the telephone. The Russians' love of this instrument, so congenial to their oral traditions, is owing to the rich nonvisual involvement it affords. The Russian uses the telephone for the sort of effects we associate with the eager conversation of the lapel-gripper whose face is twelve inches away. Both telephone and teleprinter as amplifications of the un- conscious cultural bias of Moscow, on one hand, and of Washing- ton, on the other, are invitations to monstrous misunderstandings. The Russian bugs rooms and spies by ear, finding this quite natural. He is outraged by our visual spying, however, finding this quite unnatural.
runamuck 2y ago
I have a good rule. I NEVER reply to someone who comments on my comment w/ hostile intent. For example: I made an innocent comment on a YouTube video, and someone completely misread the comment and posted a hostile reply. I wanted to explain to him that he misread my comment but I just let it go. You never need to defend yourself. If you want to post a comment, post it. If someone misunderstands or mocks you, let them.
- BadHumans 2y ago
  > If someone misunderstands or mocks you, let them. Very easy to say when you aren't going viral and 100,000+ people aren't trying to get you fired or hurling insults at you ranging from calling you an idiot to telling you to die. I'm not saying you're wrong but it's much easier said than done.
  - amplex1337 2y ago
    It is definitely easier to ignore when there are 100,000 comments than 100, this is correct. You really need to be in control of what you want to spend your time on these days, and replying to cancerous YouTube comments is not one of them generally. Let it be.
    - BadHumans 2y ago
      I think you are missing my point and maybe you are assuming anonymity but there is point where it isn't as simple as ignoring hateful comments because these people try to push into your life. There are countless examples of people being doxxed and being harassed at work because of something they said online.
  - bcrosby95 2y ago
    This is why I run multiple online identities. I learned back in the '90s when I got death threats because of my MUD character (a text based multiplayer rpg). I knew people who had their power pulled in real life by rival guilds so they could kill them when they disconnected.
amplex1337 2y ago
You certainly can just throw things out there, but if you are obsessed with making every single person satisfied with your thoughts, you are going to have a bad time. The world is full of people who disagree with you, but you need to learn more than ever to recognize and filter out what you don't care about. I don't even view replies to posts any longer, 98% of the time because I am not seeking validation sharing my opinion. I still change my mind sometimes based on others thoughts and opinions, so you can't say I am fostering avoidance too much, just very selective, as my time is valuable.
- deleted 2y ago
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- qrobit 2y ago
  Aren't most of the replies critic or posted by people disagreeing with you though? Especially on HN, where most users would promote discussion with a reply rather than «Agreed» or «lmao»
  - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
    Agreed lmao
- mindcrime 2y ago
  The world is full of people who disagree with you, but you need to learn more than ever to recognize and filter out what you don't care about. I don't even view replies to posts any longer, 98% of the time because I am not seeking validation sharing my opinion. This is something it's taken me a while to come to terms with. I used to want to fully engage with everybody and everything. It was anathema to me to just "broadcast something into the void" and ignore replies. But over time I came to realize that a. I don't scale to engaging with every single person who replies to something I say online, and b. I don't owe those people a response or any of my time/attention; especially the trolls and bots and other lamers that are so prevalent these days. So now I'm more comfortable (albeit maybe not 100% comfortable) with treating things in more of a "fire and forget" fashion. I say what I want to say, and people can do with it what they will. I just can't be arsed to engage with the trolls and other randos. But... if somebody has a mature, reasonable, professional response then I am willing, on a selective basis, to dig in deeper and have a longer discussion.
yungporko 2y ago
this definitely describes nearly 100% of interactions on the internet but i almost never encounter this in real life, i assume because the other person can't sit there googling and adjusting their argument any more than you can that there's no way to "win" anyway.
natural219 2y ago
Funny. I just tried to post my yearly attempt to communicate with people on Reddit, which got taken down immediately by the auto-moderator. https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/1c0nuy6/it_is_impossible_to_live_in_austin_as_a_cigarette/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/1c0nuy6/it_is_impos... It's infinitely sad that there's no place to just connect with people on the internet anymore. My post got 6 comments and a DM within the first minute, before the post got taken down. These people could have been new friends. I've been through this cycle so many times I have long given up on trying to post on the internet. Logging on to find people and share thoughts only to be met with this massive wall of context and janitorial standards. I gave up like five years ago. This is to say that the whole debate between "social media causes anxiety" and our landscape of social media causes anxiety makes this debate way too coarse. Getting on the internet between 2005-2012 felt happy, free, and was just a wellspring of community and connection. Post-2013 it's been a nightmarish hellscape on every platform.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> You can't share your thoughts anymore. The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility I’ll add that people addicted to social media become insufferable to share novel (often silly) thoughts around because the focus becomes dropping a zinger versus meaningfully engaging with what was said.
- noemit 2y ago
  thanks for articulating this. I've encountered a lot of Gen z who do this and while they are well-meaning, smart kids, I find it so difficult to have a nice conversation because of this
  - fragmede 2y ago
    The phenomenon of being a smart ass is far from new.
gnramires 2y ago
Edit: Now before commenting, I see there's an overarching theme of: sure, there is a bunch of unhealthy stuff about social media, but meanwhile there are some things you can do to make your interaction with it better. > That's where social media has been most damaging. You can't share your thoughts anymore. The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility. No longer can you just throw something out there, no matter how stupid. These days you have carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say and if you utter anything that isn't deemed 100% perfect by those listening, the social scorn will fall upon you. I think that's an important point, that I think is partly due to culture of the spaces. For example, I almost never downvote anyone, and in particular not for them being wrong, unless it's something particularly harmful whose visibility would be damaging, or just a troll (quite rare usually). The downvote button seems important for those rare situations (maybe just a mod button would be enough?), but in general it should rarely be used. Not only I've come to believe asking questions is important for beginners to learn, but also it's an important medium for everyone else (and in particular experts or more advanced learners) to exercise their knowledge by teaching stuff and learning to fill gaps in their knowledge. I actually think reddit is pretty good in this regard, specially w.r.t. what we had before and other media like StackExchange. In SE, you're expected to search the site and often questions are met with arrogance. In oldschool forums, which I do like, there was (in almost every case I remember) an even greater air of elitism; although, on the other hand, it created a healthy eagerness to learn the norms and participate in a careful way. I tend to prefer the lower-stakes communication of HN-style boards though. I think as with everything massification is a significant problem. I encourage everyone to participate in communities whose size feels 'just right'. Also, at least some of your interactions should be highly participative, and not just mindless consumption. I think a final problem is that any activity of too narrow scope can be dangerous. If people are confined into extremely narrow interests and spend all their time on that, as opposed to learning everything about life, that can (and probably will in most cases) paint a distorted picture of reality and be very unhealthy. Broaden your curiosity :)
darby_eight 2y ago
> That's where social media has been most damaging. You can't share your thoughts anymore. The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility. No longer can you just throw something out there, no matter how stupid. These days you have carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say and if you utter anything that isn't deemed 100% perfect by those listening, the social scorn will fall upon you. I understand this fear when posting on reddit (or other social media) itself, but I am absolutely confused where this idea that this applies to reality comes from.
- czscout 2y ago
  I think the point is that this person has spent so much time experiencing this phenomenon on the internet, that the effects are bleeding into reality.
- randomdata 2y ago
  Nobody fears posting on Reddit. That's silly. What would there be to worry about? It's just software. It doesn't even recognize that you exist. The problem is that the real world is increasingly not understanding that the internet and the world are not the same place, and they are treating software and people the same way. It turns out that people are not software. This leads to problems. Those who confuse you with software don't apply the compassion that people would otherwise normally receive, and, as a result, will be quite happy to put you in a bad place. You know, the 'Redditaization' of the world. Its funny that even here we see the internet and the world being seen as the same thing; emblematic of the exact same confusion that the comment is about.
rexpop 2y ago
Providing rationales for your beliefs is hard work, but it's worth it. I'm not saying you deserve to be bullied, but I have no trouble saying what I think online, and supporting my positions with evidence—admittedly, behind a pseudonym, but that is necessary when one targets violent men for critique, which is 90% of why I bother going online in the first place.
- randomdata 2y ago
  > I have no trouble saying what I think online Well, sure, you're just dealing with software. What trouble could there be? The problem with the 'Redditization' of the world is that people fail to recognize that software and people are not the same thing, and start treating people as if they are software. That leads to social issues, just as treating people as if they were dogs leads to social issues. And here we have proof positive of this happening: You weren't even able to recognize that the world and the internet are not the same place.
khazhoux 2y ago
> The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility I think the actual biggest problem with "Redditization" is not hostility, but instead the fact that there is really no dialogue. There's no back and forth discussion, at least not with the same actual individual. You post a comment and (maybe but usually not) get a reply, then if you reply to that reply, the next reply in thread will be from someone else. Very very rarely do you go back and forth with one person. And regardless, you'll never ever interact with that person again (except maybe if you're on a tiny sub). It's such a odd and distorted version of conversation. I'm not talking to any specific "you" -- I'm submitting thoughts to a "mass-you" and hoping with fingers crossed that the mass-you will reply or at least nod in approval with a single upvote.
- gosub100 2y ago
  Reddit is not hostile as long as you only parrot back ideas that the hive mind agrees on. And the reward system is mis-aligned. I'd call it a Twitterification, because the karma points are awarded to succinct, snarky/funny conversation-ending quips. Nobody has time or attention span to debate an issue, and even if you did you risk being shut out of the group for wrongthink.
  - khazhoux 2y ago
    That's right, there's no debate, except on the rarest of occasions. It's actually an odd feeling whenever some discussion with divergent opinions ends amicably.
    - amatecha 2y ago
      In my experience, genuine "clashing of views" with amicable discussions happens pretty frequently on Mastodon. It's pretty astonishing to see sometimes, because it's so unusual for the past X years in online social spaces. Like, potentially-multi-day-threads of max-character-count messages discussing topics that people fundamentally disagree on but are trying to hash out each others' perspectives and "get somewhere" with it. Very interesting, and great to read. Sometimes it goes the other way and the people talk past each other, but that's pretty standard lol
mcronce 2y ago
> No longer can you just throw something out there, no matter how stupid Obviously this is not the context you're talking about, but I find this issue with brainstorming type sessions these days as well these days. Not just work sessions either, as another example, I'm on the advisory board for a local club, and the first meeting was really barren for quite a while. It's gotten to the point that I always make sure to voice my philosophy early on - "not all ideas are good, but many good ideas start out as bad ideas and become good through conversation" - and proceed to throw a few incredibly stupid ideas to the group to break the ice. It seems to help.
Damogran6 2y ago
Conversation is muted because the vast majority of the things I want to add to the conversation are in the top 5 upvoted comments.
- randomdata 2y ago
  Which is funny as the top five comments all fell into the exact trap that the original comment was about – confusing people with software. Which, to be fair, isn't surprising. If so many people weren't confusing people with software the original comment would have not been posted in the first place. We are here because that confusion has become so commonplace.
lawlessone 2y ago
>The 'Redditization' I'm more worried about the Linkednization. Where people share terrible views and nobody criticizes it because they don't want to be seen as someone that criticizes things.
- randomdata 2y ago
  The ‘Hacknewsization’ is most worrisome. - “The climate is changing and the outcome of that is bad.” - “The climate doesn’t have enums. Have you tried Rust?”
Xeyz0r 2y ago
> The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility. Actually for me it's quite difficult sometimes to write thoughts on topics here. I'm just being afraid not to be understanded
datavirtue 2y ago
"These days you have carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say and if you utter anything that isn't deemed 100% perfect by those listening, the social scorn will fall upon you." You just described HN perfectly. I can shrug it off because I remain anon here and don't care about my rating, but I see other people being traumatized by this dynamic in other social media platforms. I'm not sure what switched but I remember being on Slashdot and having people go off on me or others, and it was just hilarious. These days it seems like people are genuinely being traumatized regularly by the engagements.
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mikrl 2y ago
>The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility Thankfully there are corners of cyberculture with a distinct anti-Reddit bent where hostility is almost a norm that you get desensitized to and you can see all manner of profound and stupid ideas and react with hostility in kind. After spending time there, returning to Reddit feels like staring at pablum, and you start seeing gross inaccuracies get updooted, and the inconvenient truths get buried. (you should imagine this was written by gigachad, and anyone who disagrees is a badly drawn wojak in some state of emotional distress)

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worldsayshi 2y ago

This is touching on something very important but I feel there's a lot more to it. There's a lot of mystery around this for me. Like why is social media inspiring us to such hostile nit picking on behaviour and ideals?

Moru 2y ago
It's sadly not just one thing that goes wrong. But at the base of it, it's the human faults at play. It's just being amplified by social media and the easy communication on Internet.
lumb63 2y ago
I think it’s a way of farming status/clout. People who make fun of people who pose fringe ideas are rewarded with likes. People who shut down people on “the other side” are rewarded with likes. People can get likes by pushing the prominent ideology and kowtowing to that majority. It’s for their personal benefit, and being online removes the real-life downside of bullying or disagreeing with someone where you have to actually defend your ideas or deal with someone who is visibly upset by your actions. In conclusion, the upside of nitpicking is amplified by our tribal instincts, and the downside is muted by the nature of being online.
nervousvarun 2y ago
JMO, but an enormous part of it is this is the fundamental way teens now learn how to interact with the world. This disconnected, digital interface with other people that is rewarded at tremendous scale (popularity is now for some a worldwide deal...not just your high school). Older folks like myself (GenX) learned the "classic" way...face to face. There were checks and balances. If you said something that skewed hostile you found out it could have immediate direct negative consequences. It could literally leave a mark. Similarly if you went too far some other way...you found out immediately and directly how that could work out (we were just as cringy...we just didn't have it preserved digitally for prosperity). Kids today (even writing that makes me wince) have less accountability for what they write than what we had to have for what we said. Also due to scale the effects are amplified. And also you are in a digital bubble that allows you to ignore anything that isn't positive. If you piss someone off by what you said so what? You'll never interact with them directly and there will be 1000s who agree w/ and encourage you. Also old man shouts at clouds.
- numpad0 2y ago
  > Kids today (even writing that makes me wince) have less accountability for what they write than what we had to have for what we said. I think that's slightly different to what was said in GP: > That's where social media has been most damaging. You can't share your thoughts anymore. The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility. No longer can you just throw something out there, no matter how stupid. These days you have carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say and if you utter anything that isn't deemed 100% perfect by those listening, the social scorn will fall upon you. IOW, `kids these days` are required full corporate PR level accountability whenever and whatever they express, (and zero when cancelling others following social codes). There absolutely won't be thousands at your side unless you're in a straight up proper conspiracy theory circle full of actually schizophrenic people until the entire circle is going to be cancelled dead. You can't label your opponent as belonging in a category and encourage making harmful gases in a toilet and get 127 upvotes. At least not anymore. Your comment will be deleted, and one below yours that explains why you're automatically doubly stupid will. You can't even say, literally orally voice, the word "die" in some parts of YouTube without algorithmic penalties. Saying "died of injury" can be a soft violation. That is what GP is explaining by "you have [to] carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say", ironically the phenomenon I'm ending up being a contributing factor by typing this very comment, and part of what's making teens sick. I think it has to do with being correct being a cost and having huge unfortunate abuse potentials.
kombookcha 2y ago
I think there's two major drivers here - scarcity of attention (1) and social distance (2). 1) Your attention on social media is monetized by others, which means there is always something tugging on it like so many street peddlers, in addition to all the 'organic' content made by other users. When there's a shortness of attention, you're always going to be more snippy and inclined to the short pithy retort, instead of long conversational openings and explorations of topics. Those require a lot of social trust-building and responding to feedback when you do them IRL, which is difficult on social media because... 2) Other people on social media just feel less real than those you encounter in real life, because you can't feel that bad feeling in your gut as strongly when you upset them, or the good feeling when you make them laugh. That same social distancing means you have a much easier time either idealizing them in that parasocial influencer-guru follower style, or feeling comfortable with being very harsh and combative with them. AKA the toxic gamer lobby phenomena, where people say the most heinous things you've ever heard to eachother, all the while being mostly fairly ordinary kids and adults IRL. Both of these are kind of inherently tied up in the way we are ordering more and more of our (para)social life, so it seems very difficult to escape. To paraphrase a point somebody made about content generated by machines purely to tug on your attention - everything feels increasingly meaningless because you have a finite amount of attention, and more and more of the 'social' interactions that your brain deals with in a day ARE meaningless and intended solely to mine your attention and keep you scrolling on ads. I don't know how to fix that.
- worldsayshi 2y ago
  I think you're on to very good points. One kind of obvious suggestion on how to fix it: We have to grow a culture of more deliberate attention. Just like how we chose to consume healthy food and avoid consuming too much alcohol we must be more deliberate in our choice of media. But this is not an easy solution. Every social media space is saturated with good content as well as bad. It might become easier if we grow such culture around us though.
  - kombookcha 2y ago
    I do think this is one pathway, and it has kind of been happening - we're seeing people increasingly stop participating 'open' social medias and retreating into more sequestered communities with fewer, but enduring participants that you get to know, and who are united around care for some topic but also talk about other stuff. Discord servers are probably the most prominent of these just now. They have more in common with oldschool forums in the sense that you get to know the regulars, but are notoriously impenetrable if you're new and trying to search for information on some topic that's been covered in the past. But it's a start! Now that Discord is apparently opening up to ads, it remains to be seen whether that cultural shift will be able to hold or if people are going to be driven into even deeper hidey holes, like the freed humans in The Matrix who have to hide out deep in the earth from all the robots ;)
raxxorraxor 2y ago
I believe the affinity of social media users to cast judgement is a huge factor as well, worse on those that actually do reflect a lot. Although it is perceived vastly more strongly that it is often meant since individual voices overlap. Still it furthers the assumption that many are very judgmental. With that a strongly regulated social media place can be just as hostile as the most vulgar forum you can find. By experience, it can often be even worse. Nit picking is a form of communication as well, perhaps often chosen because users want to share something difficult to do on the medium. That said, nit picking often doesn't carry hostility. Especially on tech platforms it is just meant as a contribution. Maybe there are carry over effects and miscommunication.
VA0 2y ago
Social media is designed to make money, whether that be from selling data or conglomerating it and advertising to you. They want the user to be purely a consumer. They are designed to make people reactive and have a short attention span, they are easier to sell to.the users mental reward system is essentially brainwashed to be an easier target to sell to.
- ryandv 2y ago
  Advertising is one of the main reasons modern social media is experiencing continued enshittification in this era. Noam Chomsky in his "Manufacturing Consent" wrote of three "filters" that determined which content would be presented to viewers, and while he wrote on the mass media in 1988, I believe this framework applies equally to social media in 2024: access to capital; the "advertising license to do business;" and a symbiotic relationship with government, who provides access to authoritative sources of news. Take X, for example: its access to capital allows it to eclipse most other social media and build network effects that are difficult for other startups to disrupt; after the Musk acquisition, advertisers began withdrawing from the platform; and as the Twitter files have claimed, its collusion with the U.S. government in the promotion/demotion of certain viewpoints. If you want to see genuine viewpoints, you'd best seek out media that are largely independent of these three "filters" over what messages are permissible on the medium.
- red-iron-pine 2y ago
  you left out brand-shaping and consensus-building, which is arguably just very advanced advertising. almost universal overlap with agit-prop as well
- quest88 2y ago
  I think that's part of it but not all of it. Even here on HN, with no ads, you can find hostility in the comments.
  - HughParry 2y ago
    people are a bit happier here to have an argument and then get on with their lives though
walthamstow 2y ago
Lots of good answers to your question already but I'd add one - anonymity. It's a lot easier to be a dick on the internet than it is in real life.
AtlasBarfed 2y ago
Because it is INTRUSIVE. The advertising industry is fundamentally about intruding into your lives, and by that measure, the % of attention it can command. The advertising industry (which is social media is that isn't colossally obvious) has relentlessly pursued increasing this percentage, and the smartphone was the physical means to achieve it, and newfound social addiction feedback loops the nitro turbo boost. Even modern/new humans can't adapt to this. Older minds are crumbling into echo chambers, or withdrawing entirely. Paranoia takes hold. Or is it paranoia? Or are your every move, thought, and action collected and categorized into a profile which is currently used simply for "advertising optimization", while in China it produces a worse-than-1984 dystopian system, and likely there are population profiling projects in US three letter agencies? My internet profile is set in stone from my 20 years. Nothing I can do about it now. I'm purgeworthy whenever the totalitarianism grips the USA. Elections are becoming existential now, and that likely isn't paranoia. While I've given a rational probability to all this, most people do not, they respond emotionally, especially to relentless stress and burden of processing unending perpetual advertising. And as we all know, here comes the AI.
HumblyTossed 2y ago
Being angry and negative is very much easier for most people than being happy and positive. I'm serious. It's easier to complain about the driver that cut you off as being an asshole driver than to ponder if they truly made a mistake and are feeling like shit right now. "Social" media capitalizes on this and multiplies it for the sake of engagement.
avensec 2y ago
There are lots of replies; I'll add my theory. Threads aren't conducive to conversations that build psychological safety and trust. A natural conversation of curiosity/questions, in 1:1 or small group settings, doesn't exist. This leads to talking *at* each other instead of with each other. The reduction in empathy follows. Thanks for asking the question and spawning the conversation threads!
- evilduck 2y ago
  > There are lots of replies; I'll add my theory. Part of the problem lies here, and I'm doing it right now too. In online public spaces we never have a conversation with another person, and rarely even then within a small group like enthusiast forums of yesteryear, we comment to the lynch mob. We reply to someone's statement with our own thoughts but it is not judged by the original poster if it was a good or insightful reply to what was originally said, it's judged by the mob with upvotes and downvotes and being flagged, misconstrued and nitpicked in fifty different ways. It happens here, Reddit, Facebook, YT, and any popular venue where comments are allowed. Even Github issues and pull requests. I think it's why Discord is a popular alternative choice for many people. If you're not actively present, you can't chime in with your two cents and derail the conversation into some energy draining defense against someone's insane straw man attack. Comments needing to be in real time and the conversation being locked away and lost are a virtue for some folks.
  - avensec 2y ago
    One differentiation I find is that, I typically respond to questions or ask a question. In that way, I don't believe it was part of the problem, but demonstrated a pattern of improvement, I'd love to see (I responded to a direct question). More questions and dialog! :)
- circlefavshape 2y ago
  Indeed. What happens on social media isn't conversation, it's a performance for an audience
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pixl97 2y ago
>Like why is social media inspiring us to such hostile nit picking on behaviour and ideals? So I'd like to point out something I've not seen mentioned yet. That is what I call 'small down behavior', that is nit picking on those that don't fall into some small group that is acceptable. It seems that social media has not caused any new behaviors, but instead given a new and expansive venue for the behavior to spread.
- 2devnull 2y ago
  I’d say a lot of that is genetic and or cultural. At the very least there are many of us who do not possess that instinct. We have much lower karma scores but we don’t care.
  - pixl97 2y ago
    >but we don’t care. Just because you don't care about something doesn't mean it doesn't affect you. For example with many websites, high karma posts/users show up at the top of the feed. This means those addicts messages are the ones you're getting subjected too every day.
ayewo 2y ago
> Like why is social media inspiring us to such hostile nit picking on behaviour and ideals? Social media is a highlight reel of people’s lives. It’s the best part hand-picked out of our mostly mundane lives. Until these teenagers understand this, they’ll never feel “good enough” to share their own situation. Instead, they’ll remain on the hamster wheel trying to live up to the ideals peddled by influencers.
yungporko 2y ago
i don't think social media is inspiring people to act like this, i think the vast majority of people are just pricks in general and the internet lets them act like this without any negative consequences. if there was some way to just start arguments about nothing in real life and then pause them at will to go and cherrypick stuff that supports your argument, then come back and act smug about it (or not come back at all if you don't find anything), people would incessantly do it in person too.
colloydi 2y ago
I think it's because when we get to know other people IRL what they say is of secondary importance to how we perceive their intentions and motives. These determine how we feel about a person. They're subjective and hard to ascertain on the basis of written text alone. So as a matter of caution we tend to impute bad motives to people we can't 'feel' clearly which means any textual claims made are subject to unnaturally high levels of scrutiny and demands for evidence/documentation. Also the internet is forever whilst IRL conversation is throwaway.
hackinthebochs 2y ago
Social media created a perpetual church gossip culture where every action and statement is endlessly evaluated by the peanut gallery, while also creating a land rush for finding new moral angles to exploit for social status. Why specifically social media? It's a function of communication efficiency. It's why church is associated with this sort of cattiness, everyone knows everyone and is brought together regularly to provide a venue to trade gossip. It also supplies the moral standard by which everyone is evaluated and one's social status is tied to how well one appears to meet this standard. The cattiness is just status games playing out given these constraints.
squigglydonut 2y ago
I think the reddit upvote downvote design is just one example of BAD UI that doesn't take into account the human element of the interface. Imagine if when you spoke with someone in real life, you added an upvote/downvote every sentence they said. This is why product designers need to be way more concerned with ethics than they are and companies need to give more respect to the product design role it is not just drawing pretty pictures you are shaping someones psyche.

verisimi 2y ago

People are broken. Perhaps they always were. Perhaps this latest, is the cost of prioritising work over family - it is now common to have both parents working, with child care outsourced to professionals, that may do everything right, but will not love the child. Love is underrated, intangible. I suspect there are very few whole individuals out there at all. Once the child grows, why would it look to family to help? It has already been institutionalised - it believes that government agencies, psychiatrists etc will help - the 'brokenness' is normal. The grown child won't look to those that would normally step in (family) - they have their own issues. In all honesty, its hard to say whether looking to institutions for help that is a bad decision anyway - how much harm do families cause?

xattt 2y ago
> People are broken. Perhaps they always were. There’s an unspoken burden of past Child Traumatic Stress that, consciously and subconsciously, tints individuals’ resilience and the way the now-adults view the world. I’ve been fortunate to have a happy, normal childhood. However, based on the number of people that I’ve spoken to, I’m starting to think I am in the minority. Friends have casually talked about facing suicide, complex family dynamics, neglect, and crazy religious experiences in early life like it was nothing, when it was/is a big deal. It’s devastating to hear, and realize that the “silent majority” are likely maladapted individuals who are not even close to unpacking their traumatic past (i.e. things like “the friendly uncle” and “the cool youth group pastor”) that got swept under the rug or repressed.
- verisimi 2y ago
  Yep. This is exactly how is see it. I don't think people realise the level of love required to grow a human. Whatever is received is that person's normal - what else could it be? But, I don't think all childhoods are equal, despite appearances.
fireflash38 2y ago
Why do you think that childcare is incompatible with familial love and care?

watwut 2y ago

> No longer can you just throw something out there, no matter how stupid. Back in real world, I could never do it. If you could, that just means you lived in a bubble of like minded people.

tim333 2y ago
In the online world there are a lot of places where you can throw out stupid thoughts and be applauded, although for applause they have to be in line with the particular bubble. "dumbcoin to the moon!" "other party is evil" etc.
randomdata 2y ago
There have always been some dimwits who do not see that good ideas come from iteration on dumb ideas, but what is different now is that the societal norm, adopted from forums like Reddit, is an expectation for you to prove that you are a dimwit, incapable of any original thought, only able to repeat ("source", as the kids like to say) what others have said in the past. This is certainly not the only anti-intellectualism, anti-education movement we've ever experienced as humans, but we had progressed forward. This regression leaves a lot of people in bad places.
- 2devnull 2y ago
  Arguably that’s the meta force behind social media. The platforms are designed to make people think in collectivist terms, which coincidentally (or not) makes things easier for more tyrannical forms of government. Indeed Facebook and old twitter are arguably quasi-federal entities.

rchaud 2y ago

> These days you have carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say and if you utter anything that isn't deemed 100% perfect by those listening, the social scorn will fall upon you. I would expect this to some extent when conversing with strangers IRL too. If it was a chat between friends, a rant here or there is OK because your friends know the real you and understand where you're coming from. Strangers won't be as charitable.

qzx_pierri 2y ago
But you can't 'downvote' someone in real life. In real life, you can say what you want, and people have to hear. However, on reddit (and many sites copying its pernicious site design), if your comment goes against the hivemind and gets hit with -5 immediately, your comment gets collapsed (and basically unseen). Imagine being out in public at a party and you say something slightly 'spicy' and someone walks up to you and puts duct tape across your mouth. You can move to another party (or comment thread in this example), but you already were basically told "your input is useless, now leave". I should mention that I don't see it that way, but a lot of people don't know how to separate real life from the internet - Especially Gen Z. The internet is NOT real life. Bonus: Moderators locking threads with a condescending comment like "Locking this comment thread since some of you refuse to behave". Reddit is the new Twitter, only the censorship isn't thinly veiled. It's not veiled at all.
- hiatus 2y ago
  > I should mention that I don't see it that way, but a lot of people don't know how to separate real life from the internet - Especially Gen Z. The internet is NOT real life People have lost jobs, college admissions, and more based on their posts online. I understand the sentiment but what we do on the internet most certainly has an impact on real life.
  - qzx_pierri 2y ago
    >I understand the sentiment but what we do on the internet most certainly has an impact on real life Because people make the mistake of using their 'real life' identity online. Remove your real life attachments from the internet and you're untouchable. Just because people willingly 'dox' themselves doesn't make the internet anything more than a collection of webpages sitting on a blade server somewhere.

ryandv 2y ago

> These days you have carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say and if you utter anything that isn't deemed 100% perfect by those listening, the social scorn will fall upon you. This is an immense impediment to writing for the academically-inclined, or merely one who still has some shred of epistemic integrity left, and a huge boon to the dogmatic mob of believers eager to strike down anyone who dares question their orthodoxy. For one, it takes time and substantial research to compose a thought that is both "true" and unique, buttressed by citations to other works or accepted facts; for the other, it is much easier to reply with a five-second thought in 280 characters with thought-terminating cliches branding the "other" as a deplorable undesirable whose ideas aren't worthy of an audience or a platform. That is, if you even get that far - these days it's more likely you will simply be downvoted into oblivion, your thoughts swiftly evicted into the memory hole, never to be seen again. > Once you've felt said social scorn enough you no longer see words as a way to make friends, so turning to beauty is the natural progression. Issues of "Redditization" and scorn aside, we are progressing into a post-literate society where the written word and other literary media are being eclipsed by audiovisual media such as YouTube or Instagram. While much of the western world is "literate," in that they understand how to read and write (basic) words and phrases, much of our life - especially online - takes place in a highly visual world of filtered photos and staged videos. It becomes increasingly difficult for one to represent themselves in a written, literary form, when the culture demands "pictures, or it didn't happen." McLuhan in "Understanding Media" has written on how the preference of one sense over another (e.g. sight over sound) in differing societies has profound cultural impacts over the ways we think, act, and what we find permissible: The printed form has quite different im- plications in Moscow from what it has in Washington. So with the telephone. The Russians' love of this instrument, so congenial to their oral traditions, is owing to the rich nonvisual involvement it affords. The Russian uses the telephone for the sort of effects we associate with the eager conversation of the lapel-gripper whose face is twelve inches away. Both telephone and teleprinter as amplifications of the un- conscious cultural bias of Moscow, on one hand, and of Washing- ton, on the other, are invitations to monstrous misunderstandings. The Russian bugs rooms and spies by ear, finding this quite natural. He is outraged by our visual spying, however, finding this quite unnatural.

runamuck 2y ago

I have a good rule. I NEVER reply to someone who comments on my comment w/ hostile intent. For example: I made an innocent comment on a YouTube video, and someone completely misread the comment and posted a hostile reply. I wanted to explain to him that he misread my comment but I just let it go. You never need to defend yourself. If you want to post a comment, post it. If someone misunderstands or mocks you, let them.

BadHumans 2y ago
> If someone misunderstands or mocks you, let them. Very easy to say when you aren't going viral and 100,000+ people aren't trying to get you fired or hurling insults at you ranging from calling you an idiot to telling you to die. I'm not saying you're wrong but it's much easier said than done.
- amplex1337 2y ago
  It is definitely easier to ignore when there are 100,000 comments than 100, this is correct. You really need to be in control of what you want to spend your time on these days, and replying to cancerous YouTube comments is not one of them generally. Let it be.
  - BadHumans 2y ago
    I think you are missing my point and maybe you are assuming anonymity but there is point where it isn't as simple as ignoring hateful comments because these people try to push into your life. There are countless examples of people being doxxed and being harassed at work because of something they said online.
- bcrosby95 2y ago
  This is why I run multiple online identities. I learned back in the '90s when I got death threats because of my MUD character (a text based multiplayer rpg). I knew people who had their power pulled in real life by rival guilds so they could kill them when they disconnected.

amplex1337 2y ago

You certainly can just throw things out there, but if you are obsessed with making every single person satisfied with your thoughts, you are going to have a bad time. The world is full of people who disagree with you, but you need to learn more than ever to recognize and filter out what you don't care about. I don't even view replies to posts any longer, 98% of the time because I am not seeking validation sharing my opinion. I still change my mind sometimes based on others thoughts and opinions, so you can't say I am fostering avoidance too much, just very selective, as my time is valuable.

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qrobit 2y ago
Aren't most of the replies critic or posted by people disagreeing with you though? Especially on HN, where most users would promote discussion with a reply rather than «Agreed» or «lmao»
- shrimp_emoji 2y ago
  Agreed lmao
mindcrime 2y ago
The world is full of people who disagree with you, but you need to learn more than ever to recognize and filter out what you don't care about. I don't even view replies to posts any longer, 98% of the time because I am not seeking validation sharing my opinion. This is something it's taken me a while to come to terms with. I used to want to fully engage with everybody and everything. It was anathema to me to just "broadcast something into the void" and ignore replies. But over time I came to realize that a. I don't scale to engaging with every single person who replies to something I say online, and b. I don't owe those people a response or any of my time/attention; especially the trolls and bots and other lamers that are so prevalent these days. So now I'm more comfortable (albeit maybe not 100% comfortable) with treating things in more of a "fire and forget" fashion. I say what I want to say, and people can do with it what they will. I just can't be arsed to engage with the trolls and other randos. But... if somebody has a mature, reasonable, professional response then I am willing, on a selective basis, to dig in deeper and have a longer discussion.

yungporko 2y ago

this definitely describes nearly 100% of interactions on the internet but i almost never encounter this in real life, i assume because the other person can't sit there googling and adjusting their argument any more than you can that there's no way to "win" anyway.

natural219 2y ago

Funny. I just tried to post my yearly attempt to communicate with people on Reddit, which got taken down immediately by the auto-moderator. https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/1c0nuy6/it_is_impossible_to_live_in_austin_as_a_cigarette/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/1c0nuy6/it_is_impos... It's infinitely sad that there's no place to just connect with people on the internet anymore. My post got 6 comments and a DM within the first minute, before the post got taken down. These people could have been new friends. I've been through this cycle so many times I have long given up on trying to post on the internet. Logging on to find people and share thoughts only to be met with this massive wall of context and janitorial standards. I gave up like five years ago. This is to say that the whole debate between "social media causes anxiety" and our landscape of social media causes anxiety makes this debate way too coarse. Getting on the internet between 2005-2012 felt happy, free, and was just a wellspring of community and connection. Post-2013 it's been a nightmarish hellscape on every platform.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> You can't share your thoughts anymore. The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility I’ll add that people addicted to social media become insufferable to share novel (often silly) thoughts around because the focus becomes dropping a zinger versus meaningfully engaging with what was said.

noemit 2y ago
thanks for articulating this. I've encountered a lot of Gen z who do this and while they are well-meaning, smart kids, I find it so difficult to have a nice conversation because of this
- fragmede 2y ago
  The phenomenon of being a smart ass is far from new.

gnramires 2y ago

Edit: Now before commenting, I see there's an overarching theme of: sure, there is a bunch of unhealthy stuff about social media, but meanwhile there are some things you can do to make your interaction with it better. > That's where social media has been most damaging. You can't share your thoughts anymore. The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility. No longer can you just throw something out there, no matter how stupid. These days you have carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say and if you utter anything that isn't deemed 100% perfect by those listening, the social scorn will fall upon you. I think that's an important point, that I think is partly due to culture of the spaces. For example, I almost never downvote anyone, and in particular not for them being wrong, unless it's something particularly harmful whose visibility would be damaging, or just a troll (quite rare usually). The downvote button seems important for those rare situations (maybe just a mod button would be enough?), but in general it should rarely be used. Not only I've come to believe asking questions is important for beginners to learn, but also it's an important medium for everyone else (and in particular experts or more advanced learners) to exercise their knowledge by teaching stuff and learning to fill gaps in their knowledge. I actually think reddit is pretty good in this regard, specially w.r.t. what we had before and other media like StackExchange. In SE, you're expected to search the site and often questions are met with arrogance. In oldschool forums, which I do like, there was (in almost every case I remember) an even greater air of elitism; although, on the other hand, it created a healthy eagerness to learn the norms and participate in a careful way. I tend to prefer the lower-stakes communication of HN-style boards though. I think as with everything massification is a significant problem. I encourage everyone to participate in communities whose size feels 'just right'. Also, at least some of your interactions should be highly participative, and not just mindless consumption. I think a final problem is that any activity of too narrow scope can be dangerous. If people are confined into extremely narrow interests and spend all their time on that, as opposed to learning everything about life, that can (and probably will in most cases) paint a distorted picture of reality and be very unhealthy. Broaden your curiosity :)

darby_eight 2y ago

> That's where social media has been most damaging. You can't share your thoughts anymore. The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility. No longer can you just throw something out there, no matter how stupid. These days you have carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say and if you utter anything that isn't deemed 100% perfect by those listening, the social scorn will fall upon you. I understand this fear when posting on reddit (or other social media) itself, but I am absolutely confused where this idea that this applies to reality comes from.

czscout 2y ago
I think the point is that this person has spent so much time experiencing this phenomenon on the internet, that the effects are bleeding into reality.
randomdata 2y ago
Nobody fears posting on Reddit. That's silly. What would there be to worry about? It's just software. It doesn't even recognize that you exist. The problem is that the real world is increasingly not understanding that the internet and the world are not the same place, and they are treating software and people the same way. It turns out that people are not software. This leads to problems. Those who confuse you with software don't apply the compassion that people would otherwise normally receive, and, as a result, will be quite happy to put you in a bad place. You know, the 'Redditaization' of the world. Its funny that even here we see the internet and the world being seen as the same thing; emblematic of the exact same confusion that the comment is about.

rexpop 2y ago

Providing rationales for your beliefs is hard work, but it's worth it. I'm not saying you deserve to be bullied, but I have no trouble saying what I think online, and supporting my positions with evidence—admittedly, behind a pseudonym, but that is necessary when one targets violent men for critique, which is 90% of why I bother going online in the first place.

randomdata 2y ago
> I have no trouble saying what I think online Well, sure, you're just dealing with software. What trouble could there be? The problem with the 'Redditization' of the world is that people fail to recognize that software and people are not the same thing, and start treating people as if they are software. That leads to social issues, just as treating people as if they were dogs leads to social issues. And here we have proof positive of this happening: You weren't even able to recognize that the world and the internet are not the same place.

khazhoux 2y ago

> The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility I think the actual biggest problem with "Redditization" is not hostility, but instead the fact that there is really no dialogue. There's no back and forth discussion, at least not with the same actual individual. You post a comment and (maybe but usually not) get a reply, then if you reply to that reply, the next reply in thread will be from someone else. Very very rarely do you go back and forth with one person. And regardless, you'll never ever interact with that person again (except maybe if you're on a tiny sub). It's such a odd and distorted version of conversation. I'm not talking to any specific "you" -- I'm submitting thoughts to a "mass-you" and hoping with fingers crossed that the mass-you will reply or at least nod in approval with a single upvote.

gosub100 2y ago
Reddit is not hostile as long as you only parrot back ideas that the hive mind agrees on. And the reward system is mis-aligned. I'd call it a Twitterification, because the karma points are awarded to succinct, snarky/funny conversation-ending quips. Nobody has time or attention span to debate an issue, and even if you did you risk being shut out of the group for wrongthink.
- khazhoux 2y ago
  That's right, there's no debate, except on the rarest of occasions. It's actually an odd feeling whenever some discussion with divergent opinions ends amicably.
  - amatecha 2y ago
    In my experience, genuine "clashing of views" with amicable discussions happens pretty frequently on Mastodon. It's pretty astonishing to see sometimes, because it's so unusual for the past X years in online social spaces. Like, potentially-multi-day-threads of max-character-count messages discussing topics that people fundamentally disagree on but are trying to hash out each others' perspectives and "get somewhere" with it. Very interesting, and great to read. Sometimes it goes the other way and the people talk past each other, but that's pretty standard lol

mcronce 2y ago

> No longer can you just throw something out there, no matter how stupid Obviously this is not the context you're talking about, but I find this issue with brainstorming type sessions these days as well these days. Not just work sessions either, as another example, I'm on the advisory board for a local club, and the first meeting was really barren for quite a while. It's gotten to the point that I always make sure to voice my philosophy early on - "not all ideas are good, but many good ideas start out as bad ideas and become good through conversation" - and proceed to throw a few incredibly stupid ideas to the group to break the ice. It seems to help.

Damogran6 2y ago

Conversation is muted because the vast majority of the things I want to add to the conversation are in the top 5 upvoted comments.

randomdata 2y ago
Which is funny as the top five comments all fell into the exact trap that the original comment was about – confusing people with software. Which, to be fair, isn't surprising. If so many people weren't confusing people with software the original comment would have not been posted in the first place. We are here because that confusion has become so commonplace.

lawlessone 2y ago

>The 'Redditization' I'm more worried about the Linkednization. Where people share terrible views and nobody criticizes it because they don't want to be seen as someone that criticizes things.

randomdata 2y ago
The ‘Hacknewsization’ is most worrisome. - “The climate is changing and the outcome of that is bad.” - “The climate doesn’t have enums. Have you tried Rust?”

Xeyz0r 2y ago

> The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility. Actually for me it's quite difficult sometimes to write thoughts on topics here. I'm just being afraid not to be understanded

datavirtue 2y ago

"These days you have carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say and if you utter anything that isn't deemed 100% perfect by those listening, the social scorn will fall upon you." You just described HN perfectly. I can shrug it off because I remain anon here and don't care about my rating, but I see other people being traumatized by this dynamic in other social media platforms. I'm not sure what switched but I remember being on Slashdot and having people go off on me or others, and it was just hilarious. These days it seems like people are genuinely being traumatized regularly by the engagements.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

mikrl 2y ago

>The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility Thankfully there are corners of cyberculture with a distinct anti-Reddit bent where hostility is almost a norm that you get desensitized to and you can see all manner of profound and stupid ideas and react with hostility in kind. After spending time there, returning to Reddit feels like staring at pablum, and you start seeing gross inaccuracies get updooted, and the inconvenient truths get buried. (you should imagine this was written by gigachad, and anyone who disagrees is a badly drawn wojak in some state of emotional distress)