4 ms·

Twitter seems pretty much designed to function as an emotional amplifier. It's not dissimilar to traditional news media in that respect -- "if it bleeds, it le

by cstross 12y ago

Twitter seems pretty much designed to function as an emotional amplifier. It's not dissimilar to traditional news media in that respect -- "if it bleeds, it leads" and all that. Humans like to pay attention to other humans, and are fascinated by bad behaviour and messy accidents. Newspapers and TV channels are always after something that provokes their readers and gets them emotionally engaged at a fight/flight level. And twitter and other social media that permit unrestricted engagement play to this -- that's precisely why they've grown so big. (Facebook is in no way an improvement unless you lock it down to friends-only. After all, the difference between 4000 characters and 140 isn't that great, when you're trying to discuss complex issues, especially if you're not very articulate or thoughtful in the first place.)

timr 12y ago
Yeah, the most important benefit of Facebook is that you can say things "privately". But even then, it's a lot harder to portray someone as an evil villain cartoon when there's context. Even if most people don't read more than a sentence or two, it's possible to look like a real human being, whereas on Twitter you get your 140 characters, and that's that. By the nature of the network, nobody cares or sees the ten tweets that come before/after the offending one.
wutbrodo 12y ago
> Facebook is in no way an improvement unless you lock it down to friends-only. This is definitely not true. As lunatic as they may seem, many of the people in these online mobs are at least somewhat reasonable, and if they were able to see context (for example, a comment or edit on the original post) it would pretty seriously attenuate the virality of stuff like this. Twitter is drive-by conversation: there's practically no possibility for context, for clarification, etc. Hell half the time I'm exposed to Twitter, I end up looking at fragments of conversation whose context is pretty damn painful to nail down. A shitty interface like that is a hell of a lot more efficient at instigating mobs over misunderstandings.
dredmorbius 12y ago
Scott Alexander's "The Toxoplasm of Rage" (h/t mlp at Ello) describes how Tumblr is apparently the perfect storm of outrage: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage More from Merideth: http://maradydd.livejournal.com/530110.html http://maradydd.livejournal.com/530110.html The phenomenon reminds me quite strongly of Orwell's Two Minutes Hate from 1984 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate

by cstross 12y ago

timr 12y ago

Yeah, the most important benefit of Facebook is that you can say things "privately". But even then, it's a lot harder to portray someone as an evil villain cartoon when there's context. Even if most people don't read more than a sentence or two, it's possible to look like a real human being, whereas on Twitter you get your 140 characters, and that's that. By the nature of the network, nobody cares or sees the ten tweets that come before/after the offending one.

wutbrodo 12y ago

> Facebook is in no way an improvement unless you lock it down to friends-only. This is definitely not true. As lunatic as they may seem, many of the people in these online mobs are at least somewhat reasonable, and if they were able to see context (for example, a comment or edit on the original post) it would pretty seriously attenuate the virality of stuff like this. Twitter is drive-by conversation: there's practically no possibility for context, for clarification, etc. Hell half the time I'm exposed to Twitter, I end up looking at fragments of conversation whose context is pretty damn painful to nail down. A shitty interface like that is a hell of a lot more efficient at instigating mobs over misunderstandings.

dredmorbius 12y ago

Scott Alexander's "The Toxoplasm of Rage" (h/t mlp at Ello) describes how Tumblr is apparently the perfect storm of outrage: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage More from Merideth: http://maradydd.livejournal.com/530110.html http://maradydd.livejournal.com/530110.html The phenomenon reminds me quite strongly of Orwell's Two Minutes Hate from 1984 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate