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In this Discussion
- 000 September 2014
- 1234 October 2014
- Death September 2014
- distant_shoe September 2014
- flossy_log_lady September 2014
- joey September 2014
- kdawg October 2014
- Leland September 2014
- MirandaJuly October 2014
- swamp_knobbler_mahan September 2014
- YoursTruly September 2014
1 Like
The Social Network(s)
All this ello business made me think about the number of social networks I participate in.
PARTICIPATE
Facebook (poorly)
Instagram
Twitter
UHX (poorly, but working to be better)
ello (I guess)
tumblr
linkedin (kind of)
Sort of...
youtube
flickr
dabble in
behance
dribbble
deviantART
DON'T PARTICIPATE
vine
snapchat
orkut
google+
Things I No Longer Participate In But Miss
Banana Chat
Vimeo
PARTICIPATE
Facebook (poorly)
UHX (poorly, but working to be better)
ello (I guess)
tumblr
linkedin (kind of)
Sort of...
youtube
flickr
dabble in
behance
dribbble
deviantART
DON'T PARTICIPATE
vine
snapchat
orkut
google+
Things I No Longer Participate In But Miss
Banana Chat
Vimeo
Comments
I LOVE the internet for information but...
most social networks are ruining the human race.
Sports are a far superior form of bringing the various parts of the human race together.
Why?
If I have a thing to say and I share it on twitter or facebook, generally, I will have that thing reinforced with likes or favorites because I am only surrounded by friends and most social networks are about bringing like minded people together. Goodbye serendipity! Goodbye being challenged! Goodbye difficult real life conversations and trying to make friends with people even if I don't particularly fit with them! Goodbye nuance in inflection! I can just turn people off now if they decide to argue with me and forget that conflict doesn't need to be incredibly stressful. I can spin what someone said or imagine them saying it in any way I want. Hello social interactions all becoming, more and more, just one giant popularity contest.
Not so much in Portland, but in other cities I might run into a guy who is like from Pakistan or something and he has an entirely different world view than me and a totally different life experience and we really don't have much we can talk about, but he's a Chicago Bulls fan which means we can talk all day which is a great lube for future empathizing and understanding of our completely different lives. This is one thing I will say about soccer, it can really bring together disparate parts of an individual countries population.
I know social networks have done some great things for struggling countries and organizing oppressed people, but in well off countries it seems to just make everybody patronizing and uninvolved. I think Americans should not be allowed on facebook.
I don't know. Feeling salty lately. I know none of these are new or particularly agreeable thoughts really. On another day I might feel differently. I do like smaller social communities like this one although I hate that there are 'likes' on this board.
We all use facebook
We all complain about facebook on facebook
what does it mean
Is it just FOMO or something deeper/creepier?
I mostly agree with Tom
Facebook is a place where I have honed a style of comedy that I am very pleased with but that comprises like 20% of my experience there (expressing and enjoying comedy (my own and others')), and the rest is just feeling hatred of the human race and despair of anything good ever happening. And irritation with baby pictures I have to scroll past
I also have been disturbed by what tom notes--that thing of just hiding somebody who says something pro-Israel so I never have to deal with it/them again. On the one hand, why expose myself to some vague acquaintances nonsensical rantings? On the other hand, what is the point of consuming a feed comprised entirely of shit I agree with? On the other hand, nothing is less productive than fighting about politics on facebook.
why am I on there? it's my own choice
I don't get it
I miss just liking stuff in my guts.
This is what interests me most about the new social network I'm working on. The goal is for it to be more based on your participation, rather than your popularity. We're trying to not encourage the glorification of "having the most followers" or "having the most likes" and instead just encouraging everyone to take part.
https://mix.fiftythree.com/
I never thought I'd like Pinterest, but it's a great tool for collecting a lot of paintings and drawings that I like in one place. The aspirational and commercial home/life part depresses me though.
"Lube for future empathizing"
I don't draw and I don't have an iPad, so I'll probably never use dalas's thing. It's for a specific group of people I think.
The good thing about it is that it's not aimed only at people who are good at drawing. You could share and play Mad Libs with it. No drawing at all!
Or you could download a template someone else has made for something like Web UI or a checklist for packing for traveling.
Or you can take something someone else has drawn and color it in. Turns out, coloring is still really fun, even as an adult.
I sort of went off-line for a while earlier this year. It felt amazing and surprisingly easy, I didn't have FOMO because I had no idea what was going on and I was only devoting like one hour a week to answering important emails and posting stamps on my philatelic tumblr. I was reading a ton of books, feeling pretty pleased with myself.
Then a couple things happened that made me go online a lot more regularly and ever since, every time I have tried to quit my incessant internet visits it has been A LOT HARDER.
As for "diversity", I live in a small town full of people who aren't that much like me, so I have frequent awkward conversations with people who are "on the other side of things". I definitely don't hear languages other than English spoken, except for the occasional Croatian when I go to the Club for dinner and French when I listen to the news.
Anyway.
I am not on Facebook but I have snuck a peek at some people's Facebook accounts.
I am not on Twitter but I have read many of my friends' tweets.
I am not on Instagram but have looked at friends' photos.
I have two tumblrs that I use sparingly.
I have recently started lurking this board again after months of being away.
I guess my point is that I have grown more and more anti-internet, it depresses the shit out of me and consumes so much of mine and the people I love's lives and time and time again I find myself in this weird lonely place of feeling alienated for not participating enough or being out of the loop. When I am offline for a while I feel wonderful, but the pull is so fucking strong once I start thinking about the possibility of social interactions...
The truth is that even some of my most favorite people in the world's social network accounts are not that interesting nor funny. They start to all feel the same after a while: a person on twitter making a dumb joke or a statement, someone putting up a youtube or a photo, nothing new, too short to be deep (there are rare exceptions, of course). And then I feel like most people never have time to really TALK to each other anymore, mostly no time to talk to ME. It makes it feel as though having an actual nice lengthy conversation with a friend is an unusual opportunity which must be cherished for months!
Some of the stuff I look at online leads to the tumblr accounts of hipster college girls who post tons of bare-chested pictures of themselves smoking. That is probably the thing that gets to me the most. That is the trigger that makes me close my laptop and walk away from it for a while. While social networks have helped activists and certain political movements around the world, they have also made the people who are not directly experiencing turmoil or struggle a thousand times less productive as humans, to the point of apathy and self-destruction.
I am thinking of quitting everything but my blog, UHX, and a very carefully curated instagram feed, and of course email which I love. Email does not feel like "internet" to me, although of course it's a slippery slope because once you're in front of the computer reading emails it is but a click away to get to facebook. But I love email. I have many email correspondences without which my life would be worse. So yeah. What if I quit everything but:
- blog
- uhx
- email
- downloading podcasts
- texting
even that seems like a lot but it would be cutting out a lot of chaff. what would it even be like. I want to read books again.
I use the internet so much for my job--journal articles, scholarly research--it seems crazy to me to also just constantly be using it for life too. I want to identify the exact specific aspects of the internet that are amazing and work for me and jettison everything else. I am feeling inspired by your post Joey.
see you guys here on uhx and nowhere else for awhile! HOW LONG CAN I LAST
what will happen
i'm scared
What I have done?
I will probably get hate mail for convincing YoursTruly to limit her online presence. She is clearly one of the best of the internet and I have made her even less available...
I will stay offline the rest of today and not be a hypocrite.
When I was away from the internet I sort of became mesmerized by computers and all the other stuff they can do. Like I own a laptop and I was pretty much only ever using it for email. Then I filled my itunes with podcasts and audiobooks (I would download them during email checking time) and started to record demos on the computer and write a ton of stuff in Textedit. It was like all my focus was suddenly more concentrated.
As a person who makes music and comics, my poor internet presence is a thing I often question. Self-promotion seems to be so vital to being a person making things, but then again I would rather make the things than talk them up. And at the same time, in many cases, I feel like the more somebody is out there promoting their work, the less I am moved by it. I also feel like certain things are sacred, like you shouldn't be watching a movie while writing/drawing a comic, but tons of people I know do it.
The last thing I have to say is sort of elaborating on that "apathy and self destruction" comment I made. In recent years I have been made more aware of the type of stupid shit some women do on the internet. I know it sounds very judgemental, but from the young lady who posts mostly sexy selfies of herself, to so many fashion/style blogs*, to hundreds of mommy blog*, some of us are choosing to entrap ourselves in these super strict traditional gender roles and to promote them as "normal" in such an "appealing/hip" way that all these otherwise emancipated women follow suit. I feel like this specifically has made our social values regress back to shittier times. And I focus on that part because I am a lady and I don't think of myself as "normal" and don't intend to be. I hate to remember the "I am not a feminist" campaign that happened on Twitter a while ago. You are not a feminist, fine, suit yourself, but do you even understand what that word can mean to some people?
Perhaps there are other vibes like this which I am not aware of because I became so focused on female self-exploitation. Maybe you find idiotic behaviour in your internet zone, too. Or not.
Done blabbing.
Joey.
*there are always exceptions, obviously.
I don't go to Facebook that much. It's pretty crowded, but I like that a lot of my friends are often there.
I really like Twitter because so many people I really respect hang out there and sometimes you get to talk to them.
BananaChat was like a secret closet in an old subway tunnel that only four or five people could fit in and that was awesome. But I got busy and it's hard to dedicate time to it. :(
ello feels like Dig A Pony. Seems like cool kids are building it and people I like are there but everyone is sort of skeptical and it's a little scene-y.
UHX is like a coffee shop owned by friends. You know the people working and you know the regulars and even if the topics are boring you like it.
That said, it's always more complicated as you unpack these things.
Not necessarily weighing in on the selfies issue but I am super disturbed by the idea that everything anyone does is ok. I'm increasingly suspicious of the hyper-individualism promoted these days. Critiquing our own desires and our own motivations is supposed to be part of feminism. There is no such thing as "feminism" if all it means is that everything on earth counts as "feminist" so long as somebody's doing it by choice.
Choosing to be a slave doesn't make slavery okay
So I was standing at a crosswalk with my naked and defenseless transport-appliance between my legs watching the stream of people pilot by in their costly, world-crushing, recliner-seats-behind-armor-and-glass when I found myself thinking "Victorious empire of the sofa-throne!"
Why are we exhausting the world so people can just sit there?
Technology changes our shape. (McCluhan paraphrased)
Please?
Do we really have to beat up a lot of people with police before we get this?
Really?
Note that I was very cautious in my last post not to insinuate that there is only "one kind" of feminism. I specifically pointed out that the word "feminist" can empower many people in many different ways. I just feel like discarding the term with great pride is not going to do much for the evolution of human sensitivity and awareness.
I am completely in agreement with YoursTruly. A person getting to choose what they want doesn't always make them free and independent, especially when they have been exposed to limited options, and I think that is what our mainstream online culture has done: limiting our options. It's weird because it's such a vast magical world out there, but somehow I feel like in general, we are zeroing in on the same three or four popular things. Like, you'd think that the internet would allow us to explore all kinds of exciting new stuff we've never heard about, but the more time goes by, the harder it is to find that cool stuff (in my opinion - I just think of all the artists I know who are trying to be noticed on the web and it is a constant struggle: the airwaves are saturated).
A weird totally nutty example of limited options: have you ever noticed how Beyonce, Rihanna, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry (and probably more popstars I am forgetting) basically never wear pants when they are on stage? It is not the fact that they forgo pants which disturbs me, it is the fact that their performance attire is basically a sexy bathing suit and hardly ever anything else. It makes it look like a woman could never be a famous pop singer (at the top of the charts, who is popular amongst the youth) if she was to wear more clothes. Like, whatever, they CHOOSE to wear the bathing suit thing, how empowering. They love their legs, I guess and it must be great for dancing, but all of a sudden no other kind of clothes are worn. I saw a weird picture of Beyonce recently, with Jay Z and Blue Ivy who are fully clothed, and Beyonce looks like an Ice Capade.
I feel stupid for even having seen that photo, for having paid attention enough to come to the conclusion that pop divas don't cover their legs ever. Alas, that's what the internet does to my brain. And obviously, it isn't really an example of how the internet is affecting people "like us".
I love DrJ's question:
"Why are we exhausting the world so people can just sit there?"
The question of the century.
That is all. Maybe I'm an exception?
Something else that I can say without launching into a long rant about social media is that they seem to really deteriorate reading and listening comprehension for many peeps.
Our overwhelming means of communication makes us worse communicators.
I think reality TV is also to blame for that. Watching "real" people fight on TV makes them look subhuman, until you experience that kind of fight in real life.
@Alex: I might be wrong. Your example might prove me wrong. But at the same time I know you and I would put you on my list of "people who are curious". Curiosity trumps everything. Which is great.
It seems like the answer to improving things is, as you suggest, increasing exposure to alternatives, so that the choice isn't a false choice from a limited set of options. It's just tricky, because there will always be someone who says "Yes, I was raised middle class. Yes, I have a masters degree in gender studies. I still want to be a sex worker, because I feel it's my calling." Then we have to make sure to respect that person's actual, informed choice and not treat them like we know better about how they should live their life.
Still, I think the vast majority of folks are trapped in false choices, like y'all are saying.
Then again, it's hard to pick apart all the different factors--standardized testing and the deplorable state of the American public school system obviously also have to do with this. I just feel like if a culture's primary means of communicating becomes the soundbyte and the short declarative statement bound by word limits, it just can't mean good things for that culture's ongoing ability to deal with complexity and clarity. Clarity is so important!! And if all you read are soundbytes, you receive no training in parsing meanings and subtexts; in picking out what is really being said / what is really important; you don't know how to argue against a statement except by saying "YOU are!"
...wait a minute...
I'm curious about what possible positives can come of this (if any).
For example, I use a service that reads all my emails and tells me how many different people I emailed in a week. It also tells me how many of those are 'new' to me. I have been delighted to see that while the total number of emails varies wildly, I am generally in contact with about 30 people a week via email. And best of all, about 5 new people EVERY WEEK.
How am I emailing five or more NEW PEOPLE every week? That seems INSANE. I want to make an argument that perhaps cutting communication down to just 140 characters allows us to communicate with more people. That's cool (if it's true).
Also... Perhaps these short modes decimate the articulation of complex thoughts, but are the complex thoughts still happening? I think so. I hope so.
I'm not convinced people are getting dumber. I think it feels that way because we're interacting with more dumb people. THE POWER OF THE NETWORK EFFECT = YOU WILL KNOW MORE (dumb) PEOPLE.
Use the momentum of the future to your advantage.
“You might think you’re thinking your own thoughts. You’re not. You’re thinking your culture’s thoughts.”
— Krishnamurti as recollected by Nora Bateson.
(good argument for intentional creation of your community)
Recently I've felt pretty disconnected from old friends and guilty because this is entirely my choice. I'm busy because I'm keeping myself busy. I like it. Most of the time.
But I haven't used it much. What's your profile?
http://www.tsu.co/kmikeym
FUN NEW ONE YOU GUYS!