Surely this isn't a new concept but I think it deserves a different perspective in the "modern" Internet.
Talk has become too cheap. Cheaper than talking in person. The <text> field has made it too easy to mindlessly post an opinion before fleshing it out or even finishing the argument well.
In the IRL world, talk is still cheap and still quite meaningless. I am from a country that I feel talks way too much. I probably wouldn't say that if the talk was interesting or new, which only occurs in about 5% of my daily conversations.
The Internet is supposed to let someone(s) make their own worlds. However, the walled gardens have made it too apparent that no one need understand the internet or even much of a computer. Just sign in and type.
That I think is what made me so interested with the early days of AOL, geocities, etc. Sure, the Internet was much easy to use than it had been, but there were still some technical barriers that users had to figure out.
And now I feel elitist and "tryanical" to say that I only want to talk with someone who, say, understands how to use a private / public key at the very least. I don't care if that over-respresents certain races or socio economic groups. It doesn't exclude anyone from learning and participating, but I prefer to hear from at least the people who bothered to persist with the most basic of concepts of the medium that they are using to express their ideas.
Right now, no one has a "speed bump" that makes them stop to think about their ideas or research others' ideas who could support or disprove theirs. It's way too easy to make a rant, take an emotional dump on the Internet, and leave.
I am not a communist, either. I think that everyone should have a type of Internet experience that they prefer. And I wonder how such "speed bumps" can be built in without turning people off.
And I'm not talking at all about a speed bump on freedom of expressions or thoughts. It is more of a speed bump to thwart two class of people I personally don't have good conversations
1) those who cannot or will not learn from others and teach themselves; in other words, stubbornly "stuck in their ways" (Read: mindset).
2) people who do not flesh out their ideas, however wrong I think they are. People should have the right to be wrong, but I don't want to hear from them if their opinion is full of intellectual short cuts or copied whatever is popular on reddit this week. One can go to reddit for that. You are just filling up a column and row on a Twitter database with a copy of an idea but in re-arranged words.
>>1
I don't thing it's is as simple as barrier to entry increasing quality. A good counter example to this view would be that provided by the tildeverse, fediverse, and decentralized or darknet social platforms. Also consider the following: https://wakaba.c3.cx/shii/shiichan and some of the comments made in the sbbs.el and support thread concerning the refusal of many very competent individuals to use anything that requires an account or execution of arbitrary source on their machine.
It's not and my opinion is a blog, look up "hackernets", for a modern patch. Not saying it has exactly what you want, such a buzzword but there are certain "hackernets" that are internet overlay based.
some of the comments made in the sbbs.el and support thread concerning the refusal of many very competent individuals to use anything that requires an account or execution of arbitrary source on their machine.
I must be extremely competent then, even though I'm still using x86 and have a few accounts I haven't knocked out yet, lol. HTML and CSS are declarative languages and still arbitrary source, ECMAscript is still a no go regardless of the argument, it's horrific.
>>2
I understand your point. But you have to see that even a "federated" social network like Mastodon has better quality user content than Twitter, even if it has a fraction of the content overall.
And that is a point I missed too. Most of the internet's content is now user generated summaries of current events. Current Events are still generated from the powers on high, in my opinion, which Internet users are not privy too.
Is there such a thing as "herd content"?
>>3
Will do.
>>2
I understand your point. But you have to see that even a "federated" social network like Mastodon has better quality user content than Twitter, even if it has a fraction of the content overall.
And that is a point I missed too. Most of the internet's content is now user generated summaries of current events. Current Events are still generated from the powers on high, in my opinion, which Internet users are not privy too.
Is there such a thing as "herd content"?
>>3
Will do.
HTML and CSS are declarative languages and still arbitrary source
The demarcation criteria is a bit tricky, one could argue that HTML and CSS can't be executed, but it's probably not a debate worth having. Can you think of a better way to describe this concept?
But you have to see that even a "federated" social network like Mastodon has better quality user content than Twitter, even if it has a fraction of the content overall.
I have a rather superficial knowledge of both, but for the sake of argument I'd be willing to accept the premise ignoring all the furrys etc. From this follows the question is the barrier to entry to Mastadon what improves the relative quality over Twitter, even if the quality is still poor? A natural direction of thought would be from this to ask whether Mastadon is primarily distinguished from Twitter in form by its barrier to entry. To gain insight into this one could ask why users switch to Mastadon from Twitter.
Is there such a thing as "herd content"?
I think what you might be referring to here is “The Spectacle”, although the scope of what you're talking about is more limited than it.
>>7
Hot take: Mastodon has been advertised as a ``Twitter without Nazis''. It is not better because of some artificial barrier to entry. People might have trouble selecting an instance to register on, but it is actually very user-friendly. The reason its content is better is the branding. It has been specifically designed to be unappealing to the online Nazi crowd, with emphasis on effective moderation tools that quickly shuts down their harassment campaigns. It is better because it does not have the hordes of right-wing imbeciles that do nothing but poison every single online conversation with their brain dead delusions and stupid-ass dog-whistles.
Regarding Twitter, the Spectacle and constructed realities, the recent reaction to the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone has been very instructive. You could see in real time how the positive feedback loop of derangement works. The same people would create "memes" to slander it, only to conveniently forget that the lies were made up by them and to a mere minute later accept them as genuine truth that further reinforces their existing delusions. Then they would proclaim that "the memes writes themselves"!
>>7
Domain specific language and or parsing malicious tokens from arbitrary input, triggering bugs.
>>8
That was a mistake in hindsight though, one of the disadvantages of distributed networks is that they are harder to moderate effectively. That's why, over time more and more of the instances that were created as "Twitter without Nazis", contemplated de-federating or whitelist federation, which stood in conflict with those who were interested in a distributed network for technical reasons.
>>8,11
I think you're close, but you've over specified. In abstract terms you might say that Mastadon's distinguishing characteristic in contrast to Twitter is better power relations, as in users and communities especially have more control.
>>8,9
Regarding Twitter, I recommend reading White by Bret Easton Ellis. He's a left-leaning gay writer (I never knew he was gay, he doesn't seem to make a whole identity from his sexual orientation). You'll learn more about ``Generation Wuss'' and harassment from the other side of the political spectrum. It's probably one of the best essay I've read in 2019 (I troll you not) and it's a story of contemporary events (post-2016 global nervous breakdown)
Otherwise, I agree with you on Mastodon. The signal/noise ratio is immeasurably better than Twitter's. It simply doesn't appeal to nazi trolls. Discussions seem to be more technical than political anyway and the alt-right simpletons have their own Gab Twitter clone. I don't miss the emotional crew either, to be honest. Besides, Mastodon's interface is not only user-friendly: it's beautiful. It's a proof that open source projects can come with polished UIs too.
>>11,12
Federated networks have that inherent problem: some content could be censored on a particular instance but not on another. If your interests are programming, technology and knitting, and if you're careful to stay away from the political shitshow, I doubt you'll notice it anyway.
>>11,13
Instances having autonomy over which other instances to network with is a desirable feature of federation and not a problem.
>>14
Yes, but if this is at the cost of hyper-fragmentation, the fediverse becomes less attractive as a concept. Especially with how liberally some administrators are with instancs-blocks.
>>13, 7
It is ironic that there is no way to have a thread online without someone(s) bringing the politikal to it eventually. Nothing in OP mentions his politics. For all you know, he/she could be a neo-Nazi, but it has no bearing on what they are trying to discuss, so doesn't bring it up. Mind blowing, I know.
>>16
It's virtue signalling. Even the folks at 9front felt compelled to display an anti-nazi banner and a black lives matter logo: http://9front.org/
Nothing in OP mentions his politics
OP contains the germs of political contamination:
I don't care if that over-respresents certain races or socio economic groups.
I am not a communist, either
Xir gender is not hinted but we know as much about xir politics.
Being alive doesn't have a high enough barrier to entry.
>>17
It's not ``virtue signalling'', it is a clear message to fascist imbeciles that try to co-opt every single community that exists. Why do you think the Dead Kennedys had to write that song? Why do a thousand other such statements exist?
>>18
Here, here
Why do you think the Dead Kennedys had to write that song?
I'm glad you asked.
Maybe, because when you're a millionaire, and you earned all that money by selling mind-numbing mass culture products, such as vinyl disks, to the imbecilic children of the white middle-class, all that's left to pretend you're into class struggle is anti-racism. A song like ``Jewish music producers fuck off'' wouldn't have cut it. Even if punks wearing swastikas was their marketing idea, to begin with.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/feb/27/never-mind-swastikas-secret-history-punky-jews
The swastika also caused an argument between two Jewish manager/theorists of punk, the Pistols' Malcolm McLaren, and his friend, the Clash's svengali, Bernie Rhodes. Fast-talking McLaren embraced being what my late mother called "a disgrace to the race".
Activist, artist and punk chronicler Caroline Coon recalls rehearsals for the 100 Club's first punk festival in 1976. Malcolm started handing out swastika armbands he'd had made. Siouxsie of the Banshees put one on right away and some of the Pistols seemed ready to follow suit. Aghast, Rhodes blurted out that if anyone wore swastikas onstage, they couldn't use the Clash's instruments as planned. The Clash backed him up. The gig went on. No swastikas.
(Just kidding, punk bands were brave rebels opposing the systemic nazi ideology of their times)
Real rebellion is when you repeat lies straight out of 19th century forgeries that were constructed to misdirect genuine dissent into hatred towards innocents.
>>23
No, what you describe (and I guess it's chauvinism and racism) is simply called "stupidity". Being stupid and being a rebel are in no way mutually exclusive (quite the contrary, in many cases)
When you're a rich pop star or any sort of jester, and also a proponent of economic liberalism along with social progressivism, you're inline with Hollywood, the press, the whole entertainment industry and the vast majority of the politicians in charge. You can't call yourself a rebel, unless you change the meaning of the word. You're just part of the post-60s rebellocracy. (and also definitely not stupid considering the personal benefits that such an attitude will bring to your entertainer career)
On the other hand, I have no idea where you come from and I could be projecting the western state of affairs onto you. You are a rebel if you hold these beliefs in Russia or Iran, for instance.
In any case, depression leads to indifference and I'd feel guilty if I managed to show you the world in my eyes where everything is dull and gray. So keep up the good fight and make the meme-spouting nazi retards feel unwelcome anywhere!
misdirect genuine dissent into hatred towards innocents
That's how you subvert the genuine class struggle with identity politics, I'll give you that.
That's how you subvert the genuine class struggle with identity politics
Which is what you and your Nazi pals are doing. But keep bitching about the world-wide conspiracy of ```Jewish music producers producers''' as if that wasn't identity politics.
you and your Nazi pals
Kindly fuck off.
t. Jew
And do fuck off, please.
>>26
See? You are doing the identity politics again. Maybe you are the one who should fuck off?
Please move this conversation to /sandbox.
...Especially with how liberally some administrators are with instancs-blocks.
>>15 In my opinion, a strong point of federation is that if that were to happen, you wouldn't feel obligated to stay in their instance because you could get the same experience on any other instance. You can switch to another one that meets your needs better at any time (including running your own) to meet your interests, and everyone gets what they want.
>>28
It was kept on VIP, there are so many non/prog/ threads here that should be in /sol/, it's not funny but the administrator is chill and in my opinion I prefer the administrator this way. Let the insanity spectacle play or ignore it.
The nice thing about talking in person is there's no record besides your hazy memories. If you are from a country that you feel talks way too much, then you are from a shithole country unless the problem is normalfags which are universal.
What you really long for is an internet without poor people. Nothing will ever bring that back.
My only preference is to hear from people who recognize and acknowledge basic concepts of the medium that they are using to express their ideas even if they don't practice it themselves.
The thing is the internet is part of people's daily lives now whether they want it to be or not. Are you going to go after someone who just wants a online webshop to supplement their physical storefront?
What's more important: the fact that someone is right or that they're right but for the wrong reasons?
>>31
You're really bad at red herring, retard.
/sol/