One of my pet theories for why social media is such a cesspool is that it exposes us to the whole of someone else.
If I play boardgames with Sue, that's enough. We meet, enjoy a beer and play some Catan and go our separate ways. That's a fine relationship.
If I follow Sue on social media, now I know her politics, religion, sex life, drug usage, opinions on every little thing.. and frankly, I don't care or want to. I'm happy just playing some Catan once in a while.
Historically you didn't need to know everything about everyone. Your friends will always have opinions or lifestyles you will find disagreeable - that is the nature of human existence.
Humanity either needs to "agree to disagree" on wide swaths of things we care a whole bunch about (abortion, firearms, lgbtq, etc) or we need to go back to not discussing those things in public or polite company.
My $0.02 is that it's easier to fall back to rules of polite conversation than fix our compulsive need for agreement.
My favorite theory comes from an HN comment describing it as the "toaster fucker problem." I'd attempt to re-explain it, but the original comment is great (and easy to search for. Not many mentions of the phrase "toaster fucker" on HN.)
My roommate basically put it in his project for university as a similar theory to Toaster Fucker. I too have a personal similar theory where I just refer to the 'village idiot'.
They all basically revolve around one truth I think.
The internet doesn't radicalize people. People radicalize people. The internet is just full of people who are already radicalized in their daily life, and they are using the internet to radicalize others. Whether it be for the left, right, or even some weird alt thing.
Penny Arcade even has their own comic strip theory called "G.I.F.T of the Internet".
Theirs is more simplistic though in that it stipulates that the anonymity of the net is the problem insofar that it gives people a fake sense of security to be who they really are on the inside. For better or worse. Usually worse.
I think all of our ideas on the matter basically resonate on the same singular issue. That people were already nuts to begin with. The internet is just making easier to identify which are fucking screwballs and ... the rest.
But then that poses a new problem. Mob mentality even of righteous people is still just as toxic as the mob mentality of fucking idiots.
Not only the most incendiary topics but the most incendiary people as well! So the crazy angry neighbor who AFK has two friends gets 500 followers on Twitter, and lots of "likes" on various partisan sites. That rush of approval causes the neighbor to invest even more of their time online where they feel important. This wouldn't be possible without network effects, so I agree, the algorithm can't be discounted or disambiguated from the phenomenon as a whole.
Yeah, we shouldn't discount the algorithms put in place by people; but we should also keep in mind that those algorithms only operate based on inputs from people. If the outputs the algorithms are giving you are not desirable, then it is solely the fault of the people who are feeding that algorithm in the way they are, etc and so forth. Algorithms are not sentient nor have agency over the results of their actions.
We however, do. This is why the human element side of things is my target. Even if the algorithms change, not much will if we don't.
Algorithms are designed, evaluated and impoved by organizations, so are not a point of blame at all. They’re not accidentally putting divisive stuff to the top, the analytics, devs and management all surely see the consequences and decide that the algos are aligned with the business .
Many Organizations generally are within some sort of
competitive landscape - companies in the market,
non profits with donations, city and state govts for tax base. So they all will optimize for effectiveness towards some metric to some degree, restricted by whatever fear of backlash or consequences they may have.
No one is going to approve a ‘say anything as long as it bumps ratings immediately’ algorithm, but almost everyone is going to try to do at least what the top competitor seems to be doing.
Which is algorithmic/ML based engagement optimization, with some kind of ‘but not the most controversial if it’s literally nazis’ type filter for things with too much political blowback (aka calls for insurrection), or legal issues (child porn).
If you look, it’s literally almost everywhere now. And earlier they didn’t even have the ‘not literally nazi’s’ filter.
But it's still people at the end of it. The "algorithm" didn't come up with the topic, didn't write the article, didn't perform the actions. People did. People bought the ads. People promoted the content. And ultimately, people also wrote the "algorithm".
Some hyperbole, but considering the real world consequences right now maybe not as much as we’d like to believe - People are also the ones who use chemical weapons to gas their opponents in particularly nasty wars.
It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t all agree to not do that, or even try to enforce that people don’t do that.
Likes and reshares are often consumed via feed like interfaces though?
I get it definitely happens with folks texting friends links or sharing it via email, but the friction with those is higher and it gives time for folks to think more than the feed interface.
It’s highly efficient psychological pressure/engagement and maximizing the focus towards the engaging content that is the real problem IMO. It makes something that someone could think about (potentially) and choose to stop into something they become hyper engaged with constantly and can’t turn off.
Not to quote taco girl too overly much; but how about both?
Algorithms require input to give you output, right? So even if you are correct that badly created algoritms are to blame, we still have the people who fall for the algorithms outputs because they are feeding it the inputs.
To put it simply, it all goes back to the calculator/computer quote in regard to their users. They are only as smart as the person using them.
So, from that point of view; there are a lot of really dumb users on the internet.
If 99 out of 100 users input not-BS, and 1 user inputs BS, but the algorithm picks the 1 users BS input and feeds it to the other 99 first so they get angry and yell at each other over the 1 BS input together - that is a historically unique situation.
If it does it at scale for cheap, that is also a historically unique situation.
If it does it without a human being directly involved in the choosing and pushing process (and feeling bad potentially!), that is also a historically unique situation.
If someone sees all 100 users posts together, it’s easy to see the BS is BS. If the BS post goes to the top of the feed and is the first thing they see, and the normal posts either don’t show up, or only a few of them show up? That is a completely different experience for the consumer of the media.
I feel like all of this just means that teaching proper critical thinking in schools again would solve most of this. Along with maybe an educational update for those who missed it.
While it would help a little, you’ll always have a minimum of 25% (probably more like 50%+) of folks who lack the degree of emotional self control necessary for any sort of rational learning to override the emotional response.
They might feel worse about it later because they know they shouldn’t have reacted that way, but in my experience that doesn’t help as much as you’d want.
Doesn’t take much to get a mob going unfortunately.
TV talk shows basically had the same formula as Twitter. You don't invite the common, adjusted and perhaps boring personalities, you invite the most polarizing and special personalities you can find. Now they can share their craziness on Twitter together. The press is hostage in an attention economy and must further showcase people like that for financial stability.
Anonymity means more honesty, which is far more interesting than an adjusted and boring corporate world full of advertiser messages and the latter is all you would ever get. That said, the loudest voices on Twitter or Facebook are mostly not anonymous, anonymous boards are mostly far better places to discuss anything. Some abuse it, but without it we would see a much worse net.
> The internet doesn't radicalize people. People radicalize people.
I tend to agree but it's an oversimplification of the problem. There is a fantastic book about the psychology of radicalization by Robert B Caldini "Influence"[1] that has apart from the more common scenarios like exploiting reciprocity etc the idea about saying things out loud. There are 3 stages, you get people to read it, then you get them to say it then you get them to sign it. Once they say it it will be hard for them not to sign it since it means walking back on their argument and society likes consistency and hates flip-flopping. After you get them to sign, it's now recorded in history like something that can compromise you in future. Even you delete it you have said it before. This is relevant on especially for things that go viral or have a large audience. How does that relate to social media?
Especially on platforms that enforce a real name policy you get shallow thoughts because people are careful (LinkedIn is a good example). But even on things like twitter / reddit people will have followers and a karma that they attach themselves (their ego) to.
We do not communicate by saying things but we immediately jump to the stage of writing it down. Now these are usually not well thought out opinions since they haven't been argued in a group and tested against our peers. We blurt out not opinions but brain-farts that we test against an audience but at this stage they are already written down.
If the message shared is popular you get the likes flooding in where every person is likely not to read this message more than once before liking / sharing. But the effect on the author is different because they end up reading what they wrote several times as a way of congratulating themselves and reliving the moment of gratification. So it's actually a form of self-radicalization on half baked thoughts (than radicalization by others). An important step is missing where the author of a message can verbalize the idea with real people f2f before jumping to "the writing it down" stage. That makes it harder not to double down once critic is expressed by an audience. Add to this tribal culture of in/out groups those who will oppose the message can be drowned out with a click of a button (I'm not arguing for letting trolls take over and abolishing mute/block button, but these don't exit IRL. Anyway I'm only trying to deconstruct the process)
There are very few people on social media humble enough not to drink their own kool-aid. The majority of users are absolutely eaten by the system and spat out again without realizing what happened. the concept of writing it down is so powerful that we have even built a legal / trust system around it where we require people to scribble their name under something they have read to make it binding.
I'll take a look at this link later and possibly look up that book too. I do want to say a few things however that so far it seems every replier seems to be mistaking as a larger whole.
These people seem to think that humans aren't at fault for the actions of their creations. They seem to think that algorithms are capable of having agency for their actions... This couldn't be further from the case.
As for the content of your reply however, thanks for being a little more nuanced in it all. Yes, a self contained echo chamber is definitely not going to help things. That said, what you are saying is effectively saying as well "If you proofread your own comments, you are risking radicalizing yourself off your own ideas." But further than that, you are also stating "Those ideas are just half baked".
Well in some people's cases that may be true, but as per the usual problem with most of these arguements; it leaps right past the true actionable agent in the problem and heads straight for blaming X thing that people have little control over. Psychology is one of those things that people have less control over than other people would like to believe. I know this because I have had to literally retrain psychologists over stuff like this during the times they figured they were fixing me. HAH, jokes on them.
(It was always something like "Those people don't control your actions" and I would always reply with "When did the chain of actions and consequences begin in your mind over this subject matter?". To this they would usually start it with 'me', when I would correct them and say "it starts with the person before I, because my actions are based off the consequences of their actions. Therefore while they may not 'Make me' do anything, they certainly do present possible options for me to take, and I tend to take the ones that they like the least; usually due to them being the correct action."
Now, from that little bit of a side story, do you see how your opinion of psychology being the answer might be a bit of problem in its own right? Your assumption basically ignores the fact that there is a chain of consequences for every action taken by every single person connected to said subject matter.
So while the person proofreading their comment might be 'radicalizing themselves' using their own propoganda; you are making the mistake of thinking that just because they have X opinion other than yours, it must be bad. This is a common mistake made by... drum roll please... radicalized people. Especially so in regards to folk who are on the internet far more than they should be? I end that with a question mark because it's mostly an observation so far that I cannot concretely say is for certain the problem and cause to the problem.
And so now we are back to the crux of your point. The half baked idea that gets reiterated over and over again due to be re-read. How half baked is my reply to you? How half baked is your reply to me? Was my original comment even half baked to begin with, or is that just your view of the situation through your own subjective and thus potentially biased viewpoint? Get the point?
The problem is many things DyslexicAtheist. But all of them stem from one single source. Humans. This is why I blame them and not the algorithms or the psychology itself. Why?
Because both are creations of humans. Psychology is just an attempt to understand something we didn't create, so we created a method of understanding it. Faulty as it may be, it has its uses. Algorithms are the same thing in a way. We created the fabric of which they exist, but we still don't understand fully how they operate. Or to put it a better way, we don't fully understand yet how to create them to make them operate exactly how we want. And then furthermore from there, we also do know how to create them well enough to make them do exactly what we want from time to time as well; which has its own problems.
Youtube's algorithm is a good example of the creators only having a partial understanding of how their creation works. (If they are to be believed every time they say "we aren't sure how this works")
Twitters is on the other hand a good example of them making an algorithm to do exactly what they want it to do, and it does it really well. To horrific results.
Both together are my point insofar that algorithms and psychology are only part of the general overall answer. They are not the end all or be all. Humanity is that, in regards to this problem. We are the one factor that if removed, all the problems cease to exist. But we can't exactly go removing ourselves... Well, we can... but that has new problems attached to it.
Meanwhile, the people with the half baked ideas as you put it, are just stating their opinions. You may call them half baked, but who are you to judge others opinions when yours probably aren't that great either to begin with? right?
And that right there is the real source of all the problems. People's ego's.
Once you get over your ego, all of this becomes much easier to understand and accept. But getting a human to do that is fucking hard.
Actually, I understand it quite properly. I was merely just putting into easier to understand terms for others who might need it.
I for one, have no doubt that the removal of the internet from most people's lives would reduce most of these problems to a standstill for the time being due to how exactly right you are about the effect of fast and long reaching communication has.
That doesn't mean that I want to remove the internet completely from everyone's lives though. I just accept that many to most people aren't capable of handling it yet. Not yet.
All these theories that people have on the other hand are them trying to grasp and come to terms with the very fact I just stated. I mean look at them right now. Some of them think algorithms are fully to blame, but this kind of behavior from humans has been around for centuries and beyond now. The only difference through out time is just the speed and distance of which communication occurs.
So, the internet itself is not to blame for anything. The people are, entirely and thoroughly. The internet is for the most part right now, an inanimate object with zero agency or sentient logical thought processes. For now.
And here's the catch... even if it ever gains those things somehow; it will still be the fault of humans if it turns out to be a giant piece of shit; since it is learning from us.
So, Zubiri... still think I don't have a full enough grasp on this yet? Quite contrary, I probably have a larger grasp on the full details of this problem than most people who try to figure it out. But thanks for your input.
This basically keeps the status quo and gatekeeps any marginal opinion. Today's toaster fucking is tomorrow's right to repair or yesterday's abortion rights. It only helps to preserve the system.
I for one am happy about all the toaster fuckers who have a place to talk about it, maybe get help if they think they need it. The alternative would be that we all get mashed into an amorphous blob of the same middle of the road opinions that keep everyone happy.
It's a funny analogy, but there is a spectrum, no? Surely you could acknowledge that there is a spectrum somewhere between Black, Gay, Trans, and Toaster Fucker?
It's extremely easy to dismiss all of these as equally irrelevant. In fact many do (not saying you are) - "I don't care if you are black, white or purple. I treat everyone equally". "I don't care if you're straight, gay, or curvy - what you do in the bedroom is no business of mine". These attitudes SEEM like they are non-judgemental and egalitarian, but they tend to miss all the implicit ways in which the dominant society does NOT treat people equally in these circumstances. And being asked to be treated equally gets perceived as asking for special treatment until it becomes ridiculous: "Gay people want special treatment by asking gay marriage - they're not being discriminated - they can already marry someone of the opposite sex".
It's easy not to care about race or sexuality when society treats yours as irrelevant.
>These attitudes SEEM like they are non-judgemental and egalitarian, but they tend to miss all the implicit ways in which the dominant society does NOT treat people equally in these circumstances.
So, what would you have us do?
I treat each individual as an individual and interact with them based on their individual actions, not based on any immutable characteristics.
I fully support inclusion, diversity, honesty and good citizenship and speak out when I see bigotry, hatred and abuse.
It seems like you're implying that doing so is somehow disingenuous or posturing and that I need to do more. Do I understand you correctly?
Should I, as a middle-aged, heterosexual, "white" male, carry around lots of cash so I can give every woman, POC, differently-abled and LGBTQ+ person I encounter US$20? As "reparations" for the white male privilege that I never asked for, don't want and actively argue against?
This may seem like some sort of anti-progressive rant, but it's not.
So, other than trying hard to be a decent human being and interacting with and about others based on their actions rather than some immutable characteristics, calling out hatred and bigotry when I see it and supporting political candidates who do the same, what exactly do you propose that I do?
You're taking a very individualist stance on the issue - nobody reasonable thinks you should literally give your money to oppressed people to assuage privilege guilt. Hell, you shouldn't feel guilt at all for privilege; it's just something you're meant to be aware of when looking at things outside your frame of reference.
All anybody wants is for you to support the movement for their rights in whatever ways you feel willing to. Often times the "I don't see colour" people are just sticking their heads in the sand about ongoing racial issues, and won't do anything to help combat racism (even voting, the literal smallest political action you can take) because they believe that it's good enough that they personally don't mistreat people for their race. Sometimes these types of people will actively oppose progressive movements in the style of "I'm against racism but affirmative action/BLM protests/Black girls code is political correctness gone mad" stances.
What people are generally asking for is for you to argue their case if it comes up with friends, vote for politicians that want to rectify institutional problems, and even join in protests or rallies or voice your support publicly if you're willing to do so.
>You're taking a very individualist stance on the issue - nobody reasonable thinks you should literally give your money to oppressed people to assuage privilege guilt.
I have no control over what other people do, think or say. What other stance can I take?
I know. I was being hyperbolic with the US$20 bit.
Upon reflection, I interpreted GP's comment as moralistic and condescending, which colored my response in a bad way.
My error was I did not attempt to see their comment in the best possible light and that's not fair to them.
Others who've read my comment appear to agree.
>Often times the "I don't see colour" people are just sticking their heads in the sand about ongoing racial issues,
Sadly, those who pile that sand on these folks' heads are never held to account.
I suspect that many of those with their "heads in the sand" would be less inclined to ignore the intolerance if the sand shovelers (dump truck operators?) were shown for the venal, cynical scum they are.
> I have no control over what other people do, think or say. What other stance can I take?
Of course - individualism in a political sense means the rejection of collective action. It usually boils down to the belief that people's political actions should be limited to financial transactions - solving climate change by individuals recycling, solving food insecurity by individuals donating, that sort of thing. I knew you were being hyperbolic, but a lack of familiarity with institutional or systemic change made me think you might be missing that option. That's not a criticism; it's really common in the US.
> Sadly, those who pile that sand on these folks' heads are never held to account.
Yeah, I was considering saying in my original comment that targeting those types of people has been a conservative strategy for years now, but figured it was political enough already. It seems its easy to switch people over from "nominally anti racism but also anti change" to "nominally anti racist but practically anti anti racist, ie pro racist" by getting them to support counter protest movements escalating in extreme from "all lives matter" and "its OK to be white" up to believing in the white genocide conspiracy theory.
> I suspect that many of those with their "heads in the sand" would be less inclined to ignore the intolerance if the sand shovelers (dump truck operators?) were shown for the venal, cynical scum they are.
Unfortunately people aren't very easy to reason out of positions they've dug themselves into. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink, as they say.
Taking a single thing I said without context is quite disingenuous.
I suggest you re-read the comment to which you replied. Perhaps you'd like to revise your barely concealed and completely unfounded attack on the straw man you created around my comment.
Huh? I was just expanding on your comment about not knowing what people were expecting you to do about systemic problems - I wasn't attacking you. Do you mean the bit about conservative talking heads? I assumed that's who you meant when you were talking about the sand shovelers.
From your reaction I'm guessing the sand shovelers you think are scum are the "woke" people but I hope I'm wrong.
>Huh? I was just expanding on your comment about not knowing what people were expecting you to do about systemic problems - I wasn't attacking you.
That's as may be, but you focused on a single sentence ("I have no control over what other people do, think or say. What other stance can I take?")
in my comment and ignored everything else I wrote.
You then deigned to forgive me (and 300+ million other people) my ignorance.
...a lack of familiarity with institutional or
systemic change made me think you might be
missing that option. That's not a criticism; it's
really common in the US.
How gracious of you.
I'll wait with bated breath for your next brilliant missive.
I'm sorry if I offended you - I didn't mean for that to come across as patronising or as some kind of sanctimonious forgiving of sin, I was just wary that a lot of people tend to get their backs up around the topic of systemic problems and wanted to be clear that I wasn't attacking you. You did also literally say "what other stance could I take?" which I interpreted as meaning you didn't know your options for helping combat systemic problems.
> you focused on a single sentence [...] in my comment and ignored everything else I wrote.
I did address you saying the $20 thing was hyperbole, but I guess I'm not sure what you wanted me to add to the rest? You said you misinterpreted GP's comment - okay? What am I to add to that? It's not much of a prompt for discussion.
>You did also literally say "what other stance could I take?" which I interpreted as meaning you didn't know your options for helping combat systemic problems.
And you interpreted that incorrectly.
the "stance" I take (in this case, support for the equal rights and equal opporunities of all) is the stance of one who doesn't have governmental or corporate power to directly impact change other than my behavior and my advocacy.
You interpreted what I said to mean that I'm powerless to effect any change. Which is unfortunate since not only is that not true, I neither said nor implied anything of the sort.
All that said, I suspect we're, in large part, in violent agreement on this topic.
Go back and read the comment[0] to which you originally replied. You'll see that it makes clear what I think.
I feel like I didn't interpret you incorrectly, because while I missed that it was a rhetorical question, I didn't miss that you didn't list a single way to affect systemic change outside of voting - which is to say that you have an individualist perspective on systemic change. That's why I listed those other options for action - because let's be real here, US electoral politics is a corporate duopoly between a neoliberal party and a vaguely conservative, trending towards fascistic party, neither of which are known for advancing social progress (because the Democrats are wilfully incompetent). Thus, things like BLM protesting for rights or the progressive caucus of the Democrats smuggling actual progressives into Congress. All I wanted to highlight was that real political change happens outside the ballot box, and even though we don't have the power to enact change by fiat the way the powerful do, we can do things beyond just voting and trying to be good people individually, to advance progressive causes. That was all I was trying to say - I do think we're in agreement broadly speaking (though beyond being a progressive I'm also an anarchist, so perhaps we differ there).
>I didn't miss that you didn't list a single way to affect systemic change outside of voting - which is to say that you have an individualist perspective on systemic change. That's why I listed those other options for action
My apologies for not listing every possible activity. I'll make sure to write a Phd thesis here in future.
As for the rest of your paranoid (and condescending) blather, I can do without it. From now on, I will.
There is a huge difference of who asks. The answer to if I support BLM is different and can even contradict itself if the family of George Floyd asks or some corporate media that runs a populist ad campaign. I still believe people were scammed out of their money, that their good nature was taken advantage of.
Black girl programmers should not be black girl programmers, they should be programmers. And they most certainly won't face discrimination because of that. I do think that treating people differently will breed animosity and it does not solve any problem.
I'm not sure what you're talking about with the BLM stuff. You would support them privately but not publicly?
> Black girl programmers should not be black girl programmers, they should be programmers. And they most certainly won't face discrimination because of that.
This is a perfect demonstration of the "head in the sand" position that leads to conservatism that I was talking about. The whole point of "black girls code" is that black girls have less opportunity to get into programming, which is a form of systemic racism given that programming is a lucrative career. It's not an identity thing, it's an access thing - it's an outreach program.
It's also absurd to claim that black women never face discrimination in the workplace.
You seem to be starting from a belief that equal opportunity and discrimination based on race are solved problems and then putting yourself in opposition to programs that try to alleviate these problems (which actually do still exist).
I doesn't have to do with public or private support. I think people were scammed to a significant degree. To offer solidarity means to let yourself be exploited too.
I don't see how my position leads to conservatism. If I prefer not making race a relevant attribute in an outreach program, I guess I am. But the label doesn't mean much to me.
There perhaps aren't many black women in programming yet, but opposing a new racialized world is not sticking my head in the sand. I am pretty actively opposed to it.
You keep avoiding explicitly saying what you mean. By scamming, do you mean the houses bought by Patrice Cullors? The ones she bought with the profits from her bestselling book, where there's no evidence donations were involved?
The idea that progressives are creating a newly racialised world where before everything was meritocratic and equal opportunity /is/ the modern conservative line, and it's a lie. The whole reason for outreach programs is to counteract lack of opportunities that are race based - what exactly do you think racism is?
Actively opposing programs designed to counteract racism, is supporting racism, you do realise that?
> Actively opposing programs designed to counteract racism, is supporting racism, you do realise that?
Your accusation is weak. I disagree and I think a lot of programs are racist and should be opposed on that merit. I am not talking about outreach programs here. There are much more relevant factors why specifically black women might be underrepresented. If I generalize that to women, the reason is sexism. I don't believe in these simple explanations and much more importantly I believe these facts do not allow for anyone to be discriminated, which has to be said specifically also extends to white people.
This is so pointless; every time I try to get a concrete example out of you, you pivot. First you dislike BLM but don't give a reason, then you dislike black girls code but then "have no problem with outreach programs", now you're vaguely hinting at affirmative action being racist because it considers race. Just figure it out yourself.
>but opposing a new racialized world is not sticking my head in the sand. I am pretty actively opposed to it.
New?
Are you claiming that the genocide of the indiginous peoples of the Americas, the centuries-long enslavement (and then another century of legal discrimination) of Africans, discrimination against indiginous peoples of Australia and New Zealand, domination of South Asia by Britain, etc., etc., etc. wasn't "racialized"?
I suppose you could try to argue that all that was a long time ago and is irrelevant to today's society. But that doesn't really work. Laws forbidding marriage between "white" and "black" folks were in full force in my lifetime.
Or Are you claimng that The Spanish, Dutch, British and Portuguese conquerors and slave traders in the 16th and 17th centuries were pushing for the equal inclusion of Africans who "emigrated" to the Americas and the indiginous peoples of the America into their societies?
Are you claiming that the genocide of indiginous American peoples and the maintenance of slave economies that excusively used POC weren't "racialized"?
Are you claiming that the differences in family wealth, quality of education/infrastructure/housing, treatment by law "enforcement" agencies and a dozen other testable, measurable ares aren't the result of centuries of a "racialized" world?
What is new is that those who have been murdered, enslaved and discriminated against are being given a platform to speak out about the legacies of those centuries of mistreatment and the ways that discrimination is embedded into our societies.
And I haven't even touched on the appalling treatment of half the population (women) as well as those who want to live and love (LGBTQ) as they need to.
So, when you say you are opposed to a "new racialized world," to what exactly are you opposed?
Is it equal rights and opportunities for all, regardless of gender, melanin content or national origin?
If that's what you're opposing, I can certainly understand why you're upset. Please do elucidate.
>It seems like you're implying that doing so is somehow disingenuous or posturing and that I need to do more. Do I understand you correctly?
I don't see anything in the OP's post to suggest that. I think their point is that being merely indifferent to (e.g.) gay people isn't actually a neutral stance in the context of a homophobic society. But you state in your post that you're not merely indifferent, so I don't think anything OP says applies to you.
I don't get what being black has to do with this theory though. It's not like it was hard to find a black community before? Nevermind that it's not exactly a trait that has anything to do with what community you are in the first place!
I completely disagree with this on basically all these points. Implicit bias only has shaky theoretical foundations and you don't have to be ashamed of being biased in the first place. Of course you have bias for friends and family. Principles and laws keep you from nepotism. But emotional ties are almost completely irrelevant here. The mafia isn't a real family.
These position are as non-judgemental as it gets. Gay marriage is a separate issue but many support it because of such positions.
Dominant society in liberal democracies impose almost no values on anything related to that and it is even part of the curriculum to educate people on different sexuality. But I think that problem is solved since a few generations. In many countries at least. Saying such positions would be judgemental is actually moving backwards again.
It's a naive and overly courageous assumption that people around you are competent and capable. For instance, I've yet to see someone play proper tennis, do proper pullups, play proper guitar, etc.
At some point you have to branch off and learn from others.
This is why I love HN. Brilliant theory and one I want to circulate but might... no will... need to replace 'toaster fucker' with something more PC to avoid a call from the HR robots.
The counter to that is - sometimes the toaster fuckers are right. See: civil rights, women's suffrage, LGBT.
My pet dream: Everybody Gets One, maybe two, things to be "radical" about. You reckon the earth is flat? Sure. You don't get that AND vaccines are micro-chipped AND an antisemitic 9/11 theory. Spend that token wisely.
Ironically you're only acknowledging the toxic minority of the internet. If anything, if you can't make use of it to find and make friends, colleagues, and family - you are the maladapted one.
The internet provides you with a dozen lifetimes worth of information so you improve yourself. Far beyond what your yokel neighbors could teach you. The need for a extended family is still here and you can compensate with the internet for being born in a shithole country or flyover state.
"If I follow Sue on social media, now I know her politics, religion, sex life, drug usage, opinions on every little thing.. and frankly, I don't care or want to. I'm happy just playing some Catan once in a while."
I have a slightly different view of this. People's opinions on things are always in flux, even if they sway heavily toward one side. What we see on social media is a person's opinions without the context of a human interaction. On social media, we see Sue's emotional response to politics without her having to negotiate that emotional response in relationship to another person sitting in front of her. She may "believe" what she says in the moment she types it, but put her in a room with a friend who disagrees and you can watch how her views shift, push back, concede, change, challenge, etc. On social media, there's very little of this taking place, because there's zero human intimacy at work. It belief in a vacuum not in relationship.
and writing it down in public may make it a lot harder for Sue to change her views, or walk back an over reach after those interactions happen since at any point in the future she could be confronted with her prior dissonant statements.
This is an interesting idea: I wish you could Follow a combination of a person and the #topic they post to. You could choose to follow "all of" a person, but more realistically the default behavior would be to attach to posts from a particular topic that person is generating. This would be similar to your example of playing a game of Catan with someone and enjoying just that limited bandwidth you have with them. Knowing and seeing all of who they are is not common in our business relationships, or friendships.. I think you're right, and I appreciate how you articulated it.
Someone below this mentioned this was how Google+ was intended to work.
I thought I saw someone proposing that Twitter do something like this, basically allowing sub-accounts. For example, I speak some Spanish and would love to tweet in Spanish, but those who follow me and don't speak Spanish may feel annoyed for it to pop up all the time. So I'd love to have sub-accounts, where I have my main account and people can choose which sub-accounts to follow.
I'd love the same for a podcast. I don't want to create 5 separate podcast channels, I want to have a main one and then have sub-channels that people can subscribe to.
It doesn't have to be this structure, it can be another way to allow us to have more power over the feed that we're seeing, giving us filter/search/sort/algorithm options.
So, in short, I love your suggestion and wish the next generation of social network implements it in some shape, whether that be from the incumbents or new ones.
Twitter seems set on going the opposite direction. The fact that likes are mixed in with posts in the main feed is infuriating, because anyone who is just using the like function as a like function instead of a lesser version of RT just floods the feed with random shit.
Now I'm annoyed that in 2022 I'm understanding Google+ better. I want to follow the /intersect/ of "Jane Smith" and "Catan". Both of these are topics. I might be broadly interested in "computers", and "board games", or interested in just my friend "Jane Smith". I likely don't want to know everything Jane is posting - or those posting things about her - but when I choose to Follow her, I should be prompted with a list of topics I've subscribed to that would narrow the posts I see which intersect with Jane. Also - G+ or Twitter - would be working to autotag posts into topics/subjects to help me identify how I want to intersect with those posts. (If the author themselves don't apply tags)
I can see why limiting what you're presented with never took off from a marketing point of view. I think this is rad though.
The problem is I don't think Google+ ever worked that way either. You used circles to decide who to send to, but there wasn't a good way to filter as a receiver.
Being spammed with every single thing a person posts, on any topic, any hour of the day, is a tech problem. No matter how accepting I am, that's a huge waste of time.
If I follow someone for a hobby, and I can have a computer filter out the posts that aren't relevant to that hobby, then it stops being a waste of time* and I'm done much sooner.
*(Unless you want to be unreasonably judgemental about hobbies. But even then, it would probably cut 80-90% of the waste and increase the enjoyment.)
I think you bring your whole self to an in person encounter much more than you do to a social media presence. The difference is, there's no concept of proximity. Everything you say on social is shouted to the entire room, so if you want to say anything, you have to say it to everyone. In a personal encounter, you react to the people near you. If they recoil, you might explain. On social, many people are reacting in different ways and even more not reacting at all. So how do you react to all of those reactions? (You don't)
Or shift the subset of your views that you're exposing to a set that would result in a mutually enjoyable conversation.
In person you can also be passively present and still interacting without saying much. But on twitter you're not even in the room unless you speak and generate reactions, the most reliable way to get a reaction is to be irritating rather than cooperate to generate a mutually good time.
It's the same as with any public discourse these days. If your audience is practically infinite, you have to have an extreme and attention-grabbing viewpoint, otherwise you're just one in a sea of many. If you're only talking to a handful of people, be it in real life or on social media, you don't need the extremism and can afford moderate opinions and nuance.
> One of my pet theories for why social media is such a cesspool is that it exposes us to the whole of someone else.
The common theory is roughly the opposite of this: people disproportionately share their better moments on social media. Its users project the impression of having a much better life than they actually have. This bias is one of the reasons social media is so awful for 'FOMO'.
edit Of course, that's not a direct contradiction of your point. The positive/negative dimension is different from the which-aspect-of-your-life dimension.
I think your comment and the parent's comment can be in agreement if you think about people in your social media as now sharing an office with you. You get to be stuck in a room with them for eight hours a day while they share their personal drama, monger gossip, and boast about their work accomplishments.
share their more extreme moments. Not automatically "better", there is an awful lot of tweeting where people are essentially exposing their mental illness and successfully soliciting support. While no one is going to FOMO on misfortune itself, people certainly do FOMO on the attention announcing your misfortune (and as a result identifying with it) brings.
This was one of the ideas behind Google+ - "circles". You could put other people in different broadcast "circles" and then you wouldn't end up announcing your weird fetish preferences or drug use to your grandma or your coworkers - at least not intentionally.
Google+ also relied on users to correctly categorize their posts to the right stream or interest. Software developers tend to be good at dividing things into near little categories. Other users not so much.
I don't know. I definitely think some people would just mass broadcast to everyone.
Using the example above, there's nothing stopping that person from bringing their whole self to board game night. They're choosing to avoid certain topics with a certain group of people, so I would expect some of that behavior to cary over to social media.
If I think about something like the "close friends" feature on instagram, I have some friends who just share way too much with everyone, but I've got others who use that feature pretty heavily.
I disagree. I think the types of people this article is about - the silent majority of non-tweeters - are happy to compartmentalise different aspects of their lives within different circles. It's the tweeting minority who feel like they need to broadcast their every righteous thought to as many people as possible.
> no one is going to pass an opportunity to broadcast their political views
I expect most people that held a job prior to social media (or-- really, holds a job in most industries except tech outside of a few cities) will happily tell you that people readily pass on such opportunities.
Presumably people are losing a lot of followers on Twitter broadcasting their political views when they are mostly followed for some other reason. These people might be motivated to correctly categorise their Tweets.
>Humanity either needs to "agree to disagree" on wide swaths of things we care a whole bunch about (abortion, firearms, lgbtq, etc) or we need to go back to not discussing those things in public or polite company.
The original American Experiment allowed this sort of thing. Big Important Nationwide things happened at the federal level; everything else was done by the States. It's a pretty good idea.
All social media suffers from the "talking to nobody/talking to everybody" aspect. A post on a social media site is really just you talking to yourself out loud. But it's a public place, and therefore everybody can hear you. So they talk out loud to themselves, but at you.
If this sounds like a gaggle of homeless people shouting at each other about everything and nothing, that's because it is exactly that, only with a $25B market cap and a P/E ratio that looks more like the onset of hypertension.
I feel that if you're expecting your 'whole friend' to be exactly compatible with your opinions, you're not really looking for friends, you're looking for confirmation for your own opinions. I fully expect to disagree with a lot of things my friends say or think, and that there will be arguments. When we do argue, sometimes they change their mind, sometimes I change mine but mostly we agree to disagree. What makes a difference between a friend and a non-friend is that even if we disagree on some fundamental things and a lot of trivial things, our core values more or less align, and both sides respect the other and realize that there is no way you're right about everything. If you are, you don't have friends. You have followers and sycophants.
> If I play boardgames with Sue, that's enough. We meet, enjoy a beer and play some Catan and go our separate ways. That's a fine relationship.
> If I follow Sue on social media, now I know her politics, religion, sex life, drug usage, opinions on every little thing.. and frankly, I don't care or want to. I'm happy just playing some Catan once in a while.
> Historically you didn't need to know everything about everyone. Your friends will always have opinions or lifestyles you will find disagreeable - that is the nature of human existence.
This hits the nail on the head perfectly, IMHO. Unfortunately, even the activities you describe have become politicized. For example, Settlers of Catan rebranding to just Catan.
Living in the hole I am living in seems to shield me from this. I had no idea that "Settlers of Catan" has been rebranded to just "Catan" or why. In my circles we call it "Settlers", "Settlers of Catan" or just "Catan" interchangeably all the time. The "controversial" one is "Settlers" if you talk to someone you might also play a round of Settlers the computer game with (as in these guys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Settlers)
What is politicized about that? I had no idea the name had ever changed, but thanks to your comment, just spent the last 20 minutes trying to figure out why and no Internet sources citing the fact that a rebrand happened give a reason at all. The only somewhat "political" theory seems to be a Reddit thread citing a Dutch publication claiming the rebrand happened because of pressure from Palestinians complaining that it supported Jewish West Bank settlements. Apart from that being ridiculous in the first place, that theory was quickly debunked in the same thread by both the maker of the game disavowing that and they and players pointing out the rebrand had actually happened in Germany years earlier and was only then being reflected in the Dutch version.
Yeah. I have a semi-recent copy and the box says "Catan – Trade Build Settle", so that definitely seems like a regular rebranding. And people who see politics everywhere are projecting that it is political.
It reminds me of that time I was somewhat viciously verbally assaulted and accused of "self-censorship" for saying strawperson instead of strawman. I just like it better and have always said it that way, but that person was so deep in a culture war mindset that they couldn't imagine I'd chosen that phrasing without any political thought given to it. Sometimes a spade is just a spade and not a leftist mind control plot.
Yep. I find it really amusing how those people are constantly policing other people's language and life, while they spend their free time complaining that it's them that are being policed. Textbook projection.
Yeah, just to clarify: the point of my anecdote is that even things like board games, which are supposed to be fun and relaxing, are being politicized by some people over topics like name changes.
I will say in this case Catan is cool and feels natural, like what people would call it if they're still playing the game a hundred years from now. So maybe it was politically sparked but the rebrand feels solid.
I had noticed the name change myself, but never consider it was politically motivated until you brought it up (especially considering mine is called "Catan: Trade Build Settle"). You're Sue in this case.
It seems like they read a lot of politics into a fairly simple issue. As brands go on, they try to simplify and occupy more space. I would be shocked if properties didn't see being able to simplify and maintain the brand as being a huge win.
I wholeheartedly agree with you. My point was just that even things which are supposed to be relaxing and apolitical like board games, are being politicized over things like discussing name changes. And that sucks.
Excellent theory. I think it's more than that - you now have tidbits of her opinion on every little thing without the benefit of nonverbal communication, empathy and nuance that you would if you actually talked to her for the same amount of time.
What's funny here are that the example issues you listed are exactly the issues that the vast majority of Americans actually do agree on. Those are wedge issues that were carefully crafted by political parties to try and create a division in popular opinion when there isn't one. It's a fairly common political strategy nowadays.
You think the vast majority of Americans agree on abortion? I'm pretty sure that, no, they do not. The division is real, not just a political strategy.
Abortion isn't an either or position. There are quite a few position and this stat only shows a single one: 15-20% believe it should be illegal in all cases. What about the subset who believe it should only be legal for rape victims. Or only plan B style drugs (I'm not sure how the linked data classifies the responses, but some people do consider such drugs on the same level as abortion). Or only by first trimester. Or only by second trimester. Or until birth? Or some other position that I am not able to remember off the top of my head?
> Humanity either needs to "agree to disagree" on wide swaths of things we care a whole bunch about ([...] lgbtq [...]) or we need to go back to not discussing those things in public or polite company.
Does this cut both ways, where LGBTQ+ people also don't have to listen to how straight everyone is? I doubt it. So yeah, how about no? How about there is agreement or nothing? Because there's no way straight people are going to agree to disagree about whether they should be allowed to discuss their sexuality.
I'd be fine with either not discussing relationships in public, or openly discussing both straight and non-straight relationships. Not sure which is more likely though.
You constructed a straw man out of his comments very effectively. I didn’t gather that he meant you can’t mention your life, significant other, etc. I read it as maybe don’t discuss the political aspects of LGBT issues, etc
If you don't understand that the problem is that detractors have made simply being LGBTQ+ a political issue, you are not qualified to have an opinion here.
I'm curious what you think you mean because there is no good answer.
I also wouldn't have had to comment at all if people weren't casually asking people to instate don't ask don't tell in social settings.
Remember to interpret someone's arguments in the strongest possible sense. Chastising others is great for moral superiority but it is a poor tool for discussion.
You know, telling people they're acting morally superior when they're confronting the fact that people are calling aspects of their identity controversial and acting like said parts of their identity simply shouldn't be discussed in public is not a good look.
No, you didn't. The original person did. You then told me I was making a straw man by calling him out for it.
You could have just as easily not commented and I could have been dealing with the original commenter. You decided to comment, defending his absurdity. You don't get to now tell me I am "looking to be offended," especially when you take the side of the less reasonable position.
Do you really think the whole spectrum of LGBTQ identities isn't controversial?
We aren't saying good or bad, we aren't assigning value, we are simply saying controversial. Like, obviously you feel you have to fight everyone if there is so much as a chance someone is attacking you - that sort of supports the argument, no?
And no, my original argument was not that LGBTQ aligned folks should go back into the closet or any such nonsense as that. It was mostly that if you have hot takes on deep in-community debates (I give several examples above), maybe don't share them on twitter and disown everyone around you who disagrees.
Again, read arguments in the strongest possible sense. Read the entire context.
So, there are two points that you've yet to address and I doubt ever will, which casts an extremely negative light on your argument:
1) You have yet to provide any concrete examples of what it is you mean. You keep going "but I swear this isn't what I mean." Thus, I can only conclude that you mean the whole.
Am I to think you're saying that LGBTQ+ people shouldn't be allowed to discuss marriage rights, even though straight people have been afforded that right and freely talk about their marriages in front of people who are affected by laws outlawing their unions?
Am I to believe that you're saying that we shouldn't talk about whether trans people should be allowed to change their names without gender/sex reassignment surgery, even though straight people regularly change their names, get plastic surgery, and what-have-you?
There are no good answers. The very fact that you've not acknowledged that there is no good answer is the problem here. You could just accept that you're wrong, that this is offensive no matter how it is interpreted. But no, you feel an incessant need to defend yourself because you, as a straight man, couldn't possibly have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to LGBTQ+ issues and, thus, couldn't possibly be offending people.
2) You have yet to acknowledge the fact that you could just casually throw that in there without a second thought is the problem. The fact that you didn't need to think "does LGBTQ+ really belong here?" Your very doing that contributes to anti-LGBTQ+ and "don't say gay" mentalities.
> Am I to think you're saying that LGBTQ+ people shouldn't be allowed to discuss marriage rights, even though straight people have been afforded that right and freely talk about their marriages in front of people who are affected by laws outlawing their unions?
Are we to think you're honestly too stupid to see that discussing marriage rights is something totally different than talking about their actual marriages? We can, if you want. If not, we'd have to conclude it's a conscious tactic; twisting facts and your opponent's words into something they didn't say or doesn't happen.
We could then think this is a constant tactic of yours... But I'd prefer to ascribe it to temporary rhetorical overheating in discussing a burning cause. Hope you've put out the flames and cooled down now.
We live in a world where gay people still have to worry about being arrested for merely being gay in several countries! God help you if you're visibly trans and in a bad neighborhood!
What world do you live in where being _any_ of the LGBTQ spectrum is some overall totally safe and hunky dory existence!?
And if that wasn't bad enough, your fellow LGBTQ friends likely have all kinds of "ready to rip your throat out" hot takes - or did we already forget the shunning and rejection of Buck Angel?
It's incredible how men, especially straight white men, can demonstrate their understanding of the point by using all of its parts in twisted fashions to support their argument, but will never concede that the point was correct.
Yes, it is unsafe to be LGBTQ+. That is exactly why you can't put it in a box and go "you're not allowed to talk about these things in social situations because my game of Catan is more important."
Really ruminate on that last point. Your game of Catan is more important to you than whether the people in that game are comfortable being around you.
That is not what I said. Go back and read the original post.
It's amazing how strangers on the internet can just star gaze and determine my gender, sexuality, race and so on. It's less amazing how often wrong they are. I'd really take a moment and think whether predicting someones identity is aligned with your ethical beliefs on those topics.
If you want to fight straw men, please have the courtesy of doing it in private.
To be completely fair, if you're not a straight white man and people are regularly mistaking you for a straight white man, that generally means only one thing: you're on the wrong side of history.
And no, I think you should think a bit harder about what it is you said and how you said it. It's easy to claim that isn't what you meant, but you've yet to provide any concrete examples of what you mean, which I called you out for and you proceeded to be flippant. This is also a sign that you know your argument is lost.
You can continue to claim straw men, but you've yet to provide evidence that I've actually created a straw man.
EDIT: Moreover, if you want to say we should just not discuss LGBTQ+ issues in public and try and justify using a slur and then call LGBTQ+ people the problem when they get angry, maybe you should have the courtesy of doing that in private.
> To be completely fair, if you're not a straight white man and people are regularly mistaking you for a straight white man, that generally means only one thing: you're on the wrong side of history.
Because straight white men just are "on the wrong side of history, everyone knows that", or what?!?
Or perhaps it's just an attempt from straight men to not have to confront the fact that what they say is harmful.
Again, it's easy to say that I'm creating a straw man, but the facts are thus.
The OP said:
- My games of Catan work because we don't talk about things.
- Social media is bad because I have to confront the fact that I will disagree with people on things.
- These things that I will disagree with my Catan buddies on should either be "agree to disagree" matters or matters that don't get discussed.
- LGBTQ+ issues were one of the examples of such topics. Neither option is acceptable for LGBTQ+ people.
No examples of what sort of "LGBTQ+ political topics" either of you might mean have been given and yet I, the one providing examples and countering them, am the one creating the straw man?
All I can say is that, once again, you need to listen to the people affected when they say that what is said is harmful and stop acting like the LGBTQ+ people are the problem for telling you that it is, in fact, harmful.
EDIT: You're also defending a man who actively tried to justify using a slur. Doesn't reflect well on you, does it?
Nobody can stop you from trying to shut down arguments by telling people that the insinuation that their existence is somehow so controversial that people can just casually suggest that discussing it in public is akin to discussing abortion and gun laws somehow isn't a form of oppression that is above and beyond what would be called a microaggression, but, if you did, I'd hazard a guess that you aren't part of the oppressed party and aren't qualified to speak on their behalf.
> telling people that the insinuation that their existence is somehow so controversial that people can just casually suggest that discussing it in public is akin to discussing abortion and gun laws
Discussing your existence?!? Who the F said your existence can't be mentioned?!?
You're really not doing your cause any good with these ever more ridiculously hysterical arguments.
> Humanity either needs to "agree to disagree" on wide swaths of things we care a whole bunch about (abortion, firearms, lgbtq, etc) or we need to go back to not discussing those things in public or polite company.
Two out of three of those aren't just random positions. If you believe someone else is literally advocating for murdering children, I can see why you would judge them. Similarly, if you see people oppressing people like you for some reason, you should judge them.
I will admit, I have no idea what the disagreement in modern society is with relation the LGBTQ people. Like, I can articulate both sides of the abortion debate. Hell, I can even understand the sides about firearms. But what is the dispute about LGBTQ?
Blue side wants trans women to be treated identically to women, based on their personal conception of identity, not necessarily tied to any external or societal factor. So if they say they're a trans woman, you call them "she" regardless of how masculine they make look or dress. Being trans is a valid and inherent part of a person. We need to educate children that gender is a social construct.
Red side disagrees with the notion that personal identity overrides societal norms. It's an imposition, or a farce, to call a man in a dress a woman. Why should we change thousands of years of grammar because some people are nutcases? Being trans is a mental illness that instead of being treated is being celebrated and normalized, in turn harming society. It's a shame you're ill, but keep that out of our schools and get help.
You can see how these viewpoints are not going to get along
I agree with this. I've found that in order to maintain my relationships with some good friends, I've had to stop following them on twitter (and other social media).
On twitter, it's really easy for my to ignore all the insane and stupid things that complete strangers blather about on there all the time. There's a ton of noise, but just enough signal for me to check in regularly.
But then suddenly I see a ridiculous post from someone I truly care about. Someone who I've known for years and know their spouse and kids and families. I can read their post in their voice as if it were said to me, personally. And now I'm angered and incensed and putting up maps and charts and pins in my head preparing a response that this person whom I care about deserves.
But they weren't talking to me. They were shouting something crazy into a cacophony of crazy strangers. If we were at dinner we would have a long, deep, and nuanced conversation on the subject and we'd listen to each other's points and respond accordingly. But in 240 chars they're wrong and now I will reserve two hours of mental capacity to argue with myself about why.
Nope. Just block them, knowing I'll see them next time they're in town, and we'll have a real conversations about real things in a forum more befitting two people trying to understand each other.
Wrong. Facebook whistleblower says company made profits from making people suffer. People suffer from reading cesspool produce. Facebook used big data insight to expose users to cesspool produce.
If you play Catan (or tennis or amateur theatre group etc) with a person for long enough you will come to know these bits about them. However, as most small country town people know, you ignore or otherwise put up with "their stupidity" while trying not to shove what they see as "your stupidity" in their face. This is respect for others.
Such respect helps preserve the alliance to get the outcome you want - a game of Catan. Hence, even Sue-the-Otherwise-Intolerable isn't all bad, they like to play Catan like you do right?
As you eloquently advise, the internet doesn't "hide your stupidity from others" so that is grating. It also doesn't promote people ignoring your stupidity. It promotes "engagement"...
2. Shared experience
Experience is how humans build trust/relationships. Y'know, a first date cliche is a movie then coffee or dinner. The shared movie experience forms a basis to trust each other ("Well they didn't yabber on the phone the whole time so they're not all bad...") and then talking about the experience after may yield new insights on that experience. And those insights are attributed to that person alone ("I didn't think of it that way, very good point Sue." or "Nope. That's just stupid Sue.") even though the experience itself is already in the past!
Even though virtual experiences can be such a basis - IE Game of Thrones as "viral" thing - I submit that in person experiences are more powerful by far.
You tolerate Sue-the-Otherwise-Intolerable in person to get your fix of Catan. But you wouldn't do that for a virtual Sue, you'd just move onto Bob, Mary, Joe or Jane or whoever else the game's matchmaker throws up.
I think this hits on a critical aspect of cyberspace's impact but phrased in a new way for me.
My view has been that it allows individuals to split their personalties and actions into discrete entities based on a blend of the account/platform/information environment and relative cause the account/platform exists in support of.
But another way to look at it is what you've said - the whole person comes out through the various personalities they have online.
There is a niche but famous sci-fi book called True Names* about a similar idea: people have their true name in real life, and a digital nym that's just as valid per the impact of the nym's existence as the name. Operating the balance, and making a choice which to embrace (name vs. nym) is the big question.
The novella was written prior to cloud computing and twitter/reddit/VR, and reading it now with all that tech in place is really something.
My wife is quite active on social while I'm not part of any social media (HN doesn't count, right?). We both have quite a different options about some political issues than our friends. It's been strange observing how her views about our friends are more negative and polarised than mine. Like, I don't really know or care what they think about politics, or what they think about my views. They are my friends and it's okay we disagree on stuff. When I meet them we seldom discuss about the dividing things, but when we do, we do so in respectful manner.
I think when meeting in person we tend to find similarities with each other. In social media it's the opposite.
I have a similar theory. That, in social media, we touch a different part of a person, than, say, irl.
I think that when we read, or we're on the computer, we are in a kind of trance. Our unconscious self is exposed.
It expresses itself, we all harbor a lot of dark feelings. And we are reactive. It's not a rational self. It's a self that gropes for the good stuff and kicks against the bad stuff and that's about it. Like an animal.
It is also exposed and vulnerable. So when the flame hits we feel it deeply.
I imagine us all to be like that demon in The Exorcist. A raging ego trapped in a world of words. Playing mind games. And when we are told that it's holy water, it burns just fine.
What you're describing is called "context collapse." Pre-social media you had face that you presented in different contexts, now you have one flattened out "you" feed.
I've had people show me things at work on things like reddit and I always try and avoid looking at their username simply because I don't want to be tempted to check what kinds of things they post. I've seen co-workers reddit accounts before and it is almost always surprising and feels too personal. I feel like I am learning things I don't care or need to know about a coworker.
I totally agree that social media has made this a bigger issue than it used to be before social media. It also doesn't help that these social media sites are likely trying to feed you some intentionally controversial content as fear/anger can keep you engaged. Facebook showing a coworkers controversial political opinion on a matter right at the top of your feed feels intentional.
I've also found social media, as well as the mass media constantly bombards you with the idea that you must pick a "side". If someone is anti-immigration, pro-abortion, pro firearms, and pro lgbtq you'd think it would make some of these online peoples heads explode. It's like they think it's not possible to have opinions and beliefs that align with both political "sides". The division that social media and mass media companies push is what I find is one of the most toxic things in the world currently. Trying to profit off creating hatred. It's pretty disgusting.
> Humanity either needs to "agree to disagree" on wide swaths of things we care a whole bunch about (abortion, firearms, lgbtq, etc) or we need to go back to not discussing those things in public or polite company.
There’s a third option, which is that discussion can lead to actual moral progress where society decides that certain views are just beyond the pale. A few decades ago people might have ‘agreed to disagree’ on whether interracial marriage was ok. Now society has formed a consensus on this issue and anyone who’s opposed to interracial marriage is part of an isolated fringe.
Saying that we should agree to disagree on controversial issues sounds superficially reasonable - especially when you’re exhausted from reading some awful twitter thread. It won’t necessarily sound so great in retrospect. It’s also a luxury that people directly affected by the relevant issues don’t always have.
The real problem isn't people debating controversial issues, which is fine and healthy and necessary for progress. The problem is the way that platforms like Twitter incentivize hot takes, rapid response, bullying, and other behavior that's not conducive to rational discussion.
Also, anyone who thinks that intemperate public discourse on controversial topics is a new phenomenon should check out some of the things that Thomas Moore and Martin Luther said to each other: https://meansandmatters.wordpress.com/2009/07/21/my-favorite...
> One of my pet theories for why social media is such a cesspool is that it exposes us to the whole of someone else.
We are naturally inclined to be negative. Or, said differently, it takes a LOT less effort to be negative than positive. On social media it's just way too easy for people to pile on.
people are negative on social media for the same reason that most news is horrifying: it gets attention. social media is socializing made into a game. show people their score and they'll want to make that number go up.
One of my pet theories for why social media is such a cesspool is that it exposes us to the whole of someone else
Thing is, personal social media accounts don't expose you to the whole of someone else, they expose you to that part of someone without the buffer of small talk, low-level real life social interactions, non-verbal cues, work/school/routine-based camaraderie, and, as you put it, enjoying a beer and playing some Catan.
The problem is that without that part of social interaction, you end up with raw opinion or dogma which doesn't have any "soft" dimension or transition layer, and that causes people to be reactionary rather than accepting.
I used to say, half jokingly, people need to learn to shut the **** up, myself included. Meaning just because you have an opinion you don't have an obligation to share it with everyone else. Me writing this comment illustrates that.
Maybe part of it is just that typing text into a post doesn't viscerally feel like standing in front of a group of hundreds of people and shouting over a megaphone. I noticed that in myself when I first got into Facebook way back - when it was still novel, I tended to post 'stream of consciousness' type stuff. You intellectually know that your post is going to be seen by a lot of people, but _in the moment_ it doesn't _feel_ like that.
I imagine that many people have a similar experience. You're yelling into a megaphone but it feels more like you're writing an entry in your diary.
My conclusion (without any scientific verification) is people make assumption about my social media use. (I feel I've written this somewhere else)
I use Facebook for my entertainment, reacting on car memes, sarcastic memes and genuinely car things and sports. Oh and I watch TV on Facebook. meeting people real life in this city has been.... ehhh special. (But I think the things I do on Facebook isn't special, there isn't that much politics.)
I don't forget the times that I laughed so hard some posts, because it so funny.
But at the end of the day... it's people and nothing is going to fix that.
I'm sort of the opposite. I'm attracted to Twitter because a) I get to learn the whole person and b) even "heroes" are very accessible. We're all humans trying to figure it out.
It's Sue's decision whether to share the full range of her ideas and personality or not.
It's the algorithm's decision to serve up the choicest bits with the highest polarization scores bc that seems to have the highest correlation with overall engagement.
And feeding the compulsive need for argument seems to be the more profitable strategy over providing a framework for truly polite conversation.
That's half of it. The other problem is that now you are connected to Edna's unsavoury friends, and can now easily argue with them about any of these issues. Edna's dad might randomly join a conversation you were having about something unrelated.
We're not really equipped to be so connected to people we don't agree with about everything.
This is actually an excellent explanation that I’d never thought through before. Totally makes sense. Rarely would you see “the whole” of your whole Dunbar group + a few hundred more — so makes sense why it could turn into such a cesspool. Really interesting idea.
I just want to say, hugely insightful comment. Or at the very least it helps me feel better about my decision to not be on any social media other than HN (not even Reddit) because of the things you describe. You hit the nail right on the head.
Well said. I buy into your theory and $0.02. If we fall back to rules of polite conversation than trying to "fix" our compulsions then we don't even need a social network with filters or circles.
> Humanity either needs to "agree to disagree" on wide swaths of things we care a whole bunch about (abortion, firearms, lgbtq, etc) or we need to go back to not discussing those things in public or polite company.
You can't 'agree to disagree' on those topics though, specially when laws ban abortion, for example. If you think we should do that, then making laws regarding those things (abortion, "don't say gay") would need to be completely forbidden and you would need to let people do what they want.
However, it's a lot easier to argue your case face to face. Perhaps it's because people are cooler within punching distance, but I think it's simply because they see the human being talking to them. Their imagination can't substitute you with a caricature of your side.
>One of my pet theories for why social media is such a cesspool is that it exposes us to the whole of someone else.
Yes! A thousand times yes! You are speaking out of my heart with that comment. That's what most current social networks get wrong. Just because I know someone, or met someone IRL and am now connected on the platform, I do not want to always know what they are up to. It's a pull not a push!
Yes, social media is essentially a wall of noise. It's someone throwing their ego into sharp relief. Instead of a handshake and an opportunity to judge a book by its cover, you're greeted by a literal and loud book cover of the person along with blurb.
Except... is it their ego? Or is it some surrogate persona?
It has always struck me as more of a performance. And that's the problem with social media. Rather than encouraging an individual to be themselves and arrive at their own values independently, it on the contrary encourages inauthenticity -- perhaps not intentionally by the developers of the websites in the beginning, but it emerges through behaviour of the users.
Rather than accepting of all people, people with deviant-discourse views are vilified very publicly, and either remove themselves from the platform or instead surround themselves with supporters from the deviant side. Social media does bring people together, but it doesn't bring everyone together, it just promotes the formation of ideological tribes.
This effect of uniting and dividing people into tribes isn't constrained to social media. Marketing, advertising, indeed many aspects of how capitalist society has evolved has a similar effect of forming tribes. Adverts and marketing tell people that they should do a thing, and then those who agree gravitate to that product, and those who disagree gravitate toward an opposing product or a steadfast disapproval of any product in the space, and they come to define themselves by that approval or disapproval.
Ask a person to define who they are. They will tell their name, their age, their occupation, where they were born and/or live, and then they'll most likely move on to what they like and dislike, what they believe and don't believe. They define themselves according to details they think are important to others and in relation to other things, usually things made by corporations or governments/bodies of power.
- A name doesn't define a person, it's simply how you refer to them in conversation or get their attention without ambiguity in the presence of other humans.
- Age also doesn't define a person. People look older and younger than they actually are all the time, and in my experience it has little bearing on the person's wisdom or intrigue.
- Occupation matters not. All you need is the understanding that your occupation is what you do to pay for food, water, shelter and your hobbies/downtime. It can also be what you actually want to achieve with your life, but this isn't essential as long as you have awareness.
- What a person likes and dislikes is not a defining feature, it's at best an expression of a person's taste. It is a description of a relation between a person and other things. Tastes are easily feigned to please others, easily changed and highly likely to change over time, and while they can be used to stereotype people, I'm pretty sure stereotyping people is considered a bad thing to do.
- Belief and disbelief aren't defining and also don't make a great deal of sense, since to believe is to hold that something is true without data -- holding that something is true OR false without data is nonsensical, and thus pointless to communicate to others, because they'll either have the same nonsensical belief or an opposing one, and probably won't be very amenable to having their belief(s) changed since there is no data to argue from.
Ultimately, people don't know who they are, they know what their profile page(s) should say, and these "defining" characteristics are most likely things for which they are a willing standard bearer, things that they want to shine out like a lighthouse to attract or ward off the types of people they will get along with and not get along with. There are people that do have a notion of who they are, but I suspect they are likely too scared to reveal it, precisely because people are polarised, capricious, and unforgiving.
Perhaps that's what it is, social media actually encourages people to both fall in line with a stereotype and to stereotype others. Certainly, I think social media also distorts the personality of the user as well. I avoid social media like the plague, primarily because the content social media sites generate is of little interest to me. I have absolutely no understanding of why anyone would want to do social media stuff -- so I cannot speak from any personal experience.
I've created a profile on some of them for the sake of communicating with someone who refused to communicate by other means, but never have I felt inclined to use the platforms because... it's just not for me, I don't understand it. I prefer to toil in the shadows and live my life, without sharing it.
Anyway, something I have observed throughout my life is that the personality is performative, i.e. most people will act differently if they have an audience. It either causes them to withdraw and hide features of who they are, or it will encourage them to reveal as much of themselves as possible and even to fabricate features of their persona that aren't authentic.
This kind of behaviour is easy enough to observe in work contexts, and my intuition tells me that social media must surely have a similar effect on people. With thousands of people watching out for what banal thought you share next.
The result is that not only are you exposed to the whole of the other, but you're exposed to the super-other that forms (depending on the subject type) through audience demand and expectations, or through the subject's desire to provoke a certain reaction in their audience, or indeed to attract a certain audience to serve their agenda.
Much of the social media landscape is essentially just memetic. Probably quite fascinating to study if you're interested in how utterly twisted and inauthentic people can become by living an observed and performed life, rather than simply living according to their own principles, resolute and only subject to observation when necessary to achieve, say, professional or academic goals.
* * *
I'd like to bring up something Douglas Adams wrote about in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. He imagined an alien race called the Belcerabons, who enjoyed peace and success, no doubt in part thanks to their being a wholly quiet civilization. A Galactic Tribunal of other races, envious of their success and perceived smugness, infected them with a disease that gave them the curse of forced telepathy -- every thought would be broadcast from each Belcerabon to the rest of their kind. The only way that they could silence the artillery of communicating their every thought to each other was to constantly talk to each other instead, probably preferable just to retain some control over communicating private or awkward thoughts and instead talking about the weather etc.
While Adams was undoubtedly poking fun at the sorry state of the human race when it comes to those nauseating conversations about the local weather conditions and what was eaten for lunch on a previous day, I do find it amusing that constantly bombarding one another with banalities ought to be considered a curse, and yet we have somehow managed to develop our civilization around technological platforms for that very purpose.
Because in general, those conversations are about important things that affect your life.
It's not as polarised these days, but it was within my lifetime that consensual homosexual sex between adults was illegal in many parts of the world. It still is in some countries. You cannot "agree to disagree" when someone believes you are broken or sinful or whatever and wants to put you in jail.
That's just one example.
I'm straight, white dude. It's very easy for me to ignore issues like this, because most of the time, they're in my favour. That's just the world.
I think part of the problem is the circumstances of two people meeting on social media. It's like one of those break-the-ice prompts for new coworkers, but instead of lighthearted nonsense, the card says "the gays are evil, discuss!".
In the real world, two very different people might meet and start to build a history and a good deal of rapport and trust with each other before ever getting anywhere close to a divisive issue. When they do eventually get there, without a mob watching, without the fear of every word going in the permanent record, the conversation would likely be far less of a dumpster fire, and minds might actually be changed.
As it is, a lot of the discourse you see online is indescribably bad, and I think a lot of it is down to throwing two strangers into a conversation that they would never naturally arrive at upon first meeting.
I find this argument compelling, but the counter-point is: what change is politicing everything going to affect? Will political comments on a codebase make it safer to be homosexual in Saudi Arabia? If not, combining those two things feels like an exercise in futility.
>Because in general, those conversations are about important things that affect your life.
I believe it’s very important to be able to calmly and genially argue points which are important to you. There may not be any value in merely being able to argue calmly and politely for points in which you have no interest.
As someone who is on the LGBTQ spectrum, people that actively advocate for me not being able to exist in civil society without doing anything but trying to be authentic about myself are really not people I want in my life.
I absolutely hate that my ability to participate in modern society without harassment for things that are inherent to my existence is limited and I hope that one day we can move past this kind of foolishness as a species.
Texas just unveiled a law that proposes putting parents who support their children's gender transition in jail for child abuse.
That means one side thinks the other side is a child abuser, and the other side thinks that bigots are going to throw them in prison for being a supportive parent.
"As OAG Opinion No. KP-0401 makes clear, it is already against the law to subject Texas children to
a wide variety of elective procedures for gender transitioning, including reassignment surgeries that
can cause sterilization, mastectomies, removals of otherwise healthy body parts, and administration
of puberty-blocking drugs or supraphysiologic doses of testosterone or estrogen."
Where "subject" appears to be the most general form possible, as far as I can tell from context.
Even puberty blockers are on this list! You're not supporting a gender transition if you can't touch hormones at all.
I don't think gender transition for kids is compatible with child sex laws. If a kid can't consent to sex, even if they're verbally willing and consenting, how on earth can they consent to cutting off their penis? Seems a bit absurd to me
The problem is that the order extends to puberty blockers, which are a safe and reversible treatment for kids to keep them from maturing into their undesired gender until they're old enough to opt into more drastic treatments like hormones and surgeries... or not, as they choose.
Edit: also wtf does that have to do with sex? Do you mean the larger subject of child consent in general? Because contract law would be a less extreme example of children not having power of informed consent.
It's generally quite hard for a trans person to be civil with a transphobe. Just as it's hard for e.g. black people to be civil with a racist. The bigot will, whether conscious or not, make the life of the minority absolutely terrible.
With LGBTQ it is therefore not just a difference of opinion on taxation, or a few percentage points difference in a tariff. For trans people it's about whether the other person even acknowledges that you can be trans.
Issue is usually in defining terms like 'transphobe' - I've encountered folks who define that as someone who wouldn't be willing to sleep with or be attracted to a trans person in the same way as a biological female. I think that's an example of an area people are just going to have to agree to disagree.
I know what you mean, even though I want trans people to feel comfortable in everyday life, dressing how they want and so on without prejudice, apparently it's 'transphobic' to recognise the material reality that transwomen are men and transmen are women. This activism really does feel like a religious cult that hounds non-believers.
That's a bit of a strawman. That's not transphobic. Nobody is obligated to have sex with anyone, trans or cis, period. That's not even up for discussion.
If one, however, goes out of their way to harass transexual people when stating this preference, then yeah, it's a bit transphobic. Intention matters.
I did just literally get into an argument with an acquaintance last week because she was insisting that it was not an ok or valid thing for someone to not want to date trans women as a category if they were ok with dating women. So I wouldn't call it a strawman.
I'd say it is a probably a minority position but it is a genuinely held one
What I said doesn't contradict any of what your acquaintance said. You can freely refuse to individually date as many trans women as you want, just as you could refuse to date a woman that is too old for you, or even too skinny, or too fat. Or just unattractive. But making a fuss out of it is an issue.
Whoever brought it up has some deep unresolved issues, however. Or was fishing for an argument.
EDIT: It's like fetishes. Preferences are fine and should be respected, but they're also better kept off private. Telling people of a specific ethnicity you're "into them" is also kinda creepy.
> Whoever brought it up has some deep unresolved issues, however. Or was fishing for an argument.
This was in the context one of those kink quizzes regarding what things someone was into, so genders, fetishes, bodily features, sex acts, etc. It isn't like someone just announced to a bar "I'd never date a transperson" out of nowhere.
Let's throw in a more complex example. Is someone who identifies as a "trap" trans? Is that self identification trans-phobic? Is it a valid self identity? What if someone identifies as a "trap" but not trans?
I've never heard of anyone identifying as a "trap" unironically. This sounds like a straw man.
I would equate a trans woman calling themselves a trap to being the same as a black person calling themselves the N word. It's a way of taking back a slur.
This was such a hot debate on a set of subreddits it caused a collapse of a huge subreddit, the ousting of a powermod, and several spinoff subreddits. Admittedly it was a few years ago, but it was an interesting fight to watch from the sidelines.
My preference here is to refer to people however they want to be referred to. When I adopted that view, I thought it was very safe but it has actually landed me in hot water many times. I still stand by it though.
You can call whatever this bizarre and obviously false claim is what you want, but this entire subthread is very transparently an attempt to justify using a slur. It has very "why can't I say the n word" energy.
This is an extremely poor faith interpretation of a reasonable argument: if someone asks me to call them a word that is often perceived as a slur, because they belong to a member of that group and would like to "reclaim" it, should I do so? Am I being racist by using the word? This is not a clear question like you present it to be, and has absolutely nothing to do with an inherent desire to use slurs against marginalized people.
This is absolutely not the situation that he has presented it as. Someone else has already stated what is going on here. These people do not identify as a slur. His entire argument hinges on this insane idea that people identify as a slur.
Reclaiming != identifying as.
The person you're defending even went on to say that his mentality has gotten him into hot water. The fact that you didn't read into that as "I have no idea what I'm talking about and these people clearly didn't want to be called this" is disconcerting.
And yes, if you are not a person of color and you use a slur traditionally used to describe a person of color to describe or talk about a person of color, you are racist. Full stop. The very fact that you're concocting some outlandish situation where you'd magically be allowed to use slurs is extremely telling, though. If you had any idea what you were talking about, you wouldn't ask that.
Maybe you should stop opining on things and listen to the parties these things affect. The usage of slurs isn't yours to have an opinion on if the slurs aren't words for you.
No, I actually think it's more complicated than that. I don't want to put words in their mouth, but if we go by your interpretation it really seems like they're coming to Hacker News to justify their use of slurs against people who do not appreciate it, which honestly just seems very unconvincing. If you really wanted to use a slur, you'd just use it…there's really no reason to come here to discuss it with people who are going to be overwhelmingly against what you are claiming you want to do.
Slurs are partially the actual word and partially the intent behind them. Once you get to know someone very well, it's typically the case that there is an understanding of no mutual malice between you and them. It is this context that "reclaiming" comes into the picture, because you have a shared perception of what the intent is. You might've heard of the "n-word pass"–it's kind of a meme, but before it was the concept was legitimate and the sentiment was that you're on good enough terms with someone that they know you're not trying to be malicious to them when you use it. It's a sign of trust, and to put it in vernacular, you can't
"transfer" a n-word pass because it's a product of your individual relationship.
Putting it a in slightly different context, I (jokingly, of course…) call my mom old and senile when she forgets something in a dumb way ("Where did I put my phone, I've searched the entire house…oh, it was right in front of me where I put it down seconds ago"). She knows I am not directing hatred towards her. With that said, just because I can call her old and senile doesn't mean you can do it, or that I can go do it to any middle-aged woman. But because both of us know each other, it's totally fine to say this among ourselves because it's shared language to us.
Now, with that in mind, I don't think the commenter actually was trying to justify being able to go around calling any person they saw a slur. How would they get in trouble for this? Well, I look different enough from my mom that our relationship isn't immediately evident all the time. If called her old and senile within earshot of someone else, it could definitely look like I was being a jerk if they weren't aware we knew each other beforehand. If I did it around other women of the same age, it could really cause issues. I would certainly not consider either of these a wise thing to do, but in my eyes these are really more a lack of tact or maybe misunderstanding of the context you're in rather than just a racist person wanting to be racist.
(You might be wondering why I would choose to use these words at all…I think the answer to that is really what reclamation is about. Nobody wants to be old and senile, but it's a thing that happens. My mom appreciates it that it's something we can joke about, and I think it helps her deal with it in a way. My understanding is that mutual use of slurs on friendly terms has a similar effect. There's a more extreme form of reclamation of "I think anyone can call me these words, even if I don't really know them, because I'm just really confident/proud of this" but I understand that's not for everyone, and it's definitely something that you can't just assume about people.)
Anyways, to circle back to the original topic, I don't even think my interpretation is a good faith interpretation, it just seems like the more likely interpretation, which is that the commenter has situations where the slurs is normalized and even encouraged by the people who they apply to. You seem to have interpreted this as "the commenter thinks that this means its OK to use them generally because they are racist" but this just doesn't seem to be the case to me. (And if it is…I definitely don't support that.) That's basically all I wanted to bring up.
(One final thing that has more to do with the sentiment of your comment rather than its content, which I think is solid: it seems like you wrote it from the perspective that I'm, at best, woefully misinformed and isolated from marginalized communities, and at worst some sort of closet bigot which you can discern from my comments. I'm a real human being with real empathy and real experience and real faults! I understand that this is a topic you're passionate about, perhaps maybe one you're tired of discussing, but you don't have to attack me to express your opinions on it. Even if it sounds like I'm disagreeing with you, I'm here to interact with new perspectives and learn from them. I only ask that you don't immediately dismiss me as close-minded, as doing so from the start only makes that more likely, rather than less.)
That's more a problem of vagueness and guessing than real complexity, because it's slang with unclear/multiple meanings. Some people use "trap" to mean transgender, some people use it to mean transvestite. Everything beyond that is based on intent.
If given a topic like "lgbtq" issues, the debate is not "Do gay people get basic rights?". Nobody is actually having that debate anymore and you're fighting straw men.
Ie, these debates are not between "pro-lgbtq" and "anti-lgbtq".
Instead most of these debates are more nuanced and complicated. I picked the "trap" debate because it's hotly contested, with both sides swearing up and down they are pro-lgbtq and both sides would even claim to be more pro-lgbtq than their opponents.
Which is to say, you can probably ignore the debate and not care, still be pro-lgbtq, and go back to playing your board game, even with friends who have a different ideological position on that particular debate.
A lot of social media fights are about this scale.
I think mutual respect also plays a part here. My respect, demeanor towards, and willingness to play Settlers with someone who believes LGBTQIA+ people are sinners depends a lot on whether or not that person engages in honest, consensual debate and respects the human on the other side. That is how we form good relationships and strengthen our collective understanding. I wish to underscore the importance of consensual debate, especially when there's a power gradient.
I will say though, "Do gay people get basic rights" is _very much_ still a subject of debate. Sadly.
>If given a topic like "lgbtq" issues, the debate is not "Do gay people get basic rights?".
Eeh, it's still "do gay people get basic rights" for many even in the United States. I've seen folks have last wills overturned by family through insidious legal maneuvers. I've seen doctors refuse to contact patients with biopsy results because their patients were trans. And I've seen folks even withhold paychecks from LGBT folks because of their religious nonsense. So, basic rights are still a matter of contention until it becomes not merely a legal formality that LGBT folks are equal under the law but that the entire population does not even think that they have a chance to violate those formalities and that they feel bad about thinking of doing such a thing. Until that happens, LGBT discussions will always go back to "do gay people have basic rights?".
> Why can’t you? Is it impossible to imagine civil friendly people who simply do not share one’s views on these issues?
For gay, it means keeping secret over pretty large and important parts of life. As was explained to me by gay who was super civil, but did grumbled and complained about a lot of stuff that was said when it was safe to talk more openly.
Whenever one group is deciding on what rights another group has, it seems inevitable that civility and friendliness will at some point get left behind.
Should tha baker have the right to refuse baking a gay wedding cake or some group has the power to decide what rights another group has? As a gay man the LGBT groups keep declining in the quality of their fights and, having survived their own usefulness, they invent fights that inevitably clash with others liberties and belief. No, I do need that cake, there are other bakeries.
Not when their opinion means I can't bequeath my prized personal possessions to my partner without burdensome legal complications. I've seen wills being disregarded when it comes to same-sex partners all the time because the surviving family disagreed with their dead loved one so such an extent as to try to find a legal loophole to get out of following their last wishes.
but actually, they do. thus, social media as it exists today is a bunch of people all trying to own the other side. they live to interact with people they disagree with, the harder the disagreement the better.
> Why can’t you? Is it impossible to imagine civil friendly people who simply do not share one’s views on these issues?
Of course, let's put the transphobes and trans people on the same room. That should play out well, like KKK and black people and Nazis and the Jews, right?
Within LGBTQ communities there are mass disagreements. Should women-only spaces include trans people? Is the word "transsexual" a valid identity even when self chosen?
There are even Ls and Gs who think Bs are "faking it".
The trick is that it's not a boolean question. Someone can be gay and anti-trans and this is trivially true.
A close friend of mine is, well, gay (as in man gay), and he doesn't have the fondest opinion of lesbians. He's also quite critical about trans people. He does like other (especially beautiful) men a lot, so that gay part is definitely covered, he's not in the closet by any means or anything like that.
I always find these "screw your rights, I've got mine" types funny. At the end of the day, once conservatives finish tarring and feathering trans people, they're up next. Our rights do not exist in a vacuum; we're all in the same boat. Sure, gender and sexuality stuff isn't the same, but we share a lot of issues and (most importantly) gay men would never have gotten any rights if they were duking it out alone (and neither would the rest of the acronym, for that matter).
I think I know why gay men tend to take this view way more often than the rest of the acronym, though: straight men don't hit on gay men, but straight men constantly hit on lesbians. If I had a nickel every time I heard "I can turn you straight," I'd be closing in on a couple dollars by now.
I'm LGBT and I don't consider the other side evil. I also grew up in the south and know that by yelling at them, you only make them turn their heads away. Sitting down and talking with someone is not impossible. We have more in common than not.
Oftentimes a position, belief, or disagreement is a projection of other underlying fears and discomforts. Or maybe it's simply rigidly structured views that need additional time to process new shapes.
If an intergalactic enemy suddenly showed up on our doorsteps and started attacking us, we'd all band together.
The bulk of the Left wing has moved past the whole "coddle them" method where the comfort of the other side is prioritized above all, while the entire time they are passing laws to marginalize and harass people and rolling back the Voting Rights Act.
I know LGB people who balk at the TQ.* additions to the acronym. Their arguments are cogent and logical. There seems to be plenty of room to disagree, because not all the constituents of the acronym are really fighting the same cause, or even see the groups as all being one team.
The term has been LGBT basically from the start, hasn't it? Being iffy on new optional extensions is one thing, trying to act like the T is new gets a much less charitable view from me.
According to wikipedia "LGBT" was from 1988 and "LGB" itself was spreading in the "mid to late 80s".
If you have a stronger source I'm open to being convinced, but otherwise I don't find one anecdotal account very convincing. I can't easily get to the cited books to get any more clarity they might have.
Maybe, but you have to imagine at some point, things that are in the news will get discussed over a beer.
And again, I'm talking about fairly fundamental things here. If someone is pregnant, that's pretty conversation worthy.
I also can't imagine someone not discussing seeing a new partner.
Ironically, the things you can "agree to disagree" on tend to be the ones that might not come up.
I fail to see the relevance to this conversation, and I have zero desire to get into this on HN of all places.
My point was about how some people cannot simply “agree to disagree” when important issues are at stake. I provided some simple examples. It’s quite annoying that some people insist on litigating the examples instead of discussing the actual point.
They can get pregnant but why do trans men want to have pregnancy as part of their identity? Wouldn't getting pregnant as a trans man trigger dysphoria?
If I play boardgames with Sue, that's enough. We meet, enjoy a beer and play some Catan and go our separate ways. That's a fine relationship.
If I follow Sue on social media, now I know her politics, religion, sex life, drug usage, opinions on every little thing.. and frankly, I don't care or want to. I'm happy just playing some Catan once in a while.
Historically you didn't need to know everything about everyone. Your friends will always have opinions or lifestyles you will find disagreeable - that is the nature of human existence.
Humanity either needs to "agree to disagree" on wide swaths of things we care a whole bunch about (abortion, firearms, lgbtq, etc) or we need to go back to not discussing those things in public or polite company.
My $0.02 is that it's easier to fall back to rules of polite conversation than fix our compulsive need for agreement.