Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

who are those people and why are you reading their tweets

yesterday you said they are real people who we both know, but even if that's true - which I doubt - those 14-character tweets are not themselves substantive.

they're responding to an opinion that was floated

as far as "who are these people" -- they're actual people, that I could encounter, for all I know they could be friends, or friends of friends, or alt accounts of people I know. their opinions are no less inherently valid than yours or anyone else's

(this is also funny because I distinctly remember being told a while back that "left edgelords" weren't real. I guess their realness or non-realness depends entirely on whether it can be used to tell me I'm wrong)

Personally, the past two decades have solidified my opinion that social media is pernicious and engaging with it with any degree of personal openness is a sure way to get myself emotionally overwrought... and i'd include ILX in that category too!

Some people are capable of playing the game and working "the discourse" for networking and exposure. I am not and I know it. I allow ILX in to the extent that it allows for controlled conversations about and exposure to media that's of interest to me and I (very very stupidly) allow instagram in as an effective portfolio for art that i wanna share with my art community. Even instagram can warp my brain if I allow myself more than five minutes on the damn thing.

Otherwise, I've proven to myself that allowing for extended engagement with disengaged voices from actual people will make me sick over time, so I really avoid it. But that's me! You guys may be made of sterner stuff.

Part of my issue is that it can be difficult to determine the veracity and import of voices that you internalize if you really commit to listening to an entire crowd, which is part of what I think i'm hearing from Katherine and which i empathize with.

Yes, if this conversation has reinforced anything for me it's that social media is a festering blight which is best avoided in most circumstances.

that's a copout, as "social media" consists of real people whom you may encounter in real life

people blame "social media" as a way of avoiding the fact that people are just like this

Most people are like this on social media because they don't face the more immediate repercussions of being like this face-to-face with other people.

'Most people who are like this are like this' I should say.

they're responding to an opinion that was floated

there are millions of opinions being floated on the internet every minute and you don't read them all, nor have to read any of them

they're actual people,

only in the most conceptual, abstract sense. they're Schrodinger's people, and not even that if you had never seen those tweets.

that I could encounter,

unlikely and also irrelevant, as even if you did meet them, the likelihood of you then having a long conversation about every 14-character tweet you've ever read, ending up on identifying some of theirs, and then announcing that you disagreed with them, and them caring, is infinitesimal.

for all I know they could be friends, or friends of friends, or alt accounts of people I know.

objection, your honour. speculation.

their opinions are no less inherently valid than yours or anyone else's

a) sure, so there's no value in paying attention to their opinion over literally anyone else's

b) those are not reasoned opinions that you can assess the weight of. I have good opinions and bad opinions, including absolutely thousands of excellent opinions that many people here disagree with. those twitter people are strangers posting content-free swear words, whereas I am someone you know slightly on the internet, who is posting reasoned factual sentences in the hope of pointing to ways you might find a path out of an anxiety freak-out. people here like you and want you to be less distressed. if you really didn't think the opinions of posters here are more specifically worthwhile to you than @GoldfishFart2937, you would probably be arguing in those replies rather than expressing yourself here and (to some degree) engaging with the posters taking you seriously.

Feel like the last four years have generally disproven the idea that people won't 'say that to my face.' GoldfishFar2937 might not say it at work or in front of his mee-maw but people have always been prone to talking shit.

I don't want to encounter an infinite pool of "real people whom you may encounter in real life"! It would get exhausting and i'm not equipped to do it! Social media allows instantaneous access to vast swaths of opinions, attitudes and conversational approaches that i would avoid like the plague if I ran into them IRL. It prioritizes the immediate and deprioritizes empathy except as performative exercise. It erases necessary boundaries that keep me sane. I avoid it.

TBH, I don't really care what most people say or think about how people should be (because opinions are like assholes: a point of egress for hot air), and to the extent that I do care, it's pretty much only in proportion to how much regard a given person has for the well-being of others.

Also, since currency on social media is driven by likes and follows, the discourse is going to shift back and forth as people rapidly pile on and jump off of bandwagons of popular opinion. IRL twitter would be like a giant high school filled future politicians and wannabe celebrities.

you've just explained why I hated the Boy's State documentary.

a film full of all of the worst kinds of people. hundreds of mcshitters in the one place

The end proposition here, as it always is, is "nobody should be allowed to dusagree with me- i dont like it"

Its just being pushed out to several billion people here as opposed to just the posters on ilx

I don't have anything to add to ~the discourse~ except that the contempt so many of you have for women's magazines is palpable and it suuuuckkksss

— Jessica Grose (@JessGrose) December 22, 2020

Use of ‘the discourse’ in the wild. Katherine does have a point about this whiplash stuff.

What I’m getting from this is that the early take on the Elle story was, “Wow, how could this person who seems like one of us fall for this fraudster? What an embarrassment.”
Which then quickly received the pushback, “shitty magazine is dragging this troubled woman through the mud for clicks. This is not journalism.”
Which is now being pushed back upon as anti-women’s magazinism.
Which will then peter out and the whole thing will be forgotten

"Please stop posting the reasoning behind your murderously irresponsible holiday travel" isn't an opinion, it's a naked invitation to flamewar, is the thing. We're not talking about opinions or discourses at all here, we're talking about people who want to fight on the internet

Yes, so much of this shit is just about the serotonin rush of winning, of being the most right. Humble yourself!

I legitimately don't understand what the fuck this conversation is about any more.

Just get off Twitter.

It's a satire piece wherein we critique the madhouse quality of 'conversation' on Twitter by inadvertently replicating its form on ILX.

There's a reason I've avoided Twitter for years.

You aren't sacrificing any understanding or knowledge by leaving Twitter.

The Discourse amounts to little more than an extension of the comments section on a local newspaper article.

Just don't use Twitter.

I'm sure this is the second time this discussion has come up and I think the problem was that some people need to use Twitter for their work.

Which sounds nightmarish to me but...

.

what is being elided here is that “the discourse” is of course more than twitter, it’s the entire weight of moral judgment any person feels at a given time. that twittists have deemed themselves the ONLY contributors to this is what is being sent up when people capitalise it etc

it’s what fuels the tabloid press, and romance novels, and neighbourhood whatsapp groups

i think it’s completely reasonable in 2020 to feel somewhat zugzwanged by it

also, nota bene, it is a little rich for the denizens of internet message board ilx to offer up “just go offline” to one of its own members as a solution when that is LITERALLY THE ONLY INTELLECTUAL LIFE THERE IS during a global pandemic

No, just go off Twitter, is all. Or anything where conversation is in the form of 'post + comments section'. ILX is considerably more egalitarian in that regard (except when I post, wherein it's understood that my posts are the main posts).

Lol, OL.

and suddenly the weight of moral judgment will magically lift and trustable experts will hove into view - got it

not sure you read the first post in my diptych ol

ILX used to have a trustable expert, but he got too busy shaping the discourse behind the scenes in the real world.

I miss skott too.

And if ILX is too stressful, get off ILX! We should all take breaks from time to time, it's healthy. Go offline, watch some movies, learn crocheting, or something.

I follow the AITA_reddit twitter account. Taken as read (i.e. taken as honest and true, which I often doubt), the AITA entries are usually pretty clear-cut to a progressive & empathetic moral POV and the 'discourse' is more or less gossipy types (hi dere) looking for their daily dose of righteousness. Occasionally there'll be one that's a little muddy and the voices will take a side while also moderating their responses from 'yeet AH into the sun' to 'this person's an AH but there's a way out'.

What I'm trying to say is...there IS a Righteousness Discourse in general on Twitter, basically, but in this specific example it isn't completely unreasonable at its core; if you scroll further down the replies, you'll find the pile-on enthusiasts just looking to condemn absolutely anything in the strongest possible terms to get their own fix, but I don't think this is the main driver for everyone.

That said, AITA_reddit Twitter isn't really for people who want to flamewar. Asking 'am I the asshole' in itself implies a grey area of doubt (even when in practice it doesn't exist - and this is where the dubious nature of some of the AITA entries emerges - they often come off as creative writing exercises where awfulness is hardly revealed at first and then continually redoubles). You don't really see arguments in the comments. It isn't a place where people go to fight.

My simplest advice to katherine is just to avoid the parts of Twitter where people are going out of their way to fight. I don't think that's as hard as it sounds. Even for a journalist. Limmy said it best: BAMO (Block And Move On).

Another thing (getting back to the actual topic of this thread, if you can believe it) is that a lot of people are scared/stressed/overwhelmed rn as a result of 2020 and are a lot more prickly and hyperbolic and reactive as a result (cf. ILX in 2020), and, also as a result, a lot of the strong assertions made rn have to be taken with a grain of salt as the product of people who aren't in their right minds. I can at least speak for myself here but I feel like it's generally true.

Wow fuck you imago

We're all crazy now, he says

Wait that was old lunch

Hey fuck you old lunch!

And uh sorry for calling you imago

Get your specific user right f'chrissakes.

My experience of the outrage of the day on Twitter tends to be very much 2nd hand or 3rd hand to the point that it becomes barely comprehensible what people are commenting on, and I rarely have the interest or energy to chase down and learn about the source of outrage. I'd rather just see posts by people I enjoy and topics that interest me, and if that starts to get old or unenjoyable, I have no problem with unfollowing, blocking, muting. It makes Twitter a fairly pleasant experience overall.

https://i.ibb.co/FwC9gbM/Screen-Shot-2020-12-22-at-13-52-32.png

so this *actually* happened, tweeps

Except for a yearly pile-on, most recently last month, I don't have trouble with Twitter; I've curated it sufficiently. I get a lot out of it, actually.

Yeah I knocked twitter for some time but now I’m getting more out of it than I am here, except on music which I don’t touch on twitter at all.

Get your specific user right f'chrissakes.

Tangent: There needs to be some serious research into the phenomenology of having the username at the bottom of posts, rather than the top. There are times when you read a post and know who it is before you get to the attribution - that's kinda fun. Also times when I deliberately try not to look at who posted something until I have absorbed and thought about the content. Also times when I'm boggling at something and let my eyes drift down to the poster and then back up at the post.

If our handles were at the top (as on Twitbook, Facetweet, etc.) it would be just ever so slightly easier to discount a viewpoint before hearing the poster out. imo this is a good not bad thing about ilxoria

You can change where names appear by changing your stylesheet under preferences iirc

xp username is first on zing