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

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

Ah! I did not know this. I like it as it is tho

No wonder my posts get skipped!

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/12/tis-the-season-for-shame-and-judgment/617335/

to katherine's points:

As cases surged in the fall, elected officials blamed the trend on misbehavior at private social gatherings. Restaurants, stores, and other workplaces aren’t the problem, the talking point goes; people just need to behave better everywhere else—in parks, playgrounds, and their own homes. But the resulting message to the public has been nonsensical. Through their policies, states are telling Americans that dining indoors is safe in revenue-generating situations, such as at a restaurant or formally catered event, while private holiday dinners are roundly condemned. Some communities have gone as far as banning all social interactions between people from more than one household, including outdoors. In truth, states probably can’t afford to pay businesses to stay closed, yet governors are under tremendous pressure to act. The result is a web of illogical rules that transfer the responsibility for containing the pandemic—and the blame for failing to do so—from public authorities to the individual.

If elected officials are going to scold the public for their disobedience, the least they can do is practice what they preach. But one after another, they’ve been caught breaking their own rules. Governor Andrew Cuomo berated New Yorkers the week before Thanksgiving: “If you’re socially distant, and you wore a mask, and you were smart, none of this would be a problem—it’s all self-imposed.” Throwing in some fat-shaming for good measure, he added, “If you didn’t eat the cheesecake, you wouldn’t have a weight problem.” Just days later, Cuomo said his own Thanksgiving plans included getting together with his two daughters and his 89-year-old mother, plans he later canceled amid a public outcry. Maybe governors and mayors are just hypocrites, but the other possibility is that they’re human too, and that even people who understand the risks of family gatherings—and chide others for taking them—feel the powerful draw to this important part of life.

Very few people want to get infected or get others sick. When people take risks, it often reflects an unmet need: for a paycheck, for social connection, for accurate information about how to protect themselves. Acknowledging and meeting people’s needs will reduce risk behavior; finger-wagging won’t.

Despite all of the media focus on holiday travel, this pandemic has been shaped more by where people need to be than by where they want to be. While many Americans were busy reprimanding one another for Thanksgiving dinners, people quietly continued to travel for other reasons: Truckers delivered goods around the country; migrant workers kept farms going. The moral outrage about people enjoying themselves during a pandemic is a distraction from where that outrage would be more useful: in pressuring governments to protect the marginalized populations that are most at risk, even when they are less visible—and provoke less indignation—than a crowd of holiday travelers sitting in an airport and hoping for the best.

As the winter holidays approach and cases continue to surge across the country, people need clear and consistent messaging about the very high risks of travel and gathering. And, just like safer-sex education, guidance for this holiday season must also include nuanced information about how people can protect themselves if they travel to that Christmas dinner anyway: minimizing contacts and testing before and afterward, keeping gatherings small, driving instead of flying, masking when indoors or close to others, meeting outdoors if feasible, and increasing ventilation when outdoors isn’t an option. Giving any risk-mitigation advice might seem imprudent when the dangers of social contact are so acute, but adherence to public-health recommendations is never universal, and everyone needs access to information and tools to stay safer.

No matter how comprehensive, public-health messaging won’t solve structural problems. The Thanksgiving testing debacle was indicative, more than anything, of a failure of the public-health system: Nearly a year into the pandemic, testing capacity is woefully inadequate and needs to be increased as much as possible before Christmas. And instead of closing outdoor venues and banning all outdoor gatherings, which have been deemed inessential pleasures in a pandemic, communities could do the opposite. Like Montreal, they can create appealing public spaces where people can gather more safely, equipped with open-air tents and heat lamps. They can outfit local parks with firepits and wood, as Calgary did. They can offer free outdoor activities, such as ice-skating, snowshoeing, and even art installations, to reduce pandemic fatigue and lure people away from indoor gatherings. Health agencies can urge people—for just this one year—to exchange gifts by mail and replace the indoor dinner with an outdoor picnic (in warmer states) or a family campfire (in colder ones). Rather than imposing rules that neglect the realities of human behavior and then reprimanding people for breaking them, the message could be a more pragmatic and compassionate one: We understand that this is hard and that social connection is important for health, so we will support you in gathering more safely.

With the federal government catastrophically failing to respond to the worst pandemic in a century, it feels like only personal responsibility can save us—so of course we’re turning on one another. But viruses are not moral agents, and infection is not a personal failure. Especially with vaccines so close to distribution, Americans need to keep one another safe, and that includes directing our outrage toward institutional deficiencies, rather than fixating on individual ones. Lambasting people for their risky behavior may be effective in expressing frustration over a mismanaged pandemic, but it’s counterproductive to what really matters: reducing infections.

feel like that excerpt is ignoring the not-insignificant culture of denial, defeatism, and defiance that drives the anti-mask protest crowd and the type of people that continue to hold indoor weddings with no masks and full guestlists.

but it’s counterproductive to what really matters: reducing infections.

It’s totally not though

I am slightly deaf to the politeness of that excerpt. Are you guys not seeing people outside everyday not wearing masks and generally not giving a shit? Like this "traveling for the holidays" stuff is the tip of the iceberg compared to the shitty everyday behavior that CAD just mentioned.

xxxxxp The fact that ILX doesn't reward you with likes or rely on you to follow others is another key, I think. Generally, people here are posting what they're thinking in the spirit of adding to the conversation instead of trying to add to their fanbase or get instant conformation rewards (excepting excelsior zings). And of course, ILX not monetizing user info or manipulating content with advertising/algorithms is a definite plus. It's closer to the good old internet of yore. I feel bad for kids growing up on social media, it must be exhausting to find a place to fit in online and as Katherine pointed out, the "rules" of fitting in are constantly changing.

man if likes were a thing here, there'd be polls "is it bullshit that my thread about Englebert Humperdinck only got 2 likes and a fart face emoji?"

all of my energy is harvested from ilx "otm"s

otm

otm

― Patriotic Goiter (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, December 22, 2020 5:26 PM (forty-eight seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

nabisco otm

how many Humor experience points do u get for being Excelsiored