iyo did facebook ruin the internet?

>on February 24, 2015
>ogmor said:
>still in denial over fb. I miss usenet.

Word

despite the deluge of opinions & the decline of ~websites~ & anonymity, overall I think the internet is probably better than it was. the gulf in quantity between now and 2000 is huge

I do miss the ideal of surfing the web tho, the notion of individual curiosity & wanderlust without algorithmic mediation. all the big social sites have stripped away idiosyncratic structure and design & replaced it with content in homogeneous form

tildes ruined the internet

where is your website i want to sign the guestbook

oh that's right. it is on the ~cloud~.

did you ever see this site ogmor

http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/

I do miss the ideal of surfing the web tho, the notion of individual curiosity & wanderlust without algorithmic mediation. all the big social sites have stripped away idiosyncratic structure and design & replaced it with content in homogeneous form

― ogmor, Monday, February 23, 2015 7:49 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is OTM, maybe more for the "do you miss the 'old' internet" thread but I agree, the idea of really poking through some website you find, where the person's hierarchy of information is really weirdly weighted and lopsided and some sections have one article in them and others have forty subsections with amazing chewy stuff buried deep, this is really gone. there's not much that's exploratory about the web, you just receive stuff. goes hand in hand with nobody having personal websites at all (or even the personalization of myspace pages) or more to the point - - - when was the last time you actually read somebody's facebook "profile"? in the sense of the part where you have your favorite quotes or whatever... what would have been the core not only of a "website" but of a social network page in the friendster/myspace era.

i guess that still exists as a meaningful thing in okcupid pages and such. but it's the one "slow" thing about the whole site, in that it has this longer existence, less ephemeral, you actually exist as a being rather than one of countless cloud-entities cropping up here or there in this comment thread or that re-share. and this is completely buried: you have to go to "about" and then "details about you." everything else just gets washed away immediately. i dislike this about facebook, but i'm not sure how much is also just resentment at the loss, long ago, of all the stuff i had on friendster and myspace. so many emails that just don't exist anymore at all. it's a bummer. my facebook profile i haven't updated since 2009 by the looks of it.

not exactly facebook's fault, but imo the web is a better (for users) platform for . . . content . . . than aol/facebook/snapchat/apps/etc and it kinda seems like fb led the way back into the walled gardens of aol

http://www.theawl.com/2015/02/the-next-internet-is-tv

that said, i only go on facebook when i'm horribly drunk and have exhausted other avenues of intertainment, which is rare. i'd delete my account, but there's an off-chance that someone will invite me to something on it despite my persistent failure to attend previous events

well ya never know

tbf, my inability to leave the house is not facebook's fault

xp nakh-
no, but I am charmed by it, the borgean index especially. the cheerful aphorism-laced mish mash reminds me of early internet days in a few ways bc it also reminds me of my childhood home, chatting to my dad & skimming my parents books. not sure if the peculiar crossover between weightier scholarly subject matter and lighter internet-facilitated browsing goes wider than my own experience but it is a way of thinking + feeling that I hadn't thought about for a long time

I do miss the ideal of surfing the web tho, the notion of individual curiosity & wanderlust without algorithmic mediation. all the big social sites have stripped away idiosyncratic structure and design & replaced it with content in homogeneous form

i feel you on this but there's something i've always wondered like... i get the demand side, why all most people want out of the internet is the homogenized big social media version and how that ends up being most of what we see, but what's up with the supply side? where did all the people creating idiosyncratic content go? are they still out there and no one is reading?

i mean i guess 1 answer is i'm making a huge oversimplifying assumption by calling the internet in 2015 homogenized

lots of people are making idiosyncratic content within the given social media ie being youtube millionaires or whatever

It had always sucked. But then our parents got on it. Doomed.

idiosyncratic content is different from idiosyncratic structure tho.

I think there is a heaviness to the internet now, the constant sense of tonnes of content, going back in timelines or peeking at you on sidebars

the advantage of the big sites is being able to search and filter them; searching youtube for "my first vlog" newest first, daniel lopatin's idea of having a hootsuite stream or w/e for "working on my novel" etc.

The internet surfing conditions have never been better imo. Just spend a day with archive.org! There's so much stuff there. Don't let the howlies on upworthy get you down.

I'm sure this point's been made by now, but I think it's had a negative effect on life, never mind the internet. (Mine, anyway.)

you monsters

with every post you get one step closer to becoming a harvester of sorrow

*FB post

mailing lists > Usenet forums > Livejournal > MySpace > Forums (ILX/WATMM etc) > Facebook > Twitter

Same as it ever was, really.

what about BBSs

scented doves mad underrated

realizing i could do this was a big breakthrough for me. instead of arguing w/ the void i could argue w/ ppl who i chose to friend on fb.

I feel just the opposite -- I only quarrel about politics on ILX, which is mostly separate from my IRL identity. Arguing politics on FB seems sort of obnoxious, like, why would I put my political opinions in my friends' faces? I would no more do it than I would argue about politics in person.

options open up when you realize that if it no longer shows when your wall first loads, it literally did not happen

the problem with arguing politics = friends of friends argue with other friends of friends and then it gets knockdown drag out nasty and you're like "GUYS, PLS STOP" and then five minutes later someone is lying lifeless in your living room

why would I put my political opinions in my friends' faces?

Damn, most of my friends do nothing BUT crap on about their poitical opinions .On facebook, in the pub, at someone's dinner party....

Can’t speak to “the internet” but just my own idiosyncratic pathological (((in kantian sense))) personality.

I don’t do facebook or any social media that’s tied (or tie-able) to my “IRL identity,” my proper name.

Dimly recall some article I read years ago where Zuckerberg makes reference to Stoic philosophy and something like the “radical transparency” of Facebook with respect to one’s identity— like, the idea that cultivating and manifesting a “single identity” (a centralized and ostensibly “transparent” identity/ personality, as manifest/ exercised/ performed through Facebook) = integrity. Which, ugh. (NB I’ve long studied stoic philosophy, so this reference is double ugh.)

OK just found a relevant quote: “You have one identity… The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly… Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity” – Zuckerberg, 2009

The idea being, I suppose, that maintaining decentralized or compartmentalized aspects of your personality (your music and movie preferences, your aesthetic choices, your family life, your hobbies, your sport teams, your take on pop culture/ celebrity gossip, your religion or spirituality, your politics, etc.) is living in a kind of existential inauthenticity.

Whereas I very deeply need and relish my layers of “opacity” (by which I mean not just “privacy”) and decentralized manifestations (scribbles and doodles and babblings) of polyphonous discordant aspects of self. The idea of a “transparent” “single” “identity” (particularly qua public, as exercised and manifest through social media) is repugnant and frightful to me.

This may have more to do with my own pathologies— I may be super shy and perhaps an avoidant personality. And perhaps there is an element of “inauthenticity” or cowardice in my repugnance— but on the other hand it’s the pitfalls of “inauthenticity” here (in the Facebook model of internet self-construction or self-performance) that most repel me (particularly when it comes to politics).

TL; DR I know; will probably post some more babble later (after a little more bourbon).

not a slam, or not a deep one, but that would lose nothing if every quotation mark & parenthetical were struck

what zuckerberg misses is that judicious fragmentation was an essential component of human identity prior to the internet's integration of all spheres. the idea that this new & vastly intrusive technology in some sense morally demands a radical reconfiguration and simplification of public identity seems so naive as to verge on the idiot-criminal.

not a slam, or not a deep one, but that would lose nothing if every quotation mark & parenthetical were struck

you're OTM-- I know very well (but have not been able to rid myself of) those awful writing habits. ILX may be good for me because y'all tend to be so pithy and uncluttered and I am (so) NOT. Hope some of that will rub off on me.

lol, it was beaten out of me hereabouts, but you seem to manage a better content/digression ratio than i ever did, so more power to you.

anyway, historically speaking, one might move from whatever small town to the big city to escape the prison of comprehensive known-ness, the oppressive integration of all spheres: home, work, play, etc. why then, having escaped the benevolent & all-binding eye, would we wish to reimpose it upon ourselves, rejoin some now limitless neighborhood watch? whatever morality insists upon such a thing is both boring and tyrannical by nature.

[/rant]

no worries; i stopped reading, for better or worse, after (((in kantian sense)))

heh, glad the triple parentheses as intended did their job

((((((((((facebook is good))))))))))))

jk

i do appreciate the ability to passively keep up with people i prob wldve lost touch with tho

facebook has ruined the high-school reunion industry

lag∞n has ruined the internet

omg not my fault

take it to kinja

facebook watched me grow up

i do appreciate the ability to passively keep up with people i prob wldve lost touch with tho

This is a good. Which is one reason I qualify my opinion as subjective rather than sociological. Whether inveterately or just at this point in my life, right now just don’t want to be found, don’t want to feel obliged to respond to people from my past who find me. Especially because I feel real guilt about not responding in timely fashion to real important friends I really should respond to. I tend to go incommunicado and that’s a real problem. I don’t think Facebook helps me (personally) with that; on the contrary.

judicious fragmentation was an essential component of human identity prior to the internet's integration of all spheres. the idea that this new & vastly intrusive technology in some sense morally demands a radical reconfiguration and simplification of public identity seems so naive as to verge on the idiot-criminal.

anyway, historically speaking, one might move from whatever small town to the big city to escape the prison of comprehensive known-ness, the oppressive integration of all spheres: home, work, play, etc. why then, having escaped the benevolent & all-binding eye, would we wish to reimpose it upon ourselves, rejoin some now limitless neighborhood watch? whatever morality insists upon such a thing is both boring and tyrannical by nature.

Yes, exactly. And the Other I resist here is (of course) both external and internal. I don’t mean to come off as judgy, because almost every one of my gripes is ambivalent. Like:

I’m creeped out by the curated self, the overly curated self (or subjectivation) of current social media. The “single identity” Zuckerberg talks about has (among others) aesthetic & cultural & ethical & political valences (which overlap and blur yet are conceptually distinct, but in Zuckerberg’s monistic philosophy are all too easily conflated); my discomfort involves the conflation as well as each aspect separately.

I do find some associated ideas or practices compelling: e.g. life as a work of art, or life as practice of/ toward some kind of authenticity. But Facebook internet culture seems to accentuate theyness and idle talk; upworthiness as alignment and allegiance and orientation toward some oppressive (to me) Other(s). Facebook’s “transparency” feels more like the concoction of an ideal ego; Lacan help me out here. I don’t know, there’s some repulsion I feel here that I haven’t figured out conceptually and can’t yet articulate.

It’s like, in a postmodern age without faith in an author-function, self/ identity is constructed or performed in terms of internet likes and dislikes, positive or negative retweets, tumblr curated reposts, quotation, and the panopticon internet audience. Like a last circle of hell, eternal high school. (Not that this is a new thing; identity qua imitation is human condition, but in a historically specific form now.) Dunno— because my ideas here are so inchoate, I’m making facile allusions to philosophers here, which tbh sound like (and may be) bullshit. Gotta find my own words but I’m too lazy/ sleepy/ drunk to try to do so now.

Here’s another stab: internet self-construction/ self-performance feels like permanently maintaining a self “on display”— an ongoing self-alienated performance from which you can’t escape. Living in the house of a hoarder (oneself), doomed never to rid yourself of your (or others’) past/ trash. Internet History.

And I second the echo chamber/ political entrenchment noted by others in this thread. It’s not so much an issue of the views one is exposed to (though that’s a part of it), but the internet expectation/ impulse to work out one’s political thinking through likes & dislikes, allegiances and repudiations, as markers of one’s identity. I myself have been very happy to variously pass through or set up camp at various places, forums or blogs, left and right, and engage in dialogue from an indeterminate or at least undogmatic political position (qua party or ideology). If I was bound to a proper name/ IRL identity, my explorations and conversations would be much more circumscribed. Especially e.g. within academia.

so happy we don't have 'likes' on ilx

Jesus, can you imagine?

picturing REDACTED's crushed little face, sat there refreshing and waiting for the thumbs up that never comes

there's only one REDACTED I know

I would like likes on ILX. Actually, they should be OTM's.

I just like the passive acknowledgement without having to post anything and adding to the noise.

facebook _per se_ idk. Facebook News Feed...yes.

fb is a driver of/is the biggest driver of a set of trends and ideas and structural changes that are making the internet a worse place.

a lot of it is just the actually-fairly-recent arrival of real, serious money, and maybe worse, real, serious Brand Activity online. weird new internets like whats app are vc funded and get eaten up by facebook. & the internet ends up just being the same shit, captive to m/l the same people, that you get anywhere else. maybe worse. the awl thing about the web being the new tv is otm. tv sucks!!

great posts from drash and agree totally - this crafting/curating of an "identity," like everybody needs to devote their life to being their own brand manager, is really distressing and relates directly to certain mechanics of the post-FB internet that were not consolidated before. maybe relates to my rant about the suppression of the "profile page," as non-quantifiable ways of defining this self are not really of interest. things that aren't likeable, clickable, sharable, or up-worthy are all basically extraneous, since the ideal model is actually everybody clicking clicking and clicking without actually reading or thinking about anything since that's time they could be spending clicking. and facebook encourages you to see yourself as part of this system - you're not just passing through and playing a clicking-game, your basic goal in life is to get others to click on stuff.

it's a wacky subjectivity. it's very destructive to other kinds of discourse, i think. the jokes about ILX with a "like" button point up just how destructive those forces are once they get to the level of interface and design and begin to alter what's likely - not necessarily even what kinds of conversation are possible, but what's likely. the example i always turn to is flickr, which in may 2013 changed its entire deal to try and look more tablet-y (i guess) and to emphasize the ease of seeing a big picture and clicking "favorite" on it. i've gone on about this many times but in the process, the descriptive text under the photo, and the comments on it by other people, have been very much suppressed. (at the same moment they really obscured some of the nested-set organization of users' photos, wiping out hierarchical relationships among posts and making it considerably less likely that someone would follow one person's train of thought or meandering reflection across months or years. but honestly this may have just been incompetence as i can't see where it helps them.)

a few years ago i was having really great conversations on flickr with a relatively small group of people who wanted to talk about architecture in a non-bullshitty, non-"comments thread on archdaily" kind of way. that's really, really faded and i can only compare it to ILX getting the "like" button in terms of the loss of a certain space for reasoned conversation that was, without anybody necessarily realizing it, premised on the activity's indigestibility from the point of view of clicks and commerce.

i've been reading a lot on WW2/Cold War computing (esp. paul edwards's the closed world and to a lesser extent david alan grier's when computers were human) and a theme that keeps coming up is people with machines trying to find tasks that the machines they have are good at, and patrons/institutions that are eager to be convinced they have just those kinds of tasks. feel like the increasing divergence of the silicon valley class from regular human desires (as per this kinda deal) could reflect something similar, though that analysis really needs more "follow the money." but i could believe that there is some subclass of people who always dreamed of their every action being a trackable monetizable micro-performance. the mark zuckerberg BS about a unitary self strikes me like this, dude is deep into some horrible culture he absorbed in college where this really sounds like a wonderful thing rather than the loss of everything that makes life more living.

one of the architecture criticism programs up here did a conference a couple years ago where one premise was that it was not recorded and you couldn't take pictures. while recording is useful for people who can't make it, and has obviously been going on for ages, i wonder if it felt like a huge relief to just be in a room talking to other humans and not imagining how you look on camera etc. i would not be surprised if we start seeing more and more retreats, workshops, getaways, love-ins or other activities where one of the requirements is "for this week/two weeks/etc, you cannot post anything to the internet, because as you are thinking about whether anyone has clicked on your post, you are not here in this moment."