Are You Cut Out for Social Media?

twitter is a bunch of people preening for attention.

An analysis as perceptive and fact-based as "Twitter? Who needs that? Nobody wants to read what you're having for lunch!"

Anyway, the answer is 'no'. I've never had a Facebook or Twitter account fwiw.

I mean, I've never really gotten SMS either as opposed to email, of course I send lots of SMS to say "yeah I'll pick up some bread" or "here's this story I was telling you about" but the compression doesn't lead to dialogue.

i miss having substantive discussions via email so much, which for me completely atrophied with the rise of smartphones & social. there are so many people that I used to have interesting & fulfilling email correspondence with that i'm still in touch with, but our interactions gradually changed to 100% texting, which is almost entirely vapid variations of "[meme/article/YT link]"->"haha". (Its a two-way street obviously but after a certain number of years I started to give up on expecting people to respond to emails.) For a while ILX filled that void for me but less & less so as posting styles (incl my own) gradually changed in the smartphone/twitter era. I really miss getting an email from a good friend and reading about whatever's going on in their life in complete sentences written in their own voice. Nothing has really replaced it for me, I really feel the absence of it in my life and it still bums me out.

i just don't like when in a non-related topic people on one platform complain about people/discussion on another platform. don't cross the streams.

xp I feel you

though on the other hand as a semi-pro email reader/writer, well...

I have come to the (too late) realisation that not only is creating original / valuable work irrelevant to virality on social media, it is actually a handicap.

1/ mutual follows

2/ replies lead to replies

3/ repeat interactions intensify over time (just like facebork can predict when two people are about to commence an 'official' romantic relationship)

― j., Tuesday, 19 May 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Also plenty of those micro- communitues go on to form outside of twitter via WhatsApp groups to actual meet ups.

Plenty of people have made friendships or got married out of it too.

Besides all that I see ilx style discussions to events of the day all the time. With people who seem not to have met and just share an interest.

no way. dumb as a rock, poor emotional regulation

Instagram - pretty pictures, bands, architecture, friends’ kids. I find it quite nice.

Twitter - occasionally funny, I never tweet and only follow a half dozen people I actually know. It’s a cesspool overall but limited exposure is fine.

The key is to lightly consume and not be an active part of the ecosystem.

Facebook is also bearable if you eliminate everyone you don’t have a strong personal connection to and just make dick jokes with each other.

xp -- the problem with substantive discussions via email is writing the email, it's all the procrastination of writing for work plus an added vector of guilt because now it's personal

Something gained, something lost: in the early days of e-mail, it was a smooth transition from letter-writing for me, so I wrote long, thoughtful e-mails to whichever American friends I'd been writing letters to and who now had e-mail. Now I mostly FB message, and whatever e-mails I send are very short. 1000 times easier, 1000 times more superficial.

ikr

ok Twitter is good now! j, I followed your suggestions and followed a Fields medalist who is active on there, and today he made an announcement relevant to my interests & I tweeted back an invitation to further dialogue (in irl), and then they tweeted back with interest!

La Lechera posted something last year that nicely captures some key differences between ILX and social media.

I'd like to say something nice that is more generally about ILX:
When I get the urge to engage in conversation (specifically online in lieu of an IRL option), I strongly prefer to have a conversational group of people who might care about what I have to say. The way ILX is structured, I can choose to share my thoughts/questions (at any time of day or night!) about a specific topic with other people interested in that topic who ostensibly read/ post on the thread because they also have an interest in the topic. Then I potentially (ideally) avoid 1) annoying/inciting the "rage" of other people by yammering to people who don't care and 2) can learn from others interested in the topic 3) post in several different threads without feeling like I am yammering in a manner coherent to myself alone, as I would if I were to share my thoughts on twitter, for example.

There's no Me Feed here unless someone specifically searches for posts by a specific user (right?). I realize that hashtags function in this way for some people, but I like the general environment of ILX because I am free from my own image, free from my public-facing identity, and yet also hopefully at least somewhat known to people on account of having been here for a while (since 2005?!) and having met/enjoyed quality hangs with a number of you irl (and online!)

So thanks ILX, you have weathered the social media storm and come out ahead in a number of ways. You are not perfect and you have had many bouts of being unwell as a space for my preferred variety of nonconfrontational conversation, you are still here and have the above-mentioned attributes to your favor. This post is not about me; it is about appreciating the longevity and specificity of our old pal. ILX. *toast*

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Thursday, August 1, 2019 4:03 PM (nine months ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah I feel that post a lot. early in my professional life a senior member of my field told me that I was quiet in an irl setting where it would have been better to be vocal, and he was right, because I get shy when there are a medium number of people watching (I'm comfortable talking to small and large groups, by contrast). I had to "get over it" because professional advancement made it necessary and I'm now ok at it. I still wonder if it's just some natural shyness, or something about my ethnic upbringing, as a Latino; and whether my profession reinforces the...forthrightness of other ethnic groups without recognizing other ethnic dispositions. Maybe this is also true of social media.

not "forthrightness", more, "forwardness", I think.

i think there's a lot of space made in philosophy for people who want to hold the floor for various reasons (many notably not good). even the ones who don't want that as speakers are disposed to encourage it by the ways they are receptive to it as listeners and respondents.

yeah it can be rotten. I think I like settings where everyone is encouraged to have their turn, rather than letting the big mouths hog things. I just wonder about the gender & ethnic dimensions of being a big mouth or of being someone who wants to give space to others (I am of the latter kind). Though sometimes I feel like I have something actually worth saying, and I guess the big mouths must feel like that all the time? I just make sure not to sit next to them at dinners.

La lechera otm, hate social media. I used to post on ilx way too much and now it seems comparatively incredibly benign. Also can be sure nothing is going to 'go viral' and so the show off element and careering that exists on Twitter say is not a thing here. There's also the archival element, you can return to theads or use them as resources (I recently read all the threads about the red Crayola while really stuck on 'introduction'

Feeling these posts from jaymc’s on down

I'll be honest: I've had more scraps on ILX than on Facebook, in about the same time-frame. Nothing too major, else I'd be long gone, but there have been more than a few exchanges over the years that upset me, something that hardly ever happens with me on Facebook. I imagine that has to do with the combination of the way I approach the two and the fact your Facebook world is much easier to control.

la lechera post is SO otm

I think I've had two scraps on Facebook in 10 years. One with a former friend I blocked, one with my sister-in-law who blocked me, but has unblocked me since. I haven't got into that many scraps on ILX in the same time period, but it's certainly been more than two!

You can look at the amount of control you have two different ways. As LL says, you can pick which threads you read or post on with ILX. But that only goes so far. Whatever scraps I've gotten into have been, presumably, "with other people interested in that topic who ostensibly read/post on the thread because they also have an interest in the topic." But that doesn't really spare you from confrontation--it facilitates it, if--the part of ILX I've never understood--someone's lying in wait to make a big deal out of the fact you don't see this common interest (a film, a baseball player, whatever) the same way. The control on Facebook is in who's on your friends list and what feeds you let onto your wall. Which, to me, feels like much more control.

This thread making me thinking about a lot of things, not sure how much I can post now, probably not too much, but for the most part, with some expected exceptions of course, FB posting seems to me so generic, so disposable, so preaching-to-the-converted, so me me me me me, etc.. Here we have a ghost of chance that we are having some kind of interesting conversation. Also you post something interesting on FB, maybe at best you will get a few likes (I have kept my number of friends amazingly low over the past decade) Post something interesting here and there is a much better chance someone will respond in kind. Even if no one responds you may find it again yourself years later and get something out of it, it doesn't have that same sense of sitting there Unliked or Uncared for.

I mean, the problem -- which is also a problem with twitter, but maybe not a social media-specific problem -- is that there are designated Bad People, which are sometimes designated due to good reasons, or reasons that are knowable and avoidable, but not always. and once someone is a designated Bad Person then anything else they post is deemed bad; and furthermore, once someone is designated as a Bad Person, everybody else is compelled to share that opinion, or else they too will become a designated Bad Person

see: the dozen or so people here who supposedly are trolls but whom, at least from their posts, have given zero indications that they are not operating in good faith, and yet every time they post in a thread, even if that string of words would be acceptable with another name attached, they receive so much vitriol

I'll probably regret saying this, but I never--never--understood the vitriol heaped on Fred B. I know he had lots of opinions on American politics from a thousand miles away--if I were American, I'm sure that would sometimes get under my skin. (I went through a much more benign version of that when I first joined ILX, a Canadian who had an interest in American politics--especially, horror of horrors, the "race-horse" aspect of it.) But, as you say, "that string of words would be acceptable with another name attached."

I've never really understood either and have wondered whether there were some posts or threads that I missed.

That's what I always think.

I've never really understood either and have wondered whether there were some posts or threads that I missed.

Yes, there were. Obviously. It wasn't just US politics threads he annoyed people on btw, he did the same every single time he appeared in a UK politics threads too. I don't want to list Fred's faults, because that's a thankless task if ever there was one, but I tried with the guy occasionally but all he did was throw stuff back in your face. I will mention one fault though: one minute (haughtily) "I don't resort to insults and personal attacks", the next minute, "You're an idiot".

No big deal though, every person who's ever been banned on here (or banned more than once in Fred's case) has had someone say, "I never saw what the problem with them".

"... with them was"

Rule #1 of ILX: every thread eventually becomes a Fred B thread, especially when he's not there to partake in it.

He's just the latest one.

Come to think of it, he supplied ILX's current board description, no?

What is it?

'not I day goes by where I don't feel like I'm smarter than everyone else on here'

It is very easy to engage with social media in moderation and maintain mental health. No one knows discipline anymore. I love Twitter but I don't spend all day on it. I know lots of people who read *their entire timeline*, like every tweet. Insane. Social media is to be checked in on, watched when you have a moment's rest, like a river or a stream. I like skipping pebbles on ponds. The key is remaining the person and not becoming the pebble. The overextended metaphor ends here, with the post

yet the thread does not

For me it does. I must leave now

but

I've always liked Fred B's contributions to the film threads. I would follow him on twitter but all of his posts are in Danish

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM86DdwT71Y

It is very easy to engage with social media in moderation and maintain mental health. No one knows discipline anymore. I love Twitter but I don't spend all day on it. I know lots of people who read *their entire timeline*, like every tweet. Insane. Social media is to be checked in on, watched when you have a moment's rest, like a river or a stream. I like skipping pebbles on ponds. The key is remaining the person and not becoming the pebble. The overextended metaphor ends here, with the post

― flappy bird, Thursday, May 21, 2020 3:33 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

no it's not, actually. it's no secret that these platforms / interfaces are designed to be addictive. people don't check their phones all the time because they lack self-control. they're hooked like junkies or alcoholics.

we have an entire society that's wrapped up in this shit, that's toxically dependent on total trash, scrolling, filling the void, unable to step away.

just do some basic research on the deleterious cognitive effects of social media. we're going to look back at children with smartphones and IG accounts like how we see smoking culture now.

Post something interesting here and there is a much better chance someone will respond in kind. Even if no one responds you may find it again yourself years later and get something out of it, it doesn't have that same sense of sitting there Unliked or Uncared for.

i like this about ILX. sometimes you're posting just to share. other times it's for the conversation / perspectives / tips. but occasionally you look in on threads and it's clearly just one person's little project, and that's okay, too.

It is very easy to engage with social media in moderation and maintain mental health. No one knows discipline anymore.

― flappy bird

a boy used to kick a ball in the yard

I did have to put in place a rule, i.e. I'll read x amounts of pages/chapters before picking up my phone again.

And then I'm reading a lot more links I get from twitter and here too, so if anything I'm just reading a lot more.

I like both of bodu jeru's posts, they explain why ilx is the best social media to me