Are You Cut Out for Social Media?

I mean, that's what the article wants you to think some unspecified cabal of people in charge of our culture insists, yes.

But that is not a stance you will find in either of those Lerner novels, the Jenny Offill book, or How Should A Person Be?.

i don't think the author wants you to think the person in the first paragraph is a secret bad person - they probably think the composite is reasonable for the social mores of the day (at least of a certain set)

it’s hard to tell one way or the other bc it’s not well-written

Yes, looking at it again, I feel like there is just something fundamentally disorganized in Oyler's writing. It's not clear to me what she means to say about e.g. Sheila Heti. I felt the same about her review of Tolentino's book -- each paragraph read like something that was saying something but I could never actually get it to cohere into something but a sensation of complaint.

I do think that when a clear assertion emerges it is, like "The shift to socially conscious art and criticism Molly Fischer termed “the Great Awokening” has meant most books are judged on everything except aesthetic terms," incompatible with my experience.

She's probably a good person though

The fact that I'm spending my time engaging with this is presumably a sign I'm cut out for social media

my stance against reading articles continues to pay dividends

the aeon one is almost unreadable

The fact that I'm spending my time engaging with this is presumably a sign I'm cut out for social media

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Wednesday, May 27, 2020 8:33 AM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

is it weird that i think the same fact about me means i'm not cut out for social media at all

my stance against reading articles continues to pay dividends

― silby, Wednesday, May 27, 2020 11:36 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

was waiting for this post

you're both right! that's the paradox of being cut out for social media xp

what if... social media is cut out for us

I think the Aeon one is trying to say that 'virtue signalling is bad not good' (if anyone needed a tl;dr, there it is).

my stance against reading articles continues to pay dividends

― silby, Wednesday, May 27, 2020 11:36 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

was waiting for this post

― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Wednesday, May 27, 2020 8:41 AM (five minutes ago)

:*

what i got out of the laura oyster article is here are some examples of how authors' novels were shaped in various ways by the depiction of anxiety about being a "good person" which is triangulated according to an acute self-awareness that their morality will be judged widely and visibly by their audience on social media

this is actually a perfect example but not for the reasons claimed it is; after reading the article my basic stance was "this was a decent article, I'm glad I read it, I should look up some of those other books," but now I am questioning that stance because it does not seem to be aligned with the correct one, nor do I trust that I'm right

What do you think?

I don't fucking know because what I think is apparently the wrong thing

yr ego balloon needs inflating!

I don't think "how should a person be" (apparently discussed in the article I won't read) is written in the context of social media scrutiny at all!

katherine I definitely recommend all the Ben Lerner novels and both Jenny Offill novels and How Should A Person Be? because they are all funny and good. Probably Motherhood is good too, it's on my shelf and I just haven't gotten to it yet. I think the things this article is concerned about are most present in The Topeka School, which, perhaps not by coincidence, is the least successful of Lerner's books, I would start with 10:04 (or, better, How Should A Person Be?, which is just wonderfully and radically its own thing, and when you are trapped in a social-media-mediated self-consciousness spiral the best prescription is a radically alternate perspective)

Motherhood is really good too! It's sort of secretly about the Holocaust though.

Leaving the Atocha Station is no less apposite to this discussion and very much worth everyone's time as well.

I've read most of those except the ben lerner

Oh sorry for wrongly imagining otherwise!

If you've read all those books and thought the Oyler was on point maybe it's me who's missing it!

glad some ppl think it's funny to ask if Ammonium Nitrate would be a great metal band name the day after Beirut.

was unusually dickish to this person cos it was in poor taste

I hate when you notice you have less mutual friends than before with someone because it means nearly always someone has removed you and even though you know logically that it doesn't mean anything, it still stings your ego a bit. I like to think that I'm not so unlikable that my mere online presence (which can be muted) is so unpleasant. OTOH these days I only seem to share pro-feminism and pro-trans rights articles I've enjoyed reading, so maybe it's for the best these people remove themselves from my social media circles

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-19/onlyfans-to-block-sexually-explicit-videos-starting-in-october

if i were smarter and knew how to program, launching an onlyfans knockoff that is JUST explicit video seems like a goldmine

"We have decided that our role in distributing sexually explicit videos is morally and ethically wrong and something we want no further part in. That is why we are only going to engage in this harmful and exploitative activity for another, oh, let's say 45 days, so we can all get comfortable with the idea. We don't want to be rash."

I'll admit to being out of the loop but...isn't OnlyFans basically just OnlyExplicitVideos?

yes

this isn't related to the link forksclovetofu posted, but how does everyone "keep up" with social media?

am i getting old or not using it right?

i try to read local and world news every day. it sometimes takes me up to two hours and i still feel like i only skimmed through a lot of articles. i may have too many interests, though?

i would say i'm not cut out for social media because it seems like an endless stream of information. add that you have to learn how to parse people's meaning according to whatever character they're playing or their personality, and things just become so complicated.

i only use facebook but don't have any personal details or pictures up. it's mostly to keep in touch with friends, because we don't all live in the same city anymore. i have less than 20 friends on there.

and just when Rachel Dolezal set up her account no less

damn, rachel dolezal joining onlyfans made them ban porn. i mean it scans.

tumblr banning porn and then this are honestly shocking to me. really didn't realize how institutionalized sexual repression is in the u.s. i kind of thought the internet ended all that, lol. like, my personal journey was the one that everyone else went on. nope!

the word will literally burn up before americans aren't horrified by their own sexuality

world

onlyfans shutting down the sexy vids has everything to do with them having issues getting funding and nothing to do with a moral stance.

why do you think they are having issues getting funding?

exactly

too many butts

why do you think they are having issues getting funding?

The Bloomberg and Axios articles say they are. Apparently, some investment firms are prohibited from investing in adult businesses, and others just don't want to.

Here's the thing: OnlyFans had over a billion dollars in net revenue last year. Why the fuck do they even need outside investors?

And my follow-up question: What do they think they're going to do for money after this? Nobody goes to OnlyFans for non-explicit content. Do they think celebrities are gonna flood in and make it something like Cameo? Cause that's never gonna happen. This is just a stunningly bad idea.

I missed this poll, but my answer is (increasingly) no.

I don't think it's venture capital that's the reason. I have a friend doing her phd on the online porn economy and she pointed me to:

Potential legal trouble: https://www.vice.com/en/article/4avpe3/ann-wagner-fosta-onlyfans-csam-doj-letter

MasterCard recently changed their rules for "adult businesses": https://www.xbiz.com/news/258606/heres-what-the-new-mastercard-rules-mean-for-adult-sites-producers

All equally speculative I suppose, but these seem more convincing to me

The Evangelical women trying to make onlyfans disappear don’t realize if I lose that income I’ll start fucking their husbands for money again

— Sydney Leathers (@sydneyelainexo) August 19, 2021

The Evangelical women trying to make onlyfans disappear don’t realize if I lose that income I’ll start fucking their husbands for money again

— Sydney Leathers (@sydneyelainexo) August 19, 2021

Don't know why that link posted twice; in a follow-up tweet, she called out Ann Wagner by name.