Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
And @suspended granted the real digital natives are younger than even I am, did you not experience a sense of isolation in terms of navigating the internet as a high schooler? Or do you at least feel that way in hindsight, if not at the time?
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
I'd like to think I make my position at least fairly clear whilst never making people feel as though they're involved in an argument or that they need to go on the attack or pull back.
Yeah you do well at this, as I noticed how strongly you seem to feel about these things, yet nonetheless held course in respectful dialogue, largely abstaining from needless value judgements, etc.
 

sus

Well-known member
You have to account for the people pointing to Facebook potentially being dishonest and using the argument for ends other than dealing with mental health too.
Bottom line: social media deeply threatens many lucrative businesses. Those include large portions of the press.

Yes, they're learning to work together symbiotically, as was inevitable, but there's no question that social media and the Internet broadly threatens to undermine its previous impervious authority, to pulls away revenue, etc.

Silicon Valley, to some extent, is the only real elite culture in the United States that can rival East Coast establishment culture, and it's a culture the press basically doesn't control, doesn't understand, isn't encamped in like the elite East Coast systems. Indeed, the Valley's often actively antagonistic towards East Coast press—some SV figures boycott the Times, and don't give interviews to the press. Gell Mann amnesia is practically part of its folk parlance.

And this is regardless of whether you "like" Valley culture—and it's a mixed bag, as all cultures are; there's some good (irreverence, DIY/frontier ethic) and some bad (the grifts that invariably circle money, self-delusional BS about changing the world, a philosophical approach whose shallowness rivals legacy institutional culture). Whenyou look at the overwhelming anti-tech bias of the press, and you say—well, even if it were all true, aren't they awfully motivated to be saying it.
 

version

Well-known member
I don’t use Facebook, and it doesn’t seem popular with people my age or younger, but she was also using Instagram as an example of intense, self-image mutilating social phenomena that was amplified, not engendered, by certain recommendation algorithms.
I definitely agree with the latter. It isn't the full story as people have been talking about the impact of TV, film, the fashion industry et al. on body image for a long time, but Instagram really seems to have intensified it, particularly with all the digital editing going on through stuff like Facetune. You've now got people asking surgeons to make them look like they do on Insta...
 

sus

Well-known member
I don’t use Facebook, and it doesn’t seem popular with people my age or younger, but she was also using Instagram as an example of intense, self-image mutilating social phenomena that was amplified, not engendered, by certain recommendation algorithms.
Right, because this wasn't exactly what touchy-feely libs said about Cosmo and women's magazines.

The age of the image started a long time ago.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Yeah and personally I’d like a better handle on what data has been collected here and by whom, such as rates of reported anorexia, which I don’t even know who would be collecting.

I’d also be interested in research linking anorexia to infertility, as that could end up being a major rhetoric point.
 

sus

Well-known member
And @suspended granted the real digital natives are younger than even I am, did you not experience a sense of isolation in terms of navigating the internet as a high schooler? Or do you at least feel that way in hindsight, if not at the time?
No, the Internet has been a godsend in my life, and one of the things I'm most grateful for.

The people I knew in my little town—well, I could take them or leave them. The people I've found online—incredible people. My favorite people, I met online. The best music, the best books, the best movies. All of it. From the Internet. Living in chatrooms in eighth grade. Playing Runescape at 12 with my pals into the wee hours. Getting to read enormous archives from Pitchfork, NME, The Wire as a music-desperate high schooler.

And then later in my life, the access to knowledge, the access to people... Bloggers that outpace professional literary reviews in education, understanding, and prose. The friends I met in Slacks and Discords. The person I care most about, besides my partner—met him at a Twitter meetup, we both blogged. I spend all day these days on Google Scholar and Wikipedia and listening to incredible podcasts, thousands of hours of access to the thoughts of incredible people. Some of the films I've loved the most I never could've found in Blockbuster. My day job is coding—I get to work 2 days a week, from the comfort of my home, taking whatever breaks I wish, solving engineering problems. And I get paid a living wage! Incredible.

Sure, I'm not so hot on Instagram or Facebook. Don't use either much, can't say much about them. But the Internet? As a high schooler? Incredible.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Right, because this wasn't exactly what touchy-feely libs said about Cosmo and women's magazines.

The age of the image started a long time ago.
But I am of the opinion that the onus shouldn’t be on the individual to pry themselves away from their social milieu in the interest of health, especially when it seems their neurochemistry is stacked against their will. Not that that is what you are arguing here necessarily.
 

version

Well-known member
No, the Internet has been a godsend in my life, and one of the things I'm most grateful for.

The people I knew in my little town—well, I could take them or leave them. The people I've found online—incredible people. My favorite people, I met online. The best music, the best books, the best movies. All of it. From the Internet. Living in chatrooms in eighth grade. Playing Runescape at 12 with my pals into the wee hours. Getting to read enormous archives from Pitchfork, NME, The Wire as a music-desperate high schooler.

And then later in my life, the access to knowledge, the access to people... Bloggers that outpace professional literary reviews in education, understanding, and prose. The friends I met in Slacks and Discords. The person I care most about, besides my partner—met him at a Twitter meetup, we both blogged. I spend all day these days on Google Scholar and Wikipedia and listening to incredible podcasts, thousands of hours of access to the thoughts of incredible people.

Sure, I'm not so hot on Instagram or Facebook. Don't use either much, can't say much about them. But the Internet? As a high schooler? Incredible.
I'm in a similar boat. This is the major upside of the internet.
 
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Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
No, the Internet has been a godsend in my life, and one of the things I'm most grateful for.

The people I knew in my little town—well, I could take them or leave them. The people I've found online—incredible people. My favorite people, I met online. The best music, the best books, the best movies. All of it. From the Internet. Living in chatrooms in eighth grade. Playing Runescape at 12 with my pals into the wee hours. Getting to read enormous archives from Pitchfork, NME, The Wire as a music-desperate high schooler.

And then later in my life, the access to knowledge, the access to people... Bloggers that outpace professional literary reviews in education, understanding, and prose. The friends I met in Slacks and Discords. The person I care most about, besides my partner—met him at a Twitter meetup, we both blogged. I spend all day these days on Google Scholar and Wikipedia and listening to incredible podcasts, thousands of hours of access to the thoughts of incredible people.

Sure, I'm not so hot on Instagram or Facebook. Don't use either much, can't say much about them. But the Internet? As a high schooler? Incredible.
I mean, I think the internet is a miracle too, but I also see that, say, the average online American’s scope is much more simple and surficial than ours.

So really I shouldn’t have asked for your own experience, but what you think of the average experience of the digital native, I.e those who did not experience socializing before the internet.
 

sus

Well-known member
But I am of the opinion that the onus shouldn’t be on the individual to pry themselves away from their social milieu in the interest of health, especially when it seems their neurochemistry is stacked against their will. Not that that is what you are arguing here necessarily.
I don't exactly disagree, but I basically am of the belief that all this business about Facebook "dopamine hacking" users is more or less pseudo-scientific nonsense. The whole "nudge" thing that's very popular these days—it just doesn't work. They've done a lot of failed replication experiments. Most of behavioral economics and the nudge philosophy that accompanies is it just pseudo-science.

That's probably a pretty significant "is" that alters our "ought."
 

sus

Well-known member
I mean, I think the internet is a miracle too, but I also see that, say, the average online American’s scope is much more simple and surficial than ours.

So really I shouldn’t have asked for your own experience, but what you think of the average experience of the digital native, I.e those who did not experience socializing before the internet.
Yeah I mean I just don't know. It could be true! It could be tearing normies apart! I wouldn't really know. My parents aren't on social media, and I don't spend time with people who aren't Internet weirdos (or one degree removed).
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
I don't exactly disagree, but I basically am of the belief that all this business about Facebook "dopamine hacking" users is more or less pseudo-scientific nonsense. The whole "nudge" thing that's very popular these days—it just doesn't work. They've done a lot of failed replication experiments. Most of behavioral economics and the nudge philosophy that accompanies is it just pseudo-science.

That's probably a pretty significant "is" that alters our "ought."
The research could be pseudo-science and disregardable as such along the lines of science, but it sure seems like almost everyone, even on this board, admits to consciously recognizing how getting a positive emote reaction feels good, good enough to occasionally impact the conscious decision-making regarding posts, etc.
 
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