The Front

[sus]

Stan doesnt read

Have you ever thought about how Dissensus is just as or more addicting than Facebook Twitter Instagram etc

@version have you thought about this? @Clinamenic have you thought about this? @beiser have you thought about this?

I spend as much or more time here as anywhere else

And yet are there fancy algorithms trying to hack my brain no

In other words, Beiser was always right. Social media companies are impotent. Their algorithms can't do shit. Their "dopamine hacking" is nothing but. People just like talking to people and showing off and clicking things and seeing updates from friends

 

[sus]

This is a big insight. Huge. Enough to turn major assumptions of this board on their head... by this board's own logic. Wow. Great thought Spendo

 

[Corpsey.]

I do think the endless scroll and targeted advertisement is what keeps me on other things. Cant think of any other reason why I would spend time on instagram. This place fires a different part of my brain I think.

 

[Clinamenic]

I read two of Simondons short essays, I can find the titles. I was intrigued because of how his thought was framed as relay between Heidegger and Deleuze. A lot about becomings and traversing boundaries and whatnot. Apparently the conceptual aesthetics Deleuze uses about crystallizing layers, as a sort of procedural development, is derived from Simondon.

 

[Clinamenic]

Have you ever thought about how Dissensus is just as or more addicting than Facebook Twitter Instagram etc

@version have you thought about this? @Clinamenic have you thought about this? @beiser have you thought about this?

I spend as much or more time here as anywhere else

And yet are there fancy algorithms trying to hack my brain no

In other words, Beiser was always right. Social media companies are impotent. Their algorithms can't do shit. Their "dopamine hacking" is nothing but. People just like talking to people and showing off and clicking things and seeing updates from friends

With Dissensus, the company makes the difference. A like from one of Dissensus’ regulars is worth 100 likes from twitter randos. A higher standard of rapport.

 

[Clinamenic]

A more refined milieu. A salon reserved for only the most cultured and sophisticated minds.

 

[Clinamenic]

I read two of Simondons short essays, I can find the titles. I was intrigued because of how his thought was framed as relay between Heidegger and Deleuze. A lot about becomings and traversing boundaries and whatnot. Apparently the conceptual aesthetics Deleuze uses about crystallizing layers, as a sort of procedural development, is derived from Simondon.

There were also two distinct predictions he made about the development of technology which mapped conspicuously onto the dynamics of present-day social media. Something having to do with the omnipresence of a virtual interface.

 

[shiels]

working my way through it at the moment. So far its been both a critique of substantial and or form/matter-based approaches to individuation and a positive ontological project in its own right. The thought is that the substance-based approaches treat the individual as stable, and think of individuation in terms of already constituted individuals/terms. This is wrong, a principle of individuation results in individuals, not the other way around. So instead he suggests we borrow terms from thermodynamics, and consider individuation in terms of a pre-individual meta-stable state which somehow gets activated to form both the individual and its associated milieu. He gives the example of a liquid that is super-cooled and therefore meta-stable, it requires only some kind of catalyst in the form of energy to "push" it to become crystallized into something else.

Its basically process philosophy

Harangued into such a thoughtful response and then ignored!

 

[luka]

it was just a summary of a book shails dont get carried away!

 

[shiels]

Oh right I’m getting confused. Was trying to shit stir and make you feel bad

 

[shiels]

If I am Buddhist and have a good grasp of the core tenets, what can deleuze or these here process philosophers show me that I don’t already know?

 

[william kent]

People just like talking to people and showing off and clicking things and seeing updates from friends

You need feedback to function, like a bat bouncing sonar off things, and a site and userbase that produces stimulating feedback is going keep you coming back.

Feedback not necessarily in the sense of people directly praising something you've said, just the general principle of inputs and outputs.

 

[sus]

You need feedback to function, like a bat bouncing sonar off things, and a site and userbase that produces stimulating feedback is going keep you coming back.

Feedback not necessarily in the sense of people directly praising something you've said, just the general principle of inputs and outputs.

I agree

 

[Murphy]

Do you believe in dopamine Gus? It has a huge role in roving clicks. Without it we would simply do the basic necessities via communication devices, but we don’t, we keep clicking

Social media’s design and evolution was founded on dopamine and if you think this is chance, or missing entirely from the framework of its architectures, think again

 

[sus]

I believe in dopamine, I don't believe we have anywhere near the knowledge needed to "hack" people's receptors short of giving them cocaine, and I don't believe that Zuckman was sitting in front of his computer age 21 reading papers on dopaminergic response and engineering his site accordingly, nor do I believe Facebook is a competent enough organization to have made a "better" product over the years—the site is clearly trash, attributing incredible mind-manipulation powers to them seems like over-estimating their powers, which are mediocre

 

[sus]

Even at 26 I've lived through enough media hysteria cycles (see also video games) to recognize one when I see it. And the social media hysteria has all the classic hallmarks: spotty studies exaggerated by orders of magnitude, Time magazine covers, juicy tabloid-testimonials from burned ex-founders using the latest news cycle to boost their public image.

 

[sus]

Anxious mamas are always a recipe for selling issues. (If you wanna talk about dopamine manipulation, look at newspaper headlines from time immemorial.)

Sure, there's always a grain of truth in the hysteria around new technologies, you're kidding yourself if you don't recognize the Girardian dangers of television, but the truth is always so distorted and overstated that the public version of it becomes laughable, contempt-worthy. It's a shame, really, because the hysterics are actually harming their case, preventing actual counter-measures from being taken: eventually, public opinion will subside, nothing will have been done because it was mostly smoke and mirrors to begin with, people will move on, just as they did with television, just as they are doing now with video games, and the actual real problems of the technology won't be dealt with.

 

[luka]

one of the things that makes people, makes me, upset and feel all helpless and pathetic, is wasting time. anything that facilitates wasting time
absorbs the blame for wasting time. but we waste time becasue life is inherently boring and pointless and there's nothing worth doing anyway.

 

[luka]

I agree with Gus to a large extent although it does leave open the question of why people find/found Facebook such a good way to waste time, why they find any of the large social media platforms such a good way to waste time. i also agree with limburger that the scrolling feed and endless new content twitter and instagram provide is part of why its so easy just to stare at it endlessly

 

[william kent]

It may just be a numbers thing. Those platforms have the most users. You go where the activity is.