How much of this is that we’re getting older? I find that outside thoughtfluencing and reputation building, I’ve simply become tired of sharing. Just kinda don’t care anymore.
Part of it is that there’s less and less novelty. What was new and exciting 5 years ago is mundane and boring now. Done it a million times. What felt like a huge insight, became a normal part of my worldview. Etc
To top it off I realized I simply don’t care as much about keeping in touch with people who aren’t actually part of my life.
Ultimately my time is limited and I can publish to build leads/branding or to drive vanity metrics like a monkey acting out in a cage. One of those is a good use of time.
Especially if your social media is facebook, i think the original users just got bored of it and adult life isn't that interesting. Mine is slowly filling up with baby pictures now and weddings now after what i think was a lull. Younger people seem to be going strong on sharing stupid things on snap chat and tiktok.
My journey was something like
-Facebook,
- private blog with logins so my parents and siblings could read, post and comment
- Started using Hangouts(or so I think, there's been so many Google messaging apps) with my wife because it was convenient to not have to dig out the phone everytime we worked at a computer and needed to send som messages.
- Started using WhatsApp. Fell in love. "Sold it" to my family and my wife's family.
- All our close friends picked it up too at around the same time.
- Facebook announced it would buy WhatsApp. I felt uncomfortable, but waited.
- Telegram showed up and was better but I didn't want to switch as they were free and WhatsApp was still paid so WhatsApp felt safer.
- Facebook made WhatsApp free and took away all guarantees.
- I started using Telegram. Soon after everyone around me switched too.
I won't say I started the move to WhatsApp and later Telegram among my friends but I have wholeheartedly supported it.
(Say what you want about the encryption in early WhatsApp and later in Telegram, but there's more to security than encryption and most of the stuff we post would otherwise have gone on Facebook so it is a huge step forward anyways and it is so liberating to know I can talk to anyone and know that it doesn't automatically get pumped into Facebooks data lake.)
Edit, FWIW, two more observations:
- Google Hangouts could have been the place we went to instead of WhatsApp, but lacked polish especially on group chats.
- Google+ could have been an alternative but didn't feel private enough.
- After Google+ I gave up Google.[1]
- There's a number of interesting options at any time, but I haven't found what we (my family and close friends) need: hubzilla seems promising but lacks community it seems. Mastodon is public by default so more like Twitter, while we want 1-1 or group messaging. MeWe is focused on being a 1-to-many network, and they lack pseudonym accounts so they still don't come close to Google+. Ideas are welcome.
[1]: Maybe I won't work there even if I'm offered a job as it feels like a minefield for anyone with a different background like me and they also haven't managed to get a single service to improve since 10 years ago as far as I remember.
Most services are even going backwards it seems, reducing quotas, killing products, even search has been failing badly for years and ad targeting is so bad it would have been funny if it wasn't so insulting. (I always complain about this so I should probably say the last few months I've seen ads from stores I'd actually want to buy from instead of just the "hot singles near you" scam etc.)
The algorithms have only settled down on the extremes which we've already known sell: sex, violence, fear, outrage.
Fox News was selling fear and outrage long before Facebook's algorithms discovered that fear and outrage sells. Every grocery store had tabloids right there at the checkout, already optimized for engagement from those with obvious self-control and critical thinking issues. In fact, the grocery store is an excellent example of a place that has been heavily optimized based on human psychology. They want you to buy the cereal and other high margin items. They put the basics on the periphery, etc.
Social media is a problem, but I don't think it's the problem. We have deeper issues we need to dig to.
No. That life is sadly dead and gone, the damage of politics / identity politics as most dominant identity, bias enforcing algorithms and creepy behavioural psychology manipulation as “user experience” has not just corrupted the internet permanently but likely how we see and deal with one another online also.
"Live and let live" only ever worked for acceptable identities. You did not have that luxury if you were, say, gay prior to the early oughts.
I think you're looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses. It was less 'live and let live' and more 'sit down and shut up if you are different'.
Now those people have a voice, and a lot of folks are finding it quite upsetting.
In the 1960s, I believe SF did have much more of a live and let live attitude than much of the rest of the world, but IMO, SF is now a not really tolerant place anymore. There's very much a dominant narrative being imposed by the big silicon valley players, but culture does change over time. If you try to enforce certain political ideas and suppress others, you inevitably give rise to some kind of counter-culture, it seems.
Is intolerance of intolerance intolerance?
I recommend this book by Robert Kane: "Through the Moral Maze: Searching for Absolute Values in a Pluralistic World"
GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1654373.Through_the_Mora...
A book review by Bruce Ballard: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/490166
Perhaps it can help to remember this: some of us here may not realize that even the term identity politics has a complex history. From Wikipedia:
> The term was coined by the Combahee River Collective in 1977. The collective group of women saw identity politics as an analysis that introduced opportunity for Black women to be actively involved in politics, while simultaneously acting as a tool to authenticate Black women's personal experiences. It took on widespread usage in the early 1980s, and in the ensuing decades has been employed in myriad cases with radically different connotations dependent upon the term's context.
99% of this junk amounts to fear/outrage porn that is non-actionable for me. There's no reason to devote even an iota of mental energy to it.
I, sadly, do not see how America comes out of this together, embracing a "live and let live" type attitude, in a world where identity politics does not continue to dominate the narrative, when a large bulk of the mainstream has stoked, embraced and celebrated a loosely constructed contextually and historically ignorant hierarchy and narrative of the "oppressed" and of the "oppressors". Where one half of the populace believes the nation itself to be fundamentally good , worthwhile or indeed "the best", and the other believes it to be rotten to the core not just now but since its very beginning. Where one half believes that the 2020 election was genuinely stolen from them by socialists and communists, and the other genuinely believes they've just defeated something in line with Adolf Hitler, who himself stole the 2016 election thanks to Russians with a couple million of FB ad spend.
I hope to be wrong.
One that comes to mind for me is Lobsters. I'm interested in other examples as well as mechanisms for striking a balance between civility and diversity of opinion.
The only other places I've seen that aren't this way are various chan style sites and oldschool internet forums, but those places have their own obvious problems.
There is some, but it's tiny. /r/stupidpol subreddit is an example of that.
I wonder if such a subreddit is mostly for amusement purposes; i.e. blowing off steam, laughing at the spectacle.
Do you think it can help play a part in forming broader coalitions (which I think is a hallmark of non-identity politics)?
It's funny that this is expressed in a culture war kind of way: the identity politics crowd versus the "against identity politics" crowd.
Sometimes social phenomena don't dissipate because of push-back, but because they simply fizzle out, like a fire that consumed all of the underbrush. I think that's a more apt analogy for how we can expect the current era of identity politics to end, if it does. You can't shoot guns in the name of peace, and you can't "push back" against too much shoving.
That depends on consequences.
For example, if there are jobs that depend on continuation of social phenomena, their holders will fight tooth and nail not to let this happen.
Universities now have special administrators dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion. These are someone's livelihoods and also sources of power. Will the incumbents simply say "there is no more interest in identity politics, our task is done, we made ourselves redundant"?
No. As long as they are paid to promote, say, inclusion, they will always push the idea that more must be done.
Consider that all jobs depend on the continuation of social phenomena.
Think, for a moment, about the sentiment of 'They took our jobs'. (With 'They' being Jews, immigrants, Mexicans, China, or some other boogieman of the week.)
As long as there are jobs, people with them will always push the idea that some 'Other' is coming to take away their livelihood.
It's all identity politics - it's just that when its practiced by the political right, they don't call it that. It wouldn't be part of their identity to engage in them, after all.
But, of course, if you call out and challenge this, you will be accused of engaging in identity politics.
This isn't an empty argument, I'll grant. It extends to yellow "journalists" (from OANN to CTH), political campaign staff (divided country = more spending on politics), social media companies, and others. Division is profitable.
But lots of awful things are profitable. There are always stakeholders in whatever enterprise is polluting the water, the air, or the discourse. You deal with it by offering them progressively worse compromises and hoping that, over time, the frogs will jump out of the pot.
If we say for example the police system is not working as it should and many people are dying or being locked away unnecessarily, how do you fix this when the leaders of your country are unwilling to do anything. The only options you have make you one of those 'identity politics people'.
We have to find and grow new leaders! :)
My general comment is: please, pick one issue you care about, study it, find the leverage points, and make time to get involved. This might mean joining an organization, volunteering, making a tech project to share what you've learned -- even running for office.
Based on your username, I would guess perhaps you are already involved to some degree around pollution or environmental issues [1]. Let me know if you want someone to bounce ideas off of. I also can offer this perspective: ongoing dissatisfaction, properly harnessed, can be a great motivator for change.
I think if anything, the scary thing is that it works better than caring about the poor at all. It wasn't democratic ideas about poverty that made them such a force...just accuse people of homophobia and you've already put them on the defensive if not won. "Alt-right" is such a wonderful tool-just hint someone is it, and a person's mind does all the rest even though they may have no idea what it even means. Just say it long enough and loud enough in the right tone of disapproval and you have magic.
I'm not sure how much of this is /s.
When I was against gay marriage, I sat down and tried to think a lot about how marriage related to procreation or was a special institution. How religion related to it, and whether or not it needed protection. I did feel eventually civil unions were the strongest compromise, because there were legal aspects to recognizing couples that were important but the special nature of heterosexual marriage and its relation to tradition and religion mattered to. You can disagree about gay marriage but realize that there are definitely things gay couples should have in a legal sense too; hospital visitation rights as one. A lot really was uncertainty about metaphysical and philosophical ideas I think.
But all you had to do to shut all that down was to accuse me of homophobia and bigotry. It's insanely effective because a person has to now defend that whatever he is proposing isn't because of deep-seated irrational phobia or anger. It really worked.
Now i pretty much just shrug and say "What are you going to do, you're conquered." Pay the Dane the Danegeld when he asks.
Gay marriage as an actual act is not really a success. In my state last year all of 700 people got married in same sex couples out of a population of 4 million, and even with the low straight marriage rate here thats 700 out of 20,000 a year I believe, not even .05 percent. Ever since mid 2015 we have never seen even 1000 people a year use it. That's the huge irony of all those identity politics...they were a club to beat people with more than a vital need it seemed.
It's easier and more effective to use identity politics. They aren't going away. I mean lord, "live and let live"-be honest, you think you're going to allow us to do that with climate change an issue? When you want us to learn to love the veggie burger and electric bike everywhere instead of using cars?
I mean it doesn't work well on the receiving end but hey, like the simpsons treehouse of horror episode, sometimes the dolphins just want it more. Luckily it seems people get embarassed of conquering after a bit so it fades.
I'd say the republicans did that. And even after the 4 years of gaslighting and bigotry, they almost did it again. I wouldn't say it's the democrats who make topics like wearing a mask or the destruction of the environment political.
Now you have democrats who play that game too, but since they have the facts "in their favor" it's to their detriment (I'm putting quotes here because covid and global warming being real isn't to anyone's favor, but it's facts). Mud fights benefit those without good arguments.
That said, I agree with your post, antagonizing people doesn't help changing minds.
> See, its easier to accuse people of bigotry than look at their actual problems.
That's true. But I strongly believe that bigotry is the problem. Blaming the left for the rise of populism and conspiracies is like blaming the firefighters for the fire. I'm putting the blame on the arsonists.
We should be debating how to fix issues instead of "Is the issue real?". All the politics who participated in spreading misinformation and dividing the western world should be voted out of their positions.
It's a systemic failure that brought us here. Our system allowed selfish leaders (from all sides tbh) to get in power.
But fixing the systemic issues touches on personal liberties (who decides what can and cannot be said?), so it cannot be done lightly. Additionally, politics wants to be re-elected, so not only they won't do anything against misinformation, they sometimes encourage it.
I blame the leaders more than the followers, but the followers have a personal responsibility in it as well.
What remains is not allowing homosexual couples the same treatment as heterosexual couples, because heterosexual couples are "special" for religious and traditionalist reasons. This is very strong identity politics, but from conservative side and very much contrary to the spirit of "live and let live". It strikes me how many conservatives do not realize that they very much support identity politics and then go raging against it the next moment.
Treating people equally should be the default and is the result of not caring about identity in the first place. There are some good arguments that can be made for identity politics after that, but the case against equal treatment should have to be a really strong one. Traditions and religious feelings do not suffice for that in my opinions.
Even when the absolute numbers of homosexual marriages is very small that doesn't justify not caring about unequal treatment. Imagine if we would tax all identical twins 5% more than everybody else. This nonsensical unequal treatment would clearly be unacceptable injustice while the percentage of people that are affected is still very small.
On top of that there are social explanations why homosexual people would be less likely to marry. Marriage has long been a religious and traditionalist institution and has been used to discriminate against them. It can be hard to identify with such an institution and I know queer people who would not like get married because of that. If marriage had been available to everybody since as long as they can remember considering marriage would perhaps come more natural.
I think there were conservatives who realized this, and this was the reason why "the state should get out of marriage entirely" was pushed as a solution. That too was shot down harshly. At that point I personally gave up I think. It's like abortion...the issue is not "should a woman have a right to it," the issue is that now we live in a society where premarital sex is the norm and abortion is just restoring equity to the new norm.
The real numbers..look, it was literally hilarious to me that the same people who were arguing "marriage was only a piece of paper" in their own lives suddenly turned around and became strict advocates of it in the lives of a small minority of people. If religious people had said "okay, we accept gay people, but they need to follow the same teachings we do-be the husband of one husband, no premarital sex, and no sex outside marriage" everyone here would have railed against marriage as a tool of straight fascism or something.
I'm not meaning the low numbers means its should be revoked though. If anything it's the reverse. We did all that trouble, all that hate and strife...can you all please use it at least? When you fight desperately for the right for something, and in reality barely anyone seems to use it, what was the fighting done for?
Empathy. What you're describing your shocked reaction to is empathy in others. This says a lot about you.
The gay population is estimated at roughly 10% but we're talking couples so 3.5% would imply a surprisingly high rate of marriages amongst gay people within the year over year married population.
Actually what's ironic is that my state's capitol is heralded as "one of the gayest cities in america" for having a percentage of 4.6%. San fransico seems to be 6.2%. This link is dated 6 years ago, though:
https://www.ctpost.com/living/article/Which-are-the-gayest-c...
I have no idea what offering them marriage rate in isolation is contributing otherwise.
To loop this back around to the topic at hand though, it is bizzare to use the rate of utilisation of one's rights as an argument as to whether or not people should have them.
I have friends who are able to enjoy the benefits of a legal contract and existing case law and precedents that was previously restricted to man/woman couples. Seems like a success to me.
>live and let live"-be honest, you think you're going to allow us to do that with climate change an issue? When you want us to learn to love the veggie burger and electric bike everywhere instead of using cars?
You can live and let live with gay marriage, it doesn't affect you in any way. Neither does a veggie burger, and no one has ever wanted you to love a veggie burger. I do want it as an option for my kid in school, however.
Climate change, and cars are not live and let live issues, since they have massive externalities that affect everyone.
Like let's assume in my state we take the fairly average assumption of LGBT population at 5%. Now let's also take a marriage rate of 5 per 1000, which is pretty low given that this is a historic opportunity. Even granting this, the actual numbers indicate a rate close to 3 per 1000. This is close to half of the current rates, which are widely seen as historic lows:
https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/2020...
This is in a new england state. So it's not something you accuse due to being in the Bible belt. In actual numbers, the impact of gay marriage is fairly tiny. Your friends are outliers. It's actually tiny enough to hurt a lot of compelling reasons for it; state-sanctioned marriage as a tool to help combat gay male promiscuity for one, or any form of economic benefit to it. Ironically SSM wasn't something to worry about because the people who want or need it are small enough a population not to impact anything in practice; it was more of an ideological issue it seems.
As for climate change, yeah my point is if we do identity politics now, over things which are let or let live, what is going to happen when there are things that we cannot do so? I think it will ramp up more even.
I'm not sure what this statement means. Are you claiming combating gay male promiscuity is beneficial for society?
>Ironically SSM wasn't something to worry about because the people who want or need it are small enough a population not to impact anything in practice; it was more of an ideological issue it seems.
I disagree. Freedom, for populations small or big, for actions that have no effect on anyone else is very important to worry about it. And I don't see what can be wrong with that ideological issue, unless you're anti freedom.
>As for climate change, yeah my point is if we do identity politics now, over things which are let or let live, what is going to happen when there are things that we cannot do so? I think it will ramp up more even.
With any limited resource (such as the global environment and natural resources like clean water and air), the ones with power will end up with most of it, and the people alive have more power than the people that have yet to be born.
The only identity politics that matter in the climate change situation is those who will consume today or those who will sacrifice today. But I predict this will be an unsolvable problem due to lack of buy in from the global population, for variety of reasons.
Good points. I am glad you thought about it, even if you came to different conclusions than I would have.
> But all you had to do to shut all that down was to accuse me of homophobia and bigotry.
To state the obvious: I never accused you of that.
I'm not stating the obvious to be confrontational; I'm saying it because I've heard this argument frequently from people I know that disagree with my politically.
For example, I've met thoughtful people that feel attacked because they want to think through issues rather than jump on a bandwagon. I am very glad they are being thoughtful and see nuance in the issues.
So here is what I hope to learn: I'd like to know why you feel this way. Do you personally think that someone like me, perhaps from a different political philosophy, is judging you (as opposed to the underlying ideas)?
(I have some guesses, but I would rather not speculate.)
By calling me irrational, I do not need to be compromised with or taken seriously; compromise and dialogue is based on the fact that people are both making good faith efforts to engage. Part of what is chilling about the whole social media thing recently is that it's arguing that it causes people to be in an irrational state and not to be taken seriously. Go home trump voters; you are drunk on social media.
So yeah, there is a lot of judging going on, because that kind of judging is more effective than compromise. You yourself sound like you are open minded more because people will need time to come to the undeniable truth than anything.
And this is the problem with so many debates - the people who are largely comfortable with the status quo are confused because people in marginalized groups are screaming at them, when they didn't really do anything to those people. In fact they may, in some abstract way, be supportive of their struggle. But the people are screaming because a third party has a gun (literally or figuratively) to their heads. So in order for there to be a real conversation, first we need to get that guy to put the gun down. Nothing else can happen until then.
Why do you use the 'conquered' language?
Very few things are static under a long enough time horizon. In politics and public opinion, things can change quite quickly. So, if you want to prioritize an issue, go for it.
Some political ideas are not "we must both give up something to exist together." Some are "My idea is morally right, and by necessity it must conquer yours." I use SSM more because it's a pure example of this; what exactly did marriage advocates "give up" in the bargain? It was the opponents who more or less had to capitulate near totally.
This is what culture war is. It is the use of politics to establish ideas and defeat or subjugate those who disagree with it. This does not mean it is inherently immoral; one of the frustrating things about this is the realization that no, the conquerors are not the rapacious Mongols we think they are. But i think people often don't get how much a political idea can be subjugation more than compromise.
As for changing, nah. Can you imagine a world where it has changed so much divorce becomes illegal again? What would it take for people to cast it off? If we were possible of this kind of change as a group I think we'd have far less to worry about climate change for example.
I (and most people I think) use the word subjugation to mean "bring under domination or control, especially by conquest: the invaders had soon subjugated most of the native population." Traditional examples of subjugation include occupations and forced religion.
I think I see what you mean, as a general concept, although I think using "conquer" is a poor word choice. The word "conquer" tends to imply force.
There are many tensions between ideas in law, life, and philosophy that are resolved by economics, thinking, compromise, persuasion, voting, organizing, and group behavior rather than force.
Based on your comment so far, I will say that I don't get what you are trying to say.
Do you mean this: those who define the terms of a debate shape how it is perceived, what options are considered, and (to some degree) how it is evaluated?
I am fascinated by your language use of "capitulate" here. You are framing this discussion very much with the language of "subjugation".
Here is how I frame one category of public policy involving allocation of scarce resources. In the case of legislation that adjusts spending from general revenue, each taxpayer shares the responsibility. Individuals who attempt to withhold that portion of the tax will face penalties. This is one way a government can wield power. The power is often implied, but if necessary, it can be backed up with various enforcement mechanisms. These mechanisms may be coercive, but they are subject to the rule of law.
Now, with regards to granting privileges to same-sex couples, I do not see this as an issue involving scarce resources. A person who opposes same-sex marriage is not directly harmed by someone else's partnership receiving the right for hospital visitation, for example.
In fact, I think the opponent of SSM, in practice, benefits in ways they don't even recognize. Happier, more fulfilled people tend to lead to a more vibrant culture, stronger economy, and overall better quality of life -- for everyone. One of the classic ironic Hollywood storylines is about a homophobic man who grows up to be a father of a gay son. Over time, he realizes he was wrong.
At the same time, I can understand how this opponent of SSM may feel worse off. Unfortunately, this person wants their private morality to be imposed on everyone.
For background on how I am using public morality and private morality, see the writings of Robert Kaine. He argues against moral relativism while supporting the importance of value systems that are compatible with democratic ideals. In short, not all private moralities are equal in this sense: not all are compatible with a pluralistic public morality.
To be clear, Kaine's reasoning does not demand a total ordering of private moralities. Indeed, it steers clear of that issue.
So, in conclusion, while I can sympathize with people who don't get their way (which I frame as "having their private beliefs codified into law"), I don't think they have been treated unjustly. Not all private beliefs are compatible with pluralistic democratic values. Sometimes society has to choose.
This is poorly framed. This is not about "bargaining".
This is a case of people demanding and advocating for their rights. There is no principled reason to ask while doing so they should "bargain away" those rights.
Sure, opponents of same-sex marriage may disagree.
There are some schools of thought that try to separate, shame, or exclude others based on some criteria, whether it be sexual orientation, educational background, or socioeconomic status.
I see a pattern around intolerance. People that have exclusionary beliefs don't have a good track record -- here's what I mean -- these belief systems do not survive contact with reality, unless the person with that belief system digs in their feet and refuses to engage with real people. For example, it may be "easy" for someone to be homophobic if that is how they were raised, but this belief system is unlikely to survive if the person has a gay son and they are open to talking with their son and learning about the issue.
For context, from Wikipedia:
> "Dane-geld" is a poem by British writer Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936). It relates to the unwisdom of paying "Danegeld", or what is nowadays called blackmail and protection money. The most famous lines are "once you have paid him the Danegeld/ You never get rid of the Dane."
I don't follow why you reference blackmail or protection money. Can you explain?
Do you see it as an opposite of "live and let live" attitude?
(I don't quite follow)
For example, cis-white-males are often demonized, binned as oppressors. If you take a step back and think about it, a lot of cis-white-males were born in US states with huge meth and fentanyl addiction problems. Raised in trailer parks, in poverty, with maybe one or both parents missing and no access to education. If you paint poverty and access to education as being purely a race problem, and white males as always being oppressors, you are leaving people behind. We can't afford to do that. We collectively pay the price, as a society, somewhere down the road.
With regards to "live and let live", many prominent advocates of identity politics are very hostile people. They do not welcome discussion, they do not want your input. Either you have the same opinion as them, or you are an alt-right, a bad person. The correct opinion has been decided once and for all by social justice academics, and either you're onboard, or you're necessarily ignorant and wrong. Kind of like George W Bush said "you're either with us, or against us".
Here are only three examples of how identity politics might be used. It can be used to describe:
1. how minority groups fight oppression based on skin color
2. how a majority group, perceiving a threat, joins together (often based on baser instincts)
3. a tendency for political parties to connect primarily on surface-level attributes of people, rather than substantive root causes
Which of these (if any) do you mean when you talk about identity politics?
Caveat: I am no expert on the term.
There's no way to collect all discussion of, say, a new product the company the group is about released. You'll get dozens of threads of the same thing for weeks and weeks without any way of directing everyone to the same one.
You can pin posts with instructions - no one sees that shit, because no one actually visits the groups "front page" after they've joined.