zlacker

[return to "Social Cooling (2017)"]
1. tboyd4+dm[view] [source] 2020-09-29 15:10:04
>>rapnie+(OP)
This is exactly why I had to get off of Facebook (again).

I deactivated my first account 8 years ago, but got back on to re-connect with my old pals and acquaintances from back in the day. For that reason, it was fantastic.

After another year, I realized that I can't actually say ANYTHING interesting on this platform without offending someone. There's a lot of variety in my crowd. I have the sense IRL to know that not everything is for everybody, but that doesn't matter much on Facebook unless you want to spend hours and hours hand-crafting subsets of your friends for different topics (I don't). And I have zero interest in posting selfies or status updates of what's going on in my life, so that made the platform exceedingly boring and a waste of time for me. It's a shame, because it does work really well for "connecting" with people (in the shallowest sense of the word).

◧◩
2. wwwest+Lz[view] [source] 2020-09-29 16:11:03
>>tboyd4+dm
> I realized that I can't actually say ANYTHING interesting on this platform without offending someone.

If you really don't get value out of a platform then it's definitely a good thing to withdraw, but personally... I find there are plenty of interesting things I can talk/post about without flipping any major rage behavior. And I have lefty, liberal, and conservative friends, religious and anti-religious friends, friends who are interested in high/intellectual culture and friends who are not.

I do sometimes offend people. Anything that prompts people to evaluate themselves or their models of the world or their particular value-set runs that risk. Sometimes I have things to say that are likely to do that. Like, for example, the suggestion that maybe a personal capacity for diplomacy has as much to do with the ability to hold wide-ranging conversations as much as the foibles of platforms or people do.

Some topics are especially difficult, but there sure seem to be approaches that minimize the heat-to-light ratio in discussions.

◧◩◪
3. tboyd4+gH[view] [source] 2020-09-29 16:45:48
>>wwwest+Lz
Maybe I'm not always as diplomatic as I could be all the time, but what if I like it that way? I don't have this problem with offending people IRL or even in other online communities. And I'm not interested at all in cutting people out of my life - I like my social circle. So, in my mind, the platform is indeed the problem.
[go to top]