Social Media Is Killing Discourse ...
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Nice headline.
Not related to http://discourse.org
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@aliceif said in Social Media Is Killing Discourse ...:
Not related to http://discourse.org
Aww.... You got my hopes up for nothing......
:-(
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For one thing, we need more text than videos in order to remain rational animals. Typography, as Postman describes, is in essence much more capable of communicating complex messages that provoke thinking.
Humans got along fine for hundreds of years before the printing press made daily newspapers cheap and affordable. Where you get your information is a separate issue than "do you ever read books" -- books are hardly going out of style here.
Furthermore, there's this tendency on the internet to over-represent high-school and college-aged students who spend a lot more time on the internet because they have more time to spend on the internet due to not working. That's a temporary phenomenon. Holding down a job means talking to people you didn't choose yourself, routinely. So you're never going to achieve total facebook bubble saturation.
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This is why Oxford Dictionaries designated "post-truth" as the word of 2016: an adjective "relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals."
AKA politics.
Who would like to hang around in a place where everyone seems to be negative, mean, and disapproving?
Everyone on Slashdot?
For one thing, we need more text than videos in order to remain rational animals.
We got on well enough before Gutenberg's printing press. The Ancient Greeks managed to be pretty rational about a lot of things, and in doing so, effectively laid the foundations for science and modern society.
Typography, as Postman describes, is in essence much more capable of communicating complex messages that provoke thinking.
On the other hand, a picture paints a thousand words. Cliché it may be, but that doesn't make it any less true.
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@RaceProUK said in Social Media Is Killing Discourse ...:
Who would like to hang around in a place where everyone seems to be negative, mean, and disapproving?
Everyone on Slashdot?
And everyone who reads Trolleybus Garage topics.
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@aliceif FTFS:
This is why Oxford Dictionaries designated "post-truth" as the word of 2016: an adjective "relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals."
I think we've been post-truth for...uh...when did civilization begin?
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The only reason I go to Facebook these days is because people tagged me in dumb stuff. I guess you could call reddit social media, but that would be offensive to social media
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@RaceProUK said in Social Media Is Killing Discourse ...:
We got on well enough before Gutenberg's printing press. The Ancient Greeks managed to be pretty rational about a lot of things, and in doing so, effectively laid the foundations for science and modern society.
And we manage to be pretty rational about a lot of things, too! And the Greeks were pretty crazy about other things.
The printing press (and now social media) changed the way information was transmitted but it's still people communicating and emotions and emotional appeals have always been and always will be powerful.
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@boomzilla It's fascinating reading really well-done history books. I'm reading "How To Be Victorian", a text about the daily life during the Victorian era. A lot of the stuff we consider silly actually had perfectly sensible reasoning behind it. It makes me think about what stupid shit they'll say about our era in the future.
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@Yamikuronue said in Social Media Is Killing Discourse ...:
It makes me think about what stupid shit they'll say about our era in the future.
It makes me think about what we say about our era in the present.
Filed Under: Chesterton's Gate
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@boomzilla One example that amused me: in the section about dress, it points out that super-slim was the ideal of beauty, a standard we still hold today. In the section about food, however, it points out the widespread famine among the populace, and the belief that arose from it that eating less was "good for you". Poor children starved because there wasn't enough food, and rich children starved because eating a full meal was seen as "encouraging gluttony", while eating only bread was seen as enriching moral fiber and building self-control. Young lads were encouraged to exercise, but young women were seen as "delicate" and therefore encouraged to avoid straining themselves with anything more rigorous than walking.
And then we're surprised to find that people in the Victorian era were shorter, slimmer, and prone to fainting. Must have been the corsets.
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I watched an episode of Chicago Med last night. In it, one of the doctors is worrying about a patient who's sleeping on the streets because said patient hasn't checked his Facebook recently.
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@boomzilla said in Social Media Is Killing Discourse ...:
@aliceif FTFS:
This is why Oxford Dictionaries designated "post-truth" as the word of 2016: an adjective "relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals."
I think we've been post-truth for...uh...when did civilization begin?
6000 years ago.
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@Lorne-Kates You're @OffByOneThousand
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@RaceProUK said in Social Media Is Killing Discourse ...:
@Lorne-Kates You're @OffByOneThousand
6000000 years ago?
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@RaceProUK said in Social Media Is Killing Discourse ...:
We got on well enough before Gutenberg's printing press. The Ancient Greeks managed to be pretty rational about a lot of things, and in doing so, effectively laid the foundations for science and modern society.
Having read some of the founding fathers letters (federalist vs. antifederalist is interesting), some of the arguments of the antagonists in the Bible (Ester is basically a story about arguing with a stupid version of Hitler, then that bit with David's children), some of the stories surrounding Aristotle, some of 3 Kingdoms, and having watched 300.... (not really an exact science... )
Logical arguments seem to take a backseat all throughout history.
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@ben_lubar said in Social Media Is Killing Discourse ...:
@RaceProUK said in Social Media Is Killing Discourse ...:
@Lorne-Kates You're @OffByOneThousand
6000000 years ago?
6 years ago?
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Fourscore and seven years ago!
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Slashdot's article said in Social Media Is Killing Discourse ...:
Who would like to hang around in a place where everyone seems to be negative, mean, and disapproving?
Wow. This question, by itself, makes me think about how differently people who actually use social media networks regularly think from me. I find talking to people who are only there to agree with or comfort you to be terminally boring... Unless, of course, that agreement leads into an interesting discussion about the nuances of said topic. When I find people that I disagree with and can start a debate with, I actually get slightly excited.
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@aliceif said in Social Media Is Killing Discourse ...:
Not related to http://discourse.org
So much disappoint …
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@masonwheeler said in Social Media Is Killing Discourse ...:
Four
scoresquare and seven years ago!FTFY