Social media – Bickering, flaming, trolling---all exhausting, but still addicting

[Brian63]

What do you do when you become tired of all the usual fighting and insulting all throughout social media? The amount of actual substantive, civil, informed, educational discussion is dwarfed by the threads where people are childishly insulting, sniping, and demeaning people who disagree with them. Do you get tired of the latter, even if you are not engaging in it yourself---but still get tired of other potentially interesting and helpful discussions getting demolished by the assholeishness of the participants, regardless of whether or not you agree with their view? It partly depends on the platform. Twitter, with its few character-limits, does not provide any room for any kind of in-depth discussion. It is people just throwing verbal punches and GIFs at each other. Facebook has more room for elaborate conversations, but too often just devolves into the same old trolling. There are a few right-wing Christian fundamentalist groups on Facebook that occasionally I will look into the comment sections on, and even the atheists posting in them (often regular participants) are clearly just jerks and assholes, and I am embarrassed to use the same label as them. Even this forum, or its prior incarnations (as best as I can recall) used to involve more developed and mature and informed discussion, but too many threads now involve people just demeaning and insulting or out-GIF'ing for the purpose of inflating their own egos and putting down others who disagree with them. Sometimes I succumb to it myself and it brings out my worse tendencies. It really would be nicer if people actually wanted to use the internet platforms to help others, instead of hurt them. The latter motive is much more enticing and addictive, however.

Do you think changes in technology over time have contributed to it---such as people now are constantly on their portable smartphones and laptops 24/7 and can make brief, useless, quickfire assholeish responses at anytime, instead of needing to wait until they get to their home desktop to read and respond in more depth to some material, and perhaps were more emotionally rested as well?

What do you do when you have just seen enough, or even contributed to it enough yourself? Do you take a temporary break from social media for a few weeks or months and then come back and get into the same shit all over again, or have you ever made a more significant and permanent change in yourself to be better the 2nd or 3rd or 4th time around? On FB and Twitter and discussion forums, do you just look over the original posts for a hint of interesting thoughts and then avoid the comments sections? Do you read the comments, or even respond to them with more insults when really it was not helpful?

 

[rousseau]

A timely thread as I've just been experimenting with social media in the past few weeks.

A few weekends ago I read Deep Work by Cal Newport, who argued in the book that social media makes it difficult to get any serious work done. So in one section he recommends quitting all of your social media accounts for 30 days to get a sense of which are actually important to you, and which are time-wasters.

So I've been doing that for about a week now, and it's definitely been eye-opening.

The first thing I've noticed is how well these sites have managed to addict their users. And not just 'I really like this site, I can't stop checking it' addicted, but 'I navigate to these sites before I'm aware I'm doing so' addicted, which feeds the cycle. I blocked all of these sites with my hosts file on my laptop and PC, and I've found myself entering URLs out of pure muscle memory. Breaking the chains takes effort, deleting accounts, removing apps - which is why people rarely do it.

I also realized that Twitter and Facebook are actually a bit shit, and not worth much time and attention. Most of the content on these platforms is vacuous, and when I stepped away for a while and came back briefly I was struck with how pointless it all really was.

And when you actually stand back and stop using these sites for a while, you realize how many more useful and interesting things you can be doing instead. It just takes a bit of effort and thought to find new things to do, rather than defaulting to social media right away.

On the other hand, browsing social media is also a completely mindless activity and takes minimal effort. So I've found that at times it's just a way to kill time without thinking too hard. And I think this is pretty much where it's value lies and why people spend so much time on it. The internet of the 2010s is the TV of the 80s and 90s.

As for bickering, flaming, and trolling, I think that pretty much comes down to the lack of a face to face element on the internet. It's much easier to think of a person as an idiot because of something they posted, than to think of them as an idiot when you're hanging out having coffee. When we're face to face there's a natural emotional and compassionate element - two people sharing their time together. When we're on the internet we're not exposed to the person, we're exposed to their ideas, which we often find abhorrent or stupid.

For myself I only find this a problem on Facebook and Twitter, which I just don't take part in anymore. The overwhelming majority of my online activity is either on forums, or in one-to-one conversation with people.

So I guess to answer your question: I don't get tired of the trolling and come and go from it, anymore I just ignore it completely.

 

[steve_bank]

Simple. Learn to be able to be happy without out it, like we did before it appeared.

Kids growing up in social media never learn the idea of self and a positive self image without constant reinforcement. One can be happy without constant activity. In the 70s to talk you visited. In a news segment it was said young people are becoming uncomfortable with face to face situations.

Back in the 90s I was invited to join a group of guys who once a month went out eating, drinking, and talking. Start a social group.

I experienced the rise of email. It got so bad in the 80s people in adjacent offices would send email instead of standing up and talking. From my experience email in some ways reduced communication. Endless email =s in a group that go nowhere on an issue that face to face would be quickly solved.

 

[rousseau]

Simple. Learn to be able to be happy without out it, like we did before it appeared.

Kids growing up in social media never learn the idea of self and a positive self image without constant reinforcement. One can be happy without constant activity. In the 70s to talk you visited. In a news segment it was said young people are becoming uncomfortable with face to face situations.

Back in the 90s I was invited to join a group of guys who once a month went out eating, drinking, and talking. Start a social group.

I experienced the rise of email. It got so bad in the 80s people in adjacent offices would send email instead of standing up and talking. From my experience email in some ways reduced communication. Endless email =s in a group that go nowhere on an issue that face to face would be quickly solved.

It's a complex situation.

If you had given a 19th century Scottish Immigrant living in the U.S. a device that would allow him to talk to his family back home, all day, every day, he would be ecstatic. Our increased ability to communicate is a net positive. Similarly, because we can 'connect' with people without spending much energy this makes us more efficient. A person can, in theory, maintain friendships with a much broader range of people now.

But of course this changes the entire dynamic of socializing, because we're no longer constrained to the people we have around us. So instead of more face-to-face interaction with people we don't necessarily like, we have more indirect interaction with people we do like. So there's a bit of a trade-off happening.

Personally, I think the idea that people are becoming less comfortable with face to face interaction is overblown. Certainly there may be some of that, but I see young kids, and younger millennials interacting in person all the time. If there is a major problem with social media and smartphones, it's that we're forgetting how to put it aside and just be in the present from day to day. People like it so much that it completely takes over their lives, so there is an opportunity for people who are able to set it aside and actually focus.

 

[Toni]

For myself, I find that I use Facebook simply because that's the easiest, simplest way to keep in touch with out of town relatives and friends. Two exceptions are, as it happens, my two closest friends, both from childhood. One: we write long emails back and forth. Really, electronic letters without the stamp. Some are short and simple exchange of info. Some are more detailed. The other? She'd rather text or talk on the phone than write long emails. It's...very rare that she will write a lot but we can (and do) talk for hours. In her work, she spent too many hours sitting in front of a computer and it was taking a toll on her. Both are on FB but we rarely communicate via that format. In fact, they rarely, rarely, rarely post anything. One is only on because of her daughter/grandchildren. Frankly, one other friend and my daughter pushed me to FB. I'm only still there because of a handful of friends and my kids. BUT it did allow me to 'find' a long lost and very dear friend. We lost contact with one another pre-internet days when we were both at the stage of our lives where we moved long distances fairly frequently and address books got lost and long distance phone calls were very expensive.

FB does remind me of some local events and I appreciate that as I dislike the local news/'news'papers.

I joined twitter just to follow some political stuff. Instagram? Whyyyyyyyyyy???????? Times 10 for the rest.

There are a very small number of forums (including this one) devoted to separate specialized interests where I post/read, although that's rarer and rarer now.

And truthfully, my Real Life has a lot going on so I'm mostly just doing quick, drive by posts and checking to see how some people are doing.

So, Hi!

 

[steve_bank]

Simple. Learn to be able to be happy without out it, like we did before it appeared.

Kids growing up in social media never learn the idea of self and a positive self image without constant reinforcement. One can be happy without constant activity. In the 70s to talk you visited. In a news segment it was said young people are becoming uncomfortable with face to face situations.

Back in the 90s I was invited to join a group of guys who once a month went out eating, drinking, and talking. Start a social group.

I experienced the rise of email. It got so bad in the 80s people in adjacent offices would send email instead of standing up and talking. From my experience email in some ways reduced communication. Endless email =s in a group that go nowhere on an issue that face to face would be quickly solved.

It's a complex situation.

If you had given a 19th century Scottish Immigrant living in the U.S. a device that would allow him to talk to his family back home, all day, every day, he would be ecstatic. Our increased ability to communicate is a net positive. Similarly, because we can 'connect' with people without spending much energy this makes us more efficient. A person can, in theory, maintain friendships with a much broader range of people now.

But of course this changes the entire dynamic of socializing, because we're no longer constrained to the people we have around us. So instead of more face-to-face interaction with people we don't necessarily like, we have more indirect interaction with people we do like. So there's a bit of a trade-off happening.

Personally, I think the idea that people are becoming less comfortable with face to face interaction is overblown. Certainly there may be some of that, but I see young kids, and younger millennials interacting in person all the time. If there is a major problem with social media and smartphones, it's that we're forgetting how to put it aside and just be in the present from day to day. People like it so much that it completely takes over their lives, so there is an opportunity for people who are able to set it aside and actually focus.

Seriously, it is as simple or complex as you make it.

There are trends indicating a downside of technology and social media being reported for some time now. Sometimes it is like getting theists to the downside of their blind faith,

 

[rousseau]

Simple. Learn to be able to be happy without out it, like we did before it appeared.

Kids growing up in social media never learn the idea of self and a positive self image without constant reinforcement. One can be happy without constant activity. In the 70s to talk you visited. In a news segment it was said young people are becoming uncomfortable with face to face situations.

Back in the 90s I was invited to join a group of guys who once a month went out eating, drinking, and talking. Start a social group.

I experienced the rise of email. It got so bad in the 80s people in adjacent offices would send email instead of standing up and talking. From my experience email in some ways reduced communication. Endless email =s in a group that go nowhere on an issue that face to face would be quickly solved.

It's a complex situation.

If you had given a 19th century Scottish Immigrant living in the U.S. a device that would allow him to talk to his family back home, all day, every day, he would be ecstatic. Our increased ability to communicate is a net positive. Similarly, because we can 'connect' with people without spending much energy this makes us more efficient. A person can, in theory, maintain friendships with a much broader range of people now.

But of course this changes the entire dynamic of socializing, because we're no longer constrained to the people we have around us. So instead of more face-to-face interaction with people we don't necessarily like, we have more indirect interaction with people we do like. So there's a bit of a trade-off happening.

Personally, I think the idea that people are becoming less comfortable with face to face interaction is overblown. Certainly there may be some of that, but I see young kids, and younger millennials interacting in person all the time. If there is a major problem with social media and smartphones, it's that we're forgetting how to put it aside and just be in the present from day to day. People like it so much that it completely takes over their lives, so there is an opportunity for people who are able to set it aside and actually focus.

Seriously, it is as simple or complex as you make it.

There are trends indicating a downside of technology and social media being reported for some time now. Sometimes it is like getting theists to the downside of their blind faith,

Did you actually read my post at all? I acknowledged that there's a downside to social media, right about where the bold type-face is above.

 

[Brian63]

As for bickering, flaming, and trolling, I think that pretty much comes down to the lack of a face to face element on the internet. It's much easier to think of a person as an idiot because of something they posted, than to think of them as an idiot when you're hanging out having coffee. When we're face to face there's a natural emotional and compassionate element - two people sharing their time together. When we're on the internet we're not exposed to the person, we're exposed to their ideas, which we often find abhorrent or stupid.

Yes, that would be a likely element as well. It would be interesting to see how some of the combative and jerkish trolling posters on this forum would behave with each other if we knowingly were all sitting at the same lunch table. There would be certain posters that I would try to avoid, but would not engage in fighting and kindergarten level name-calling.

Each of us is going to be alive only 1 time, and it seems these people do not consider that fact or value it much. When they are on their deathbed and reflecting back on their life story, are they going to be most proud of how many potshots and putdowns they threw at other people across the internet? Is that what you want your lasting legacy on the world to be? Help things out, people, instead focusing so much on hurting things even more.

 

[steve_bank]

Seriously, it is as simple or complex as you make it.

There are trends indicating a downside of technology and social media being reported for some time now. Sometimes it is like getting theists to the downside of their blind faith,

Did you actually read my post at all? I acknowledged that there's a downside to social media, right about where the bold type-face is above.

Looks like a post of mine disappeared. Warning sarcasm.

OMG!!! We are bickering !!!

 

[steve_bank]

Of course bullies and assholes on the net will never act like that in the real world.

Look at teen cyber bullying.

You would not find me speaking much differently among peers in the real world compared to the forum. I do watch what I say depending on the type of person I am speaking with. I won't belittle someone over religion or lack of science. Tolerance.

 

[prideandfall]

i've found this culture's ridiculous obsession with "social media" to be fascinating for quite a while, and watching the zeitgeist try and do the mental gymnastics required to adhere to a preconceived notion of the world that is hilariously wrong has been quite entertaining.

here's the thing about "social media" that most normal people simply don't understand: it's predicated on the notion that, by and large, everyone will like everyone.
this is the basic hook of facebook and twitter and such, somewhere you can go to be access to everyone all the time, and it'll be great because everyone likes everyone and likes seeing what everyone is saying the doing.

however, this is a gigantic load of steaming bullshit: everyone doesn't like everyone, everyone likes their own specific brand of people and personality types and interests, and the whole "social media" backlash is nothing more than the cognitive dissonance of the masses being smashed against a reality they can't cope with.
the instant you realize you don't like everyone and don't give a shit about what they're doing, social media becomes instantly irrelevant. if you never gave a shit about what other people, social media never mattered to you in the first place.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

I like you.