I know I was taken aback when two youngish couples sat down in the patio at the Ahwanee hotel (Yosemite NP, CA) and all four pulled out iPhones as they sat.
Does The World Really Need Another Twitter?
- Thread starter mawnansmiff
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For the doubters....we have this just in on the Beeb...but the 'experts' are blaming it on the pandemic
Rise in psychological distress in young adults - survey
Rise in psychological distress in young adults - survey
Researchers say the pandemic and cost of living crisis have contributed to worsening mental health.
www.bbc.co.uk
Regards,
Jay.
It’s like a replacement for a pack of cigarettes except far less healthy…
True...but discovering the true facts is often the tricky part. Especially when information is being deliberately suppressed or muddied.
As I've said before more than once, the search for truth is usually a process of elimination. It's often easier to determine what is not true than what is.
Also, facts by themselves don't necessarily equal truth. It often depends on how they are assembled and interpreted...and whether there are related facts that are unknown. This is how court cases are sometimes either seriously flawed or rigged for example...the jury is presented with certain facts that appear to paint a clear picture, but other related facts that significantly alter the picture were either not known at the time or intentionally not allowed to be presented...or sometimes evidence is destroyed.
Then there are the chosen "experts" whose utterances are often just assumed to be "facts", while other experts who disagree are mercilessly maligned without any fair examination or investigation.
Add to all of that the new age of "deep fake" video and audio and it takes it all to a whole other level.
So yes, I agree there is no such thing as alternative facts...but many things both present and historical that are commonly believed to be factual are not...or in some cases need to at least be questioned.
The so-called "alternative media" is not a monolithic thing...some are very good, some very bad, and everything in between. But they're an easy target...most don't have big budgets or the type of access and resources that the so-called MSM have. If the big corporate MSM were doing their job instead of serving as a propaganda arm for the powers that be there would be no need for any alternative.
Source criticism.
A necessity in these days of information overload from everywhere.
I don't think humans are capable to process having the whole world in a small screen 24/7, to begin with.
Complex issues and phenomena requires reading up on the subject, whatever it is.
Books, not scrolling twitter. Social media aren't designed for deeper studies but to mess with our dopamin levels and make us addicted to it. Scrolling for the next THING. Fear of missing out. Nextopia.
Likes and reactions from people we don't know.
Something I can't stand is demagogues on youtube that looks into the camera and with a dramatized voice begins talking with the words "they don't want you to know this".
Well, if that is true, why are you able to upload your jibberisch on the platform?
Totally agree - searching for truth is a question of elimination.
If somethings seems to be too fantastic to be true, it usually is.
Someone told me I should be "open minded".
I prefer to be analytical.
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Couldn't agree more. But to some degree it depends on what the subject/issue is. If it is some historical subject for example, books are usually preferable to anything else...but unfortunately, book reading is no longer an American pastime (if it ever was).
But when it comes to current events, and what we refer to as the "daily news", a big part of the problem is information overload as you said. Even if the sources are generally good, it requires reading a number of detailed sources to get any decent perspective, and the pace of events in these times often does not allow for really processing properly.
Many things happen now that would have been at the top of the news cycle for weeks in the past, and analyzed in depth, with at least a general understanding in the public at large of their significance...but now they are gone after a couple of days and everyone forgets about it. And these things are never resolved...we just move on to the next insane occurrence that also will never be properly processed, investigated and resolved in any meaningful, satisfactory way. And to the few who still try to follow these stories, your questions will likely never be answered...primarily because corruption has metastasized to such an extent that just about anything can be swept under the rug now and ignored.
Then if you still seek answers to these things as they pass into history, you can read the books that inevitably come out on the subject, but again, there will likely be no resolution or the true culprits held accountable. This year is the 60th anniversary of JFK's murder, for a prime example
Replying to the bolded parts in principle.
I come from a house of books, many books, all walls of the house almost covered in books, yet rarely read books myself anymore unless I want a really in-depth study of a subject. In fact I spend almost as much time researching a book before I buy it as I did for buying my car, for example. And then books will give you one author's perspective only.
Information overload is real, but in my opinion mostly affects those with less advanced critical thinking...which is largely the majority. Clickbait - sensationalist headlines - are not a new thing at all. The end goal is also as old as time: profit, power. The difference this time 'round is the SCALE and SPEED. Where in the past news would take weeks or months to arrive (e.g. from Rome to England) now they arrive instantly. In Greece, for example, it was not uncommon for villages clustered around a valley to have a shared opinion on something, because that was the range of the people, and that opinion may be very different one mountain ridge away, near ports, near rivers. People may have had similar thoughts with someone in the other side of the country, let alone continent or planet, but they'd never even know the other existed.
What's more insidious - but I do not subscribe to any "master plan theory" - is the positive feedback loops employed by anything on the internet. This is dangerous because again most people have neither the knowledge of it happening, the understanding of how it works, or the critical ability to resist it. Their search results and suggestions funnel them onto a path until it becomes their little bubble of reality filled with like-minded people all enforcing the same ideas over and over and over. I don't believe this is planned, driven or designed to be manipulative for any more nefarious goal than...adds, sales. Of course it IS a vehicle for manipulation where it matters a lot more than buying one brand of diapers than another, in politics, and it is being used heavily all over the world, and THAT is bad, but I doubt it's Mr Zuck or Musk behind it. I see their personal political opinions as mildly uninteresting, I think their drive is profit. Personally I don't care about their specific politics, I care a lot more that that mechanisms they've put in place to sell diapers can influence politics, and hence influence my life.
Moreover we all LIKE to hear what we like to hear, we're hard-wired for it and it takes a lot of effort to be a critical, pragmatic thinker, especially if it means going against the grain. That's where in my opinion STEM people like me have an edge, we're trained to question and analyze with a fairly cold-blooded attitude
It's also a double edged sword because we also question ourselves first and foremost!
I disagree, that's on the user, if I want to search about a news topic I can find both good as well as deep information, just takes more effort. Ultimately through my job, and after 10 years of stress, I finally learnt to be comfortable being uncomfortable. I know there's a ton out there which I don't and won't know, so I try to switch it off and focus on personal development, financial independence, and happy kids and wife. My wife's a very smart person, with great practicality - a lot more practical than me - but far less curious about what she feels or thinks are not her field (she's a painter and a teacher) than I am. She couldn't care less about politics, science, economics, history, which to me is mind-blowing! I am saying this because I want to illustrate the point that getting the knowledge is on us, more than ever before, the hard part is sifting through the shitstorm that's around us 24/7/365 and actually making the effort to get it.
On topic, I had a look at Threads, it's an Instagram app, apparently. I don't use Instagram so I won't use this app. I do use twitter for many years but follow a handful of people whose opinions I like to read - so this is my own, self-imposed echo chamber/positive feedback loop. I do use facebook but mostly to talk to people. For what it's worth (to me), I am pretty careful with how I spend my money, and know for a fact social media don't make me buy anything, but similarly, adverts never worked on me either.
These twins' picture should be next to "chad" and "jock" in the dictionary. Born into wealth, still extremely wealthy, but outsmarted by Zuck every step of the way. Now they're in big trouble with crypto. Must be hard being told from the day you're born "you'll be kingS of the world" and seeing it slip away every step of the way. Maybe they should chill and enjoy their insanely privileged lives. Between Zuck and Musk, I dislike Musk quite a bit, but can't help but agree that he's done more meaningful things overall.
In terms of "getting rid of it", my feeling is that the massive move to video messages in the last 5 years could eventually greatly dilute the impact of social media, purely because of the unimaginable amount of crap flying in the ether. What's more worrying is people being conditioned the last 10 years or so to think in terms of 30 second videos and 2 sentence statements.
Being involved with computers and being on the internet as early as 1997 I used a few of the early social media things, which weren't even called that back then: mIRC chat, ICQ chat, myspace, then of course facebook (back when you needed an academic email address to access it). Before that I was in mailing lists and fora. A colleague laughed at my face when I mentioned something about facebook, saying nobody below the age of 30 uses it, they all use snapchat and tiktok - I've never looked into either. The only more serious social media (?) platforms are reddit and discord, but these are fairly esoteric for the average person compared with the rest.
I have had Twitter, and other social networks. There is interesting stuff underneath tons of garbage. But at the moment the only social network I have active, is this smoking forum. I need to disconnect from so much information bombardment, which is constantly changing. I still take refuge in my austere library reading.
"Threads" is already in its death spiral.
www.wsj.com
Threads Is Already Losing Its Allure for Users, Adding Urgency for New Features
User engagement has fallen 70%, putting pressure on parent Meta to roll out new features for its nascent microblogging app.
www.wsj.com
The honeymoon period is already over, all is good then"Threads" is already in its death spiral.
Threads Is Already Losing Its Allure for Users, Adding Urgency for New Features
User engagement has fallen 70%, putting pressure on parent Meta to roll out new features for its nascent microblogging app.
Regards,
Jay.
And in the latest plot twist, it has been announced that Twitter is changing its name and logo to: X ... that's right...simply just: X
That’s always been the believed move. He looks to make X an everything type of platform.
I wasn't aware of it until now...haven't really paid that much attention...never had a Twitter account and never will.
It's amazing though how much constant exposure to Twitter content I've had even though I never go directly to the site...because it's so often embedded into news articles.
Iv never had an account either. I was just aware of it seeing discussion around it when he purchased Twitter, his original company being x.com and the fact that he still maintains the domain address (x.com redirects to Twitter).
Kind of like how Bezos originally wanted to call amazon “Relentless”. To this day, relentless.com is still owned and redirects to amazon.
I wasn't aware of that either...Relentless...lol...that's funny. He should have renamed the WA Post that...Relentless Propaganda.
Oh well. I wonder how much money was sunk into this inane bullshit."Threads" is already in its death spiral.
Threads Is Already Losing Its Allure for Users, Adding Urgency for New Features
User engagement has fallen 70%, putting pressure on parent Meta to roll out new features for its nascent microblogging app.
I bet it was a quick build out. I say this since many people noted missing features along with if you “opened” a threads profile it was tied to your IG account and you can not delete one without the other. It would lead me to believe they spun it up using IG as some type of platform base with the goal of actually building it out over the coming months.