jo

put down the gun is another big mood and i am only a little troubled by the number of people (like, honestly, only four who said anything somewhere i got notifications about it) who responded with some variation on "i have never heard of this happening before" to my big post of the day or other people concurring; i try to just let it go but i wonder if they realize that there is a basic assumption at work there of "so youre probably wrong about how it happened" or otherwise making judgement calls about the experiences of others in a way i am trying to explicitly not be about 😞 oh well

puts this in the folder of 'posts referencing incidents i didnt witness'

definitely had a lot of the rose-tinted glasses about this place fade away for me after one of my posts got weaponized for a completely different agenda through some reshares. It was particularly embarrassing because that went on to get reshares and comments and discussion and so my name was just attached against my will to dogma I have no tie to. It was kind of a sad reminder that while the design of this place can incentivize better discussions and discourage shootouts, a lot of classic internet behaviors are still hard to escape from.

someone once shared and replied to a post i made here once with a long rant about how they disagreed, which didn't bother me, but what did bother me is that they started by saying my post "reeked of bait" and positioned it as if i was trolling them specifically, which like, alright chief

and like, I've gained followers from this post. I shouldn't, it should just be how things are. because without room for ambiguity, there is no society. just individuals with different enough world views there will always be something to be Actionable about.

no one's getting promo for being good at nitpicking.

"People will immediately escalate to open conflict if they decide I'm wrong" has been my most enduring fear about interacting online since I started doing it, and not without reason; I think Twitter etc. exacerbated it, but I've been thinking about how some of the worst and least productive social media behavior used to be things I'd see one or two people doing on smaller community sites. And very often no one would stop them--it'd just be like, "Hey, welcome to our hobby forum! We're generally pretty chill but if you ask the wrong question or state anything with confidence, the acknowledged foremost expert who is online most of the day may jumpscare you with the most scathing, contemptuous reply you've ever gotten in your life. Don't worry; it's actually for your own good and you'll quickly learn never to question them. Also they're a mod because we're all terrified of them."

And like, the way that obviously works is they get to be right by making the stakes of challenging them too high to be worth it for most people, because one of the Weird Hacks you can very easily do on a situation that's cooperative by default is to introduce conflict where there shouldn't be any. There seems to be a spot someone can hit (if they're willing to) where, if they're not clearly wrong and can speak with enough confidence, they can flip out unreasonably at a target to humiliate them and the rest of the group will individually do the math and decide that:

1. There must have been a reason they reacted so strongly, because most people wouldn't do that unless they felt justified.

2. They will learn from the target's mistake to avoid being humiliated themselves.

In a small group, one person who can speak with equal confidence and experience saying, "Hey, that was uncalled for" can break this down or at least facilitate pushback. But if no one does, everyone sees the whole group apparently approving of this behavior and seeing nothing wrong with it.

My hypothesis is that since social media has such a high volume of casual interactions with strangers--most of whom are spectating--it taught people who wouldn't otherwise start shit to do it as a preemptive move. The goal is not to influence the other person; it's to get higher visible support from spectators, which will determine who is right and who is humiliated. And it perpetuates because there are enough people who do this as a matter of course--either with no real community to stick to or with a large spectator audience--that it starts to feel like offense is just a necessary element of assertiveness to avoid getting sideswiped.

All of this is to say that I think people can unlearn that as they get used to smaller, more stable groups again, but we're still left with 1) people having gotten used to disagreement needing a (supported) winner and a (disgraced) loser, and 2) small communities still being vulnerable to this dynamic the way they were before social media. I'm not sure what steps need to be taken, but I wouldn't be surprised to find other "what do you expect, it's the internet" behaviors that adapted to social media rather than originating there and can easily re-adapt outside of it if allowed to.

a lesson i think i’ve only in the last 12-18 months finally mastered after learning it from an xkcd comic of all places years and years ago is that most, if not all, people who are Wrong On The Internet do not need to be corrected, or engaged with at all for that matter

Half of me wants to say this is overthinking it but the other half says "damn we really are here because we're tired of how rude people are on the internet"

I still see a lot of people with that overly combative twitter-brain on here. It helps that no one can see who you follow so you can just unfollow, mute, or block as you want. It's good.

for sure.