💾 Archived View for bbs.geminispace.org › u › gritty › 12664 captured on 2023-12-28 at 16:30:14. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Re: "Infinite Scrolling and hyper personalization are evil"
@clseibold thanks for the explanation. I saw the movie a while ago but didn't know it was about all that.
I get your frustration with everything being 1984 reference but sometimes when you have a good, common reference I think it's fine to use. I wouldn't have known about superbia. Being this isn't the regular web I think the occasional reference is fine, but again I get the normal overuse on the web.
Dec 15 · 13 days ago
🚀 clseibold · Dec 15 at 15:33:
@gritty Sure, I get it. I just think it would be great if tick, tick... Boom! and Superbia had more exposure, and a great way to do that is to talk about it! :D
Everyone always uses 1984 in a very ambiguous way to mean a million different things, from attacking the LGBTQ+ community to like buttons (apparently), to supporting conservatism, or socialism, or liberalism, or anywhere in between, which is both frustrating and extremely ironic!
And then when 1984 *does* get used correctly as a good comparison to real-life situations, people just ignore or downplay it because everyone has drained all meaning from the book or, worse yet, turned it into what it is not.
For example, It is not and has never been about humans coming together and organically deciding on terms that are useful for them. Changing definitions is a part of language in general. Every generation for thousands of years has recognized this (and criticized it). It's one of the first things you learn in a basic linguistics class.
Talking about the "your truth" and "my truth" terms has no place in this discussion if we cannot be truthful about their linguistic *semantics* - what people *actually mean* when they say it, not what one *thinks* they mean. The idea of multiple people's "truths" is just a way for people to talk about their experiences. That's it. It's not some agenda to propagandize crap. It means one's experiences. It's literally as simple as that. That's why I'm fighting back against fear-monger language.
People may want to call me snideful, but I don't think it's good to downplay the dangers of how groups of people are targeted with language, of how powerful language really is, and the irony of using 1984 in such an ambiguous way that it borders on the very thing it's supposed to be criticizing.
So, I think it is important to remind people that George Orwell was a democratic socialist (kinda), that he was somewhat homophobic (not uncommon among everyone at the time, I'm sure), and that he was influenced by Oscar Wilde who mocked *political* doublespeak a lot for comedic purposes - the Oscar Wilde that wrote the Picture of Dorian Gray (which ended up being censored by the publisher, but the uncensored version has been released).
Only recently has doublespeak become so broad that it now describes things that aren't so harmless, like euphemisms that are used online to not get banned because some service banned a specific word that references certain groups of people.
It is this unbalancedness of the conversation that is so frustrating. Euphemisms are now considered a form of "doublespeak", because you are being vague enough that the real meaning lies behind the literal word-for-word meaning, which implies they are all bad now when they actually just... aren't. See how powerful language is? We have broadened "doublespeak" so much that we are now implying all euphemisms are bad!
This fear-mongering on language change has gotten so bad that the NYT has a post calling TikTok slang "dystopian". Like, *holy crap!*
You combat this by adapting your usage of the language to the changing words and meanings - which is necessary so we don't misunderstand each other.
Language is nuanced and simplistic reductions of it do not and will never work, but will *always* be harmful.
Coded/Hidden Language is a form of "doublespeak" that is extremely useful for the survival of groups of people. A great example is when certain languages - like English - almost died out. They hid their language, and sometimes combined their language with the language of the conquerors so that their own native language would survive. This is why I personally think we should be making Linguistics a requirement for all College degrees.
I would also say that even Brave New World fits much better than 1984 in regards to social media, commercialization, and the wide range of information on the internet (leading to people not knowing what to listen to and what to not listen to).
Btw, @gritty, if you ever decide to rewatch tick, tick... Boom! it might be interesting to read the backstory of Superbia. The movie does cover Superbia's story a little bit, but I think you have to watch the movie multiple times to start to understand it. "Come To Your Senses" is the song sung by one of the characters at the presentation/audition for the play, but also by Jonathan Larson's Girlfriend - so the song is actually based on both things, the play and his relationship. You can tell because the song references things about being on a (TV) screen, and the whole play is about being so enwrapped in a TV screen and reality TV that you lose the use of your senses.
tick, tick... Boom is just a masterpiece.
🦂 urbanhacker · Dec 16 at 12:48:
I just looked at superbia and it’s fascinating how it predicted in some way the future we are now living. I’m more familiar with 1984 like many people and I was not aware about Superbia.
There is also the death internet theory that says most of the content we consume / interact with are generated by bots and farms to keep us addicted.
I also wonder if (maybe this is elitist) with the ease of use to create / add bullshit you just have low quality because you have no effort to think. You can just vomit your toxicity.
While with this BBS (and similar to other BBS in the 90) you need to access it, its quirky, you can’t just sweep left / right so before answering I need to think deeper and longer.
Infinite Scrolling and hyper personalization are evil — I miss the old BBS and forums long gone the few that exist are like ghost town. Once in a blue moon I go back and I remember vividly certain topics or obscure knowledge bits. The ability to navigate and map the information with section, broken down into topics and comments. The main page was the same for everybody and everybody knew what the other would get. Those are two things missing from the modern web. Both infinite scrolling and...
💬 urbanhacker · 13 comments · 11 likes · Dec 13 · 2 weeks ago