274 lines
14 KiB
Markdown
274 lines
14 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Was Social Media a Mistake?"
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date: 2021-01-26
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tags:
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- philosophy
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---
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# Was Social Media a Mistake?
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<big>Subjective Opinions Ahead</big>
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This entire post is a big pile of opinions. Please feel free to skip this one if
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you don't want to hear it. It says so in the footer of each page, but I want to
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emphasize that these opinions are my own and not that of my employers (past,
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current or future). This is my subjective opinion. I cannot be unbiased about
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this topic (though I also doubt that anyone who has experienced it can be), so
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instead of trying to pretend to be unbiased in this article I'm just going to
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let the words out.
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I also don't really have any solution to propose in this article. This is a
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problem that is way bigger than a single shitposter like me can really handle on
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their own. I am one person among an unfathomably large crowd. If this makes you
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think, then I have done my job.
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Buckle up, I'm doing a philosophy.
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> It is difficult
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> to get the news from poems
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> yet men die miserably every day
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> for lack
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> of what is found there.
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- [Asphodel, That Greeny Flower](https://poets.org/poem/asphodel-greeny-flower-excerpt) (William Carlos Williams)
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Traditionally, getting your message in front of thousands or millions of people
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required you to be a public figure working for a media company. The idea of a
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self-service tool for individuals to get a message out to anyone who cared to
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read it was expensive, and usually limited to small areas due to the expense of
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mailing things. [In the late
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1960's](https://www.history.com/news/who-invented-the-internet),
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[ARPANET](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET) was created by the US
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Department of Defense as a project to enable remote access to computers over the
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existing phone network. Some of the first services that were created are
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constants even today: remote login, file transfer and email. After a decade of
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experimentation, the National Science Foundation funded the installation of
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supercomputers at a few universities and provided connectivity between them.
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Ordinary people wanted to hook into these supercomputers and the internet as we
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know it today blossomed forth.
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With this new network it was easier than ever to get your message out to the
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world, all you needed to do was install expensive hardware, an expensive type of
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phone line and potentially custom software to serve your message over a protocol
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such as [Gopher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)). Or, you could
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just lease space from someone else who had set all this up. During this time
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everything was a bit experimental. Everything was quirky. Personality and flair
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oozed from the edges of every handcrafted page you set your eyes on. Of course,
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making those pages was an art in its own right.
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These bursts of creativity gave people ideas, and as time progressed, companies
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formed around the idea of making it easier to let people get their message out
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to the internet via their servers. Geocites, Livejournal, Blogger, Wordpress,
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Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Orkut and others formed to help people communicate.
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Facebook became larger than most countries. Twitter became the communications
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media of choice for global superpowers. Wordpress became one of the biggest
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attack vectors on the internet. Geocites lived, died and was reborn. The
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survivors were branded "social media". Social media forms the backbone of a lot
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of our modern culture. You probably got the link to this article from some form
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of social media.
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> "Glum, Marc, glum" The clap on the shoulder made him start, look up. It was
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> that brute Henry Foster. "What you need is a gramme of soma. All the
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> advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects".
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- Brave New World (Aldous Huxley), Location 672-674
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And through all of it people got their messages out. Entire social movements
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were formed on the backs of those messages. Without those messages, I probably
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would not exist in the way that I currently do. Those messages have changed me
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and likely have changed _countless_ other people too.
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So, now that we have everyone communicating so openly, freely and to mass
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audiences, what are the societal consequences? A country divided. Left and
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right, red and blue, messages of love twisted into messages of hate, divisions
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across cultural and ideological boundaries. Has it all really been worth it? Is
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the ability to communicate so quickly so far really a net benefit for us all?
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<center>
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</center>
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- [Duck or Rabbit?](https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a18662) - Paul Noth
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Has it really been worth destroying families in its wake?
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What about those with chronic anxiety disorders or other similar things?
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There's a good word for what happens as a result of this:
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[doomscrolling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomscrolling).
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To put it lightly, 2020 has not been a year with much in the "good news"
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department. A global pandemic separated people. Conventions were cancelled.
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Travel became all but impossible. We had the ability and foresight to see it
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coming but we still fucked it up.
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> come on brain make the happy chemical you lump of fuck
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- [housewive#1](https://twitter.com/heebiejeebis/status/1123236591755874304)
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Sex sells movies, but doom sells newspapers. And on social media, negative
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articles perform better. Doom makes people afraid. Fear makes people angry.
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Anger makes people react. Reactions drive engagement. Engagement makes the
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algorithm put that article in front of more people so it can make the anger
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happen all over again.
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> Fear is the path to the dark side.<br />
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> Fear leads to anger.<br />
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> Anger leads to hate.<br />
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> Hate leads to suffering.<br />
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> I sense much fear in you.
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- Yoda, The Phantom Menace
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Is The Algorithm to blame? People talk about The Algorithm like it's some kind
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of benevolent god that gives them the happy chemical sometimes. How does what
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The Algorithm optimizes for have effects on society at large? By putting posts
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that are bound to cause engagement (basically reactions) in front of the largest
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audience possible, how does this affect people? How does this affect their
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worldviews? How does this affect how people percieve what is true and what is
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false?
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One of the biggest hits that social media has done to our world is that it's
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made truth become a relative thing instead of an objective thing. Take the
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recent 2020 election for example. There are people who believe that Donald Trump
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objectively won the election, despite all of the other correlating evidence that
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leads others to conclude the exact opposite. This seems confusing at first. To
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become the president you need to win the election. To win the election you need
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more electoral votes. Joe Biden got more electoral votes, therefore Biden won
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the election, therefore Joe Biden is the new president of the US.
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But these [alternative facts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSrEEDQgFc8)
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persist. Thanks to idiologies such as QAnon, these views flourish. Thanks to
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social media, they have places to communicate, re-interpret and plan. Where does
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the responsibility of individuals end and the responsibility of platforms begin?
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> Each individual must know them self to be free of all forms of external
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> reliance. This is not to imply that one should not trust others or band
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> together in alliances of friendship and community. It is simply a warning that
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> relative truth is constantly shifting in the hands of those who desire to
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> control, and even though their motives may be of good will, it is still a form
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> of control.
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- [The Shifting Models of Existence](https://wingmakers.com/writings/philosophy/chambertwo/) (WingMakers)
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Are we really all that different? We're all human. We are all limited. What real
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benefit do we reap by this separation? What do we gain by letting us get so
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divided that we can't realistically see the chasm being bridged?
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Can this chasm be bridged?
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What of the ruined lives in the wake?
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Without social media though, my best friends would be unknown to me (if they
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even ended up existing). My fiance would be a stranger to me. This blog likely
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wouldn't exist in its current form. I would have never questioned my gender. I
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would have never done all of the things that have lead me to be the person I am
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today. I would not have the job I have today. I would not have the career I have
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today (early in my career, networking over slack and IRC while delivering pizzas
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is literally how I got my break into the industry). Social media is how I keep
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in touch with my family. To put it simply, social media's proliferation is a
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good part of how I managed to become the self-realized nonbinary person I am.
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Without it existing I would be a vastly different person.
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It makes me wonder how others are affected like I have been. How many would come
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out as transgender without knowing the concept exists? How many would feel safe
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to speak out against taboos without spaces to explore what taboos even are?
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Is it the _implementation_ of social media that is flawed or is it the _concept_
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that is flawed?
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According to [this post by Boston University's College of
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Communication](https://sites.bu.edu/cmcs/2017/11/16/printing-press-digital-age-and-social-movements/)
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human communication has had three major phases of development:
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- Oral Tradition
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- Literacy/Books/Print Media
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- Electronic Communication/Social Media
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We are just on the cusp of the last phase beginning, from a grander history
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scale that is. The age of literacy and print media lasted for at least
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_thousands_ of years. Social media and the interet has existed for 50 years by
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the most liberal estimates. Maybe this is one of those cases where large changes
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in these models cause outright societal chaos _because_ it exposes the biases
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that we've already had for so long. Are things chaotic because of the change or
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is the change making things chaotic?
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<center>
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</center>
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Just because we can get Uncle Bob's hot takes on the geopolitical state of
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affairs between the US and Canada, does that mean we _should_? How do we know
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what's more accurate: memes shared in parenting groups or news articles behind
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paywalls? Why is it easier to get junk food than it is to get healthy things?
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This [post on
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/r/starslatecodex](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most_of_what_you_read_on_the_internet_is_written/)
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comes to mind. Its main thesis (that it does an admittedly poor job defending)
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is that most of what you read on the internet is written by a tiny fraction of
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people that don't represent the rest very well. If you've run communities in the
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past I'm sure you are familiar with the power laws at play:
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- 90% of people lurk and contribute only spairingly
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- 9% of people actively contribute to discussions or create new one
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- 1% of people seemingly have no other social life outside that community
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Those top 10% of contributors are either somewhat sensible people (in rare
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cases) or more than likely not representative of rest that just passively lurk.
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We can see these patterns arise in other places too. Most people that read books
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consume them without contributing to discussions about them. Even fewer people
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are authors. Fewer are prolific authors. Politics (via voting rates), recipe
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groups, even multi-level marketing scams fall into these power rules.
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Is this power rule something that is just natural for humans?
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Was social media a mistake or could it actually end up being a net benefit like
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the printing press turned out to be? What societal changes will we need to make
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as a result of everyone being able to contact everyone else with the touch of a
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button?
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> This discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls,
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> because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external
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> written characters and not remember of themselves.
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>
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> The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to
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> reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of
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> truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they
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> will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be
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> tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.
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- Socrates, commenting on writing and literacy
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The printing press changed so much because it made books available to the
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masses. Before the advent of the printing press, making a book could literally
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take a trained scribe decades. As such they were so expensive that only the
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elite could afford them. The printing press made it easy for the masses to be
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able to have books of their own. Not to mention it also made it easy for authors
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and writers to create books too. Without a lot of these stories, a good chunk of
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our culture would not exist. However at the same time because it was so easy to
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churn out print media (compared to hiring a scribe for years, etc) the printing
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press had real societal consquences. The renaissance was spread on the back of
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the printing press. Christianity spread as a result of the printing press making
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it so easy to print out bibles. Public libraries came into existence, changing
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how books were used as a fundamental resource.
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Is social media the new printing press? If so, what impact will it end up having
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on us all?
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---
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I don't know the answers to a lot of these questions. I don't know if they can
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be answered today. I don't know if it is possible to answer these questions. But
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damn if they don't make me think a lot. There is just so much ground to cover
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when you're talking about something like this that encompasses just about
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_everything_. These are complicated questions. There are a billion moving parts.
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However, I think that if our society survives long enough to see it, social
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media will end up becoming central to our lives in ways that we can't even imagine.
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