this post was submitted on 17 May 2024
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Privacy
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i'm fairly sure the point (whether calculated, or more likely, mostly not) of having politics moved there is because there is no political topic that could be discussed properly there. it makes for good, distracting noise.
it makes for a lack of meaningful critique, or for that critique to be instantly buried in bad actors. noise is a shield. noise is easily dismissable.
monetized social media, in general, is made to be clickbait, to feed negative emotions because that's what gets people addicted to outrage, it steers people towards thinking less and reacting more. nuanced discussion and thoughtful spaces are drowned out and cast aside for the loudest and most obnoxious players. this is appealing for someone trying to uphold the status quo or push society towards hate.
i don't think it's a coincidence that politicians have moved there, that spaces have become so polarized and negatively charged, and that the most prime example of both of these happenings is xwitter. everything is connected in this big, terrible, and vaguely randomly evolved system. i do think evolution is the best word for it. what lives, survives to propagate. it doesn't matter how healthy it is. the result is this blind, meandering, gargantuan worm, following the scent of blood, feeding on the worst of it all.
xwitter is easy and, notably, if you're a powerful white man, you can build your base with no accountability. it exists in this space where it's the most serious news source that almost no one takes that seriously. of course it's appealing.
It's more stupid than that. The idea is that 140 characters is a lower barrier of entry for a reader, compared to reading a series of paragraphs that might be able to at least talk about something, or attempt to summarize an issue. It's why accounts like wint can pop off, and become so prolific.
Two things can be true.
I mean I just don't think it's so much a calculated effort by the ruling class as kind of a natural evolution of the market taking hold of and exploiting the human mind to the nth possible degree, such as they have always done.
You're phrasing this as a rebuttal when these points were an explicitly acknowledged part of my original stance. It is a bit odd.
Both quotes from my original posting, here. If you want to point out something that I had missed, it would be more time efficient to have picked something I had missed?
I'm bemused.
I'm gonna be honest most times when I write a response I'm taking a shit and not paying very much attention to the thread which it belongs beyond my vaguest recollection to what was said