I don’t know Phillip K Dick, just saying, this isn’t my name and isn’t ever going to be me. It’s blinking lights suggesting the thinnest possible representation of the idea of a person.
But, identifiable?
I’m vaguely suspicious that the Zuck heard the advice/info, then promptly chuckled to himself as he calculated what his net worth was.
Facebook made him a gazilionnaire, why should he care what it does to anyone who willingly uses it, as long as you can’t sue (and win) a part of his sweet sweet empire away from him?
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This is not about anonymity, that is a separate issue, What this is about is compartmentalization. We all play different roles with different groups of people where we share different things, present ourselves in different ways and have different rights, responsibilities, levels of power, freedom, exposure etc. All of these roles overlap with other roles. This is how all of us live in the real world. But online we are largely forced to try to be an mashup of all of those different roles presented as a single face. Of course that doesn’t work.
Facebook started quite literally as a sophomoric idea created by a college sophomore with questionable social skills whose own identity was still a work in progress. What could go wrong?
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https://www.shmoop.com/the-circle/protagonist.html
PROTAGONISTCharacter Role AnalysisMae Holland
Broadly speaking, *The Circle *is about the rise of a corporation that
creates an oppressive state through the willing participation of the people
it oppresses. When it comes right down to it, though, *The Circle *is The
Mae Holland Show. By focusing his narrative on the moral disintegration
that turns one young woman into a puppet of the Circle, Dave Eggers
explores the motivations that might spur millions of people to sacrifice
their rights and liberties for more convenient shopping and means of
communication.
So, just to be clear, my stance is not an advocacy of corporate (or
government) control. I just examine the big picture, weighing in on human
nature and how we can optimize our lives. Exploitation isn’t acceptable,
however, customization is. Would you rather be understood or
misunderstood? I prefer the former because I’m familiar with the latter
and it’s frustrating as fuck. At least to date, Amazon, Facebook, YouTube,
etc. knowing what my preferences are has played to my advantage. This is
probably attributable to my actual values and interests, since I’m not
interested in hurting innocent people. If strangers know that I seek to
help others and create solutions whenever and wherever I can, why would I
be scared, right? Anyway, that’s the perspective I’m coming from. If I
were trafficking people, selling/buying substances, planning attacks, or
had kinks that I was embarrassed of, then I’d see where you’re coming
from…but it’s not really a binary position. There’s a lot of grey.
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Why? Over here schools are forbidden to use that stuff and for any other organization relying exclusively on FaceBook, there are a multitude of other that do not.
I think Facebook itself is basically “fine” but is mostly misused. Why do people feel the need to post every ridiculous detail about their lives and major life events? Would you put up a billboard with that same info or deliver flyers? No. So that is a misuse. Why do people get so amazingly butthurt about some “thing” out there and excoriate everyone who disagrees in the slightest? Same thing happens here, and I call that a misuse as well.
I use FB to keep in touch with faraway friends and family. To occasionally make new friends and establish connections. To get news about a few local groups I’m in. And for stress relief and laughter at all the funny stuff that floats around. I do sometimes post personal things, though usually not long emotional unloadings. I mean pictures of an event or a thank you or to celebrate someone else’s accomplishments, stuff like that.
On that level, where’s the misery? I don’t see it. Because I don’t over invest. If it went away tomorrow how sad would I be? Not too sad, just a bit at losing contact with all those people. But otherwise, it wouldn’t be a big deal.
Maybe people should think about attachment?
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This reads to me like “I think corporal punishment is basically fine, but mostly misused” or “I think Meth is basically fine, but mostly misused.
Because they get immediate feedback from the people they connect with, which (shortly) improves their mood. Followed by the wait for the next fix.
It’s quite likely that you are not in main curve concerning mainstream behavior.
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LOL. Facebook = corporal punishment = meth.
Conversation over before it even began.
I will say this about FB: people bring their toxicity to it. Basically any public threads with over about 100 comments are a predictable morass of seething vitriol.
For example, today there’s something about Jane Fonda wearing a band aid on her lip because of cancer. I do not even have to go into the comments to know EXACTLY what’s gonna be in there, which I can summarize in two words: traitor and die.
So, jump in, or keep my distance? I choose LIFE, y’all can hash it out while I’m over here doing the actual fun stuff.
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Putting aside the comments, what value does it bring to LIFE to read that article about Jane Fonda? Obviously, there’s a demand for such stories (the tabloids are still in business) but demand does not necessarily equal true value in helping improve people’s lives.
The social scientists and psychologists and media scholars are all sending the same message: Facebook as currently designed and implemented acts as an enhancement and feedback mechanism for the some of the worst and most misery-making aspects of human behaviour, far outweighing the benefits it provides.
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You can say the same about so much of BB…
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Then you must be a masochist because you spend a whole lot of time here publically grousing about BB. Not that I’m shaming your kink.
Inflicting needless pain upon myself isn’t my bag, so you know what I do when I don’t like a site that I think is profoundly broken (e.g. Facebook)? I don’t participate on it, and I’m a happier person for it.
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I’ve read the comments and I’m reminded that introverts are introverts and extroverts are extroverts. It is not trivial to convince one member to come to the other side.
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True enough. But my masochism doesn’t actually undermine the point, no?
It’s clearly not enough for Facebook and so on to be simply ignored by folks who don’t like a site. Instead articles like this and comments like yours (and mine!) signify significant energy spent ‘grousing’ about things we don’t like. That’s actually a key part of the internet and not just Facebook.
We’re all masochists, welcome to the engagement economy
That’s very true. One of the awful things that FB has done, through its effective monopolisation of the digital enhancement of eternal high school, is help create extreme peer pressure for introverts to join the platform.
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It reminds me of an old Connections episode where the host talked about there being “two yous” with respect to the Internet. The you that you know and the you that you show the world (that’s too many yous, lol).
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Thinking about the worst and most misery-making aspects of human behavior, war comes to mind. All through history and around the world, communities grow and they go to war. If Zuckerberg thought for a second that a global FB community would bring about world peace it may be the most outstanding instance of hubris in the 21st century!
You’d have to list the specific ways and degree of similarity between BB and FB and their impact based on scale. I can think of a few (e.g. the headlines), but I would also argue that some of them are driven by the attention model of which FB is a large part.
Again, there’s a matter of scale. I like BB and it does have a lot of traffic, but I doubt it has anywhere close to the impact or transformative effect on American society as FB does. The original article here isn’t about rando commenters grousing about FB but about social scientists and mental health experts warning about the real dangers it poses.
Masochism involves deliberately subjecting oneself to a painful experience in order to achieve a benefit to one’s ego or id (anything from getting positive physical feedback from pain to feeling an unearned sense of superiority to others). Most of us complaining about FB here are not willingly subjecting ourselves to it by joining it or using it as Zuckerberg would prefer.
It’s the difference between looking at the rack and saying “boy, that must be painful, just like a doctor would say” and deciding that the rack is where you’re going to spend part of every day.
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I have no doubt he has. The running joke on “Silicon Valley” about all the tech company founders using “changing the world” as their slogan is based in truth.
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The show with James Burke? I watched it in physics class 30 years ago, and it must’ve already been 10 years old at that point. I had no idea there’d been additional episodes – but I just checked and whaddya know.
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