@fraying I fundamentally don't think large-scale social media is healthy for (most) humans. It certainly isn't for me. I don't want to be famous, I like being a random nobody.
In related news, TIL I learned that despite 15+ years as a software developer and living what I consider a materially comfortable life, I barely qualify as "middle class" by US standards.
@datarama my last shred of optimism is that I still believe social media could be made healthy if it was designed by healthy humans who know what the fuck a community is and how they’re supposed to work.
@fraying I think the problem isn't "social media" as much as it is "large-scale". There's simply too many people for "going viral" to not feel like you're under a kind of social siege.
At least for myself, I've gotten completely overwhelmed even if it was positive attention.
@datarama that’s part of it for sure, but the same dynamics appear in small scale as well. The core problem is community systems designed by people who don’t know the first fucking thing about community.
@fraying I think you're right that those social dynamics - for better or worse - appear at any scale.
But at least speaking purely for myself here, it's a lot harder for internet interactions to overwhelm me if it's 10 people compared to if it's 100 or 1000. For 10 people to overwhelm me they'd have to deliberately bully (or love-bomb, I guess) me; a large group can be overwhelming with minimal effort from anyone.
(the best technical mitigation I can think of is making contact require effort.)
@datarama oh absolutely. Scale makes everything worse. Which is why you have to design community systems with that in mind. And this place has not been designed that way.
@fraying@pluralistic Just seize everything over 1 billion as a wealth tax. Yeah I know it’s about what they own. We can figure out a way to do it. This is obscene. There are many others besides Elmo.
@mivox@_L1vY_@fraying that does feel high, but if it includes all wealth such as houses, cars, and 401(k)s, even though that money is basically inaccessible to the average person until they retire and downsize their house, it might not be too far off.
@sspopovich@_L1vY_@fraying I do have a house, and that makes me privileged as fuck compared to a huge chunk of the population, but I don’t have a 401K and my car is old enough to vote, and my total personal worth is definitely not $400K. 😅
I don’t think the “average American” these days has a paid-off house AND a 401K AND an expensive car.
@fraying@TheManyVoices sometimes I really wonder how long they let stuff like this go on unchecked. Will it be forever? Will there actually be a tipping point? Maybe we’ll all be dead before it happens from climate change anyway.
@fraying Bitter, envious and the proud will never inspire anyone. Never lead anyone. Never create anything of any value. They will never be grateful to live in an era of such incredible innovation, excitement and abundance. They will never be grateful period. Gratitude is something lacking from their core. This stunts their ability to function beyond tearing down things that remind them of their own inability to inspire anyone let alone themselves.
Because it's been pushed into our heads since childhood that if he has that much, he is that much better and more deserving of it than the rest of us. That's just how it works, sorry.
@fraying The "torch and guillotine" approach already has been tried in Russia, and that country still screwed so much it poses a real danger for humanity just from being in its current mutated form.
About voting - well, if people can't self-organize well enough, they get what deserve being organized by someone else.
@fraying@alexisdyslexic For whom? Another rich person who will never tax the super-wealthy fairly because they've been paid not to? This is just me ranting against the system as is, we can change it but it'll take time and I hope we can do it.
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