Once again concerning the Facebook/Meta takeover of the Fediverse, allow me to remind you of the cultural cycle of cool, from geeks and nerds to sociopaths, as brilliantly summarized by David Chapman in his essay on “Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution” https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
This is highly recommended reading, and in case you're missing the parallel, the Fediverse is currently in its MOPs phase, driven by the influx of uncaring Twitter refugees.
@oblomov Arguably, this also happened to #DoctorWho as a result of its 2005 relaunch, but the Mops have convinced themselves they are the fanatics, and the sociopaths have taken over everything, convincing themselves that their reboot is in fact canon, all garnished with faux progressive, right-on posturing that masks a far darker, meaner politics...
A MOP, (Member of the Public), is not a collective noun and neither is its plural. Treating it as a collective is part of the problem, and that problem is over categorisation in order to try and simplify highly complex groups.
I think it's much more fluid most of the time which is why individuals flow from one environment to another even if they're convinced they're in one specific group.
@simon_lucy I don't think that the individuals changing category invalidated the analysis. Yes, a MOP may become passionate enough to become a fanatic or even a geek, and vice versa a fan may get distracted it disillusioned with the subculture and become a MOP or even abandon it altogether, but these changing behavioral patterns personally affect the individual, rather than the subculture itself unless their previous role within has them as “bus factor of 1”.
It isn't individuals changing categories it's the synthetic creation of categories and then fitting individuals to them. We are all members of the public depending on the context.
Audiences are members of the public who have vestigial commonalities for a performance, but even if they are fans they are fans in individual ways.
We are content makers and consumers in turn, when it's a discourse it's simultaneous and there's an audience in a public space.
@simon_lucy your examples don't match your thesis, as you keep rejecting the existence of the categories, but only bring forth individuals not fit rigidly into said categories as counter.
All categories are synthetic, they may be useful but treating them as real is unsane. Constructing towers of reasoning only upon categories is just talking about talking.
@jens these kinds of structural analysis isn't uncommon, mostly because it's a reflection of how people operate in groups as groups scale. OP's essay even takes explicit inspiration from another one with a similar analysis, but in workplace context.
And I'm not sure the solution you present is even feasible, assuming MOPs are unproductive consumers. That's ultimately the core of the matter: who creates, for whom, to what purpose and with what means.
@oblomov You're right, and the MMO model also has a revenue stream coming even from unproductive consumers, so it's a very different situation.
What strikes me is that they provide the social fabric that keeps outliers from acting out, whichever motivation the outliers may have (constructive or destructive), so they provide stability.
The question this post isn't asking is what the goals of the community should be, but that is what MMO designers concern themselves with (in a way), and then...
@oblomov ... design the space so that it's attractive to the kinds of individual motivations they're trying to bring in.
Which may mean that in order to achieve stability (if that's your community goal), explicitly attracting MOPs may be the thing to do. And rejection of them, as the article sort of postulates, may backfire.
@jens my reading of the article conclusions are a bit different; in fact, the author explicitly mentioned that rejecting MOPs altogether is detrimental to the development of the subculture, so the party is to find the balance that attracts enough MOPs that the subculture develops, but not too many, lest it degenerate into the collapsing stage. Hence the recommendation to “be slightly evil”.
@oblomov Yes, I agree. I meant relatively speaking.
My point is, if the most stability is brought by a group of superficially engaged people, then putting effort into reducing this group's size is maybe the wrong move.
There's an elitist flavour to the piece. I do understand the drive to "keep nerd spaces for nerds", but then why attract moderately engaged people at all?
@oblomov Right now, trying to keep them out is a meaningful effort that deserves support. The problem is what happens if they get federated by some instances only (which sounds likely), and then this "sellout" subnetwork outgrows the subnetwork that keeps its integrity. At some stage this becomes a full-blown split.
Still, I guess the emergence of ActivityPub even in the commercial space would be a step forward in comparison with the current state of affairs in which instance equals network.
@oblomov Very interesting and extremely on point article! It seems like the #Fediverse is in danger from the #Sociopaths, like #Meta and their like. TY for sharing your thoughts and ideas here.
Even more, the Fediverse is at the point where MOPs have attracted the attention of sociopaths, indicating the approach of the downwards arc of the parabola.
There are two quotes from the way t that in my opinion are worth looking into, and I'm sure you can easily see how the map to the Fediverse situation.
The first is about detection of and pushback against the sociopaths:
«Alternatively, you could recognize sociopaths and eject them. Geeks may be pretty good at the recognizing, but are lousy at the ejecting. Mops don’t recognize sociopaths, and anyway don’t care. Mops have little investment in the subculture, and can just walk away when sociopaths ruin it. By the time sociopaths show up, mops are numerically most of the subculture. Sociopaths manipulate the mops, and it’s hard for the geeks to overrule an overwhelming majority.»
@staidwinnow I would say all Fediverse figures (admins, mods, users) span the gamut. There's probably a higher concentration of geeks in the admin/mods role than among users since the migration, mostly because MOPs are usually too non-committal to get involved to the degree required to be mods or admins. And I see some recent events and discussions as strong signs there's some sociopaths in the more controlling positions.
@oblomov If a subculture starts with creators, expands fast with fanatics, and you suspect sociopaths in those two ranks, did they generally sneak in at the very beginning (like with Gab, for example) or turned later once the MOPS arrived? Like which do you find more likely?
And unless the controllers are a majority they can be ousted by fanatics and creators almost always, right? Because those two are not hampered like the MOPS.
@staidwinnow I see both possibilities, and although the second is IMO more likely, I know of sociopaths that were here since the earlier days; this is probably also due to the hierarchical structure of the Fediverse platforms having some appeal for certain people even when the crowd is not too big.
As for kicking these types out earlier, it's not as simple as you make it to be, both because of “submarine” sociopaths, and the geeks' preference for building.
(I'm sure the genocide-corp friendlies will have a field day with my use of the word “exclusive”, they really love to spin our rejection of the Instagram invasion as an attempt at keeping things “for nerds only” to avoid facing the reality that what we're pushing back against is the fact they're knowingly letting a known abuser into the room with victims of abuse and pretending that that's the best way to save more people from abuse.)
I understand. but you kinda sound like my friend in Oakland trying to be kind to me, as we wait in line for tickets to see a band that played in her parent's basement two years ago.
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