Old article, but new to me. What are your thoughts?
- Cancel culture is not about righting wrongs or making the world more tolerant — it's an addiction to power
- And this is precisely the point. Good people can say bad things; most people can and do learn from their mistakes. And sometimes, on the internet, things are misunderstood, misrepresented, and blown out of proportion. (Most of the time, to be fair.)
Indeed, we seem to thrive on doing just that: taking a headline, an out of context comment or joke, and running with it, never reading the article, asking questions about context, never wondering what else might have been happening beyond the frame. We love to hate, so much more than we love the truth or love to understand.
This has led to a real culture of fear. Young people feel so afraid of ostracism that they won’t be honest, even with their closest friends. “I probably hold back 90 percent of the things that I want to say due to fear of being called out,” one student told The Atlantic 2017. “People won’t call you out because your opinion is wrong. People will call you out for literally anything.” This isn’t uncommon; we all know that those deemed to have made “wrong” comments do not get conversations, they get cancelled. Online and in real life.
This is an interesting topic, but a clumsy article. "Canceling" takes a lot of shapes, and there's a big difference between people yelling loudly about Louis CK being a sexual predator and your friend circle calling you out for making a shitty joke. If you want thoughtful commentary on the relationship between public figures and the public, maybe start with Ollie Thorn. For the remainder of my time, I'd like to advance a preliminary thesis. The author identifies several aspects of "cancel culture": a dogmatic insistence on a very specific truth, inability to consider the context of words and actions, a crime-and-punishment approach to handling people who have done something wrong, and a resultant culture where people act based on fear. Think of the difference between "calling out" and "calling in". What are all these aspects reminiscent of? Where did they come from? Because I guarantee you folks on twitter did not invent these whole-cloth over the course of the 2010s. This particular way of seeing, to me, reeks of how Protestant American culture approaches "others". Think about how white society and the police "handle" black people. Think about how wealthy society "handles" the poor. Cancel culture is this same cultural heritage writ in the language of everyday people wielding their own power the way the powerful in our society wield theirs. That this happens in conservative/Christian circles is perhaps not surprising. That this happens among liberals and the left too shows that we have not thought through the implications of this way of thinking, that they still shape us in spite of our rejection of their overt values. The rise of modern-day fascism tells a similar story, c.f. All that said, it seems like the online communities I spend time in have, to some extent, matured out of cancel culture. I see a trend towards having a more constructive outlook and spending more energy on supporting people and having good-faith discussions than on being incensed at assholes being assholes. My hope is that Hubski follows this trend too.
On a different note, It's not a comfortable truth, but since we've all grown up in a racist, sexist, homophobic society, we have got parts of those ways of seeing stuck in our heads too. That's not to say that self-flagellation is the appropriate response or that canceling people for being racist is inherently right. But denying the problem, as the author does here, merely feeds the engine of cancellation. If someone says "You did X which is very wrong," reacting with "No I didn't!" is understandable, but prevents any further constructive dialogue on the topic.I don’t believe that anyone thinks Kevin Hart is a homophobe, or that Al Franken is a dangerous predator. And I definitely don’t believe they think Sarah Silverman is a racist.
Ethos rhetoric. I cannot attack your arguments so I will attack your character. It seems novel because the peanut gallery seldom has any power over the intelligentsia this side of a revolution but on Twitter, nobody knows you're a dog unless you have a blue check mark. I would go as far as to say that checkmark is the problem: Jack Dorsey created a caste system in a place where it can really only do harm.What are all these aspects reminiscent of? Where did they come from?
Jon Ronson wrote a great book about this. Meghan Murphy didn't read it. She'd much rather tell you how she feels about "cancel culture" anyway, because she feels that she is vulnerable to it - which hey, top two comments here are, in fact, "cancelling" her. The meat of her argument is a journalist and a dude with a sign, neither of which are particularly vulnerable to being "cancelled" because they were never "on air." The lady in the park who decided to call the cops on the Black birdwatcher who told her to leash her dog? She wasn't "cancelled" as no one had ever heard of her before anyway. JK Rowling? Yeah, there's definitely a move afoot to "cancel" her. Because that's the thing: social media is media, and celebrities often say one thing to the media and another thing to social media, and the rest of the social uses that dichotomy to "cancel out" the media statements. That's the mechanism at play here: the mob using the statements of a public figure to nullify their privileged voice. Am I a fan? No - but if you're going to say one thing in public and another thing in private, best be sure it's actually in private, dumbass. Unfortunately nobody ever expects to raise a million dollars with the help of budweiser so we say dumb shit on Twitter.
Canceling doesn't go one way. Kathy Lee Grifwhatever (-ith? -in? don't care) got canceled for holding a decapitated Trumphead. Good! Don't do that. Louis C.K. is over. Or was over. Who knows, with multi-million business deals in the mix. I don't feel bad about joining dat horde who condemned people that beat their dick off in front of strangers, We just canceled Kanye in hubski chat a few hours ago. Examples like these go on forever. Q: Why are there two "L"s in "uncancelled" and only one in "canceled"? A: One was cancelled, because there is no consensus on the proper spelling. Congratulations, you just made it through the Worst Joke of the Day, hopefully without vomiting. It's still hilarious, to me, to pretend like the social justice warrior mob is the sole aggressor, like Stephen Miller, Ben Shapiro, or Diamond & Silk or whoever don't have a Twitter, like Donald Trump retweeting someone yelling "white power" is an accident, like the George Floyd-inspired, Kaepernick-continuing movement is unwarranted. HILARIOUS. It's almost like one side of the political spectrum is intrinsically more susceptible to attacks on their moral stances. ALMOST.
You're missing the power dynamic. - KATHY GRIFFIN did a photoshoot with Tyler Shields, whose whole schtick is to be obnoxious and provocative. Being photographed by somebody famous is a famousness multiplier, just ask anyone who has ever posed for Annie Liebovitz or Richard Avedon. Thing about these portraits? Neither you nor I will ever pose for any of these photographers 'cuz we're schlubs. But amongst the intelligentsia, being in the gallery is social signalling. And the hoi polloi know it. Kathy Griffin caused furor because the people that shoot was intended for - agents, publishers, execs, producers - HATE Trump and she was being "brave." She was one-upping other obnoxious Tyler Shields photos. And if you think she was surprised to be dropped by CNN over that shit you aren't paying attention. Kathy Griffin's Trump head move was coldly calculated through and through and pissing off the conservative hoi polloi to please the liberal hoi polloi is just public relations. - LOUIS C.K. fundamentally admitted that he had used his power to render women powerless for years or decades. The victims ceased to be nameless and faceless and the crimes became unforgivable. It could have gone either way - guaranteed he was going for some sort of redemption tale. I mean, that which destroys Pee Wee Herman barely touches Fred Willard. But again, it took people in power telling the hoi polloi what to believe. If you want to talk about "cancelling" you need to look at - ROSANNE BARR. Big new show, triumph of the conservatives, fundamentally changes the equation for broadcast television, Trump's popular mouthpiece, sitting around scoring likes amongst the MAGA-heads, tweets And it was fuckin' over. Rosanne had taken a beer shit in the middle of her career and everyone dove away from it as quickly as possible. There were points to be scored with the liberals for kicking her down and no points to be scored with the conservatives for backing her up so out the door she went. She probably could have walked back from that if she had shown some contriteness, demonstrated humility, gone on TV to talk about "changing" or some shit - that's part of the reason the powerless on Twitter live for this shit, it's water off a duck's back 99% of the time (Kathy Griffin is very much still working, thankyouverymuch). But she's fundamentally Roseanne Barr and nobody wants to put up with her shit. Which is why - JK ROWLING has abso-fucking-lutely nothing to worry about because she's richer than God and is probably learning that there's no point in tweeting with the Proles when your attempts at humor can be weaponized. Slowly. Painfully. Over and over. But I mean fuck Mel Gibson doesn't care. Roman Polanski keeps getting awards. And I think that's the part people don't understand - "cancel culture" is this thing Hollywood has been doing since before the advent of sound. You might be able to shout, but if I can get everyone to whisper I can drown you out. Tippi Hedren never worked again because Alfred Hitchcock told everyone what an impossible bitch she was when he didn't sleep with her. Same with Mira Sorvino and Harvey Weinstein. The Hollywood rumor mill allows people to justify their petty gut decisions and forces the less powerful to go along with them and now that we've got Twitter the super-powerless can do the same to the mostly-powerless.Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj
100% true... but fundamentally, the mob didn't like his position against Archive.org so they dredged up situationally-irrelevant vaguely-questionable hot takes from 2011 so they could ignore everything he had to say. That is cancellation - "you are no longer a part of the sphere of discussion for reasons having nothing to do with the discussion." The fact that they didn't succeed in canceling him doesn't mean they didn't try. And I agree: Kate Wagner has much more to fear because she has made a career out of slagging on the work of others. All the does is piss on creatives. Her every word begs for reprisal, which is why there isn't a post on here without me slagging on her. She's like Dane Cook: once everyone has a chance to step back and see what she's adding to the discussion, they can't help but decide she isn't.Chuck Wendig got harassed by the twitter mob for a couple weeks but I don't think he's going to lose out on any book deals just because he wrote an essay where he admitted he likes porn.
To the extent it’s that, I am all for canceling. However it’s been my experience that when a group of people are right about something and are taking action, you find that only about 20% can appropriately communicate that message, and the other 80% are finding their conviction from their peers. When this dynamic gets coopted by evil people, very bad things happen. I know people that suffered in the Cultural Revolution. Part of the fear is legitimately rooted in this. Part is just assholes afraid of being held accountable. Also, I have personal issues such as the nice weekend with my aunt and uncle who are Trumpers. We discussed politics, but it never got ugly, and I love them. I’m all about canceling Trump, but I can love his followers. I need to be careful not to be a hypocrite. I totally agree about free speech in the private sphere. It’s also why I think the Constitutional right is so precious. The ugly thing is that at the core of it, being "cancelled" is just other people not liking you.
I spent some time with Trump family this past weekend, too. We engage but we don't fight, and I don't care about them any less since Trump became president. I think the problem is that people have all sorts of reasons for voting Trump that don't have anything to do with Nazism. The trouble is that they can't be convinced that the white supremacists are a core constituency of his, and that supporting him is supporting them too. But it's just not that important to them, and there's no amount of convincing we can do to change that. But I totally and completely disagree that "canceling" is, at its core, about just not liking someone. It's about thought policing for purity. This type of thought regulation has a long history (goes back at least to a French philosopher whom Marx cited a lot called Helvetius), and the idea is that if you can get people to change their behavior via law (or de facto law, in the case of the Internet), then you can eventually alter their morality. Basically you Stockholm syndrome them into acting a certain way. It's more or less why art and literature were so heavily regulated in the Eastern Bloc. I fundamentally believe that there are not any ideas that are too dangerous to talk about--as ideas in an open marketplace. The Holocaust didn't happen because Mein Kampf got published. It's in print here in the US, and I read it years ago...I still have two little Jewish babies running around my house. This is as close to saying anything controversial as I'll probably say on the internet, because I'm not into Internet fights as a way of life, but the Twitter mobs are playing with fire they don't fundamentally understand. Vote, please. For the love of God vote.Also, I have personal issues such as the nice weekend with my aunt and uncle who are Trumpers. We discussed politics, but it never got ugly, and I love them. I’m all about canceling Trump, but I can love his followers. I need to be careful not to be a hypocrite.
Talk to me or don't, but when you some dumb, meaningless shit like this it's not really a conversation you're trying to have. Since you don't know much of anything about my background, and I know even less about yours, let's try to evaluate each other's words instead of making buzzword value judgments about character. To get back to the conversation: You have it the wrong way around. The ideas that were once too dangerous to talk about were that black people aren't subhuman, not that they are. In fact, there is a really large body of literature from post-Civil War until like the 1930s trying to use data to support that point (and not from backwater Southerners--Harvard was the biggest and worst offender for this type of "research"). It was only when more voices were let in that change started to occur. One thing I agree with you on is that there is never a true marketplace of ideas. That's a fantasy, but it's a good fantasy, not a bad one, and one that we would be wise to try to strive for. In fact, I have it on pretty good authority that's sort of the point of this here website (privileged information, you might even call it). The abject ridiculousness of ideas about, say, genetic inferiority, only get exposed in a world in which alternative narratives are allowed to thrive.this is an opinion that can only come from a place of privilege
"I'm making no judgments about your character. You can't empathize." Reread as many times as you need to figure out why that's wrong. Inherent in your argument is that no one can ever see anything from anyone else's perspective, because someone has always suffered more. It's hyperindividualism to a degree that would make Grover Norquist blush.
I think you misread my meaning. I wasn't moaning about either side or belittling them. I think they are both legit and important. I often see opposing forces as a good thing. It's how nature is stable. I'm glad to see people less repressed, but fearful of the means leading to other ends. I do think that if your side fully won, there would be repression and fear, but it would look different. That said, I don't take issue with your conviction, I don't think it isn't legitimate. Curious, have you read the autobiography of Malcolm X?
I mention the book because it is a candid and compelling account of his journey that was manifest in contradiction but was noble. Malcolm left the world a better place. His views on racial equality evolve, as do his views on gender. The ground moves beneath his feet. His views of women and his participation in the Nation of Islam were both progressive and regressive. Malcolm was at times right and wrong and neither and both, but he had a cause. You cannot define his work by a moment, or a measure. However, if you take him as the sum of his efforts, there is no question that we are better off for him. It is a very human story. I think everyone should read it. I agree with the pace of progress. Those repressions are clear. As an aside, some actualization is complicated, and it becomes difficult to get a social consensus on dignity, especially in matters of religion. I think polygamy is an interesting example. It is illegal, and most Mormons no longer practice it. But is that right? Should consenting adults be able to choose to live in polyamorous union? I think so. But maybe not if as children they have been subjected to religious indoctrination of a patriarchal-style polygamy? But why? Is that denying religious identity and dignity? Are agnostics and atheists in the clear for patriarchal-style polygamy? Should we choose? I don’t want to repress adults that want a certain kind of family, but at the same time, I am worried about why they want it. For some groups, it is not clear when respect and dignity are met for all. Is there a battle won when one man and three women are married? Some people want that. I don’t know. On some matters of repression there should be no debate. But it doesn't mean that all matters repression can be settled by applying a vision of respect and dignity. In some subjective value judgments get entangled.
The thing is, she's not wrong about the problem. The mob is very real, and it's as un-nuanced as she suggests. I've written about this before on hubski, and was not particularly well-received, and unfortunately I think that's true in a lot of communities. (What happened to Richard Stallman is a good example of how the mob can get ahead of itself.) All it takes is one edited screenshot or just a baseless accusation and we're off to the races. Where she is wrong is about the consequences. I can't speak to what young people may be feeling; I'm in my late 30s and have basically no shame, so "holding back" isn't remotely in my wheelhouse, for better or worse. So the idea that I wouldn't say something for fear of being "called out" is just...weird. But as for famous people, I can't think of anyone who's been permanently forced out of the public eye absent going to jail (and even then it's debatable). Plenty of famous people have been sent to time out, which I think is the appropriate response, and is better than what I was worried about; I believe that redemption and atonement are always possible. My main concern, though, is that culturally we'll begin to forget why due process is a thing. We already seem to have forgotten that you can't only protect "some" speech (in a legal sense). Someone on a leftist discord I frequent legit said that hate speech should be illegal. I also think this is going to allow us to not give a shit about reforming the actual criminal justice system. I get the catharsis about someone who was caught on social media being racist losing their job or whatever, but we have to think about what our goals actually are. I'm not convinced that that kind of shaming will actually change anyone's mind. Meanwhile, the mob is fickle, and it can turn on you easily. We forget that our system is specifically designed so that minorities are protected (ideally, that is), but it's easy to forget that "minority" in this instance just means "someone who has a minority view." Popular speech never needs protection.
There's absolutely a distinction between government and private action, both legally and from a practical, moral point of view. But that doesn't mean all of the underlying issues are different, and the way we see one can very easily influence the way we see the other. I have two primary concerns. One, it's only a matter of time before someone gets cancelled unjustly. With literally 0 safeguards in place, that is an inevitability, and there's no clear way for someone to clear their name. Second, and related to this, the whole idea of things like the First Amendment was to protect unpopular speech, i.e. things that would make people mad. We often think of it as speech that was ahead of its time, but that's not exclusively where it applies.
This article is from last October, so this author isn't worried about "everyone getting cancelled right about now." Also, it should be possible to criticize this article without bringing in ad hominem attacks and anti-woman slurs. It says something that you consider yourself incredibly open minded, yet don't extend that to include women who dare question the liberal mainstream.
Sometimes you've been around hubski long enough that you should realize the context of who you are, and who you're contradicting, on what specific topics. i don't agree with threats of violence against any group of people, but I also don't agree that "TERF" is an anti-woman slur. In fact, I'd say to be a TERF is to make an anti-woman slur. AND LET'S ADD, it's to be utterly paranoid and self-gender-obsessed, like, for life. talk. about. gatekeeping. the marginalized class self protecting by further leaning on an even more subordinate class. Just because some people wrote it on the web doesn't mean it's a sane viewpoint. Even if they are female-identifying.
It seems reasonable to me to reject a viewpoint that widely misrepresents scientific consensus and advocates against peoples' bodily autonomy, a position that goes against much of feminist thought. I'm heavily in favor of criticizing "the liberal mainstream", but if I found my criticism being supported and amplified by conservatives opposed to queer rights, you bet I'd be taking a long look in the mirror first.
The Dota 2 community was recently shaken by a wave of accusations of sexual harassment towards a lot of male analysts/commentators/casters in the Western scene. If you go to /r/Dota2 and sort by "top of month", you're gonna see a lot of posts on the matter. A handful of high-profile commentators have already left the scene: GranDGranT, RedEye, TobiWan... The scene is very small. The three of them leaving means there's a big personality vacuum. At least one high-profile commentator was falsely accused: Zyori. It took some time to sort out what happened (the accuser went a little too hot on the ways to describe what had occurred), and now Zyori is back to casting matches. Those three, though? Pummelled into the ground by the Internet army. Rightly so, it would appear: they were all accused on multiple accounts, from respectable sources, with independent confirmation by fellow commentators. There was still a lot of support for them, though. Some thought the loss of a prominent figure in the community justifies not doing anything about the accusations: as if the community itself would be damaged by the loss of these men. I guess harassment of women on the scene – good casters in their own right, not some eye candy for the horny teens – would be a reasonable expectation for some. I don't know much about cancel culture – the whole concept it still one I'm yet to read up on – but I've been watching the shitstorm of opinions and facts and defenses and counter-accusations... When the storm had settled, the genuinely-good people of the community stayed good (Slacks, Purge, PFlax, syndereN, SUNSFan...), and I hope the women who had to experience the bullshit got a little relief their way. On those rare occasions that the Internet army acts against sexual predators, it feels good.
i think hubski was a great idea and i respect you for creating it as an experiment. its failures, however they might be defined by any of the users who have quit in disgust over the years, or by me, or whomever, i believe are mostly inherent in the medium. that said, i still encounter new, interesting ideas on the internet fairly often, and none of them come from here (anymore).
I’d love for you to expand on this, and for no one else to join the thread, if possible, if you’d humor me. I think I am out of touch with so much that happens here. I think I have a notion of where your critique comes from, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I was dead wrong.
i don't contribute nearly as many pageviews to hubski as i did 5+ years ago, so i probably do not represent the consensus opinion on the state of the site. that said, it is clear that some of my (and your, i think) favorite users have drifted away, despite still being friendly with various people they met through hubski. probably for a few different reasons. it is partially the medium's fault. interesting people just don't post on forums much. i figure that's what happened to most of the best users here; they're interesting, and therefore busy. there was a guy who posted a lot of supreme court stuff that was great. was it francopoli who had the astronomy updates? etc. others were driven away by a few loud users who dislike people having opinions they don't agree with. some even in this thread. but that's a separate problem and certainly not unique to hubski. (although its small size makes it uniquely vulnerable.) a couple of years ago i unfollowed all users and began screwing around with tag/domain-based use of the site to see if i could land in a bucket i find more useful, but the signal to noise ratio is still not good enough for me to justify spending much time here. (i also found that this wasn't too easy to do... domains, sure, but what's the point, i can just rss; tags, often too scattered.) for one thing, the norm in the early days of hubski was to post the absolute most interesting stuff you found, and the average poster's age was higher than most of the internet, which meant stuff off the beaten internet path got posted. now when i skim the home page from time to time, there's a higher number of "news item" posts, i.e. ones where nothing beyond the headline is particularly relevant. there's no point clicking on those -- unlikely to breed good discussion, and no additional info in the article. that's just a reddit post. scroll and move on. (this, at least, includes a degree of personal preference: there are a lot of subjects i find less interesting than i did in 2017 or 2014, and if those are still found interesting by the majority of the userbase, then the site is serving its purpose. but #goodlongread used to be one of the most popular tags, and i don't think it is anymore.) -- so, i think the short version is basically signal to noise. i'm still pretty sure there's a way to slice and dice things so that nearly every post i see in the home feed is interesting to me, but i haven't bothered because i don't really care about the comments on any of those posts, and there are other ways to get the raw content itself.
Thanks, flag. Your critiques and feelings are shared by many of us. I've had related discussions with a few of you, and I harbor some of these feelings as well. I'm not sure the 'interesting people part' is true. We've had a lot of interesting people posting in the past, and interesting people still post here, and more so on some other forums. I do agree that many of the OG's have gotten busy and have experienced life changes. thenewgreen insomniasexx and myself used to be active community managers. Each day, at least one of us was adding something intended to be positive. Often we did multiple times per day. We also took opportunities to reward the best kind of discussions by joining in. Sometimes we tried to diffuse conversations gone wrong. Oddly, we three are now all founders of venture-backed startups, which is extremely consuming, if not ridiculous. I suspect that our efforts had a positive impact, and that the lack of them has had the opposite, over the long term. Furthermore, I admit that my reduced presence and awareness meant that my contributions in the last few years haven't always been the best example on the site. Our anti-spam measures have slowed the flow of new blood to the site, which has also contributed to things becoming stale. That has to change. I have been told this by a few people, some that have left. Those instances really make me sad. I probably don't need to say it, but I can't point to a current Hubskier that I wish would leave us. Some of my favorite people on here have views that I cannot fathom. The better angels of our nature are absent in some threads on this site, and that some patterns of behavior and interactions are obvious and in the balance, negative. Different personalities clash by their nature, and on top of that, most of us seem to oscillate between degrees of a willingness to let go, and fed up. Whenever Hubskiers meet in meatspace, this doesn't appear to happen at all, but likely we haven't met for long enough. We can never engineer this away, but I am sure we can still improve upon what we have. I talked to _refugee_ about an idea I had that would be sure to be controversial: It was that you could not reply to a post or comment that you did not share. In simplest terms, if it is not something worthy of sharing, then it is not something worth continued discussion. The user base just isn't big enough for that kind of stuff. There is basically one Hubski. This is very true. I have been thinking that the post submission page could stand to have some reminders/guidelines. It's not terribly interesting seeing a feed of mainstream news items that either challenge or support my view of the world, particularly my political one. That's not to say that these aren't interesting subjects worthy of discussion, but I'd find more value in Hubski if it were the minority of content, not the majority. I am guilty of contributing to this decline. I have some thoughts on how to encourage a less newsy balance. In fact, I have a number of thoughts on how we can make a course correction. Rather than bury it in this thread, I will make a post in the next couple of days, and invite discussion. Some of us will leave Hubski. Some of us will revisit from time to time. However, we all have learned from our time here, and if we can improve upon in for those to come, then that'd be a good thing. I am not going anywhere. When I started Hubski, I knew that it would evolve, but that its goal wouldn't. I also knew that this was going to be a lifelong project. Thanks for your thoughts.it is partially the medium's fault. interesting people just don't post on forums much. i figure that's what happened to most of the best users here; they're interesting, and therefore busy. there was a guy who posted a lot of supreme court stuff that was great. was it francopoli who had the astronomy updates? etc.
others were driven away by a few loud users who dislike people having opinions they don't agree with. some even in this thread. but that's a separate problem and certainly not unique to hubski. (although its small size makes it uniquely vulnerable.)
a couple of years ago i unfollowed all users and began screwing around with tag/domain-based use of the site to see if i could land in a bucket i find more useful, but the signal to noise ratio is still not good enough for me to justify spending much time here. (i also found that this wasn't too easy to do... domains, sure, but what's the point, i can just rss; tags, often too scattered.)
for one thing, the norm in the early days of hubski was to post the absolute most interesting stuff you found, and the average poster's age was higher than most of the internet, which meant stuff off the beaten internet path got posted. now when i skim the home page from time to time, there's a higher number of "news item" posts, i.e. ones where nothing beyond the headline is particularly relevant. there's no point clicking on those -- unlikely to breed good discussion, and no additional info in the article. that's just a reddit post. scroll and move on. (this, at least, includes a degree of personal preference: there are a lot of subjects i find less interesting than i did in 2017 or 2014, and if those are still found interesting by the majority of the userbase, then the site is serving its purpose. but #goodlongread used to be one of the most popular tags, and i don't think it is anymore.)
I think it's pretty silly to presume that mainstream articles are shared to inform rather than to discuss. I can find information fuckin' anywhere. What I care about is what the people I find interesting think about it.It's not terribly interesting seeing a feed of mainstream news items that either challenge or support my view of the world, particularly my political one.
Isn’t the Supreme Court roundup posts from johnnyFive who is still around. Francopoli I miss. Hope someone here had his contact info.
Yep, I'm still around. I'd like to do the SCOTUS posts still, I'm just not as good at keeping up with when new decisions drop as I have been :)
Thanks! I really do want to get back on that particular project, as I said.
No, thank you. edit: Sorry, this should've been phrased: No! Thank you.
it can only do so much. the desire of the site has skewed notably towards link posts. discussion (#askhubski) and OC-sharing posts used to be extremely common. this used to feel like a place where people were asked and invited to share of themselves. now it's a somewhat lofty but no better than well-sifted reddit link aggregator, minus a few recurring threads that help bring it together (pubskis, music threads, etc) this is really not a place where people feel comfortable opening the floor with sharing themselves or their content anymore and that used to be very, very common.
I see a fair a bit of sharing themselves in chat ever since mk made the big change to it. But yes, I by and large agree with you - though to a small aspect of flagamuffin‘s point, it’s difficult to make the time to share myself in a way that’s satisfactory (see: the six months it took me to write up half of my Bhutan trip). As an unrelated reason for this, I am less and less comfortable sharing personal details on any forum after seeing the ever increasing weaponization of the Internet. I am close to the point of wishing we all had our own private pay to enter bubbles with no inter connectivity.
Those are called bars, sewing circles, book clubs, debate clubs, cars and coffee, bowling leagues, etc. They're awesome. Unfortunately, Covid kind of put the brakes on all that.I am close to the point of wishing we all had our own private pay to enter bubbles with no inter connectivity.
For me they’re called mountains ;) Agree except maybe on bowling leagues. I have complicated thoughts on that one.
Hah, no, though in a way only the Coen brothers can capture, yes. This goes back to the 50s/60s and the rise and fall and rise and current state fall (again) of bowling in the United States. I grew up bowling, bowled collegiate, and have lots of words to spare on this one between bowling leagues, USBC, the PBA, Bowlero, and the book Bowling Alone.
I think hubski used to be much more a much more challenging and interesting place. I think there are a bunch of things that make it not snap like it used too but I don't think there is anything that can be done to get its groove back. I can't really think of what else to say about it other than that. It's too bad.
I wrote and deleted several paragraphs. I couldn't expresses anything helpful or kind and I am fond of what hubski was and mostly don't dislike it now. I have nothing productive to say. I still enjoy my self here every so often. mk knows he can text or call me if he wants, he knows I'd be straight with him. I don't think any of it would matter.
There's a few things that could be done. Whether they would work to the result you, or many other users, will consider positive remains to be seen. I find fatalistic approach to system design rarely beneficial. Here's one suggestion: Clear fuckin' everything. Remove all content from this forum, and all users. Have all users that are still interested in participating in a new format (TBD) re-register, using previous or new usernames. No archives, no links to previous threads, no saved settings. Reboot. Then have the users wait for a month without being able to engage with Hubski at all. (Ideally that would also mean not engaging with the same people from the previous Hubski via external contacts, but that's an honor-system contract not everyone would sign, so you can't rely on it.) No messages to mk, no posts, no comments, no chat. Then you let users come back. Maybe you tweak a few things about the forum engine, maybe you don't. Fresh start. Clean slate. Here's another suggestion: Only ever open Hubski to interactions once a week. Host Pubski on that day, let users post links and make comments. Once your timezone-based 24 hours are up, hope you said everything you wanted to say, 'cause it's Monday o'clock, the bar is closed, and you're on the curb. Not one thing will work if you, a member of the community, is willing to give it a shot. Complacency is the mind-killer for places like these. Change is good.
OK, now you're saying something concrete, and I don't think you're completely wrong. Too many of us here have been horrified at what we see as the implosion of American statehood. Personally, I'm studying it. And I know that with your socioeconomic philosophy of choice (for posterity: libertarianism), statehood is naught but a hindrance, and thus, I think it's hard for me to find common ground with someone who may delight in Trump's dismantling of this country's government. My horror is reason #1 why I'm not on here waxing poetic-ish about the observed shape of accretion disks bent around black holes by spacetime or whatever. A chorus of other scientist-types are freaking the fuck out too at this administration. I'm not trying to pretend like muh peoples are the end-all, be-all source of wisdom, but to deny that this administration is anti-science is laughable, and some of us are fucking pissed. It's killing people. I actually don't know how to have a conversation like this anymore. This is a pretty bad first/second attempt, and I'm sorry. Am I? I'm definitely pretty fuckin angry. There's no way that you're as angry as me, bro. Good for you. I'm jealous. Ugghh, it got uglier from there, I deleted paragraphs. I'm tired of seeing articles like this that are basically railing against the inevitable disruptions to society brought on by the internet, transparently adapted for a particular brand of politics. Yes, of course people posting their brainfarts on social media is going to be occasionally terrible for said people. That's one reason I'm here fleshing things out pseudonymously. Edit: I apologize to mk, I didn't fully process their comment before posting. You can ignore me and just respond to mk, if you like. I don't want you to leave this place. I enjoy your contributions. Just because we disagree doesn't mean we gotta hate. It's a couple hours later, I've cooled off a bit, but I'm gonna leave up what I wrote, because it'd be hard for me not to have a hot take like that in person. Maybe I'm simulating that? weird
So naturally, disparaging an entire community of people... to their faces... was the right thing to do. What would we do without you!!?