Twitter Poisoned
November 12, 2022 1:20 PM Subscribe
What do I think are the symptoms of Twitter poisoning? There is a childish insecurity, where before there was pride. Instead of being above it all, like traditional strongmen throughout history, the modern social media-poisoned alpha male whines and frets. This works because his followers are similarly poisoned and can relate so well. Cached version
I continue to think that the single best regulation we could take against social media poisoning is banning algorithmic feeds. If all you see is what people you follow have posted for you to see, then you don't get shit thrown at you unless you've subscribed to it somehow.
posted by hippybear at 1:27 PM on November 12, 2022 [51 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 1:27 PM on November 12, 2022 [51 favorites]
I made the same observation about someone I know, it's distinctly twitter poisoning.
posted by bleep at 1:32 PM on November 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by bleep at 1:32 PM on November 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
All search results are algorithmic, and likely indistinguishable legally, so unsure if that makes much sense legally hippybear.
We could however create some "duty of care" for the well being of identified users, including using identifying cookies. At least this way search engines could operate legally by simply removing any login facility, so they'd know nothing about the specific user to whom they algorithmically served harmful content.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:35 PM on November 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
We could however create some "duty of care" for the well being of identified users, including using identifying cookies. At least this way search engines could operate legally by simply removing any login facility, so they'd know nothing about the specific user to whom they algorithmically served harmful content.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:35 PM on November 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
The better solution is to recognize it as software rather than speech, and finally do something about the total foreclosure of software product liability through EULAs and TOS. It's astounding that an industry and type of product that has become so central to our lives exists outside of the usual tort and consumer protection regimes built up in previous eras of commerce.
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:44 PM on November 12, 2022 [28 favorites]
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:44 PM on November 12, 2022 [28 favorites]
One thing that I found interesting about the article is this:
I was around when Google and other companies that operate on the personalized advertising model were created, and I can say that at least in the early days, operant conditioning was not part of the plan. What happened was that the algorithms that optimized the individualized advertising model found their way into it automatically, unintentionally rediscovering methods that had been tested on dogs and pigeons.
So the operant conditioning is an emergent property and a consequence of the advertising business model in general.
posted by signal at 1:44 PM on November 12, 2022 [25 favorites]
I was around when Google and other companies that operate on the personalized advertising model were created, and I can say that at least in the early days, operant conditioning was not part of the plan. What happened was that the algorithms that optimized the individualized advertising model found their way into it automatically, unintentionally rediscovering methods that had been tested on dogs and pigeons.
So the operant conditioning is an emergent property and a consequence of the advertising business model in general.
posted by signal at 1:44 PM on November 12, 2022 [25 favorites]
Also: it looks more and more like adblock software is an ethical and societal necessity.
posted by signal at 1:45 PM on November 12, 2022 [45 favorites]
posted by signal at 1:45 PM on November 12, 2022 [45 favorites]
I continue to think that the single best regulation we could take against social media poisoning is banning algorithmic feeds.
That is how Mastodon works, but it kills the idea of 'viral' posts and having a 'character of the day' which makes for a very different experience.
posted by Lanark at 2:02 PM on November 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
That is how Mastodon works, but it kills the idea of 'viral' posts and having a 'character of the day' which makes for a very different experience.
posted by Lanark at 2:02 PM on November 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
I don't mind algorithmic feeds, if I can be confident the algorithm is actually working on my behalf. But that's clearly not what's happening here. The perfect audience for any ad-driven company is someone who’s impulsive, angry, frightened and just tired enough that they keep clicking the things that make them impulsive, angry, frightened and tired.
For most of us, that's the whole story: the cyclic relationships between what you see and how you think, feel and react being the entirety that the implicit victory condition for any attention-economy machine learning, the process of optimizing the creation of an audience too anxious and angry to do anything but keep clicking on reasons to be anxious and angry. But for celebrities, the people for whom the personal attention is the thing, the spiral is different, a kind of amplified, ultra-refined narcissism.
Like the man said, never get high on your own supply. But when the thing you're getting high on is literal more you, and the algorithm can find enough people willing to inject your own vanity right back into your veins, it's hard to imagine if there's any other way for that to end than the kind of sepsis of the spirit this article is talking about.
posted by mhoye at 2:22 PM on November 12, 2022 [19 favorites]
For most of us, that's the whole story: the cyclic relationships between what you see and how you think, feel and react being the entirety that the implicit victory condition for any attention-economy machine learning, the process of optimizing the creation of an audience too anxious and angry to do anything but keep clicking on reasons to be anxious and angry. But for celebrities, the people for whom the personal attention is the thing, the spiral is different, a kind of amplified, ultra-refined narcissism.
Like the man said, never get high on your own supply. But when the thing you're getting high on is literal more you, and the algorithm can find enough people willing to inject your own vanity right back into your veins, it's hard to imagine if there's any other way for that to end than the kind of sepsis of the spirit this article is talking about.
posted by mhoye at 2:22 PM on November 12, 2022 [19 favorites]
I'm sorry, but I take the exception to the idea that Musk, Trump, or West were more reasonable/less hateful before. I don't think Twitter can make a grown person a monster if they weren't already headed that way. It might accelerate things, can definitely reward them, but those guys were already poisoned beforehand.
It reads very much like a "I used to have plausibly deniable ways to enjoy these dudes and claim to not know how awful they were, now I can't because Twitter."
(Kids/teens are more impressionable, but even then, it's about following a toxic group of other humans rather than Something Evil inherent to online discourse).
posted by emjaybee at 2:25 PM on November 12, 2022 [38 favorites]
It reads very much like a "I used to have plausibly deniable ways to enjoy these dudes and claim to not know how awful they were, now I can't because Twitter."
(Kids/teens are more impressionable, but even then, it's about following a toxic group of other humans rather than Something Evil inherent to online discourse).
posted by emjaybee at 2:25 PM on November 12, 2022 [38 favorites]
I've used twitter often for a couple of years, but from about ? 3 months ago started withdrawing as it feels like the polarisation of views has become far more extreme (another emergent property, or by design?). My early experience (of responding to other's posts) was some level of nuance in reply was easier, now other's posts are often definitive nuance is impossible (to some extent it may be all the real life polarisation bleeding back into twitter - or being transfused), as if all the wider societal polarisation is infecting the whole twitter platform.
I only engaged with twitter by searching for, and following, people with in my subject/interest area areas and generally switching off their retweets. Despite the algo-driven content and how twitter must know my interests from what I write I have never received a relevant advert, my ads are always finance, crypto, server software, and sport - never books, art materials or useful computers.
posted by unearthed at 2:40 PM on November 12, 2022
I only engaged with twitter by searching for, and following, people with in my subject/interest area areas and generally switching off their retweets. Despite the algo-driven content and how twitter must know my interests from what I write I have never received a relevant advert, my ads are always finance, crypto, server software, and sport - never books, art materials or useful computers.
posted by unearthed at 2:40 PM on November 12, 2022
Yes, I can certainly see that algorithmic dopamine has something to these men but each of them also has a history and a context.
Donald Trump was always the kind of huge New York asshole who had a global reputation for his glass jaw going back to the disco era. Elon is just the latest and silliest of a history of Grand Male Engineers Solving Things With Willpower—everyone who knows engineers has met one, Elon is just richer and less serious. And Kanye, alas, Kanye is a rapper, and rap being an essentially Western poetical literary form, he soaks in the same kind of essential cultural anti-semitism that Ice Cube and Public Enemy and so many 90s hip hop artists did. (I love Chuck D but it’s true).
The innovation of Twitter is that these people show their whole egos to the world in the way it would ordinarily have taken a bad party to do.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 2:41 PM on November 12, 2022 [19 favorites]
Donald Trump was always the kind of huge New York asshole who had a global reputation for his glass jaw going back to the disco era. Elon is just the latest and silliest of a history of Grand Male Engineers Solving Things With Willpower—everyone who knows engineers has met one, Elon is just richer and less serious. And Kanye, alas, Kanye is a rapper, and rap being an essentially Western poetical literary form, he soaks in the same kind of essential cultural anti-semitism that Ice Cube and Public Enemy and so many 90s hip hop artists did. (I love Chuck D but it’s true).
The innovation of Twitter is that these people show their whole egos to the world in the way it would ordinarily have taken a bad party to do.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 2:41 PM on November 12, 2022 [19 favorites]
I made the mistake of blocking almost every advertiser I saw, which backfired badly. I now only get ads by semi-relevant computer security companies, which makes my mental ad filter much less effective.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:44 PM on November 12, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by jeffburdges at 2:44 PM on November 12, 2022 [3 favorites]
The technical diagnosis is “too online”.
I, too, suspect that at most it’s made these people worse rather than them being particularly outstanding cases of it. Kanye pulled his shit at the VMAs in 2009, Trump has been a monster since the 70s, I can’t imagine Apartheid Clyde being less of an asshole if he only got to do bulling of staff and soaking up sycophancy via email and in person. The real victim of Twitter here is us, in that we’ve got even more exposure to these tedious fucks through it.
posted by Artw at 2:47 PM on November 12, 2022 [13 favorites]
I, too, suspect that at most it’s made these people worse rather than them being particularly outstanding cases of it. Kanye pulled his shit at the VMAs in 2009, Trump has been a monster since the 70s, I can’t imagine Apartheid Clyde being less of an asshole if he only got to do bulling of staff and soaking up sycophancy via email and in person. The real victim of Twitter here is us, in that we’ve got even more exposure to these tedious fucks through it.
posted by Artw at 2:47 PM on November 12, 2022 [13 favorites]
I dislike Elon Musk purely because he actively works against public transit. Hyperloop was entirely distraction designed to prevent rail adoption.
Tesla could prove beneficial in some 12 dimensional chess way, like if rich people no longer caring about gasoline somehow caused gasoline supply collapse. Yet, Musk intent was for Tesla to save the automobile, but EVs are in no way sustainable (see Simon Michaux work).
Ain't just Taylor Swift herself flying around in her jets and helicopter taxis. Musk contentiously works towards the middle class avoiding public transit, which makes him extremely harmful (and ignorant of physics).
A priori, I'd expect Musk's hatred for public transit likely originates from apartheid, so zero relationship with his twitter usage.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:09 PM on November 12, 2022 [25 favorites]
Tesla could prove beneficial in some 12 dimensional chess way, like if rich people no longer caring about gasoline somehow caused gasoline supply collapse. Yet, Musk intent was for Tesla to save the automobile, but EVs are in no way sustainable (see Simon Michaux work).
Ain't just Taylor Swift herself flying around in her jets and helicopter taxis. Musk contentiously works towards the middle class avoiding public transit, which makes him extremely harmful (and ignorant of physics).
A priori, I'd expect Musk's hatred for public transit likely originates from apartheid, so zero relationship with his twitter usage.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:09 PM on November 12, 2022 [25 favorites]
I take the exception to the idea that Musk, Trump, or West were more reasonable/less hateful before.
Sure, but as the article puts it: "the modern social media-poisoned alpha male whines and frets. This works because his followers are similarly poisoned and can relate so well."
The fact that these men are who they are in part explains why they are so susceptible to the incentive the algorithm gives for being a troll.
Less extreme, but I've definitely witnessed ordinary people on Twitter get hooked on outrage - they go from topic of outrage to outrage, often on subjects they know nothing about- but as long as they get enough "likes" they're convinced they're morally correct.
posted by coffeecat at 3:13 PM on November 12, 2022 [9 favorites]
Sure, but as the article puts it: "the modern social media-poisoned alpha male whines and frets. This works because his followers are similarly poisoned and can relate so well."
The fact that these men are who they are in part explains why they are so susceptible to the incentive the algorithm gives for being a troll.
Less extreme, but I've definitely witnessed ordinary people on Twitter get hooked on outrage - they go from topic of outrage to outrage, often on subjects they know nothing about- but as long as they get enough "likes" they're convinced they're morally correct.
posted by coffeecat at 3:13 PM on November 12, 2022 [9 favorites]
Targeted advertising strongly resembles the reported experiences of delusional schizophrenia, in which everything is connected, everything is pointed at you personally, and in which others seem to be reading your mind.
Hundreds of times by now, the ads I see on YouTube are unmistakably related to the AskMe questions I’ve just read before clicking over to YouTube.
If I've just read a question about remineralizing toothpaste, I’ll see a dozen or more ads about toothpaste, tooth whiteners, bargain tooth implants, dental floss devices, and tooth straightening devices. If I read a question about HVAC, I’ll see half a dozen ads from local and National companies offering to come to my house, clean out my furnace, and give me a great deal on a new heat pump. If I look at a question about cookware, I’ll be deluged with ads (and videos) about pots and pans, cooktops and ovens, and countertop appliances. And so endlessly on.
And it’s not schizophrenia alone that causes delusional states; some people with PTSD hear negative voices (and also seem to have higher incidence of tinnitus like schizophrenic do, interestingly enough); people with severe OCD also seem to have symptoms in common with schizophrenics, and so do people with heavy metal poisoning — which has particularly dire implications for the gun nuts of the far right. Severe celiac disease can produce mental states like schizophrenia, and a relatively small proportion of schizophrenics have experienced remission after giving up wheat.
So if a person is fighting off delusional states, and I think people's minds do resist the onset of such things as best they can, I think exposure to targeted ads can help push them over the edge.
Social media advertising is poisonous by its very nature.
posted by jamjam at 3:14 PM on November 12, 2022 [32 favorites]
Hundreds of times by now, the ads I see on YouTube are unmistakably related to the AskMe questions I’ve just read before clicking over to YouTube.
If I've just read a question about remineralizing toothpaste, I’ll see a dozen or more ads about toothpaste, tooth whiteners, bargain tooth implants, dental floss devices, and tooth straightening devices. If I read a question about HVAC, I’ll see half a dozen ads from local and National companies offering to come to my house, clean out my furnace, and give me a great deal on a new heat pump. If I look at a question about cookware, I’ll be deluged with ads (and videos) about pots and pans, cooktops and ovens, and countertop appliances. And so endlessly on.
And it’s not schizophrenia alone that causes delusional states; some people with PTSD hear negative voices (and also seem to have higher incidence of tinnitus like schizophrenic do, interestingly enough); people with severe OCD also seem to have symptoms in common with schizophrenics, and so do people with heavy metal poisoning — which has particularly dire implications for the gun nuts of the far right. Severe celiac disease can produce mental states like schizophrenia, and a relatively small proportion of schizophrenics have experienced remission after giving up wheat.
So if a person is fighting off delusional states, and I think people's minds do resist the onset of such things as best they can, I think exposure to targeted ads can help push them over the edge.
Social media advertising is poisonous by its very nature.
posted by jamjam at 3:14 PM on November 12, 2022 [32 favorites]
I think this article has some potential to be right, because as the author points out, these guys have really ramped up their shitty behavior over the years. I'm sure a lot of factors contributed to that, but getting attention on Twitter probably was a fairly big one.
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:15 PM on November 12, 2022
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:15 PM on November 12, 2022
What links these three immensely rich men, each isolated due to their wealth, each surrounded by paid-for sycophants? What possible thing could have caused a disconnect from the real world when they have so much money that they could - and did - crap on gold toilets? Was it the fact that being incredibly rich is soul-distorting, rotting you to the core, removing your connection to anything other than your id as motivation? No, it must be the twitter.
Sure, social media isn’t great. But, like cocaine, it’s not the cause of these men being unpleasant shitheads. It’s a signifier. I look forward to the NYT realising that wealth is the problem, and joining us in the barricades.
posted by The River Ivel at 3:21 PM on November 12, 2022 [27 favorites]
Sure, social media isn’t great. But, like cocaine, it’s not the cause of these men being unpleasant shitheads. It’s a signifier. I look forward to the NYT realising that wealth is the problem, and joining us in the barricades.
posted by The River Ivel at 3:21 PM on November 12, 2022 [27 favorites]
I'm sorry, but I take the exception to the idea that Musk, Trump, or West were more reasonable/less hateful before
This is Jaron Lanier. His whole schtick now is about slamming technology, to varying degrees of coherence and evidence. I have lost too many hours reading this guy.
posted by doctornemo at 3:42 PM on November 12, 2022 [20 favorites]
This is Jaron Lanier. His whole schtick now is about slamming technology, to varying degrees of coherence and evidence. I have lost too many hours reading this guy.
posted by doctornemo at 3:42 PM on November 12, 2022 [20 favorites]
But he did, uh, something, once, in the earlier days of immersive VR, which we all know has gone on to be an important, useful thing and not a gimmick.
posted by Artw at 3:52 PM on November 12, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by Artw at 3:52 PM on November 12, 2022 [8 favorites]
Alpha males aren't real.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 4:22 PM on November 12, 2022 [14 favorites]
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 4:22 PM on November 12, 2022 [14 favorites]
I don't think this article is incorrect but I think Twitter is only part of the problem with the examples given (Trump, Musk, Ye), all three of whom have basically aged into their final form marinaded in an environment where they can do no wrong. Twitter is only a small part of their lives - they are all surrounded by yes-people and have been for decades.
As far as I can see, Twitter provides a place for people who are already a-holes to find likeminded a-holes to practice a-hole-related rhetoric. I would like to see examples of non-powerful people who leveled-up in a-holeness with Twitter as the only commonality.
"The Algorithm" is part of the problem but it is also what makes twitter useful. Twitter often showed me interesting content that is adjacent to people I follow - frankly my experience was mostly positive. I think Twitter is caught between a rock (showing users what they have explicitly asked for, leading to ridiculous timelines for anyone following more than a few people) and a hard place (showing algorithmic content, leading to either bubbles of mono-culture, or accusations of stirring up trouble if they start showing differing content).
Twitters real sin was not recognizing that advertisers and political groups were manipulating Twitters algorithm, making it far less useful than intended (for the users). Actually, they did recognize it, but chose not to act, because money. I think they did eventually realize that they would have to do something and Twitter has been better (at least for me) in the last few years.
I have decided to scale down my Twitter usage to just read-only in the light of Musk but I am sad to see something I once enjoyed mutate into chaos.
posted by AndrewStephens at 4:50 PM on November 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
As far as I can see, Twitter provides a place for people who are already a-holes to find likeminded a-holes to practice a-hole-related rhetoric. I would like to see examples of non-powerful people who leveled-up in a-holeness with Twitter as the only commonality.
"The Algorithm" is part of the problem but it is also what makes twitter useful. Twitter often showed me interesting content that is adjacent to people I follow - frankly my experience was mostly positive. I think Twitter is caught between a rock (showing users what they have explicitly asked for, leading to ridiculous timelines for anyone following more than a few people) and a hard place (showing algorithmic content, leading to either bubbles of mono-culture, or accusations of stirring up trouble if they start showing differing content).
Twitters real sin was not recognizing that advertisers and political groups were manipulating Twitters algorithm, making it far less useful than intended (for the users). Actually, they did recognize it, but chose not to act, because money. I think they did eventually realize that they would have to do something and Twitter has been better (at least for me) in the last few years.
I have decided to scale down my Twitter usage to just read-only in the light of Musk but I am sad to see something I once enjoyed mutate into chaos.
posted by AndrewStephens at 4:50 PM on November 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
i wasn't sure earlier so I checked: Twitter has only had an algorithmically curated feed since 2016.
posted by Artw at 4:53 PM on November 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by Artw at 4:53 PM on November 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
I mean, it's not just Musk and Ye: it seems like Twitter pushes people in every part of the political landscape to become the worst versions of themselves (if you want specific examples just go look at Substack which is where they all end up).
posted by Pyry at 6:02 PM on November 12, 2022
posted by Pyry at 6:02 PM on November 12, 2022
which we all know has gone on to be an important, useful thing and not a gimmick.
#jacklalanne
posted by clavdivs at 6:02 PM on November 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
#jacklalanne
posted by clavdivs at 6:02 PM on November 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
@interfluidity: "we should use regulatory tools to make the internet much, much less hospitable to ad-based business models. (for example, running ads might obviate section 230 protections.)"
posted by kliuless at 6:54 PM on November 12, 2022
posted by kliuless at 6:54 PM on November 12, 2022
Do I understand correctly that you're arguing my algorithmic Instagram feed needs to be banned so that instead of the stream of biking and hiking posts I get now "all [I should] see is what people [I] follow have posted"? All in order to satisfy your theory about how civic society can and should be saved?
Do any of y'all here follow any hobbies on social media or is it just non-stop political outrage? This is a terrible idea that will never ever happen. The hate-on for the algorithmic feed is just get off my lawn old man bullshit. I'm sorry it's destroying so many brains but PUH-lenty of people's algorithms are pumping them full of cat pictures and crafting ideas, and I don't think we're going to stuff the genie back in the bottle.
posted by Wood at 7:03 PM on November 12, 2022 [17 favorites]
Do any of y'all here follow any hobbies on social media or is it just non-stop political outrage? This is a terrible idea that will never ever happen. The hate-on for the algorithmic feed is just get off my lawn old man bullshit. I'm sorry it's destroying so many brains but PUH-lenty of people's algorithms are pumping them full of cat pictures and crafting ideas, and I don't think we're going to stuff the genie back in the bottle.
posted by Wood at 7:03 PM on November 12, 2022 [17 favorites]
I mean why stop here? Let's get rid of all media, as TV, newspaper, radio, and the printed word have all been used to incite hatred and connect or elevate horrible people.
Hell maybe even cave paintings were a mistake. or just language, period. If we were all still grunting and scavenging on the savannah, we wouldn't have these problems.
posted by emjaybee at 7:26 PM on November 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
Hell maybe even cave paintings were a mistake. or just language, period. If we were all still grunting and scavenging on the savannah, we wouldn't have these problems.
posted by emjaybee at 7:26 PM on November 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
"Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans." - Douglas Adams
posted by Pronoiac at 7:33 PM on November 12, 2022 [23 favorites]
posted by Pronoiac at 7:33 PM on November 12, 2022 [23 favorites]
Every new form of media seems to bring about a period of strife. Invent the printing press, get the Thirty Years' war. Telegraphy gets you WWI. Radio begat WWII. And now we have the internet.
I'm sure it'll be fine.
posted by MrVisible at 7:38 PM on November 12, 2022 [9 favorites]
I'm sure it'll be fine.
posted by MrVisible at 7:38 PM on November 12, 2022 [9 favorites]
Having cut my twitter time and stopped posting, I feel like I'm recovering from some form of Twitter poisoning. But it's not the algorithm because I only really interact with twitter through third-party clients that show me my timeline in reverse chronological order, like $DEITY intended. Since the API got deprecated for those clients, the back and forth is slower, too, which I feel like has been useful for me.
I still feel like getting off Twitter has been good for my mental health even if I know less stuff now.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 8:21 PM on November 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
I still feel like getting off Twitter has been good for my mental health even if I know less stuff now.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 8:21 PM on November 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
On the one hand I don’t want to give Jaron Lanier the time of day and I can see this being used to excuse all kinds of incredibly toxic bullshit from the usual assholes and monsters.
On the other hand, I think there is actually something to the idea that raging insecurity plus large audience plus scored comments plus algorithmic feed = slowly transforming people into the worst versions of themselves.
Maybe someone not named Jaron Lanier could write a better version of this, one less open to abuse and billionaire apologetics?
posted by Ryvar at 10:50 PM on November 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
On the other hand, I think there is actually something to the idea that raging insecurity plus large audience plus scored comments plus algorithmic feed = slowly transforming people into the worst versions of themselves.
Maybe someone not named Jaron Lanier could write a better version of this, one less open to abuse and billionaire apologetics?
posted by Ryvar at 10:50 PM on November 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
Is the theory that radio enabled mass propaganda, which enabled WWII, MtVisible?
posted by jeffburdges at 12:51 AM on November 13, 2022
posted by jeffburdges at 12:51 AM on November 13, 2022
Twitter ranked against other Social media sites by number of active users:
2006 #8
2007 #8
2008 #8
2009 #9
2010 #8
2011 #4
2012 #3
2013 #6
2014 #8
2015 #7
2016 #7 -- Algorithm introduced
2017 #9
2018 #11
2019 #10
2020 #17
2021 #15
2022 #15
Source statista
posted by Lanark at 2:30 AM on November 13, 2022 [10 favorites]
2006 #8
2007 #8
2008 #8
2009 #9
2010 #8
2011 #4
2012 #3
2013 #6
2014 #8
2015 #7
2016 #7 -- Algorithm introduced
2017 #9
2018 #11
2019 #10
2020 #17
2021 #15
2022 #15
Source statista
posted by Lanark at 2:30 AM on November 13, 2022 [10 favorites]
It’s not enough to talk about the poisonous effect of algorithms without looking at their impact on mainstream media. Have a look at your newspaper of choice and consider how many of the articles are pile-ons, appeals to anxiety or amplifications of somebody’s extreme toxic utterance. Then consider the percentage of headlines which are there with either implicit or explicit assistance of Twitter. For extra credit, consider how much you would edit and cut if you wanted your news to be truly well curated to inform.
posted by rongorongo at 4:02 AM on November 13, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by rongorongo at 4:02 AM on November 13, 2022 [7 favorites]
....Trump was an asshole WAY before Twitter was introduced.
Exhibit A: his initial off-the-cuff response to the Twin Tower attacks, during an interview when he was being asked to comment on the event, was to observe that cool, now he had the tallest building on Wall Street. That was in 2001, a full five years before Twitter even existed.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:22 AM on November 13, 2022 [13 favorites]
Exhibit A: his initial off-the-cuff response to the Twin Tower attacks, during an interview when he was being asked to comment on the event, was to observe that cool, now he had the tallest building on Wall Street. That was in 2001, a full five years before Twitter even existed.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:22 AM on November 13, 2022 [13 favorites]
First of all, be skeptical whenever traditional media is trying to induce a panic about social media, as this New York Times piece is doing. It's not as if print media doesn't have its own history.
Twitter hasn't poisoned these people; they've always been rich assholes. Twitter has poisoned the mainstream media.
I was trying to look up info about Trump, Kanye, and Musk's history of domestic abuse and abuse of their staff and found that it was mainly tabloids reporting on these things. Even mentioning Trump raping his first wife is mostly relegated to tabloid sites. Musk's first wife's I Was a Starter Wife doesn't seem to get much mention in news stories about Musk.
The corporate media aren't interested in domestic abuse because they don't see it as a serious story unless it becomes a crime involving the police, and the police don't care about domestic violence and sexual assault. Both groups need "hard evidence" before investigating (a high standard that is, let's say, selectively applied). Rich men behaving badly and being insulated and protected by their wealth is nothing new. Twitter hasn't poisoned them.
What is new is that traditional media has had their revenue shredded by the internet, and shoestring budgets means that the media often reports on what people say rather than report on what is true. And Twitter is a tabloid where rich people can fire hose unverified information that traditional media drinks up and amplifies by giving it the respectability of traditional media. Musk, Kanye, and Trump simply thought Twitter means they don't need a trained PR spokesman to write their copy. It's a mutually parasitic relationship and we get front row seats to watch.
Also, uhg, we say Hollywood loves telling stories about itself but that is by no means limited to Hollywood. The NYT hates social media for eating it's lunch. Twitter hates Trump but has to keep him on for as long as he's president (same with all the other poisonous people they platform who contribute to their engagement numbers.) All of this so we can shove ads into our faces to sell us products that aren't what they claim and aren't needed even if they were.
Capitalism is the poison.
posted by AlSweigart at 5:43 AM on November 13, 2022 [29 favorites]
Twitter hasn't poisoned these people; they've always been rich assholes. Twitter has poisoned the mainstream media.
I was trying to look up info about Trump, Kanye, and Musk's history of domestic abuse and abuse of their staff and found that it was mainly tabloids reporting on these things. Even mentioning Trump raping his first wife is mostly relegated to tabloid sites. Musk's first wife's I Was a Starter Wife doesn't seem to get much mention in news stories about Musk.
The corporate media aren't interested in domestic abuse because they don't see it as a serious story unless it becomes a crime involving the police, and the police don't care about domestic violence and sexual assault. Both groups need "hard evidence" before investigating (a high standard that is, let's say, selectively applied). Rich men behaving badly and being insulated and protected by their wealth is nothing new. Twitter hasn't poisoned them.
What is new is that traditional media has had their revenue shredded by the internet, and shoestring budgets means that the media often reports on what people say rather than report on what is true. And Twitter is a tabloid where rich people can fire hose unverified information that traditional media drinks up and amplifies by giving it the respectability of traditional media. Musk, Kanye, and Trump simply thought Twitter means they don't need a trained PR spokesman to write their copy. It's a mutually parasitic relationship and we get front row seats to watch.
Also, uhg, we say Hollywood loves telling stories about itself but that is by no means limited to Hollywood. The NYT hates social media for eating it's lunch. Twitter hates Trump but has to keep him on for as long as he's president (same with all the other poisonous people they platform who contribute to their engagement numbers.) All of this so we can shove ads into our faces to sell us products that aren't what they claim and aren't needed even if they were.
Capitalism is the poison.
posted by AlSweigart at 5:43 AM on November 13, 2022 [29 favorites]
/me opens TFA, notes name of author, wearily peruses opening paras..
Forty years ago Jaron Lanier worked on an interesting but wildly impractical before-its -time project that created some kind buzz but wound up going nowhere, giving rose to none of the technology that's in use today now that the original vision is getting realized.
On the strength of this he persuades NYT editors, book publishers, and other legacy gatekeepers to pay him for the privilege of printing his drivel.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 8:04 AM on November 13, 2022 [6 favorites]
Forty years ago Jaron Lanier worked on an interesting but wildly impractical before-its -time project that created some kind buzz but wound up going nowhere, giving rose to none of the technology that's in use today now that the original vision is getting realized.
On the strength of this he persuades NYT editors, book publishers, and other legacy gatekeepers to pay him for the privilege of printing his drivel.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 8:04 AM on November 13, 2022 [6 favorites]
Yeah, this is another case of “old man Lanier yells at cloud computing”.
posted by The River Ivel at 8:48 AM on November 13, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by The River Ivel at 8:48 AM on November 13, 2022 [5 favorites]
Surprised he doesn't mention J.K. Rowling, the most obvious case of Twitter poisoning I can think of. Near-universally beloved children's author turns herself into a pariah that only bigots now want to associate with.
Twitter clearly hastened her decline. Rowling takes criticism poorly, and seems to have doubled- and tripled-down on every awful thing she's ever said or done (including defending her magical chattel slavery!) in direct response to criticism. This in turn leads to more criticism as she defends increasingly awful positions and beliefs.
Twitter turbocharged this vicious cycle: you don't even have to imagine a what she would be like in a counterfactual world without Twitter because Harry Potter ended in 2007. She had been a major celebrity for a decade at that point, and while you can see the seeds of fatphobia and weird morality in HP, it was by no means a foregone conclusion that she would end up so hateful and reviled.
posted by Ndwright at 9:37 AM on November 13, 2022 [10 favorites]
Twitter clearly hastened her decline. Rowling takes criticism poorly, and seems to have doubled- and tripled-down on every awful thing she's ever said or done (including defending her magical chattel slavery!) in direct response to criticism. This in turn leads to more criticism as she defends increasingly awful positions and beliefs.
Twitter turbocharged this vicious cycle: you don't even have to imagine a what she would be like in a counterfactual world without Twitter because Harry Potter ended in 2007. She had been a major celebrity for a decade at that point, and while you can see the seeds of fatphobia and weird morality in HP, it was by no means a foregone conclusion that she would end up so hateful and reviled.
posted by Ndwright at 9:37 AM on November 13, 2022 [10 favorites]
egypturnash
Twitter definitely fucks with your brain, why the hell did we ever think it was a good idea for so much of our discussions to take place 1/?
egypturnash
via a website that chops our communication up into the Procrustean bed of 140-character chunks of text? You can't even get an entire 2/?
egypturnash
sentence in there if you use anything like "dependent clauses" or "polysyllabic words", never mind paragraphs or notes that you are talking 3/?
egypturnash
about a complex issue with obvious exceptions. What works on Twitter is simple, short, nuanceless sentences. And spending years chopping 4/?
egypturnash
your thoughts to fit this DOES THINGS to your brain. When I set up a Mastodon back in the early years of the Trump presidency to have a 5/?
egypturnash
safe haven from seeing his moron face crammed into my timeline no matter how hard I tried to block it, I set my post length limit to about 6/?
egypturnash
7k. It was AMAZING to feel my brain unclenching. I could just write sentences and not worry about trying to make them impossibly brief. 7/?
egypturnash
Anyone who has cultivated serious Twitter fame has to spend a lot of time making all their points this way: no leeway for nuance, no 8/?
egypturnash
hey sorry the thread broke, it's continued over here
egypturnash
room for subtlety, unless you are willing to spend ages constructing a lengthy and unwieldy thread. 9/?
egypturnash
Twitter's interface makes these threads super hard to read, of course. You're fighting against the nature of this medium, and it shows. 10/?
egypturnash
There are certainly ways that people like Trump, Kanye, and Musk would have turned into horrible garbage humans even if they were not on 11/?
egypturnash
Twitter. Too much money fucks with your head. Too much money brings all kind of sycophants who'll tell you whatever looney shit you're 12/?
egypturnash
going off on today makes perfect sense because you're paying them a ludicrous amount of money to listen to your dumb ideas and try to make 13/?
egypturnash
them work.
But there is also a special kind of dumbness that Twitter itself imposes upon you. I rue the day all my friends started leaving 14/?
egypturnash
Livejournal, and replaced occasional thoughtful posts (and occasional short jokes/what character from this story am I quizzes/here's 15/?
egypturnash
my friends network as worked out from a bot that I hope isn't going to abuse its access to my account somewhere down the line, LJ was 16/?
egypturnash
by no means entirely full of serious essays) with nothing but daily collections of incomprehensible half-conversations. I never wanted 17/?
egypturnash
to be there and I have only ever been there because it's where the largest chunk of my friends ended up where they could still use the 18/?
egypturnash
aliases I knew them by from the furry scene.
I hold out hope that an anarchic interoperating network of social sites will be better than corporate-owned, profit-seeking social 19/?
egypturnash
sites. There are probably massive problems that can be created by the Fediverse. But they will be different ones than the ones created 20/?
egypturnash
by Twitter, and maybe we will even - no, we're probably just gonna make the same fucking mistakes again, eventually some corporation 21/?
egypturnash
will probably figure out how to embrace, extend, and extinguish the Fediverse the same way Facebook, Twitter, Google, and their peers 22/?
egypturnash
embraced, extended, and extinguished RSS.
It will be nice to have a period of the pendulum swinging back the other way, though. 23/end
posted by egypturnash at 11:18 AM on November 13, 2022 [12 favorites]
Twitter definitely fucks with your brain, why the hell did we ever think it was a good idea for so much of our discussions to take place 1/?
egypturnash
via a website that chops our communication up into the Procrustean bed of 140-character chunks of text? You can't even get an entire 2/?
egypturnash
sentence in there if you use anything like "dependent clauses" or "polysyllabic words", never mind paragraphs or notes that you are talking 3/?
egypturnash
about a complex issue with obvious exceptions. What works on Twitter is simple, short, nuanceless sentences. And spending years chopping 4/?
egypturnash
your thoughts to fit this DOES THINGS to your brain. When I set up a Mastodon back in the early years of the Trump presidency to have a 5/?
egypturnash
safe haven from seeing his moron face crammed into my timeline no matter how hard I tried to block it, I set my post length limit to about 6/?
egypturnash
7k. It was AMAZING to feel my brain unclenching. I could just write sentences and not worry about trying to make them impossibly brief. 7/?
egypturnash
Anyone who has cultivated serious Twitter fame has to spend a lot of time making all their points this way: no leeway for nuance, no 8/?
egypturnash
hey sorry the thread broke, it's continued over here
egypturnash
room for subtlety, unless you are willing to spend ages constructing a lengthy and unwieldy thread. 9/?
egypturnash
Twitter's interface makes these threads super hard to read, of course. You're fighting against the nature of this medium, and it shows. 10/?
egypturnash
There are certainly ways that people like Trump, Kanye, and Musk would have turned into horrible garbage humans even if they were not on 11/?
egypturnash
Twitter. Too much money fucks with your head. Too much money brings all kind of sycophants who'll tell you whatever looney shit you're 12/?
egypturnash
going off on today makes perfect sense because you're paying them a ludicrous amount of money to listen to your dumb ideas and try to make 13/?
egypturnash
them work.
But there is also a special kind of dumbness that Twitter itself imposes upon you. I rue the day all my friends started leaving 14/?
egypturnash
Livejournal, and replaced occasional thoughtful posts (and occasional short jokes/what character from this story am I quizzes/here's 15/?
egypturnash
my friends network as worked out from a bot that I hope isn't going to abuse its access to my account somewhere down the line, LJ was 16/?
egypturnash
by no means entirely full of serious essays) with nothing but daily collections of incomprehensible half-conversations. I never wanted 17/?
egypturnash
to be there and I have only ever been there because it's where the largest chunk of my friends ended up where they could still use the 18/?
egypturnash
aliases I knew them by from the furry scene.
I hold out hope that an anarchic interoperating network of social sites will be better than corporate-owned, profit-seeking social 19/?
egypturnash
sites. There are probably massive problems that can be created by the Fediverse. But they will be different ones than the ones created 20/?
egypturnash
by Twitter, and maybe we will even - no, we're probably just gonna make the same fucking mistakes again, eventually some corporation 21/?
egypturnash
will probably figure out how to embrace, extend, and extinguish the Fediverse the same way Facebook, Twitter, Google, and their peers 22/?
egypturnash
embraced, extended, and extinguished RSS.
It will be nice to have a period of the pendulum swinging back the other way, though. 23/end
posted by egypturnash at 11:18 AM on November 13, 2022 [12 favorites]
I definitely had twitter poisoning until I went cold turkey for 12 weeks right after 6.1
that broke the core addiction cycle
ad tech has been and is being weaponized as a mass control device (or at least attempts, see Cambridge Analytica)
I honestly don't know where its all going from here but I suspect the coming implosion will hit everything algorithm+ad tech
see tech stocks, layoffs, EU regulations, even Indian fines and bans
posted by infini at 11:48 AM on November 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
that broke the core addiction cycle
ad tech has been and is being weaponized as a mass control device (or at least attempts, see Cambridge Analytica)
I honestly don't know where its all going from here but I suspect the coming implosion will hit everything algorithm+ad tech
see tech stocks, layoffs, EU regulations, even Indian fines and bans
posted by infini at 11:48 AM on November 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
JK Rowling, like Kanye, also a victim of being love-Bo,bed by nazis, which is platform independent. The entire guardian columnist/90s light ent COMPLEX of UK TERFs, including Glinner, certainly hasn’t been helped by Twitter but I couldn’t say they wouldn’t have all exposed themselves as vile people without.
posted by Artw at 11:55 AM on November 13, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Artw at 11:55 AM on November 13, 2022 [3 favorites]
Instead of being above it all, like traditional strongmen throughout history, the modern social media-poisoned alpha male whines and frets.I think the twitter/dopamine argument is itself evidence of a good bit of techbrain syndrome.
Case in point: Traditional strongmen throughout history are not "above it all." In fact, they tend to do really nasty things to people who mock them or otherwise make them feel bad. Indeed, they often create and enlarge an entire arm of the state so they can delegate the nasty stuff to underlings.
The distinguishing feature of twitter is really that (1) the self-styled genius is exposed to criticism there, and (2) the public gets to witness the response to even mild criticism, instead of having it reported to us by their PR machine. (Note in the old days part of managing a tyrant absolutely includes variations on "don't report this bit of bad news or criticism to him, nothing good will come of him seeing it.")
To the extent that people have changed, I'm going to borrow a bit from blogger Mark Palko to propose that the issue is not that we are finding out what happens to supergeniuses exposed to Twitter, it's that we are finding out what happens when men of average intelligence are exposed to a lot of wealth:
There's a wonderful Far Side cartoon that shows two scientists addressing a man sitting behind a desk in a sumptuous office. The lead scientist says:posted by mark k at 12:45 PM on November 13, 2022 [7 favorites]
"Sorry, your highness, but you're really not the dictator of Ithuvania, a small European republic. In fact, there is no Ithuvania. The hordes of admirers, the military parades, this office -- we faked it all as in experiment in human psychology. In fact, you highness, your real name is Edward Belcher, you're from Long Island, New York, and it's time to go home, Eddie."
Sometimes, when I come across yet another bit of jaw-dropping flakiness from some tech-bubble billionaire, my thoughts turn to Ithuvania. What if this were an experiment? What if some well-funded research organization decided to see what would happen if it randomly selected individuals of average intelligence, handed them huge checks and told them they were super-geniuses?
We all saw Downfall, right? Or at least the Downfall meme?
posted by Artw at 12:46 PM on November 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Artw at 12:46 PM on November 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
On the one hand I don’t want to give Jaron Lanier the time of day and I can see this being used to excuse all kinds of incredibly toxic bullshit from the usual assholes and monsters.
Lanier is the reason Linked In is designed to steer people's behavior in the opposite direction of impulsive and regrettable candor like Twitter.
I think y'all should give him a second look (and the time of day).
posted by ocschwar at 12:52 PM on November 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
Lanier is the reason Linked In is designed to steer people's behavior in the opposite direction of impulsive and regrettable candor like Twitter.
I think y'all should give him a second look (and the time of day).
posted by ocschwar at 12:52 PM on November 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
Related (and should probably be a front page post): How Capitalism Destroyed the Internet
"The internet that we know today began with the creation of a government institution called ARPA, the Advanced Research Projects Agency. It was started by the U.S. government in February of 1958. And that date is important because it's just four months after the Soviet Union had successfully launched Sputnik into space right in the middle of the Cold War. Sputnik's launched by the Soviets stoked fears of falling behind here in the U.S., and given the lack of innovation from the private sector to compete with what the USSR was getting up to America decided it was time to prove capitalism was the superior economic model by getting the government involved."
posted by AlSweigart at 1:02 PM on November 13, 2022 [3 favorites]
"The internet that we know today began with the creation of a government institution called ARPA, the Advanced Research Projects Agency. It was started by the U.S. government in February of 1958. And that date is important because it's just four months after the Soviet Union had successfully launched Sputnik into space right in the middle of the Cold War. Sputnik's launched by the Soviets stoked fears of falling behind here in the U.S., and given the lack of innovation from the private sector to compete with what the USSR was getting up to America decided it was time to prove capitalism was the superior economic model by getting the government involved."
posted by AlSweigart at 1:02 PM on November 13, 2022 [3 favorites]
I've been on Twitter since 2008 but I've never really got it. Don't see what the appeal is, and am glad it looks like it will die soon.
posted by signal at 4:53 PM on November 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by signal at 4:53 PM on November 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
Lanier is the reason Linked In is designed to steer people's behavior in the opposite direction of impulsive and regrettable candor like Twitter.
I think y'all should give him a second look (and the time of day).
Linked In is your argument for this guy? The social network that stalks people through email and phone address books? The social network that tries to force you into contact with every person that ever views your profile? The social network that is more infested with thought leaders than a multi-level marketing retreat?
posted by zymil at 5:19 PM on November 13, 2022 [4 favorites]
I would love to curate old metafilter posts and comments about Twitter and Facebook when they first came out.
Twitter is the most expensive junior high school ever.
posted by clavdivs at 8:19 PM on November 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
Twitter is the most expensive junior high school ever.
posted by clavdivs at 8:19 PM on November 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
Linked In is your argument for this guy?
Yes. LinkedIn is up front in all the ways it annoys you (including being all too aggressive in trying to get you to fill your list of connected persons.)
Twitter is insidious in the same way Facebook is.
Twitter and Facebook got us Trump.
LinkedIn just got us annoyed.
posted by ocschwar at 9:03 PM on November 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
Yes. LinkedIn is up front in all the ways it annoys you (including being all too aggressive in trying to get you to fill your list of connected persons.)
Twitter is insidious in the same way Facebook is.
Twitter and Facebook got us Trump.
LinkedIn just got us annoyed.
posted by ocschwar at 9:03 PM on November 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
Targeted advertising strongly resembles the reported experiences of delusional schizophrenia, in which everything is connected, everything is pointed at you personally, and in which others seem to be reading your mind.
As someone who has had schizophrenic episodes in the past, this i whole comment s utter horseshit, offensive as hell, and I'm disappointed it was allowed to stand, nevermind widely favourited. No, advertising on Twitter is not like schizophrenia - what the fuck?
posted by Dysk at 11:56 PM on November 13, 2022 [6 favorites]
As someone who has had schizophrenic episodes in the past, this i whole comment s utter horseshit, offensive as hell, and I'm disappointed it was allowed to stand, nevermind widely favourited. No, advertising on Twitter is not like schizophrenia - what the fuck?
posted by Dysk at 11:56 PM on November 13, 2022 [6 favorites]
I had a week of paranoid delusions myself after a brief stay in the ICU being treated for severe pernicious anemia, though I didn’t seek a diagnosis.
But I didn’t rely on my own personal experiences to characterize "the reported experiences of delusional schizophrenia", I based that on watching several dozen of the videos of an extremely interesting YouTube channel: Living Well With Schizophrenia, as well as videos made by several by several other schizophrenics.
Unless you think your own personal experiences trump everyone else’s, you might find them illuminating.
And by the way, if you reread my comment you'll find I did not refer to Twitter; I haven’t been on Twitter enough to know what their ads are like.
posted by jamjam at 2:05 AM on November 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
But I didn’t rely on my own personal experiences to characterize "the reported experiences of delusional schizophrenia", I based that on watching several dozen of the videos of an extremely interesting YouTube channel: Living Well With Schizophrenia, as well as videos made by several by several other schizophrenics.
Unless you think your own personal experiences trump everyone else’s, you might find them illuminating.
And by the way, if you reread my comment you'll find I did not refer to Twitter; I haven’t been on Twitter enough to know what their ads are like.
posted by jamjam at 2:05 AM on November 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
I don't think your second hand reporting of somebody else's supposed experiences trump my actual lived experience, that's fer fucking sure.
posted by Dysk at 10:02 AM on November 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 10:02 AM on November 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
And like, if you can't see how the comparison between the paranoid state of feeling people are inside your head and something reading your actions, your searches (not your thoughts, your inner ideas, but the shit you actually express and know is being put out into the world where the algorithms can pick up on it) is minimising and dismissive, I mean, I just don't know what to tell you. They are very far from the same thing, or from being similar. Targeted advertising is more similar to someone responding to something you've said (maybe to yourself absent mindedly) than to the paranoid delusions of schizophrenia. Targeted advertising cannot touch what's in your head, and it is not a comparable sensation or feeling, for myself, or for anyone else who's had experience of both that I've spoken to.
posted by Dysk at 10:10 AM on November 14, 2022
posted by Dysk at 10:10 AM on November 14, 2022
Lanier hasn't been relevant since WiReD was a glossy print mag which means he's exactly the kind of person the NYT calls up for this sort of thing. What's next, ESR on cancel culture?
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:18 AM on November 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:18 AM on November 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
On one side, Twitter helped me discover people who then helped me understand what I was feeling was gender dysphoria after I got medicated for depression and anxiety and could look past them to see what was going on to inspire them.
On the other side, I’ve seen a lot of TERFs and rightwingers that hate me for recognizing that and want me dead. But at least I know what the enemy looks like (and it looks like your average New York Times reporter).
posted by mephron at 1:50 PM on November 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
On the other side, I’ve seen a lot of TERFs and rightwingers that hate me for recognizing that and want me dead. But at least I know what the enemy looks like (and it looks like your average New York Times reporter).
posted by mephron at 1:50 PM on November 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
I don't think your second hand reporting of somebody else's supposed experiences trump my actual lived experience, that's fer fucking sure.
Did you get an actual diagnosis of "schizophrenic episodes", Dysk? If not, your personal experience of delusions, like mine, doesn’t have much relevance in a discussion of "reported experiences of schizophrenic delusions."
So far, you haven’t brought much to this thread beyond a mountain of attitude, vague yet aggressive assertions that your unspecified personal experiences make you uniquely qualified to say what schizophrenic delusions can and cannot be, and massive self importance.
I don’t cherish any illusions of getting you to change your mind, but for the sake of other people reading this thread here are more detailed justifications for the three things I said are characteristics of schizophrenic delusions:
everything is connected
posted by jamjam at 7:20 PM on November 14, 2022
Did you get an actual diagnosis of "schizophrenic episodes", Dysk? If not, your personal experience of delusions, like mine, doesn’t have much relevance in a discussion of "reported experiences of schizophrenic delusions."
So far, you haven’t brought much to this thread beyond a mountain of attitude, vague yet aggressive assertions that your unspecified personal experiences make you uniquely qualified to say what schizophrenic delusions can and cannot be, and massive self importance.
I don’t cherish any illusions of getting you to change your mind, but for the sake of other people reading this thread here are more detailed justifications for the three things I said are characteristics of schizophrenic delusions:
everything is connected
There’s a particularly insidious symptom of schizophrenia and psychosis that has the ability to derail even the most stable patient. That symptom is the unusual phenomenon of making connections between things that have no relation in reality.everything is pointed at you personally:
A delusion of reference is the belief that un-related occurrences in the external world have a special significance for the person who is being diagnosed. So, for example, a delusion of reference might occur when someone watches a movie and believes there is a message in the movie that is meant specifically for them, and that makes some kind of “sense”. Delusions of reference may also occur in other media. For example, a person may believe there are messages for them in music. One of the more prominent examples of this is the Laurel Canyon cult leader Charles Manson, who believed he was receiving injunctions to act in certain ways from certain Beatles songs. (Apologies to all the Beatles fans out there).other people seem to be reading your mind
Thought broadcasting is primarily characterized by an unshakeable feeling that people around you can hear your innermost thoughts. In most cases, people who experience this phenomenon are in a constant state of distress because they think that people can hear their thoughts.And for bonus coverage, delusions of reference can occur in OCD as well.
posted by jamjam at 7:20 PM on November 14, 2022
Did you get an actual diagnosis of "schizophrenic episodes", Dysk?
Yes.
posted by Dysk at 11:19 PM on November 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
Yes.
posted by Dysk at 11:19 PM on November 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
I am not saying that my experiences are uniquely qualifying, I am saying that drawing parallels between targeted advertising and schizophrenia is minimising and dismissive and freshly offensive.
posted by Dysk at 11:22 PM on November 14, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 11:22 PM on November 14, 2022 [4 favorites]
Like, your can attack targeted advertising without using a group of which you are not a member as a stick for that attack.
I'm telling you that while yes, the descriptions of schizophrenic delusion and targeted advertising are similar, the experiences themselves are emphatically not. The similarity in description is a function of the limitations of language. The differences are huge in both degree and kind, to the point where the comparison obscures more than it illuminates.
And it's goddamn trivialising to suggest that the two vastly different things are actually totally similar because of some surface-level analysis that does not account for the experiential difference.
posted by Dysk at 11:56 PM on November 14, 2022 [8 favorites]
I'm telling you that while yes, the descriptions of schizophrenic delusion and targeted advertising are similar, the experiences themselves are emphatically not. The similarity in description is a function of the limitations of language. The differences are huge in both degree and kind, to the point where the comparison obscures more than it illuminates.
And it's goddamn trivialising to suggest that the two vastly different things are actually totally similar because of some surface-level analysis that does not account for the experiential difference.
posted by Dysk at 11:56 PM on November 14, 2022 [8 favorites]
I instantly distrust something that aligns with my beliefs, makes a good story, and cherrypicks (or flat-out omits) references to actual science to back up its claims.
Jaron Lanier's screeds always fit this pattern.
posted by panglos at 9:05 AM on November 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
Jaron Lanier's screeds always fit this pattern.
posted by panglos at 9:05 AM on November 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
Musk biographer Ashlee Vance explains why Twitter isn’t Tesla or SpaceX.
lon went through an interesting change [from] when I was doing the reporting for my book. You would hear all these stories about some of the more extreme bits of his behavior at Tesla or SpaceX, or with his circle of friends. But this sort of darker, other side of Elon was contained to those spheres. He wasn’t quite as active on Twitter for a long time — he didn’t really let what I call Bad Elon out. But somewhere around three years ago, I think we got the Full Elon, both good and bad, out on Twitter, in full display. The version of Elon who exists today — I do think some of these elements were always there. But he’s a bit more extreme than the guy I was covering.posted by jenfullmoon at 9:30 PM on November 16, 2022 [4 favorites]
My working assumption is just that he’s obviously something of a Twitter addict. He enjoys the service. I think he wanted to exert a little more control over it. I fully believe he joined the Twitter board, and they said, “Hey, we’d love to have you, but you’ve got to kind of tamp things down a little bit.” And he was like, “Well, that’s not really what I do. Why don’t I just buy this company?”
Guardian update on Twitter's current state of disintegration. Musk sent all an employees an email, a couple of days ago, giving them then option of clicking "Yes" commit to being part of a "Long hours, hard work, extreme" Twitter 2 (shades of "safe return doubtful") - or going now with 3 months severance pay. Seems like not so many were willing to assent.
posted by rongorongo at 2:27 AM on November 18, 2022
posted by rongorongo at 2:27 AM on November 18, 2022
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I’ll suggest a hypothesis about the childishness that comes to the surface in social media addicts. When we were children, we all had to negotiate our way through the jungle of human power relationships at the playground. When we feel those old humiliations, anxieties and sadisms again as adults — over and over, because the algorithm has settled on that pattern as a powerful way to engage us — habit formation restimulates old patterns that had been dormant. We become children again, not in a positive, imaginative sense, but in a pathetic way.
Twitter poisoning makes sufferers feel more oppressed than is reasonable in response to reasonable rules. The scope of fun is constricted to transgressions. Unfortunately, scale changes everything. Taunts become dangerous hate when amplified. A Twitter-poisoned soul will often complain of a loss of fun when someone succeeds at moderating the spew of hate.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 1:25 PM on November 12, 2022 [6 favorites]