Guess I'm going to have to mute conversations on Mastodon, which is... annoying for me but the only option I have if I want my mentions to stop getting clogged with people who cannot or will not shift their understanding of how social media can work.
Perhaps in lieu of the reply-limit options that many of us wish existed in Mastodon, people could train themselves to:
- click-through and see if there are more posts by the original author that clarify their current position or desire for communication on the topic you're responding about;
- click-through to see what replies are there. Instead of simply replying with the same dozen responses that the original author likely got, you could either respond to someone else and create a functional conversation or you could decide against replying because someone's already said it;
- just stop tagging the original author because, unlike other services, the original author can be removed from a thread and it can decrease the mentions in their comments.
While I'd love some better reply-limit options, I think we could address this if we'd just add more friction to our own existence on social media instead of believing that we have to just respond to everything all the time no matter what.
We really need to rid ourselves of this reply-guy energy and start realising that conversations online are a lot like conversations offline. You wouldn't (or at least you shouldn't) just start replying to every conversation happening around you; you'd be more likely to be more thoughtful and considered of your actions.
I find it absolutely hilarious that Noam Chomsky is, at the time of posting, not yet dead but two “reputable” papers that tend to “support” the “left” have both published obituaries.
Jacobin published one and, upon realising he's not dead, changed the headline to reflect that. They just wanted to “celebrate” him, that's all. Never mind the fact they didn't change any of the past tense in the body paragraphs or the references to how there “never will be another like him.” (Except there will be. There will be many. He was not unique or special; he was not some Great Man. He was simply well-placed.)
Then, upon further inspection to see if he really had died, there was a fully retracted New Statesman article written by Yanis Varoufakis; it was archived, which made that an easy task to track. But if anything ever did feel like someone who ran a cult of personality and was using the cults of personality around others, that did. Sometimes it feels as if people give Yanis far more credit than he deserves.
It probably won't be long for Chomsky, which is just as life goes. But the least people could do is wait for him to die and to get a statement from his family before they hit publish.
Forever wondering why people who complain about others not listening refuse to fucking listen.
I said what I said, it's been recorded on a voice note, listen again if you missed it. Don't tell me “I forgot what you said” and then immediately throw out your opinion on the matter, like it makes any sense at all when you've refused to go back and listen to my actual words in a short fucking voice clip.
Now, if you don't understand it or the tech has fucked it up, say that. But don't just go “I forgot” and keep going, like you somehow remember. When your opinion doesn't even match the conversation.
One day, it would be nice if more cis men realised they were responsible for the upkeep of their homes and that they do not need to be asked to do something that is commonly done.
I shouldn't have to ask you to do dishes. I shouldn't have to ask you to vacuum around the house. I shouldn't have to ask you to clean the bathroom. You live here, just as I do. You're capable of doing the same things I am and without anyone requesting them of you. You don't need permission.
But you still refuse to unlearn all the bullshit you claim to “be against.”
This is especially true of the cis men who claim to be “feminists.”
Until you realise that you're also capable of taking care of the world around you, that it is equally your responsibility...
You are no feminist. You are merely a pretender who believes they hold principles they've never engaged in.
Don't mind me. I just enjoy soft-blocking you on the Mastodon instance so you stop following me, making it harder for you to tell me things that I know are false or aren't applicable to the majority of people.
You're not bad enough for me to straight up block, but you're annoying enough that I want to add some friction to future interactions.
I genuinely think that people fail to understand either how little tech-related literacy people have as a result of most of the web being corporate bullshit (e.g., Facebook, Google, Xitter, etc) and how many people genuinely conflated the internet with Facebook (as a result of them primarily using their phones, setting up Facebook because it came bundled and was cheaper than other internet-related media, and Meta intended that to be the case).
We have a lot of shit to do so that we can either actually learn about online infrastructure or unlearn the bullshit we've imbibed for decades at this point (which is, for some people, their whole lives).
So I really think that if you want people to work on better infrastructure, we need the support of people who know how and can. And my experience right now is that not a lot of tech people really want to and that those who do are few and far between.
So if you're demanding it and you know? You know what your role should be, rather than looking down on us for doing what we can and know we're able.
I'm seeing a lot of people making demands on groups and individuals without considering how not-simple many of their suggestions are.
These things tend to focus around infrastructure, particularly around communications and online infrastructure. There's a lot of work to be done here for sure to create 'open communication' where people want it but to also develop agreeable moderation policies (though, this last bit is frustrating in some ways as an anarchist because... it still implies a top-down approach).
A lot of people do not have the necessary knowledge to build the systems people keep demanding. They do not know how to make their own self-hosted web servers; they do not know how to manage a VPS. They may not know what the safest place is to buy access to either a VPS or shared hosting is (I sure as fuck don't).
We just don't have the necessary infrastructure to make all of this widely available, but so many people keep getting all up in arms about people not knowing what to do or how to do it. And the more frustrating thing is that they're demanding it without even trying to offer any assistance.
It's so tiring.
Interesting how often RTFM [read the fucking manual] folks refuse to read any form of manual or tutorial for anything other than a Linux distro.
You'd think their proclivity for demanding assistance in any other realm of life where there are written instructions they could take time out of their life to read would also make them sympathetic to those for whom a manual isn't legible or coherent.
Or at least coherently maintain their so-called “principles.”