Something I notice about twitter: how much people dunk on one another. Certainly far more than in my e'day life. I've worked hard to remove it from my feed, muting & unfollowing people. And yet I still see it a lot. I wonder how much it's due to design decisions about the medium?
Something I dislike about this: it's very difficult to avoid absorbing conversational norms from your environment. Of course, you can consciously reject bad norms. But it's the (many, many) norms you're not conscious of which are corrosive
It's interesting to think about good goals for social media. A few ideas I find interesting to think about:
1. Having (and helping catalyze) the best ongoing conversations of your life
1. Having (and helping catalyze) the best ongoing conversations of your life
2. For each of us, individually, 99% of our civilization is dark matter: most of the conversations and communities we'd like to be part of we don't even know exist. Social media can be a tool to help you discover and connect to that dark matter
3. A place to discover and help create your tribe
These don't seem high priorities for social media today - not even directionally. I have participated in communities which seemed closer. The original wiki (of Ward Cunningham) and Friendfeed. dang's moderation of HN is very thoughtful too, though he's fighting a lot of forces
Interesting to think about what a kind, Kumbaya Twitter would be like
Also interesting to think about how far we could simultaneously move toward *also* being honest about ideas and values and power (which are in genuine tension with Kumbaya Twitter)
Also interesting to think about how far we could simultaneously move toward *also* being honest about ideas and values and power (which are in genuine tension with Kumbaya Twitter)
Years ago, Reality TV was having a moment, and a couple of surfer-house reality TV shows were tried. I read an amusing article about why they were shut down: the surfers were simply too relaxed and kind to one another, and they couldn't get the required conflict going
A surfer with a big competition would do badly because his housemates had kept him awake partying while he tried to sleep. He'd be interviewed, & the producers would try to stoke anger. But he'd be: "Yeah, I was bummed about how I did, but I get it, people need to relax [etc]"
Just going back to this: some of the most valued conversations of my life were people telling me I was wrong, very very uncompromisingly (but never meanly, which seems inimical to insight). You can go a long way toward the insightful-and-kind frontier:
I've noticed that many people behaving as assholes justify it as though they're telling hard truths others are unwilling to face, or just generally in service of the good. It may begin that way. But I suspect that being self-righteously mean quickly becomes a habit
It's something which bothers me about the "block" button. AFAICT it's very hard to have a good Twitter experience with tens of thousands of followers and no use of block. But "block" is a (slightly) mean thing to do ("no, you cannot see me, cannot talk to me, etc")
Put another way: it's hard to block kindly. And so it's an environment where it's hard to exist well without practicing something which it's very hard to do kindly. I wish I knew of a good solution to this.
Well, that turned - entirely unexpectedly - into a long thread! Thanks for reading along, people who make it this far 😀. And Happy New Year!
Incidentally, Jenova Chen has a fantastic talk about designing the video game "Journey". Amongst other things, they worked very, very hard to ensure player interactions in Journey can only be positive. Lots of interesting thinking about design patterns: gdcvault.com
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