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Brent Fitzgerald
@bf
Internet culture is mostly awful, yet for some reason people here want to make more of it. What’s the better thing after this repetitive world of profiles and badges and followers and gifs and algos and exhortations to touch grass? Crypto doesn’t fix this btw.
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Steve
@sdv.eth
I think flatter social hierarchies like forums, image boards, discord servers, etc are the backbone of meaningful internet culture. Public social graphs create status create ego create “attention economies” which algorithms reward in a vicious cycle.
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shazow
@shazow.eth
I think that's right, *public* internet culture is basically the equivalent of celebrity culture (where everyone gets to pretend to be a micro-celebrity) right down to the gossip rags, envy, etc. Dunno if there's a way to "fix" public internet culture, but private communities don't have to suffer this way.
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Steve
@sdv.eth
One fix could be to hide the metrics that social media has popularized: follows, likes, and reblog/tweet/cast/etc Then just distill it down to one metric: replies
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shazow
@shazow.eth
I'm all for this kind of experimenting, I think that's great. I doubt that it'll fix this particular issue though, but could make it somewhat better. I suspect the main effect comes from people acting "performatively" when they are in front of a non-trivial audience. I've noticed this in myself when I'm in medium-sized chat groups (e.g. 10 people vs ones where it's 2-3 people). I have a greater urge to dunk, to take less generous reads, to argue, etc. It takes a fair bit of effort/mindfulness to avoid doing all the time, and easy to slip up.
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Steve
@sdv.eth
True, likely the bigger culprit is just public feeds which fundamentally is an ongoing battle for attention. Group chats definitely have a more natural structure to them, where there’s usually one common thread amongst participants and the vibes are much more in tact, and thus less of a power struggle for attention.
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