Or is it just doomed to the vapidity of sterile commercialization?
It feels like everything is serious these days… and ‘humor’ is only of the commercial variety. Joke communities and circlejerk communities are considered ‘hate groups’ now. Mods will ban you for sarcastic comments on ‘serious’ topics, and even on non serious ones, and everything is politicized either by trolls, bots, or whackjobs.
It’s boring when you can’t joke anymore. I miss my internet communities of 5-10 years ago when you could joke around, and even people of different beliefs and persuasions could laugh at themselves.
Now everything is so deadly serious. It’s a complete bummer. And any sort of ‘edge’ or sarcasm or sardonic remarks are ban-worthy.
I guess it’s just poe’s law run amok? I feel like mods could tell the difference 10 years ago and the non-jokey psychos were just ignored.
There’s a hypothetical phenomenon called the “asshole filter” that some have proposed. Basically, the idea is: hostile, humorless and trolling type people chase away the more pleasant people over time. The end result being, the concentration of assholes is always going up on social media and anonymous online forums, etc.
I don’t think it’s very scientific. How could you accurately measure such a thing. But I have felt like it was happening as various corners of the internet have grown in popularity.
One way I try to deal with it on here is I aggressively block people. Why let my energy get drained when there’s any easy way to never see the jerks again.
I don’t know if this tactic will work long term. There are potentially friendlier instances to migrate to, also. Lemmy is an interesting ongoing experiment.
Hope you hang in. Completely understand if you don’t want to.
I’ve been thinking about social mechanics in online environments for a few years, and this arsehole filter definitively sounds true for me. I think that it has a twofold mechanism:
- it’s easier to endure arseholes if you’re one
- your behaviour sets up the example for newbies
So arseholes have a higher re-incidence and proliferation than nice people.
I also think that this applies to assumptive/dumb/disingenuous vs. smart, and entitled/whiny vs. contributive people. If that’s correct then the phenomenon is likely wider, and we could actually measure it for something else. It wouldn’t prove that the arsehole filter is true, but it would strengthen the hypothesis.
Blame the algorithms.
They intentionally defy normal human social behavior to pit you against people you’re more likely to disagree with in a major irreconcilable way, prompting people to polarize as potential middle grounders are pushed in one direction or the other through constantly being fed the absolute most aggressive examples of “the other side” that are currently active.
It’s like video game matchmaking but the slurs actually rank you up.
In normal human interaction you’d be able to just write the crazies off and stop talking to them, social media is your boundary hating aunt who refuses to accept you have a right to go NC over irreconcilable differences and keeps trying to force reconciliation at every family event despite neither of you having any want for communicating with the other, then acts shocked and horrified when actually succeeding in forcing a conversation just leads to another blow up because some people are just better off not speaking.
Also there are bots going around posing as human users with ridiculous opinions. And there are so many of them, those ridiculous opinions can get upvoted and look popular.
Aren’t you a “free market capitalist” conservative libertarian that argues on socialist/leftist communities? Are you seriously surprised that you go on a predominantly leftist/left-leaning site and see leftist opinions being upvoted more and right-wing conspiracy nutjob comments being downvoted more?
yeah lemmy definite feels like that. full of crazies who won’t relent until you tell them they are right and you are wrong and you are horrible evil person for disagreeing with them over something like bicycle lanes.
but there are some middle ground folks, thankfully.
If the internet isn’t fun for you, find a community on the internet that you actually enjoy being in. Easier said than done, I know, but the internet is a big place.
Smaller every day though, that’s the problem
exactly. stats back this up. internet was far more diverse 10 years ago, now vast majority of traffic goes to a handful of platforms.
Its the polarisation of the masses to the point they no longer wish to interact in a civil manner when disagreeing. I remember the days when u could talk to people who are fundamentally opposed to ur ideology and have a civil discussion. Now everyone jumps at the oppertunity to label everything as something awful without a single attempt to engage in good faith.
same. you could disagree and joke about it. now it’s all demonization, labels, etc.
i feel like you could share an experience/thought and get interesting responses… now it’s just people trying to pigeonhole you and decide if you are ‘on their side’ or not. you could make a joke about a bad date and people would be like ‘haha same’ now it’s ‘why do you hate x’, ‘clearly you are mentally ill’, ‘you are clearly evil’. very little discussion… just judgement and hate.
Am seriously considering founding a not-for-profit to provide an ad free / spam free / bot free basic community. Would cost a dollar or two a month. Chief differences to the lemmy would be one account per person via proof of identity signup (I think this would improve behaviour and discourage spam), a single authority to tackle voting abuse and other things useful to be not federated.
Its an interesting idea i been thinking about something simmillar for a while now actually. If u via proof of identity allow the creation of a “root identity” (a crypto certificate) that can create other identities under it that can be traced by the initial ifentity authority then everyone is simply just a private key that can eb used to authenticate any service u want to implement it for even different federated services can use it instead of a login. U keep the anonymity allow people to have multiple accounts and can garantee that 1 person only gets 1 vote and that all people ur talking to are a real person.
Some pockets here and there are still fun. It’s just hard to find them.
You’re on a network where the majority has strict limits on the topics you’re allowed to poke fun at. Commercialization may have started the trend, but an eternal September of humorless cunts are keeping it going far and wide.
there’s the indieweb movement, smaller sites trying to have fun, like neocities
You had me in the first half, not going to lie.
Am seriously considering founding a not-for-profit to provide an ad free / spam free / bot free basic community. Would cost a dollar or two a month. Chief differences to the lemmy would be one account per person via proof of identity signup (I think this would improve behaviour and discourage spam), a single authority to tackle voting abuse and other things useful to be not federated.
Aside from that revenue would cover technical staff costs + hosting and the rest could go to some good cause. There’s be no ads. No data selling. Not conflict of interest over how the platform evolves. Would be open source. Adults only.
Id keep it as basic as possible to try and capture the spirit of 90s fora. Am not even sure I’d allow inline images or vid.
Thoughts?
God I’d kill for a place with no trolls, politics, shit posts, where your allowed to disagree and have spirited discussions on topics but mods would step in before it becomes an argument.
I feel like everywhere you go online nowadays there’s a `well ackwchullly’ type in the corner. I’d love a place people can get together share ideas and joke around.
Long story short, if you build it they will come.
no politics
good luck there. especially with determining what is or isn’t politics in the first place
amen. i feel like there used to be a barrier. now people get up in my face for drinking a diet coke, because it’s a ‘political act’ because trump drinks diet coke, so therefore i must support trump.
It’s insanity.
Maybe the things you think are jokes are offensive to other people? Watch a movie from 20, 30, 40 years ago and see how those jokes held up - lots of racist, homophobic, sexist stuff. I’m not saying that’s what you’re looking for, but just that some jokes don’t age well. When you know better, do better.
I do know better. I know about diversity and acceptance, and taking it easy, and living and letting live, and to each his own, and being a traveler, and having an open mind, and ribbing, and separating the important stuff from the unimportant stuff.
I know things that are so much better than getting offended over more and more things each year. I know better, so I do better.
I don’t get offended over jokes because I have contempt for that behavior.
same.
If you did, you’d know it isn’t about “being offended by more every year” - its recognizing that something is offensive to others and adjusting because some of us have better shit to do than being rude cause its “fun.”
If you can’t be fun without low hanging fruit gay jokes, you’re probably not actually that fun. 🤷
No. I value fun. I myself choose often not to be offended when I realize others aren’t trying to offend me. I almost never get offended. I know it’s possible to live this way. I know that others’ jokes aren’t a threat to me.
You don’t seem to realize that a thing being offensive isn’t an objective fact. Offensiveness is in the eye of the offended. That gives power to the offended, to solve their own problem.
Again, if you can’t be “fun” without offending people - You aren’t fun, you’re a dick.
Lots of niche forums are like what you say. Wider interest platforms like Lemmy try to be everything for everyone, so have to be more bland. In the further reaches of the net you can still make fun of Javascript as much as you want and no one will yell at you.
I’ve been part of quite a lot of communities ranging from old electronics to silly song contests to cartoons with sentient objects (you can tell by my profile picture) to vidya games. Almost all of them have been incredibly fun at first, but eventually turned into shadows of their former selves. It’s honestly really depressing.
Love this post
My feeling is that this is temporary. Currently there is a big fight about what is offensive and what is not. It is only logical that, when that public debate is still ongoing, people will have less tolerance towards offensiveness: we haven’t reached a consensus yet on what we should tolerate in our online language. We as a species are not used to the responsibility of anonymous communication and the repercussions it has on how we act and perceive that communication.
Also, movements and changes most of the time go to the other extreme first, before landing in the middle somewhere. That’s just how change often (not always) works.
That, or you’re getting old and you’re doing the “back in my day” thing. Could be that too. The world changes, language changes, jokes change. It’s just part of life man.
Edit: welp, this apparantly is a hot take, when I thought it was quite neutral. I’m not saying we shouldn’t stand up against offensive behaviour (my view is the opposite). It’s that coming to a sensible consensus about certain topics as a society takes time. It takes time to convince people to change their ways, but it also takes time to not fight for extremes when you’re having new talking points. Everything is balance. But in my attempt to keep it short I apparantly didn’t convey much of that message.
What places have you looked?
