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Tag: mastodon

It’s just some web forum

Posted on by Alex Daily

In the ongoing evaluation my relationship with social media, today1Well, Wednesday the 27th, I guess. Dinosaur Comics’ T-Rex weighs in with a persuasive argument.

T-Rex: "Today is the day I remove the phrase "social media" from my vocabulary… and replace it with "web forum!" That IS basically what they are, after all! There's no magic trick to them — they're just some messageboard: a web forum you sign up to and then can see what other people said on said forum." Dromiceiomimus: "Okay, sure, but they're really important forums!" T-Rex: "Are they though?? REALLY??" Utahraptor: "T-Rex, did you see what today's main character posted on social?" T-Rex: "I try to stay above forum drama." Utahraptor: "Okay, fair, but did you see what stupid changes they're making to Twitter?" T-Rex: "Oh, no, sorry — I'm on a different forum now." Utahraptor: "Ah. Cool." Narrator: "Later, T-Rex considers tying the success of both his personal and professional life to posts on a web forum." T-Rex: "Hah hah hah! WHY WOULD I EVER DO THAT"

Dinosaur Comics #4104, Ryan North, 2023
And he’s right. Because framing is everything.

I often say I don’t believe in coming out, because I don’t relate to the premise, to the narrative. I’m queer, it’s not a secret, I’m not hiding anything, just because you don’t know doesn’t mean I’m putting myself or parts of myself in a box — and when I do tell you, I’m almost always just correcting an inaccurate assumption. “I’m non-binary,” no different than “oh, I’m Frisian,” or “I don’t have a drivers’ license.”2“When did you first realise you were a different kind of vehicle user than your culture assigned you at birth?” “When I nearly drove into a ditch one fucking minute into my first ever driving lesson.” It’s just a little correction.

When we talk about the large algorithmic generative models people call “artificial intelligence,” so much of the language is people-language. We “ask” these models things, we have “conversations” with these algorithms, when the words these things generate are not reflective of accurate information we accuse the models of “hallucinating.” All of these are real things people do, and not actually what these things do. I don’t want to diminish the sincere connections some people feel they’re making with these machines, but all that’s happening is the software knows how to put words in an order that seems plausible, based on your prompt.3Tip: Try prompting ChatGPT to tell you how many times the letter “N” occurs in the word “reconnaissance.” It’s just been well-tuned to follow your lead. We have to talk about these things the way they actually are.4I’m not innocent here, either — the Enemy has put the people-language so in my head that this was not easy to write.

Social media is no different. Framing is everything.

Twitter is just some web forum. You sign up, and then you can post, and see what other people are posting on the web forum. Truly, how is that different than the rickety phpBB forum you used to hang out on in 2006? What actually is meant to make it a really important forum? This or that number of posts per second? The famous people on it? The politicians? Frankly, I’ve never been entirely clear what these people are even doing on some web forum. Shouldn’t they be minding their business, shouldn’t they be sending memos to each other? Remember when the forum got real mad about some guy who was a little weird to his kid about beans? Just forum drama. It’s not the end of the world. Why would it be? Why would it be?

At my own little personal Mastodon instance, there’s no politicians, no huge number of posts per second. Nobody ever gets mad about the beans guy. It is actually just like the rickety old phpBB forum I used to hang out on in 2006. It’s not important at all. We don’t pretend it is.

It’s just some web forum.

  • 1
    Well, Wednesday the 27th, I guess.
  • 2
    “When did you first realise you were a different kind of vehicle user than your culture assigned you at birth?” “When I nearly drove into a ditch one fucking minute into my first ever driving lesson.”
  • 3
    Tip: Try prompting ChatGPT to tell you how many times the letter “N” occurs in the word “reconnaissance.”
  • 4
    I’m not innocent here, either — the Enemy has put the people-language so in my head that this was not easy to write.

On blogging

Posted on by Alex Daily

Is anyone happy about the state of the internet in the Year of Luigi 2023? Search sucks now, what you do find is riddled with generated text and SEO land grabs, and everything you use every day has either been ruined by a billionaire or is owned by a billionaire with ruining-it aspirations, which is a problem if you like using it because it’s kicking you off the boat, and a problem if you don’t like using it but are forced to because you’re chained to a boat that sucks to be on even more now. And that’s just what’s top of mind right now because they’re the examples everyone uses when complaining about the state of the internet in the aforementioned Year of Luigi 2023.

So what does make me happy on the internet? What are my e-raindrops on digital roses, what are my electronic brown paper packages tied up with @string? Mastodon, obviously, because that’s where my friends are. Comics of all kinds, from snazzy webtoons to archives of ancient-and-still-running newspaper strips. Playing board games with friends and strangers alike on a website from 2002. Finding little personal websites is a big one. I love clicking on a link in something posted 15 years ago and seeing it still go somewhere. Remember, before he sold it, the way Wordle sprung up?

So what’s the string that ties all of these packages together? It’s all pretty people-first. I think it’s also pretty… billionaire-last. What I like here is the people. You could get rid of the billionaires1Who aren’t people., and everything I like about the web would still be there, but the same isn’t true about the people. No people, no internet worth having. So how do you get rid of the billionaires, or at least solve the billionaire problem2I stand by my pitch of, we make a list, we guillotine number one, and then we look knowingly at the rest.3As always, references to the guillotine in my writing should be read as, we do everything we can, starting with the options they’re willing to go along with, and if that doesn’t do it, well, you know. I talk about guillotining like this because I’m far more interested in being very clear about what the end of that particular road looks like than I am in negotiating. for yourself?

On billionaire-owned platforms4And I keep referring to “the billionaires” as shorthand because the Twitter issue is so fresh, but, say, platforms owned or controlled by black box megacorporations like Google or whatever the company that runs TikTok is called are clearly part of the problem, too. I am restricted in doing so. On these platforms it’s very common for what you put out there to be considered in some way in the public domain, you don’t control what happens to anything you do, you are never the captain of your own ship. And the trends are in the wrong direction. YouTubers chase the algorithm like dogs chasing cars, TikTok has kids saying “s🥚🥚🥚” and “unalive” because to say “sex” or “death” is to hex your relationship with the algorithm.

I don’t know what the solution is here. I do know I don’t want this, and that I don’t think anyone should want this. I think I can alleviate some of the issues, at least for myself, simply by being more conscientious about how and where I put things out into the world. What do Mastodon, this blog, little personal websites, all have that I don’t have on the big platforms? Here I have ownership, control, and freedom.

Baio5Who I have one-sided joke beef with., there, in 2016, in the post Kottke quotes, quotes Kottke from three years earlier saying the blog has died. No matter how much we might constantly ask for it to, the situation has not meaningfully changed in the decade since6Though I guess I can now name, like Baio asks, a great, single-author blog that started in the past few years. I wonder why this one stands out to me so much. and it doesn’t particularly look or feel like it will. But the web isn’t a sea, where the rising tide brings inevitable change over and over again on a regular schedule. The web is the people on it, it’s me, it’s you, it’s all of our friends, and all of our aunts. And change is the decisions we make.

Starting a blog will not make the problems with the state of the internet in the Year of Luigi 2023 magically go away. But I can at least live the change I want to see.

  • 1
    Who aren’t people.
  • 2
    I stand by my pitch of, we make a list, we guillotine number one, and then we look knowingly at the rest.
  • 3
    As always, references to the guillotine in my writing should be read as, we do everything we can, starting with the options they’re willing to go along with, and if that doesn’t do it, well, you know. I talk about guillotining like this because I’m far more interested in being very clear about what the end of that particular road looks like than I am in negotiating.
  • 4
    And I keep referring to “the billionaires” as shorthand because the Twitter issue is so fresh, but, say, platforms owned or controlled by black box megacorporations like Google or whatever the company that runs TikTok is called are clearly part of the problem, too.
  • 5
    Who I have one-sided joke beef with.
  • 6
    Though I guess I can now name, like Baio asks, a great, single-author blog that started in the past few years. I wonder why this one stands out to me so much.
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