#1
Post rating: +
"On Tuesday, Twitter Inc. announced another dreary set of quarterly earnings. While the company beat investor expectations, it’s still running at a loss of $132 million after taxes. Its fourth-quarter projections seem low. Worst of all, its namesake product has essentially failed to add any active American users in 2015.

Twitter stock fell more than 10 percent after the announcement....

Twitter, some time ago, depended on a common mode of participation. That mode was built on a unity of writing and consumption, people writing and reading at the same time, that let “audiences and producers shift roles and come to share contexts.” As more people have joined Twitter though, that mode has gotten more and more strained:

'The sense of participatory collective—always fraught—has waned as more and more subcultures are crammed and collapsed into a common, traceable, searchable medium. We hang over each other’s heads, more and more heavily, self-appointed swords of Damocles waiting with baited breath to strike.'

And what has specifically gotten pressed is the balance of spoken-word habits and written-word ones. “The rot we’re seeing in Twitter is the rot of participatory media devolved into competitive spheres where the collective ‘we’ treats conversational contributions as fixed print-like identity claims,” she writes."

https://t.co/iqQl0zTbAc

Edited by RedMaistre ()

#2
Post rating: +++++
if rhizzone can last longer than twitter then communism will win
#3
mt.real
Post rating: +
whoever you are quoting seems to be using some kind of nonsense hybrid of sociological thought and corporate marketing speak that says nothing

participatory media: people talking to each other on twitter
devolved into competitive spheres: follow people they like and form groups
where the collective 'we': where people who agree
treats conversational contributions: think of tweets and retweeting
as fixed print-like identity claims: as .... things they like??????????? and agree on???
and that is a problem??

i don't understand what she is suggesting, what were they hoping? for people to follow more people they don't agree with? for people to rope in more users? how does anything she said there address or explain any of that?

i agree that the problems of twitter are the problems of capitalism, in that its economic self-justification relies on infinite expansion in a finite world, they finance themselves only through parasitic and unnecessary contrivance, and they have no option for it to be "enough".

which it clearly is. twitter is done expanding, so now they have to shut it down because enough isn't, and people being able to communicate with each other freely and easily doesn't make anyone money

i guess i should start trying to make an opentwitter or freetwitter or freebird or whatever a good name for that would be
#4
mt.real
Post rating: +
if there was a free version of twitter how should it change to be better for radical thought? i guess i should ask some marxist media people, there are enough of them
#5
Post rating: ~
This is the actual Atlantic article i was referencing in my post in disciplines thread
#6
Post rating: ~

drwhat posted:

whoever you are quoting seems to be using some kind of nonsense hybrid of sociological thought and corporate marketing speak that says nothing

participatory media: people talking to each other on twitter
devolved into competitive spheres: follow people they like and form groups
where the collective 'we': where people who agree
treats conversational contributions: think of tweets and retweeting
as fixed print-like identity claims: as .... things they like??????????? and agree on???
and that is a problem??

i don't understand what she is suggesting, what were they hoping? for people to follow more people they don't agree with? for people to rope in more users? how does anything she said there address or explain any of that?



1. Well, It is an Atlantic article. The author is merely describing in an impressionistic manner the surface symptoms with, as you pointed out, sociological-ad speak. It is not interested in connecting this up with analysis of how these are the effects of larger social, political, and economic processes.

2. There is congregating around shared likes and identifies, and then there is Balkanization, tribalism,and anti-social vindictiveness. The former is simply a vital (and inescapable) element for every human existence, the latter are phenomena fatal for both the habits of communal life and intellectual debate. Twitter did not invent these phenomena in their first world, post-modern incarnations, it just that the no-place of cyber space tends to exaggerate them to nth degree.


#7
Post rating: ~

drwhat posted:

if there was a free version of twitter how should it change to be better for radical thought? i guess i should ask some marxist media people, there are enough of them



You can't solve alienation by merely changing the medium by which it expresses itself.

Assuming otherwise is another error made by the author of that article.

#8
mt.real
Post rating: ~

RedMaistre posted:

You can't solve alienation by merely changing the medium by which it expresses itself.

Assuming otherwise is another error made by the author of that article.



it seems practically self-evident that decentralized mass communication is more conducive to radical thought. it's not a cause of course, but surely it is a multiplying factor. mass media will never go away. there will always be one form of it or another now that the technology exists. so without decentralized mass media we have centralized mass media, which will never, ever be relinquished by those who can control it. as incomparably shit as the internet is, the current form of it is still probably better than it not existing? i think?

i'm not actually sure though. i also argue that any sort of mass communication should be blown up asap. but that is a little more difficult to achieve than just accepting that it exists and using it for good things (like having this conversation) instead of solely as a propaganda consumption device

#9
[account deactivated]
#10
Post rating: +

drwhat posted:

if there was a free version of twitter how should it change to be better for radical thought? i guess i should ask some marxist media people, there are enough of them



Actually it's backwards... twitter is a capitalist appropriation of txtmob.

http://www.appliedautonomy.com/txtmob.html

#11
Kurdt
Post rating: +
twitter is bad shit
#12
mt.real
Post rating: ~

Gssh posted:

drwhat posted:
if there was a free version of twitter how should it change to be better for radical thought? i guess i should ask some marxist media people, there are enough of them


Actually it's backwards... twitter is a capitalist appropriation of txtmob.

http://www.appliedautonomy.com/txtmob.html


true

so now it just needs to be replaced by txtmob again

#13
[account deactivated]
#14
Post rating: ~

gyrofry posted:

twitter is bad shit



nah it's actually better than lots of things. have you been blocked by david graeber yet? Maybe try getting that done and check back with us

#15
Post rating: +

drwhat posted:

RedMaistre posted:

You can't solve alienation by merely changing the medium by which it expresses itself.

Assuming otherwise is another error made by the author of that article.

it seems practically self-evident that decentralized mass communication is more conducive to radical thought. it's not a cause of course, but surely it is a multiplying factor. mass media will never go away. there will always be one form of it or another now that the technology exists. so without decentralized mass media we have centralized mass media, which will never, ever be relinquished by those who can control it. as incomparably shit as the internet is, the current form of it is still probably better than it not existing? i think?

i'm not actually sure though. i also argue that any sort of mass communication should be blown up asap. but that is a little more difficult to achieve than just accepting that it exists and using it for good things (like having this conversation) instead of solely as a propaganda consumption device



I'm not a luddite. And any criticism of present day media should be made with the qualification that it permits a far greater range of voices to be heard, including ones that had previously been practically invisible. Greater decentralization of media technology does indeed play to the advantage of those trying to disseminate radical and count-cultural ideas.

This doesn't preclude one from acknowledging that twitter et al helps perpetuate new forms of societal estrangement though.

Edited by RedMaistre ()

#16
[account deactivated]
#17
Kurdt
Post rating: ~
i goatsed david graeber irl
#18
Marxsplainer
Post rating: +

gyrofry posted:

i goatsed david graeber irl




EXT. CITY STREET - DAY

DAVID GRAEBER walks briskly down the sidewalk, talking into his phone.

DAVID
....and that's why we should support the revolutionaries in Kobane! Don't you realize that they're a vanguar--

DISHEVELED MANIAC springs out of a side alley, waving his arms. He jumps in front of DAVID, blocking his path.

DAVID
What the...!?

MANIAC turns his back on DAVID, lowering his filthy trousers and bending at the waist.

MANIAC
hey david are you a nazi?

CLOSE SHOT: MANIAC'S ASSHOLE

MANIAC's asshole is huge and distended. MANIAC slips both hands into his asshole to the knuckles and stretches it hideously wide.

SWISH PAN TO DAVID's SHOCKED FACE

DAVID
Wha-? You're blocked, rape threat enabler.

#19
Online
Post rating: +++++
For those interested in trolling David Grabber, calling him "Anarchy Dad" triggers him 100% of the time. He will become very mad online.
#20
Post rating: ~
An anarchy dad: The worst of all possible worlds.
#21
Post rating: +
banning twitter post-revolution may not be the most important thing that we do, but it will be the most satisfying
#22
Post rating: +
i ctrl + f ass on this thread and the only things that came up were the words "assuming" and "asshole" and NOT "ass of damocles." shameful...
#23
Post rating: ~
Police are CTRL + Fing for a man with an enormous b-hole tonight after a, *ahem*, "radical" professor was almost captured by the wanted man's massive turd chasm.
#24
Post rating: +
sung to the tune "Nowhere Man" by the Beatles©

anarchy dad, please listen (oh lalala)
you don't know what you're missing (oh lalala)
anarchy dad, my tweets blocked at your command (ahhhhh lalalalala)

#25
Post rating: ~
im pretty sure by now anarchy dad has the entire rhizzone on block, even the posters who never post
#26
hi
Post rating: ~
twitter's fine
#27
[account deactivated]
#28
Post rating: +
Everything is fine, for those of good will.
#29
Post rating: ~
Of course, a lot of the dynamics, good and bad, of social media are of course the result of the over-production of Mandarins, or would be Mandarins, with nothing better to do....


Or why 'problems' with technology ultimately return to the labor question.
#30
Post rating: +

RedMaistre posted:

over-production of Mandarins, or would be Mandarins, with nothing better to do....


idk about this "over production" of mandarins. i can eat a whole lot of them!!

#31
Post rating: +

c_man posted:

RedMaistre posted:

over-production of Mandarins, or would be Mandarins, with nothing better to do....

idk about this "over production" of mandarins. i can eat a whole lot of them!!



Student debt crisis: Solved.

#32
Post rating: +

karphead posted:

sung to the tune "Nowhere Man" by the Beatles©

anarchy dad, please listen (oh lalala)
you don't know what you're missing (oh lalala)
anarchy dad, my tweets blocked at your command (ahhhhh lalalalala)


i sung this to the tune of the spider man theme cause i dont listen to the beatles or know that song. it stopped working after the first two words

#33
[account deactivated]
#34
Post rating: +
A Self-identified "zombie killer" (i.e. enemy of the people) thinks Twitter=French revolution (or rather the Charles Dickens/Edmund Burke caricature of the same), and that biggest problem facing the web today is not government surveillance or corporate monopolization but "abuse."

https://medium.com/bad-words/why-twitter-s-dying-and-what-you-can-learn-from-it-9ed233e37974
#35
Post rating: ~
Granted, unlike the author of the Atlantic article, he makes an effort, however thinly thought out, to connect internet nastiness with real life social ills. But the extension and overuse of the category of the category "abuse" in the description of unpleasant online interactions is in itself one of the symptoms of the impossibility of the "town square" environment that the author allegedly aspires for.
#36
Post rating: +
The expectation that a public sphere should look like the ideal described by Habermas finds its fulfillment with the retreat of the respectable into gated communities.

Edited by RedMaistre ()

#37
Post rating: ~
what academics or other serious people should i follow on twitter? so far i only follow u lugheads
#38
Post rating: +
david graber!?
#39
Online
Post rating: ~
if you wanna hear about kurds all day sure
#40
Online
Post rating: +
If you mostly just follow the idiot fuckers from here, and are looking for something a little more refined and sophisticated, might I suggest @McCaineNL?