Social Media Broken…

I like the idea - following on from Dawkins' contention that we're simply vehicles for DNA - that Wheat manipulated the race. Hard to fault the logic.

 

Did we (Sapiens) domesticate wheat or did wheat domesticate us...?

 

And now the machines have pulled the same dependency trick on us that wheat did

 

The humans behind the machines....At least for now....

 

Hi Nelson,
Seems to me like flowers evolving to fool insects into pollinating them. They both play their part but only the animal has been tricked. But maybe they manipulate each other even so?

 

Finished Sapiens a couple of days ago. Started on Homo Deus last night. Sapiens is the book I'd have written if I'd had the talent (including for research). Homo Deus looks like being particulary engaging.

Anyway it's the first book whose author refers to the anonymous or prototypical human as she that I've read all the way through (I use 'he or she', 'he/she', or 'they').

 

Good effort.
I'm 1/2 through Deus, a bit chilling. The book does refer to those who comment 'glad I won't be here to see it'....Unfortunately we are....

 

It is like reading the thoughts of a guy on the same wavelength.

 

This forum is as far as I go regards social media.

First thing I did with my mobile phone was delete all the apps that would let me and disabled all the remainder.
All I need is "ring ring it's me", send the odd text(about 5 or six a month from my allowance of 2,000) and play some tunes to my Bluetooth speaker.

Now where's my tin foil hat .

 

Missed this post so a bit late, but I remember the night all FB owned apps went down, mainly because I was trying to use WhatsApp to contact someone and of course Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp all bit the bullet at the same time.

I must admit I held out a little hope they'd all be wiped out.

Full reset, allow people a 2nd choice whether they'd sign up all over again knowing what they know now, especially as the decision of everything being wiped had been taken out of their hands.

Can you imagine? I really think that's what it'd take for some people to walk away.

It's not that they necessarily enjoy the experience all the time, I think in a lot of cases it's more the fact they feel they'd be missing out but if it all went, would that allow people to break free and decide not to give back all their data?

I know there's a lot of people who effectively use them as storage for their photo albums, and of course millions of small businesses worldwide are entirely reliant on Facebook or WhatsApp platforms, the latter is the app of choice for many of the far eastern suppliers of mine, but a full reset would level the playing field. Allow different platforms, more competition which is less data farming focused....we can only dream

 

Just found this screen shot I took to show my daughter at the time it all went down and been back to find the thread



Obviously the story behind this is when all Facebook owned social media went offline (FB, Insta, WhatsApp) the only platform left standing was Twitter

Honestly it was the most surreal twitter thread conversation and really quite entertaining at the time because of the amount of traffic.

Loads of major global brands and their top marketing heads all kept coming and joining in, even the marketing head of instagram turned up at one point, Microsoft, McDonald's, all of them.

Love twitters opening line 'Hello literally everyone' Mark Zuckerberg must have been raging

https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1445078208190291973?s=21

Few tongue in cheek examples below, even the Israeli Defence Force popped in ffs

 

.

 

Twitter is full of rage I must admit, that said at least I don't have to see posts of peoples food, their child in uniform on the first day of school or those other posts people make where they've been on Google to find a deep philosophical quote, then try to pass it on as theirs

no Sharon, you seem to forget I've known you since school and the nearest you've got to philosophy is watching Harry Potter....and you still smell of chip fat for whatever reason so now we know it had nothing to do with the part time job at the chippy

Oh, and my favourite Facebook posts of all time are the cryptic woman scorned ones.

You know, those that usually say something like "Loyalty is everything, I'm strong and always better doing things for myself...Etc etc"

Then the classic first replies usually are:

"you ok hun, dm me "

"Yeah, snakes hun"

 

Appropriately enough the name of his app is the same as the former USSR’s press agency Truth/Pravda. When it gets back up and running I think it should be renamed “Fiends Reunited”.

My guess is that after an initial busy period it’ll go quiet because anyone who doesn’t kiss the Loser in Chief’s giant orange ass will get cancelled and as conflict = traffic = revenue, ad revenue will also flatline.

 

Social media has really taken over the world these days. And I can no longer imagine my life without the websitepin.com where I find all the information about social networks. Everyone has an Instagram account and I love communicating via whatsapp. Signing up through your phone number is also a good idea and is getting really convenient.

 

I found Sapiens fascinating throughout, Deus weaker in the later stages when it's mostly his speculation. He may be more accurate than me, after all he's much closer to the cutting edge (if that doesn't equate to being too close to the trees). My belief that much of what is proposed today is pure hype might be more about me not liking the new; though an awful lot of bullshit is flopped out about, e.g. 'AI' and cryptocurrency.
Anyway, next I decided to finally read McLuhan. I found him unreadable. Now I wonder if all the talk about him in the Sixties was just name-dropping; or did every social commentator take Sociology, thus were familiar with the concepts he was mangling?
(I took Sociology and it was the only subject that literally put me to sleep)
Now I'm reading 'Amusing ourselves to death' by Neil Postman (died in '03 so couldn't deliver it in person). This one I'm really enjoying! Highly legible. The premise strikes me much as Harari's did, as articulating what I've grasped at: that media revolutions shape the way we think. Almost the most basic Truth about ourselves and a kind of Evolutionary Psychology.