dangle me not.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • I’m not sure how long you’ve been here - not assuming how long you’ve been lurking, or that this is your first account, but I think it really is easier not to care here. All kidding aside, try it. You don’t have this whole upvote/award dopamine cycle here, and in many cases, anyone can see the number of downvotes a comment has vs upvotes - something that reddit long ago “fuzzed” along with actual vote counts.

    For instance, the comment I’m replying to has 3 upvotes (one of them mine), and 1 downvote as of right now. This ratio may stay the same, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you got more downvotes, because your comment was a kind of dismissive reply to a comment that probably represents what a lot of folks who’ve been here a while feel, which also came from a user that is very active and generally well liked. I could not begin to tell you their upvote count (can’t even see my own) as a proof of their popularity, so I just have to go by what I observe in my day to day, and this place is still small enough that you see familiar usernames in a variety of communities.

    This is still kind of a small town, and you may come to see this bug as a feature in time. I did.


  • Many props to you. I feel like reddit doesn’t count as social media, but I couldn’t energetically defend that position. They are certainly engaging in social media tech bro behavior, so the distinction probably doesn’t matter at this point, but it felt different than social media before it went to shit. Now, obviously when it “went to shit” is a point in time that is highly relative to the observer, but always sometime after the observer joined. That’s just the nature of enshittification.


  • yeah and I gobble that shit up like candy.

    I am not immune, and I don’t find all algorithms predatory - for example, I log on knowing that steam is selling me a product, but I am not the product. I just said in many ways I am successfully avoiding “the algorithm”, though the scare quotes immediately following a run down of social media networks was meant to indicate a specific type of algorithm that is meant to induce engagement or enragement (both are profitable) and change my behavior because I am the product.

    I still have plenty of time for algorithms that serve me up games for that crucial 15% of my library that I bought but haven’t played yet.

    One thing at a time Maxxie.



  • Slight quibble. Airlines are pushing to upgrade the technology that we use to manage our air space so that we can get more throughput on the runways safely.

    They don’t worry quite so much about bloodying your nose, killing your dog, or destroying your guitar but they do not fuck around with capital S Safety (see Valujet) and you can only consolidate so much before your main competition for takeoffs is you, and the limitations of the system you are working in.

    Cynical? Yes. Does our air traffic technology still need a massive upgrade even to maintain the status quo? Also yes.



  • That isn’t an accident.

    There is this insight that I remember reading about internet scams, that they are poor quality with lots of misspelling by design. According to what I’ve read, this acts as a useful filter: If you’re smart enough to pick up on things like misspellings, we don’t want to waste our time scamming you.

    That is now essentially the entire ethos of the modern internet.


  • There is a lot of heated debate about this. They’re saying due to COVID, that “early” can mean anything from 0-8 now, which obviously I don’t understand but what can you do? They are saying it.

    I must assume from your helpful correction that 2006 is the actual year twitter came out but even then I literally cannot be arsed to look that up on purpose because, I cannot stress this enough, I very much do not care about social media, as per my comment. So if you say 2006, that is what we’re going with.


  • modifier@lemmy.catoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldWho needs it?
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    4 days ago

    Can I just brag for a moment? I feel like I am among my people, and there is a little lesson at the end.

    to calibrate: White dude in my 40s, nerdy by nature but non-technical in my education/employment

    Twitter - signed up in the early 2000s when it first came out, pretty much stopped using by 2011

    Facebook - signed up in the early 2000s when it first got big, pretty much stopped using by 2011, deleted my abandoned account last year

    Google +, I’m sure I never signed up, but I had an account that I never used. Google being google negated me ever having to contemplate whether or not I would ever use it

    Snapchat - never used

    TikTok - never used

    Instagram - never used

    Are there others? I don’t know.

    Reddit was the only “social media” I ever used for a sustained period of time and the only one where I felt part of any sort of community. I left reddit in June of 2023 when I made this account and I’ve never been back.

    So, in many ways, I am successfully resisting/avoiding “the algorithm” and I am a good example of high media literacy with good resistance to manipulation by social media.

    But, just to emphasize why community itself is so valuable and worthy of exploitation by techbros, here are life changes I’ve made since joining Lemmy, even without any algorithms or dark patterns. Not that Lemmy is strictly causal in all of these, but the relationship is there:

    • I am now making my way through TNG, and am generally more Trek-literate

    • Linux, natch

    • Cancelled all streaming services (honestly most ‘subscription services’) in favor of a NAS running Plex (for now, will probably move to Jellyfin), Calibre, AudioBookshelf, Immich, Joplin, NextCloud, etc, etc, etc

    • Now using Steam Deck as my daily driver for gaming

    In other words, though I prize my independent thinking and avoidance of Big Cloud, and though I think all of these are positive changes representing a positive influence, I am clearly impressionable. And so are you.