Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2022-11-21, 05:18:

The funny thing is that one of the reasons I joined Vogons on the first place is because this board is probably the coziest, the least politically-inclined discussion forum at that time. Politics always tend to be toxic, and that's also the reason I've been avoiding social media since 2014. That's also the reason why I've been holding such negative views on social media, especially Twitter, where toxicities like this, this, and this take place.

You will get no argument from me that the largest threat of our time is the war on being male and the subsequent fallout of the fact that 70% of men 18-39 are single, never married, no kids (you provided some of the reasons)

If you want your eyes opened
to see why it’s a problem get yourself setup with 4chan and its ilk, get into a few by invitation only situations and watch .

Your examples which are public and searchable are nothing compared to what happens in semi public but not searchable arenas like 4chan and worse. Death threats are how you say hello there and most there are usually armed in real life.

What is “unfortunate “ is the amplification of social and not so social media and its ability to draw focus of society as a whole on solely fringe comments from tin foil hats.

The individuals and entities getting butt hurt are mostly irrelevant and getting worried over things that don’t matter while ignoring actual serious problems

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TAgUHyXr7_Y

The net affect of social media is to amplify the thoughts of a few hundred mentally disturbed individuals and broadcast them out as if those views are common, important and mainstream

Which they aren’t.

One of the examples I most recently encountered was a woman asking a question about if the headlight enclosures on an HHR would fit her cobalt, one dude PMd her death threats and threatened her family because she asked stupid questions wasting the groups time.

For every public example there is also the less public commentary that drives folks into their corners feeling justified to make blanket accessments.

rmay635703 wrote on 2022-11-21, 06:06:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2022-11-21, 05:18:

The funny thing is that one of the reasons I joined Vogons on the first place is because this board is probably the coziest, the least politically-inclined discussion forum at that time. Politics always tend to be toxic, and that's also the reason I've been avoiding social media since 2014. That's also the reason why I've been holding such negative views on social media, especially Twitter, where toxicities like this, this, and this take place.

You will get no argument from me that the largest threat of our time is the fallout of the fact that 70% of men 18-39 are single, never married, no kids (you provided some of the reasons)

1. What reasons, exactly, did I provide for such demographics?
2. What makes you believe the fact that 70% of men 18-39 are single, never married, no kids, is the largest threat of our time?

Seriously, what the hell are you insinuating? What's wrong if most men between 18 and 39 are single, never married, and childless? Your demographic may fit some of us here on Vogons, and I fail to see what's the problem with men choosing to be single, never married, and childless. I chose to be single and childless until my marriage recently, and despite I'm now happily married, it doesn't change the fact that I also thoroughly enjoyed my bachelor days (Hint: I am married because I want to, not because I need to).

These good people fit your demographics. Are you saying they're the largest threat of our time? Seriously, what's wrong with men being single?

keropi wrote on 2010-07-30, 18:05:

today I turned 31!!!
I am also single (for now) and I really like it since I have time to do whatever I want 🤣

DosFreak wrote on 2010-07-30, 18:46:

30

Single for life.

Tetrium wrote on 2010-07-30, 23:35:

32 years old over here and been single for a while now. Not actively looking though 😜

Gemini000 wrote on 2010-07-31, 21:00:

27... damn I feel young now. 🤣

6 when I started playing PC games on our own home system and 10 when I started programming.

...and single the whole time. 😜

RoyBatty wrote on 2010-08-08, 00:16:

soon to be 38, single again, loving every minute of my freedom.

fillosaurus wrote on 2012-12-01, 19:41:

35. Single and enjoing it, as long as my parents do not come to visit, which for some unknown reason (and my despair) was almost weekly for the past 3-4 months.
They always complain that I play games/music too loud and I will bother the neighbors (Like those bastards give a shit about my ears...)

SiliconClassics wrote on 2013-01-22, 23:44:

Then hopefully nobody will mind if I add a post: I'm 34, single, no pets, live with a roommate in Queens and work in NYC as a novice attorney. My family got its first computer in 1991 when I was 13, a 486DX-33 that was used extensively for AutoCAD, Microsoft Word, and Chuck Yeager's Air Combat 😀

King_Corduroy wrote on 2014-07-01, 19:47:

I'm 23, I grew up watching my father mess with DOS and early windows versions. I started networking computers in grade school with windows 95 (god was that a pain!) and since then I've always kinda loved older DOS and 90's computers. 😀

Ironically I can't seem to get windows 7 to network for the life of me. 🤣

Single and I have to say I like it that way, no obligations really. 😜

rmay635703, do you seriously believe that these good people are "the largest threat of our time" because they're single and childless? Make your point clear, stop insinuating.

rmay635703 wrote on 2022-11-21, 06:06:

If you want your eyes opened
to see why it’s a problem get yourself setup with 4chan and its ilk, get into a few by invitation only situations and watch .

Your examples which are public and searchable are nothing compared to what happens in semi public but not searchable arenas like 4chan and worse. Death threats are how you say hello there and most there are usually armed in real life.

Never been there, never bothered. And if 4chan and the likes are really toxic as you said, then why should I ever bother. Vogons aside, the other forum I join is Audiokarma, and I've been a passive reader in DIY Audio forum. What does 4chan have to offer?

rmay635703 wrote on 2022-11-21, 06:06:

What is “unfortunate “ is the amplification of social and not so social media and its ability to draw focus of society as a whole on solely fringe comments from tin foil hats.

The individuals and entities getting butt hurt are mostly irrelevant and getting worried over things that don’t matter while ignoring actual serious problems

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TAgUHyXr7_Y

Make your point clear, please. What do you think the actual serious problem is?

rmay635703 wrote on 2022-11-21, 06:06:

The net affect of social media is to amplify the thoughts of a few hundred mentally disturbed individuals and broadcast them out […]
Show full quote

The net affect of social media is to amplify the thoughts of a few hundred mentally disturbed individuals and broadcast them out as if those views are common, important and mainstream

Which they aren’t.

One of the examples I most recently encountered was a woman asking a question about if the headlight enclosures on an HHR would fit her cobalt, one dude PMd her death threats and threatened her family because she asked stupid questions wasting the groups time.

For every public example there is also the less public commentary that drives folks into their corners feeling justified to make blanket accessments.

Nice story.

Now kindly explain what does it have to do with Musk's lousy business decisions regarding Twitter.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2022-11-21, 05:18:

The funny thing is that one of the reasons I joined Vogons on the first place is because this board is probably the coziest, the least politically-inclined discussion forum at that time. Politics always tend to be toxic, and that's also the reason I've been avoiding social media since 2014.

100% this. It's a down to Earth and helpful community, the site is not riddled with ads, irrelevant topics or micromanaged by power hungry moderators.
And mainly: no fking politics that lead to endless and pointless fights. This is also an international forum so many users don't even care about the political and socioeconomic status of other countries. People come here to ask for help with their old tech and to show off a nice piece of hardware they got and are proud of.
It's a happy community.
Also agree with moving away from social media, it's so liberating. No fake news, no politics, no trolls, no cyberbullying, no fearmongering.
No wonder many people don't even read the news online anymore, it's depressing because fear = more clicks. That's why I mentioned earlier that this topic got 5x the views of an average topic here, people are used to the shitstorm and want to read it instantly.
Twitter got sold, life goes on, people should deal with it and move on.

Mandrew wrote on 2022-11-21, 08:26:

100% this. It's a down to Earth and helpful community, the site is not riddled with ads, irrelevant topics or micromanaged by po […]
Show full quote

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2022-11-21, 05:18:

The funny thing is that one of the reasons I joined Vogons on the first place is because this board is probably the coziest, the least politically-inclined discussion forum at that time. Politics always tend to be toxic, and that's also the reason I've been avoiding social media since 2014.

100% this. It's a down to Earth and helpful community, the site is not riddled with ads, irrelevant topics or micromanaged by power hungry moderators.
And mainly: no fking politics that lead to endless and pointless fights. This is also an international forum so many users don't even care about the political and socioeconomic status of other countries. People come here to ask for help with their old tech and to show off a nice piece of hardware they got and are proud of.
It's a happy community.
Also agree with moving away from social media, it's so liberating. No fake news, no politics, no trolls, no cyberbullying, no fearmongering.
No wonder many people don't even read the news online anymore, it's depressing because fear = more clicks. That's why I mentioned earlier that this topic got 5x the views of an average topic here, people are used to the shitstorm and want to read it instantly.
Twitter got sold, life goes on, people should deal with it and move on.

High five!

The tragedy of this whole thing is that social media used to be like that: no politics, no trolls, no cyberbullying, etcetera. I remember when Facebook used to be the place to re-connect with former classmates from decades ago, childhood friends, and the likes. Based on my personal experience, Facebook started becoming toxic around 2014, where hardcore supporters of a (then) presidential candidate (he is the President now), whom themselves claim to be champions of tolerance and diversity, started attacking others whom didn't share their political views. And the worst part of it they were not strangers: they're friends, childhood friends, fellow college alumni, people you already knew. I burned so many bridges back then, because I had had it enough with "tolerance" and "diversity" being shoved down my throat. Then I realized that politics tend to be toxic, if not always toxic.

But I always find solace in non-politics forums, hobby forums like Vogons, Audiokarma, and other forums where I'm merely a passive reader, like Audiogon and DIY Audio. Not to mention interesting market places like GoG, Reverb.com, and Hifishark.

Mandrew wrote on 2022-11-21, 08:26:

the site is not riddled with ads, irrelevant topics or micromanaged by power hungry moderators.

In other forums, especially politics-encrusted forums, I could be banned for arguing with a moderator! 🤣 Hats off of for Dominus.

Back to the topic, yes, Twitter is toxic, and it could get worse after Twitter acquisition. And yes, Musk makes a lot of lousy management decisions. Not to mention Twitter has always been a cost center and money bleeder; something that Musk really needs to fix if he didn't want to lose money. I think the more interesting part is to see how long Twitter would last.

politics is when I look behind the curtain that is my hobby bubble

We don‘t ban people here for arguing with a mod!
If I would think it would need moderating I would ask other mods for their opinion and another mod would need to moderate. Because once I‘m part of the discussion I can‘t be impartial 😉
Unless it goes against forum rules and you won’t follow them.

There's Hive.....and Hive ain't it. vague angel investor startup behind a mobile app walled garden.

Grzyb wrote on 2022-11-18, 01:13:

So, Twatter is going down?
Good riddance, I would say...

No, you got it all backwards.
Twitter is going down.
In 2 weeks Musk will reopen it and rebrand it as Twatter.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2022-11-20, 17:50:

Nobody said Twitter would be less toxic post-Musk. If anything, it may be even more toxic, but the shits will go the other way. However, it doesn't change the fact that pre-Musk Twitter is indeed vitriolic and toxic.

Yup, it's the nature of the beast when people are supposed to exchange opinions in a medium defined by character limits, and by the knowledge of an undifferentiated global audience watching, judging and assigning likes and retweets. You get rampant keyboard-warriorism, talking in memes, people communicating like potty mouthed 13 year olds because they read some idiotic study about how it makes them sound "transgressively intelligent" (protip: it doesn't). They simply treat each exchange as an e-peen contest where you're supposed to mock and bitch-slap your opponent, then sit there preening your ego, while your followers emerge between drooling fits to go "derp, you sure showed him boss!" like cartoon sidekicks.

Anyone can pull that lowest common denominator crap. *I* used to do it on BBSs and IRC... but then I was 13. Now you're seeing it from people who supposedly have brains, who shape the way the world works, and who make decisions that affect you and everyone around you.

It'll probably stay comfortably that way, because the loudest "I'm leaving twitter!" peeps are going to stay just where they are (exactly like those on 'the other side' did when Trump was banned). Or they'll make a dramatic exit/ragequit and then quietly return. They're simply terminally online and addicted to this kind of discourse - force them to go one day without enemies they can try to "own" in public, and they'll be having the shakes from lack of constant dopamine hits.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2022-11-21, 05:18:

leileilol wrote on 2022-11-20, 22:22:

nihilists take note: the shuttering of twitter is extremely devastating for international artists and creators (I don't mean influencers). I've followed a lot of artists I probably can't otherwise.

I should have realized that the death of Twitter could have negative impact on innocent people's livelihood. Though I'm not the first to say on this thread that Twitter's death is a good thing, your post made me realized it was uncalled for, thus I sincerely take it back. My apologies, leileilol.

AFAIK there are more than a few platforms out there intended for artists, some of them quite large (and many seem to use Twitter primarily to funnel impressions towards those other platforms). But this is a more general problem that's been with us since the start of the web2.0 era - people having an absolute dependence (sometimes avoidable, sometimes not) on centralized third-party services for every facet of their online presence and activity. Youtube hasn't died, but plenty of people still routinely lose their livelihoods just because a malicious troll thought it'd be funny to fraudulently report a few copyright infringements.

Discoverability may be a problem, but Twitter seems to be pretty bad for that anyway; at least when it comes to capabilities of filtering your exposure to specific areas of interest.

VileR wrote on 2022-11-21, 12:20:

Yup, it's the nature of the beast when people are supposed to exchange opinions in a medium defined by character limits, and by the knowledge of an undifferentiated global audience watching, judging and assigning likes and retweets. You get rampant keyboard-warriorism, talking in memes, people communicating like potty mouthed 13 year olds because they read some idiotic study about how it makes them sound "transgressively intelligent" (protip: it doesn't). They simply treat each exchange as an e-peen contest where you're supposed to mock and bitch-slap your opponent, then sit there preening your ego, while your followers emerge between drooling fits to go "derp, you sure showed him boss!" like cartoon sidekicks.

yes indeed, it is often playing to the gallery (ones own echo chamber gallery) and a kind of distortion, pushing each other into further extreme positions just not to "lose" an argument or give any ground at all - and all because of that dynamic

that's why i miss forums, where people can talk it over, take time to respond (threads remain present for long, tweets just become 'old' after hours) and think through the messages because its like a group discussion not playing to a gallery

for twitter to succeed as both a financial return and an asset for humanity (whatever that means!) much would need to be changed to the point where it takes on forum-like qualities and promotes quality discussion. i dont see it happening any time soon

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2022-11-21, 06:45:

[*] What reasons, exactly, did I provide for such demographics? [*] What makes you believe the fact that 70% of men 18-39 are si […]
Show full quote

[*] What reasons, exactly, did I provide for such demographics?
[*] What makes you believe the fact that 70% of men 18-39 are single, never married, no kids, is the largest threat of our time?
[/list]

Seriously, what the hell are you insinuating? What's wrong if most men between 18 and 39 are single, never married, and childless? Your demographic may

Now kindly explain what does it have to do with Musk's lousy business decisions regarding Twitter.

Your reaching…

We likely agree it appears, even though you need additional worldly education, you appear to see both sides of the problem but only post examples of one of the sides.

Also I highly doubt any of the people you mentioned belong to the radicalized group known as incels,
just as I doubt you personally know or have gotten corespondence or been affected in any way by
any of the femcels that posted male death threats in a public forum who are the opposite side of the same coin of nut job found mostly on 8chan

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/ … 461444820948803

I would never say that you or anyone else here is an incel and I would recommend you don’t allude to or ID anyone normal that way as both incels and femcels aren’t generally in normal forums and being “single “ certainly does not rise to the vast requirements to being an incel or femcel

As for Musk, any time he does literally anything my feed explodes with thinly veiled Russian proganda and “American patriots” gushing over it. I don’t ask for or interact with that stuff but get my feed chock full of right wing propaganda every time he does something.
I have a feeling this dogpiling of unpopular views is exactly the thing you don’t like about social media, but you aren’t worldly enough to admit it comes from both fringes.

In my case I never see femcel propaganda, rarely if ever see feminist or LGBTQ propaganda either and rarely see liberal content unless I really search for it.
If that’s the type of thing you see, you must be looking for it or the algorithm can tell you’re triggered by it.
What’s more the stuff you posted usually does get moderated and deleted.

Cancel culture goes both ways and normal people view it as stupid and pointless.

As towards the common sense reasons why large numbers of men and women being perpetually single due to a gender war is a bad thing for society , you will have to read and learn on your own, Bill Maher has had both right and left leaning individuals explain the problem if you want cliffs notes.
The problem is with the 1% of men who become isolated and radicalized, not the 99% who do not.

One bad apple makes everything bad for everyone and social media has made that issue a million times worse by amplifying the views of a small handful of individuals over everyone else.

I dont use twitter, dont have account, and i really dont care a shit about social media. I use whatsapp because i need for bussiness only. But still im happy musk buy twitter, I think twitter degenerated to some very very dangerous

Hope musk not will do the same that before happen!

social media links are forbidden to post now. this will turn out well 🧻

I have to say I agree this place is fairly drama free and the Olbies here older than me are a wealth of information, aside from that one religious zealot with the suicide enemy sprite from Shadow Warrior as his profile pic years ago. He was entertaining. Lol

It's kind of a breath of fresh air to take a break from youtube and modern social media and go back to a real forum. I feel like the internet peaked on 2015 and it's been a depressing slide into madness ever since...

King_Corduroy wrote on 2023-10-18, 18:35:

I have to say I agree this place is fairly drama free and the Olbies here older than me are a wealth of information, aside from that one religious zealot with the suicide enemy sprite from Shadow Warrior as his profile pic years ago. He was entertaining. Lol

It's kind of a breath of fresh air to take a break from youtube and modern social media and go back to a real forum. I feel like the internet peaked on 2015 and it's been a depressing slide into madness ever since...

The Internet peaked in 2005 1995. Give me back Lycos, Gopher, Archie and Altavista.

Change my mind. 😉 On second thought, please don't, I'm happy living in the past.

darry wrote on 2023-10-19, 03:28:

King_Corduroy wrote on 2023-10-18, 18:35:

I have to say I agree this place is fairly drama free and the Olbies here older than me are a wealth of information, aside from that one religious zealot with the suicide enemy sprite from Shadow Warrior as his profile pic years ago. He was entertaining. Lol

It's kind of a breath of fresh air to take a break from youtube and modern social media and go back to a real forum. I feel like the internet peaked on 2015 and it's been a depressing slide into madness ever since...

The Internet peaked in 2005 1995. Give me back Lycos, Gopher, Archie and Altavista.

Change my mind. 😉 On second thought, please don't, I'm happy living in the past.

i won't change your mind!

i would say the 'internet' has never been better if considered from the perspective of the sheer amount of content - whether it video, sound, image, text - it is a massive multiple of what was there in 95 of course, but even 2005 and even 2015 really, i can get more from it now than then in those terms

much of it is rubbish though and much of it is 'corporatized', there was a very different feeling in the 90's before the mega corps arrived and started 'owning' everything, it seems like it needs that corp power to make things like youtube etc possible but that it also somehow saps some of the joy of it!

TheGlobe was a nice example of corporate cancer around the turn of Y2K, only finally put down when they thought spamming myspace was a good idea.

darry wrote on 2023-10-19, 03:28:

King_Corduroy wrote on 2023-10-18, 18:35:

I have to say I agree this place is fairly drama free and the Olbies here older than me are a wealth of information, aside from that one religious zealot with the suicide enemy sprite from Shadow Warrior as his profile pic years ago. He was entertaining. Lol

It's kind of a breath of fresh air to take a break from youtube and modern social media and go back to a real forum. I feel like the internet peaked on 2015 and it's been a depressing slide into madness ever since...

The Internet peaked in 2005 1995. Give me back Lycos, Gopher, Archie and Altavista.

Change my mind. 😉 On second thought, please don't, I'm happy living in the past.

Eh, I remember how cluttered and irritating search engines became until Google came along.

IMHO, early to mid-2000's were peak internet.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-10-20, 02:02:

darry wrote on 2023-10-19, 03:28:

King_Corduroy wrote on 2023-10-18, 18:35:

I have to say I agree this place is fairly drama free and the Olbies here older than me are a wealth of information, aside from that one religious zealot with the suicide enemy sprite from Shadow Warrior as his profile pic years ago. He was entertaining. Lol

It's kind of a breath of fresh air to take a break from youtube and modern social media and go back to a real forum. I feel like the internet peaked on 2015 and it's been a depressing slide into madness ever since...

The Internet peaked in 2005 1995. Give me back Lycos, Gopher, Archie and Altavista.

Change my mind. 😉 On second thought, please don't, I'm happy living in the past.

Eh, I remember how cluttered and irritating search engines became until Google came along.

IMHO, early to mid-2000's were peak internet.

Eh, so many did get annoying, but Google did not pioneer simplicity or good search indexing and tools. This is what I remember when searching the web:
https://web.archive.org/web/19971222163629/ht … digital.com:80/

They were good for a while. But I think generally what happened, was Altavista ended up being the search backend to yahoo, and essentially got consumed by it. Now yahoo is consumed by Bing.

Anyway, I think the reason Google ended up successful was simply bringing back the old approach of just doing search again like Altavista. Considering how Google turned out, I'd say I agree, bring back Altavista again. I want a search engine that works.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-10-20, 02:02:

IMHO, early to mid-2000's were peak internet.

You may be right...
Basically, the history of Internet can be divided into three periods:

Pre-commercialization (until 1995) - little content, but it was all precious, very hard to find outside the net.

Commercialization-in-progress (1995..2000) - plenty of companies investing in the Internet, even if they had no idea how to make profit out of this. In effect, content was rapidly growing, and still very valuable. Ads and other annoyances were also appearing, but not yet dominating.

Commercialized (since 2000) - the dot-com crash has ruined it all. Investors became cautious, and realized that putting quality content on the Internet doesn't make sense - the only way to make a profit is by providing the cheapest garbage, and using any means possible to extract money out of it: ads, lobbying, tracking, and so on. Of course, the cheapest stuff is the one provided by the users themselves - and that's exactly how the net got dominated by that "social media" cesspool...