Back in the day (I love saying that)1960-61, my mother gathered us kids together. Not an unusual thing, but this time her serious face gave weight to what she was about to tell us.
“There is a political system in South Africa that is called apartheid. It denigrates and dehumanizes the black Africans who have lived there for thousands and thousands of years, long before it was invaded by Europeans. One of the methods they use, is to require all black Africans to carry passbooks in order to travel anywhere in the country. Those passbooks have a picture of the person in the book. That picture is taken with a Polaroid camera which gives an instant picture. Polaroid is an American co. From this point forward, no one in this family will buy one of their cameras nor will one on those cameras enter our home nor will you allow anyone to take a picture of you with one of those cameras. Do you understand me?”
We all somberly agreed, even my father who was not used to taking orders from his wife.
My mom knew our little effort would not change the vulgar system in a land 10,000 miles away, nor affect the bottom line of that billion dollar company, but she knew it was time for her family to act and maybe that might change who we were and how we were who we were. I know that tiny act in a small family, decades ago changed me.
I am my mother’s son. Twitter is deleted. Thanks mom.
I have a Twitter account mainly for the purpose of letting people out there know about my books. To me, tweets are just about nudging people to think about something, not as a way to have a real conversation. Guess I'm old fashioned. A couple of years ago I left Facebook for various reasons, mainly: Cambridge Analytica took my account info. Ticked me off. Sigh. I'll probably stay on Twitter, but if hateful speech gets the upper hand even more than it has now, I'm out. Book lovers can find me on Goodreads.
I'm in a wait and see mode with my Twitter account. I don't watch TV news anymore (too shallow) and get my news from Twitter. I don't do politics on FB; it's for my personal stuff only and will snooze followers who get too caught up into posting political stuff. Actually unfriended a couple during the 4 years of you know who.
The best feature on Twitter for now is that block button which is easier to do than on FB. One click and puff the idiots, trolls and bots gone. There are only 400 million accounts on Twitter and FB has 7.5 billion. And we know what happened with FB leaning toward authoritarians using the platform for propaganda. Time will tell if Musk lets that happen on Twitter. As long as he doesn't take the block feature away, my fingers are ready to block them.
Recently read a great article about Twitter that made me stop and think about letting it go. A comment in the article mentioned that many journalists use Twitter now more than ever and that many politicians are afraid of what the journalists are saying so there stuck with using it to protect their version of the story.
It seems like the public forum can only exist in social platforms these days. Many don't even show up at town hall meetings (at least where I am) anymore.
That's precisely why I'm on there. That's where news bubbles up. But I wouldn't die if I left it (and neither would any one else). I cannot imagine how to get people back to face-to-face public forums.
Good point. From what I've heard about Truth.Social, it's foundering because it's just an echo chamber for the RWNJ/QANON faction. I never did get my verification an email, either.
I tried yesterday to set up a CounterSocial, in case that's where the tides should wash to, but I failed. I was never sent the verification link, and when I tried to start again from go I was informed that No, Contact The Proprietor If You Dare to Inquire or Complain.
A very odd experience given my insignificance, even if I'm not viewed as innocuous.
I think the website has had all kinds of issues, given the flood of people who are leaving Twitter (a flood that for a moment, included myself). If you're serious about it, just keep trying.
I liked the frictionlessness, and the perpetual availability of quite varied conversations. Of course, the frictionlessness didn't merely facilitate popping in and out on microbreaks-- it facilitated various textual assaults, which was tiresome.
And the quality of the conversations depended pretty heavily on who was online at the time, and on the nature of the channel. But I also found it fascinating to learn that there were people who were pretty seriously into believing they were vampires, or in so representing themselves, which I hadn't known. And other not very agreeable interests were also pretty thoroughly represented. :/
Well, it was a 1990s thing, and pretty heavily associated with academic accounts-- and at that time a lot of people with academic accounts felt empowered to be sniffy about people signing on with AOL and its few competitors.
As of about a decade ago it was still around in vestigial form, with people mumbling sysadmin memes.
CounterSocial appears to be a Trump-hating communist echo chamber, similar to what Twitter was before Musk bought it. I imagine that a lot of the commies and TDS folks flocked to CoSo because it was more their type of environment. I set up an account and immediately noticed all of the TDS nonsense flying around, which I immediately responded to with my own (opposite) opinion. Naturally, they didn't like this, and after only a day on the system, I found I was unable to login to it! They actually kicked me off for expressing my opinions. After one day!
Good riddance. Fascistbook may shadow-ban and bottom-feed us, but at least they have a modicum of tolerance for varied viewpoints (ostensibly).
Back in the day (I love saying that)1960-61, my mother gathered us kids together. Not an unusual thing, but this time her serious face gave weight to what she was about to tell us.
“There is a political system in South Africa that is called apartheid. It denigrates and dehumanizes the black Africans who have lived there for thousands and thousands of years, long before it was invaded by Europeans. One of the methods they use, is to require all black Africans to carry passbooks in order to travel anywhere in the country. Those passbooks have a picture of the person in the book. That picture is taken with a Polaroid camera which gives an instant picture. Polaroid is an American co. From this point forward, no one in this family will buy one of their cameras nor will one on those cameras enter our home nor will you allow anyone to take a picture of you with one of those cameras. Do you understand me?”
We all somberly agreed, even my father who was not used to taking orders from his wife.
My mom knew our little effort would not change the vulgar system in a land 10,000 miles away, nor affect the bottom line of that billion dollar company, but she knew it was time for her family to act and maybe that might change who we were and how we were who we were. I know that tiny act in a small family, decades ago changed me.
I am my mother’s son. Twitter is deleted. Thanks mom.
Wow. That's just so very thought-provoking and deep, and I mean it. Thanks, friend.
I am incredibly blessed.
I have a Twitter account mainly for the purpose of letting people out there know about my books. To me, tweets are just about nudging people to think about something, not as a way to have a real conversation. Guess I'm old fashioned. A couple of years ago I left Facebook for various reasons, mainly: Cambridge Analytica took my account info. Ticked me off. Sigh. I'll probably stay on Twitter, but if hateful speech gets the upper hand even more than it has now, I'm out. Book lovers can find me on Goodreads.
There you go. I'm on Twitter to argue and if that becomes too much, I'll leave. But I really do like to argue.
I'm in a wait and see mode with my Twitter account. I don't watch TV news anymore (too shallow) and get my news from Twitter. I don't do politics on FB; it's for my personal stuff only and will snooze followers who get too caught up into posting political stuff. Actually unfriended a couple during the 4 years of you know who.
The best feature on Twitter for now is that block button which is easier to do than on FB. One click and puff the idiots, trolls and bots gone. There are only 400 million accounts on Twitter and FB has 7.5 billion. And we know what happened with FB leaning toward authoritarians using the platform for propaganda. Time will tell if Musk lets that happen on Twitter. As long as he doesn't take the block feature away, my fingers are ready to block them.
Recently read a great article about Twitter that made me stop and think about letting it go. A comment in the article mentioned that many journalists use Twitter now more than ever and that many politicians are afraid of what the journalists are saying so there stuck with using it to protect their version of the story.
https://prospect.org/economy/will-inflation-break-the-news/
It seems like the public forum can only exist in social platforms these days. Many don't even show up at town hall meetings (at least where I am) anymore.
That's precisely why I'm on there. That's where news bubbles up. But I wouldn't die if I left it (and neither would any one else). I cannot imagine how to get people back to face-to-face public forums.
Good point. From what I've heard about Truth.Social, it's foundering because it's just an echo chamber for the RWNJ/QANON faction. I never did get my verification an email, either.
Oh, wow. Did you sign up for Truth.Social? Or do you mean your verification for CS?
For CS. No, I would never sign up for TS.
I thought about it but then figured I would only go there to practice my cussin' and I'm pretty good at it already, so...
I tried yesterday to set up a CounterSocial, in case that's where the tides should wash to, but I failed. I was never sent the verification link, and when I tried to start again from go I was informed that No, Contact The Proprietor If You Dare to Inquire or Complain.
A very odd experience given my insignificance, even if I'm not viewed as innocuous.
I think the website has had all kinds of issues, given the flood of people who are leaving Twitter (a flood that for a moment, included myself). If you're serious about it, just keep trying.
I was thinking that they might be slammed, yeah.
I'm not in a rush. And I'm not very good at predicting where conversation will move to.
Were you ever on irc? I miss it.
I was not. Why did you like it?
I liked the frictionlessness, and the perpetual availability of quite varied conversations. Of course, the frictionlessness didn't merely facilitate popping in and out on microbreaks-- it facilitated various textual assaults, which was tiresome.
And the quality of the conversations depended pretty heavily on who was online at the time, and on the nature of the channel. But I also found it fascinating to learn that there were people who were pretty seriously into believing they were vampires, or in so representing themselves, which I hadn't known. And other not very agreeable interests were also pretty thoroughly represented. :/
I wish I'd known about it. I wonder how I missed it.
Well, it was a 1990s thing, and pretty heavily associated with academic accounts-- and at that time a lot of people with academic accounts felt empowered to be sniffy about people signing on with AOL and its few competitors.
As of about a decade ago it was still around in vestigial form, with people mumbling sysadmin memes.
CounterSocial appears to be a Trump-hating communist echo chamber, similar to what Twitter was before Musk bought it. I imagine that a lot of the commies and TDS folks flocked to CoSo because it was more their type of environment. I set up an account and immediately noticed all of the TDS nonsense flying around, which I immediately responded to with my own (opposite) opinion. Naturally, they didn't like this, and after only a day on the system, I found I was unable to login to it! They actually kicked me off for expressing my opinions. After one day!
Good riddance. Fascistbook may shadow-ban and bottom-feed us, but at least they have a modicum of tolerance for varied viewpoints (ostensibly).
I think you're probably healthier for it. I've stayed on Twitter because news often breaks there.