That Mrs. Frazzled clip made me laugh so hard. "Yes I know you get super duper excited when you're talking about bombs. I saw the emojis." LOL indeed and you're right-- human humor IS such a gift.
Thanks for another great post. I've been relying on your wisdom to talk me down from the ledge these past few months. As one of those easily distracted black-and-white-thinking types I greatly benefit when I step back from the internet, or at least curate my content consumption with mental health in mind.
I watched it like ten times the other day. It's amazing.
I've definitely been doing a lot of curating lately and I've been thinking I need more precise tools for allowing me to get what I want out of the various platforms I'm part of. I love my local gardening Facebook group for example, but I'm finding it's too easy to get sucked into other things if I check in. It may just be a matter of cleaning up my feed. I'll report back if/when I have an answer on that front.
Lauren, on some similar topics, you might enjoy this piece of mine about what makes internet communication such a deranging, destabilizing force. There's a lot of attention on social media product choices but not enough on inherent aspects of internet communication that preselect for us treating each other badly and deranging ourselves: https://defusingamericananger.substack.com/p/how-does-internet-communication-divide
Absolutely! I had a couple paragraphs I ended up taking out that mentioned the way anonymity breeds negative interactions. There's also a lot of interesting work on how reputational tools (when used wisely) can help make internet communication better and there's really interesting game theory work on iterative vs. one-off interactions. Your post is a great summary of the main problems inherent in the structure of internet communication.
I'll also add that some (though not all) of these are found in traffic as well, which is why people often behave in ways that are out of character when they're driving (difficult to communicate context, relative anonymity, one-off interactions, etc). Road rage has similarities to internet rage in terms of how that context affects our brains.
What's important here is that we can individually influence attitudes and behaviors of people in our social circles, including internet circles. For example, I try to provide reasons that we need to preserve our civility as much as possible even when we're angry at people who are inconsiderate, "violating the social contract" whatever that means, etc. Empathy and civility are not weakness. It's hypocritical to punish people online for things we accidentally find ourselves doing. Love your neighbor. Etc. For face-to-face on-the-street interactions we simply need to greet our neighbors, strike up conversations etc.
But I'm more pessimistic when it comes to human nature in the collectie. Once we're trying to manage our own huge, complex systems, other factors come into play that resist our best intentions. This gets us into system theory, global ecology, sociology, mass population behavior in species, etc. Other species can also exhaust their food supplies for example.
Don't have much to recommend for exploring this except for Jennifer Pahlka's "Recoding America" which has some good insights into systemic shortcomings of huge governmental organizations, along with suggestions for counteracting them. Private corporations have their own inherent systemic characteristics that make it difficult or impossible for them to respond to climate change, for example, until it starts directly affecting their stock prices and profits.
That Mrs. Frazzled clip made me laugh so hard. "Yes I know you get super duper excited when you're talking about bombs. I saw the emojis." LOL indeed and you're right-- human humor IS such a gift.
Thanks for another great post. I've been relying on your wisdom to talk me down from the ledge these past few months. As one of those easily distracted black-and-white-thinking types I greatly benefit when I step back from the internet, or at least curate my content consumption with mental health in mind.
I watched it like ten times the other day. It's amazing.
I've definitely been doing a lot of curating lately and I've been thinking I need more precise tools for allowing me to get what I want out of the various platforms I'm part of. I love my local gardening Facebook group for example, but I'm finding it's too easy to get sucked into other things if I check in. It may just be a matter of cleaning up my feed. I'll report back if/when I have an answer on that front.
Lauren, on some similar topics, you might enjoy this piece of mine about what makes internet communication such a deranging, destabilizing force. There's a lot of attention on social media product choices but not enough on inherent aspects of internet communication that preselect for us treating each other badly and deranging ourselves: https://defusingamericananger.substack.com/p/how-does-internet-communication-divide
Absolutely! I had a couple paragraphs I ended up taking out that mentioned the way anonymity breeds negative interactions. There's also a lot of interesting work on how reputational tools (when used wisely) can help make internet communication better and there's really interesting game theory work on iterative vs. one-off interactions. Your post is a great summary of the main problems inherent in the structure of internet communication.
I'll also add that some (though not all) of these are found in traffic as well, which is why people often behave in ways that are out of character when they're driving (difficult to communicate context, relative anonymity, one-off interactions, etc). Road rage has similarities to internet rage in terms of how that context affects our brains.
What's important here is that we can individually influence attitudes and behaviors of people in our social circles, including internet circles. For example, I try to provide reasons that we need to preserve our civility as much as possible even when we're angry at people who are inconsiderate, "violating the social contract" whatever that means, etc. Empathy and civility are not weakness. It's hypocritical to punish people online for things we accidentally find ourselves doing. Love your neighbor. Etc. For face-to-face on-the-street interactions we simply need to greet our neighbors, strike up conversations etc.
But I'm more pessimistic when it comes to human nature in the collectie. Once we're trying to manage our own huge, complex systems, other factors come into play that resist our best intentions. This gets us into system theory, global ecology, sociology, mass population behavior in species, etc. Other species can also exhaust their food supplies for example.
Don't have much to recommend for exploring this except for Jennifer Pahlka's "Recoding America" which has some good insights into systemic shortcomings of huge governmental organizations, along with suggestions for counteracting them. Private corporations have their own inherent systemic characteristics that make it difficult or impossible for them to respond to climate change, for example, until it starts directly affecting their stock prices and profits.