Why do people leave ILX for good?

xp stet, I always feel frustrated that the smartphone era ended up being about information consumption, not about communication. It frustrates me that I cannot buy a handheld device that I can use for convenient >160 chars communication. And yeah I post more on ilx since I bought a laptop. For the last decade I felt confident that the tide would turn. And, in fact, the collapse of tablets in the marketplace are a glimmer of that possibility. But clearly we're not there yet...

xp when my brother in law was getting his PhD one committee prof was a huge audiophile and another was a huge oenophile; they kind of hated each other and would often end up in fighting about why their esoteric and expensive hobby was great while the other’s esoteric and expensive hobby was a scam and pointless waste of time.

maura otm abt wikipedia, its shortcomings go way beyond dilettanteism (though it remains massively useful if you are conscious abt what you are consuming). there's a great ilx post abt this, maybe a whole thread... gimme a sec.

ugh can't find it, maybe googleproofed thread or something..... it was an ilxor (maybe you, maura!) doing this sentence by sentence takedown of an entry on slavery in the united states, how the milktoast compromise language was effectively adding up to an apologia for slavery. really revealing, even more than e.g. how every single star trek episode gets an entry while no mary tyler moore ones do (or whatever).

found it, rushomancy itt: The Golden age of Internet comes to a close?

i can write the mary tyler moore pages if it will improve things

So this is now the “why is the internet bad” thread?

Old Lunch OTM on that thread.

Using Wikipedia as anything other than a starting point for further research/inquiry has always been problematic at the very least.

― Transformed From The Norm By The Nuclear Goop (Old Lunch), Monday, February 6, 2017 1:01 PM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Didn't know about this, though:

it also has psychotic admins who want to separate out “women _______” while not being as obsessively fastidious about filtering their male counterparts from the all-gender listings. (i know from personal experience.)

found it, rushomancy itt: The Golden age of Internet comes to a close?

― |Restore| |Restart| |Quit| (Doctor Casino)

hahahaha i don't even remember writing that, cool :)

"Didn't know about this, though:

it also has psychotic admins who want to separate out “women _______” while not being as obsessively fastidious about filtering their male counterparts from the all-gender listings. (i know from personal experience.)

― Locked in silent monologue, in silent scream (Sund4r)"

yeah wikipedia has serious governance issues when you start looking at how the sausage is made, it's to their credit that even with all the bullshit going on behind the scenes wikipedia is still probably the best site on the internet

i know el sandifer had strong criticisms of wikipedia that seem reasonably well-founded particularly re: transphobia

re: mtm:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuckles_Bites_the_Dust

having said that there are literally two mary tyler moore show episodes with their own pages, as opposed to, say, the first forty-two episodes of M*A*S*H and many thereafter, so i think the argument does still hold water

isn't this more to do with which fan base is interested in making episode pages? mary tyler moore fans probably are more at peace with the passage of time and don't feel a need to fetishistically document everything

i'm sure there is tons of gender bias in wikipedia just don't know about that data point

editing wikipedia articles is pretty fun imo

treesh, that's my point - wiki's coverage is inevitably lopsided towards things that have not just people interested in them, but people who are tech-savvy, internet-battle-inclined, and obsessive. that's going to produce comparatively benign distortions, like suggesting star trek was a more popular or significant show than mtm, but obviously bigger ones as well. doesn't mean the whole project is worthless but def means that wiki-literacy includes having to take these grains of salt with one's browsing.

ah, gotcha

sentence by sentence takedown of an entry on slavery in the united states, how the milktoast compromise language was effectively adding up to an apologia for slavery.

I have not done the necessary research, but I would be surprised if any printed encyclopedia in English ever included an article on the US history of slavery that amounted to a scathing rebuke aimed at everyone who participated in or apologized for that cruel and morally criminal institution.

history textbooks have some issues, especially in conservative states

http://www.keranews.org/post/american-slavery-isnt-taught-well-schools-texas-or-across-us-report-says

and that's why some people leave ILX for good

I have not done the necessary research, but I would be surprised if any printed encyclopedia in English ever included an article on the US history of slavery that amounted to a scathing rebuke aimed at everyone who participated in or apologized for that cruel and morally criminal institution.

― A is for (Aimless)

as far as i can tell i wasn't trying to hold it up to that standard, nor did i go into my analysis with any preconceived conclusion. i was probably just bored that day and felt like seeing what i would find out by doing a critical analysis of wikipedia's article on the history of slavery. i don't really know how it would hold up to the average textbook (which i think is a better point of comparison than an encyclopedia). it's not as good as the treatment of slavery in my go-to american history textbook, tindall and shi's "america", but that's setting the bar fairly high.

wikipedia is a great resource, so far uncorrupted afaict, and one of very few internet "enlightenment" projects (what else is left... the waybackmachine?) that didn't fail

think I use it daily

I'm sure it could be better in many ways but when comparing to the rest of the post apocalyptic internet it really seems an oasis

The Encyclopédie of the 18th Century (which m/l kicked off the encyclopedia in its popular-use modern form) was an almost unapologetically biased work. Same as it ever was. Wikipedia is an awesome way to stumble upon and get a general summary of concepts like (to use a couple recent personal examples) urheimat or the Aarne-Thompson folklore categorization system, which I can then explore further via sources that haven't been extensively edited by DarthBaderGinsburg.

And that, indeed, is why I left ILX for good.

“uncorrupted” is in the eye of the beholder i guess

Enlightenment not all its cracked up to be

Where's the Dark Wikipedia?

https://www.conservapedia.com/ iirc

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page (nb, was more fun in the days when human beings still possessed the cognitive ability to discern blatant lies from facts)

There's also https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/Main_Page

And the arch-Enlightened version: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page

Finally! Guess I'll stay on ILX after all

i figure i'll eventually get killfiled by everyone and then i'll take the hint and scoot

looking at/reading what other people complain about is one of the most depressing ways to spend one's time

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Sunday, November 25, 2018 3:55 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i find myself thinking this w/politics on social media and it *almost* doesn't matter what side you're complaining about. i have friends whose entire life is apparently based on complaining about politics or social justice. i think what's grating is not the fact that they're complaining, but their complaints show up in meme or link or cartoon form and there's zero discussion, it's just dropping something on their page and leaving it sitting there.

complaining just leads to arguments and it's never worth it, i mean made a mild complaint via instagram about the shitty ad campaign for the new Grinch movie and wound up in an awkward back and forth with a friend who worked on the film in post production and somehow i tried to saved myself by saying no actually i was interested in seeing it, so she invited me to check it out the next day, and i invented a birthday party i had to go to. so she's going to send me a screener.

wikipedia is pretty incredible imo, its community has its biases and significant problems but there are also awesome people (some i know personally) who are not straight white male nerds who are actively working to improve it. kind of amazing that it exists tbh

Ain't that how social media arguments always end: being sent a Grinch screener

looking at/reading what other people complain about is one of the most depressing ways to spend one's time

the internet is neither good nor bad. or it is both good and bad. there are things i hate about it but like just don't go to those dumb places? i havent read a buzzfeed article in months. twitter i spend about two minutes before deciding it is mostly annoying, i will probably deactivate soon.

but like, every day i find new music & art that blows me away or adds meaning to my life in some small way or provides a new idea or state of awareness. every day i read about something i didn't know before. there are huge repositories of scholarship and knowledge on the internet. libraries and archives digitize and post amazing content every day.

w/ ilx i am not hugely active here i think maybe because i struggle w/ wanting to share more of what is meaningful to me personally in order to better connect w/ people here (since i like a lot of you) but also i value ilx as a place where i have more anonymity than on instagram or whatever where i am sharing my art and personal photos or twitter where i talk about stuff that matters to me in my professional field (though i don't really engage on twitter that much anymore). obviously i have shared a lot of personal things here but lately i've been using other venues for that stuff. i think having better IRL connections w/ friends and family means that i post less here too.

love the awkward sitcom vibe of omar's Grinch story, makes me think the problem with social media is it puts an unmanageably large number of people in a coworker-like social space: constant proximity but no real closeness

Democratizing the dissemination of perspectives is both the best and worst thing about the internet. At the same time that it eliminated certain barriers of access, the population of planet earth mistook ease of access as an implicit suggestion that all of our opinions were of equal value and were equally worthy of dissemination. ILX is one of the few internet haunts I've found where the ratio still largely favors signal over noise (present company excepted, natch). Which is why I have not yet left ILX for good.

downvoted u 4 that

screener feedback: get smashmouth on that ost

xpost Sorry, I deserved that for forgetting to include a hashtag (#trenchantinsights).

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(I just barfed so hard while I was typing that.)

upvoted u now

like my comment

and somehow i tried to saved myself by saying no actually i was interested in seeing it, so she invited me to check it out the next day, and i invented a birthday party i had to go to. so she's going to send me a screener.

genuine lol, best possible outcome for an internet gripe
you're right that it doesn't matter if i personally agree with the gripe or not (be it about music, politics, anything), the result is the same

for me at least on one hand (w/those i "agree with") the complaining feels like constant negative energy vs positive action, like a candidate running on why their opponent is trash vs what they want to do to improve things. i understand things are not good but i think it just contributes to a sense of trench warfare and helplessness. and obviously when i see someone posting anti-#metoo cartoons that's another kind of depressing.

and now here i am, complaining!

constant negative energy vs positive action
exactly

however ilx def provides a place for people to complain without much fear of reprisal, so if there is a safe space for the pettiest of petty complaints i guess it's here where it isn't likely to hurt anyone aside from the people who choose to participate (actively or passively) in that thread?

makes me think the problem with social media is it puts an unmanageably large number of people in a coworker-like social space: constant proximity but no real closeness

that's part of why I wandered off for a while this year. lost a few of the real life situations where I've been able to candidly be *me* and I have too many situations where "coworker voice" is the norm. in lieu of those outlets, my online persona, as it is, became some exaggerated version of my inner voice where the ability to be candid was overriding my ability to actually be interesting.

the worst part was realizing all of my offline conversations, with few exceptions, were all coming out in coworker voice. lost the ability to code-switch and everything was just flat. the partial anhedonia of perpetually stilted conversation