inner dialogue

[god_jr]

"...When Shaq was a rookie in Orlando, he dunked it so hard the whole hydraulic system of the backboard imploded. Your speech at your dad's funeral blurred the line between laughing and crying with such force, the line never returned. Remember? Remember that too-brief decade when LiveJournal was by far the Internet's most vital piece of real estate

Comments

[bikerbar]

I totally agree and keep sticking with LJ because I think its somehow more satisfying as a space, but certainly the land is pretty barren. And FB just boils everything down to the barest minimum of "interaction". We get lowest common denominator, which is what drives 13 year olds to click on something. And thanks for pointing out the way the aggregate data and mold the dialogue. So lame, yet not surprising. I think in the ever-increasing surveillance mode of Web 2.0, the radical thing to do now is to walk away. And can we do it? Can we find our inner Luddite and swith off these networks which seem indispensable? Not so easy, but more and more the thought crosses my mind.

[god_jr]

I did manage to tone down my FB use. And I try to do the same with the internet in general" limit myself to blocks of time, and making lists before i go online as to what i need to do there. but i still get stuck in the stream now and then. those domino clicks that lead to bizarre pet videos and such,

smoothing

[lostcosmonaut]

v. nice elaboration on th theme -- though I don't see much sinister in FB's algorithms, they're a reflection & amplification of th banality of how most users use th medium -- a necessary banality if yr aim is th broadest possible swath of users ........... Ah also have noticed that th most popular technologies, although they are shaping th ways we communicate in novel ways, are not creating new desires so much as figuring out ways to satisfy ancient desires -- attention, status, sex, narrative, etc. That's why people get trapped in dumb things like Farmville or whatever -- it's primal things dressed up as dumb things

--mza.

Re: smoothing

[god_jr]

maybe 'sinister' is too harsh, but we do know FB is grounded on capital gain, and for that reason i'm sure that money was poured into figuring out which words breed better consumers and which ones discourage them. and that is sinister, after all.
ironically i'd only half noticed the way they try to nudge conversations in certain directions, mostly through the irony of when someone's post would get miss-grouped, or also on occasion when the grouping was correct, even though they hadn't used any key words (which mostly left me impressed with what i assumed was a well-programed computer that had learned to read between the lines).
impossible mike was filling me in on some LJ history. he says you are on a countdown to your last entry. sigh. i guess i'm too late to this party (not LJ itself, but the corner you hang out in). i'll enjoy your gradual send out while it lasts, then maybe use the tail end as my own cue to pack it up.