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zauhar said:
Two kinds of human interaction have been obliterated by social media - direct interaction with our fellow humans, and interaction through space and time via books.
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So the long discussions about books and essays that I and my friends have had via FB (up to and including this morning) never happened?
 
Roger Hicks said:
At last! A HATER!

Still not a Facebook hater, though. And what does it matter where your frends are? I can call all sort of countries. And do.
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I didn't say that you should dislike telephones, Roger. I said that I do. My problems with your posts above center on your (inaccurate) and blinkered assumptions about how other people use social media.

Speak for yourself (and you have, through 13,000 posts to what is essentially a specialized social media site), and you won't get pushback.
 
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semilog said:
So the long discussions about books and essays that I and my friends have had via FB (up to and including this morning) never happened?
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They presumably did happen, but neither of them is referred to in the words you quoted. Read them again. DIRECT interaction (i.e. not electronically mediated) and READING books (not discussing them on Facebook). Presumably you read them, but discussing them is not the same as reading them.

Cheers,

R.
 
semilog said:
I didn't say that you should dislike telephones, Roger. I said that I do. My problems with your posts above center on your (inaccurate) and blinkered assumptions about how other people use social media.

Speak for yourself, and you won't get pushback. Say stupid things about other people, and you will.
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Still the first self-proclaimed hater, though. That was my point.

Cheers,

R.
 
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Roger Hicks said:
They presumably did happen, but neither of them is referred to in the words you quoted. Read them again. DIRECT interaction (i.e. not electronically mediated) and READING books (not discussing them on Facebook). Presumably you read them, but discussing them is not the same as reading them.
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The post in question said that reading books had been obliterated by social media, Roger. My point is that my friends who are social media users are more likely to be readers, not less.
 
semilog said:
The post in question said that reading books had been obliterated by social media, Roger. My point is that my friends who are social media users are more likely to be readers, not less.
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Interesting. Why do you think that might be? I'm not arguing, just asking. I'd say the exact opposite when it came to my friends, but as I have no evidence to back up that impression, I'd hesitate to put it forward as a strong hypothesis.

Cheers,

R.
 
A question: if 'social' media really are 'social', why do so many people hide behind made-up names? And, for all I know, made-up personae?

Cheers,

R.
 
zauhar said:
One thing I have come to realize in the last few years - there is a subset of the population (people like me, and I guess Dave too) who are sensitive to what is happening to people and society, and have an almost desperate sense of panic. It's like "Invasion of the bodysnatchers", you see people gradually being assimilated, and changing in ways they don't realize. (...)
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Yes. At work, I can observe daily that the latest generation of our employees can hardly think anymore. Really. They are and get confused over the simplest things. They know nothing. They can not think anymore. It scares me.

The reasons?

Tabloid press, television, and now 'social media'. You get what you pay for.
 
Roger Hicks said:
Interesting. Why do you think that might be? I'm not arguing, just asking.
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My social media friends tend to be a bit older and they've landed in more diverse fields of work. Many more of them have studied or spent time working in the arts and humanities. Others are scientists. Almost all of them are readers.

My local "meatspace" friends tend to be younger and are more likely to be in biomedical research and the tech industry. They may use social media but that's not generally how I interact with them. Some are (book) readers, a lot aren't.
 
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right now the conversation seems more about winning than anything else.

i like facebook, i have friends all over the world and it is nice to keep in touch and not just by phone or snail mail.

if others have no use for it then fine for them. it ain't worth the time to argue over quite frankly...
 
Gentlemen, please cool the personal comments and remain polite and civil. Thanks... :)
 
paulfish4570 said:
i like facebook. it allows me to keep up casually with my grown children - and many friends - in their daily lives. it is NOT where we have deep face-to-face conversations. that is a whole 'nother level - and a profound joy.
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Absolutely, i save the deep face to face conversations for the bar....errr then again sometimes these end up in` childish babble`
Like many here i have friends spread over the globe and i really do not have the time for quill and parcement:)

regards
CW
 
Roger Hicks said:
A question: if 'social' media really are 'social', why do so many people hide behind made-up names? And, for all I know, made-up personae?
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Because the term "social media" covers a wide range of things, and because some people want to separate their activities.

For example, it's not at all difficult to find out who I (Semilog) am in the real world. But I also teach biochemistry to several hundred undergraduates every year, and I'd just as soon keep my hobbies (e.g., rangefinder cameras, analog film, street photography, etc.) out of their Google searches. I don't particularly care if a few of them discover these things, but on the whole my hobbies, political views, opinions about literature, etc. are distractions from my professional persona, and using a pseudonym helps to keep that distinction reasonably intact.

It's not a matter of secrecy so much as of drawing some (permeable but useful) boundaries. I use my real name on FB but I also keep the privacy settings (such as they are) reasonably locked-down.
 
semilog said:
Because the term "social media" covers a wide range of things, and because some people want to separate their activities.

For example, it's not at all difficult to find out who I (Semilog) am in the real world. But I also teach biochemistry to several hundred undergraduates every year, and I'd just as soon keep my hobbies (e.g., rangefinder cameras, analog film, street photography, etc.) out of their Google searches. I don't particularly care if a few of them discover these things, but on the whole my hobbies, political views, opinions about literature, etc. are distractions from my professional persona, and using a pseudonym helps to keep that distinction reasonably intact.

It's not a matter of secrecy so much as of drawing some (permeable but useful) boundaries. I use my real name on FB but I also keep the privacy settings (such as they are) reasonably locked-down.
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Okay, this is the bit I don't understand, so it's probably not worth your effort to try to explain it to me. Real friends last a very long time. Acquaintances come and go. But either way, I'm me. I don't have separate, carefully cultivated personae. If there's someone I haven't seen for a while, but want to get in touch with, there is almost always going to be a better, easier way to do it: usually, mutual friends. I can see why someone else might choose Facebook as a way of doing it, but when Frances and I were trying to think of anyone we might try to use Facebook to trace, we couldn't think of any. If they're gone, they're gone. Otherwise, we can find them if we care enough.

Facebook, to me, loooks like a giant, year-round, 'round robin': you know, those awful letters that some people send out at Christmas to everyone they know, full of news that is of little or no interest to anyone, generally boasting of their and their family's achievements. Most of my friends regard these as being in appalling taste, and I suppose that for many of us, the same feeling carries over to Facebook.

It also strikes me that Facebook can be a excellent way of pretending you have friends, without really making any effort to maintain the contact on a personal level: "I care enough about you to tell you this personally, and I think you are a good enough friend that the news may be of interest to you." Otherwise, you can broadcast your life (and Facebook is pretty much broadcast) and let your 'friends' pick up the pieces that suit them. To me, that's not friendship. At best, it's an illusion of friendship.

You probably won't agree with this viewpoint, but at least you may understand (in the Californian phrase) "where I'm coming from".

Cheers,

R.
 
zauhar said:
Speaking as someone who has been in computing for thirty years, and as been on the net pretty much since its inception, I think you make snarky or dismissive responses to Dave's reasoned analysis at your peril.

For someone who is mature and has some level of self-possession, ANY technological bauble is a modest threat. Yeah, I can check up on an old college friend via facebook. There is little chance I will get sucked into playing Farmville (I think that's what it's called).

But look at younger people, who have no outside point of reference. They never knew the world before social media. That was a time when I saw fellow college students at my blue-collar state university reading books on the bus - which were not even assigned in class! When social contact meant hanging out at the bar in face-to-face conversations, and where an insulting remark could get you a punch in the face.

Two kinds of human interaction have been obliterated by social media - direct interaction with our fellow humans, and interaction through space and time via books. A published book, on paper, even if the product of a less-than-brilliant author, reflects a significant economic investment and a heartfelt effort on the part of the writer (and their editor). The process of making printed books presented an automatic filter against at least some of the stupidest sh-t that people can spew out.

The result of social media has been an acceleration of the coarsening of our society. The lack of direct human contact means that you are always conversing over a wire with a straw man. If you have some level of maturity (probably the case with most RFFers) you can "read" the person on the other side, and have some semblance of a human conversation. If you have been largely isolated from bonafide human contact, that straw man is either a reflection of yourself, or a cartoon enemy, or some other fanciful projection.

If you want to say "err whatever", or "-1" to that, feel free.

Randy
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Randy,

I'm with you here.

I'm a high school teacher in ICT and social studies (don't you like the combination in this particular case?;)) and have recently been involved in a task force to apply modern media in teaching. And I agree with your observation that youngsters today are using social media in a whole different way than we 'elders' can fathom.

One thing we found is that while teenagers used to cycle through friendships and social contacts to 'shape' their personality in the old days, they now are using social media for that since it's far safer. Much easier to behave in a certain way online to see what the reactions are, than to do so in real life and get smacked on the eye.

The result indeed is that many teenagers get alienated from others because they are considering the online presence of another person to likely be a role rather than a true person. They tend to dismiss the emotions of others as less real, even if coming from real other people.

This was particularly frightening when it came to their definitions of concepts like 'pressure': many kids nowadays do not consider mental coersion to be pressure at all, only physical coersion (i.e. violence, both sexual and non-sexual) is considered as pressure. They are less sensitive to the emotions of others than before. Society gets tougher indeed.

There are studies in the Netherlands to back this up. Use of social media has a bigger impact here than elsewhere, particularly since social networking sites like Hyves have gained huge popularity with kids under 12 years old and due to the high penetration of broadband internet (speeds of 340Kb/s) to Dutch households, close to 40 percent in 2010 (the US had 26 percent in 2010).

Those in this thread that dismiss the perils of social media and online presence for kids are likely not (yet) a parent of a teenager and do not work in education.

I'm interested in any teenager parent's or educator's opinion on this and would like to read them here, for the sake of educating myself more on the subject.
 
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Roger Hicks said:
Okay, this is the bit I don't understand, so it's probably not worth your effort to try to explain it to me. Real friends last a very long time. Acquaintances come and go. But either way, I'm me. I don't have separate, carefully cultivated personae. If there's someone I haven't seen for a while, but want to get in touch with, there is almost always going to be a better, easier way to do it: usually, mutual friends. I can see why someone else might choose Facebook as a way of doing it, but when Frances and I were trying to think of anyone we might try to use Facebook to trace, we couldn't think of any. If they're gone, they're gone. Otherwise, we can find them if we care enough.

Facebook, to me, loooks like a giant, year-round, 'round robin': you know, those awful letters that some people send out at Christmas to everyone they know, full of news that is of little or no interest to anyone, generally boasting of their and their family's achievements. Most of my friends regard these as being in appalling taste, and I suppose that for many of us, the same feeling carries over to Facebook.

It also strikes me that Facebook can be a excellent way of pretending you have friends, without really making any effort to maintain the contact on a personal level: "I care enough about you to tell you this personally, and I think you are a good enough friend that the news may be of interest to you." Otherwise, you can broadcast your life (and Facebook is pretty much broadcast) and let your 'friends' pick up the pieces that suit them. To me, that's not friendship. At best, it's an illusion of friendship.

You probably won't agree with this viewpoint, but at least you may understand (in the Californian phrase) "where I'm coming from".

Cheers,

R.
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Dear Roger,

Please allow me to quote from your post to explain my point further.



This one is easy for any reader here I guess: how would you feel about people that do have carefully cultivated personae?


Now ask yourself, how would kids feel about a world that they consider largely occupied by carefully cultivated personae, rather than true people?
 
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