Tag Archives: social media

2023.08.08 – media_log

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Ridley Scott Regrets Not Directing Blade Runner Sequel
I love the Blade Runner 2049 we have and realize I’ve not watched Alien: Covenant yet. Also, AV Club saying 2049 is better than the original is just plain stupid. Different eras, subgenres, everything. Comparing apples and batteries.

The Prosecraft Controversy
Dunno, fren. If you want to know how many words are in a memoir, then look at memoirs, not 25,000 different books. I happened to be on “Twitter the X” when this started and it’s down to directly benefiting (lo its tilt or not) off of someone else’s work without their consent and compensation. Also, I don’t know why you would want to sound like another author outside of marketing purposes, I guess.

Conspiracy theories: how social media can help them spread and even spark violence introduces us to the author’s research in how conspiracy theories are spread. What I’m interested in is how I can work this idea into my class discussion of discourse communities. I think this is a good way to connect it to our later technology conversation.

America Already Has An AI Underclass
“In the coming era of AI, can the people doing the tech industry’s grunt work ever be seen and treated not as tireless machines but simply as what they are—human?”
“The program might write multiple recipes for chocolate cake, which a rater ranks and edits.” Does anyone make the cake?
“the machine-learning company Hugging Face” the fuck?
“there’s nothing flexible about precarity”
There’s nothing more I can say that these quotes don’t already convey.

I did not know they made a film based on this chapter from Dracula, but I’m going to try to get to see The Last Voyage of the Demeter before my exams start.

Zoom Returns to the Office
I think there’s a way to make an adjustment without requiring people to be in the office and that’s Zoom Communal spaces- like Zoom sessions with four to five people online working together occasionally chatting and helping each other stay on task. I don’t know why employees don’t do this or maybe they do co-working all the time and companies just need to justify the high rental rates they’re paying for office space.

Seven Books That Will Make You Put Down Your Phone
I will check some of these out now that I took social media off my phone.

The Loneliness Epidemic
A generation of kids who stayed home alone because their parents didn’t make enough money for child care is part of this. Also, Reagan, it’s always Reagan.

2023.08.04 – media_log

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I’ve stepped back from consuming social media lately and am starting to feel the effects. My attention is slightly better and I find I have more time during the day to do other things. Important things. I’ve always been a fan of social media, but I think if your main use of platforms is consumption and not creation, it alters the way you think. Not in what you think, but how you think.

So I’ve been trying an experiment. I removed all social media platforms from my phone and kept only my RSS feeds from a few sources and blogs and that’s it. While I can check Facebook or Instagram on my laptop, I make sure to keep it short: a quick drive-by for Happy Birthdays and “care” emojis, and then I’m out. Twitter had been my go-to app and now it’s gone, figuratively and literally.

Now every time I read an article or have an idea I want to share, I put it into my Obsidian daily note. Not only does this give me an archive of the media I’m consuming (and that’s good for when I suddenly find myself saying “I read something just recently…”) it makes me think a little bit more about what I’m reading. No more saving articles to read later, I take the time and if it inspires or enrages me, I write it down in a separate note and log it in my daily media_log.

It’s still new and fresh, so I’m in the ADHD honeymoon phase, but I also wanted to start sharing this on my site, because, I’m not doing anything else with it right now. Let me know if this is helpful.

Who? Me?

Listening to NPR’s Up First today and in the case of Trump speaking after his arrest and Alexei Navalny speaking from a Russian jail, both men said that “this isn’t happening to me, this is happening to you” in their public statements.

I’m certainly not comparing the two men, but I just found the timing of the similar statements interesting.

Goofing around with the social medias

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  • I signed up for Post.News a few days ago and think it’s fine for now. I’m not sure who will adopt it outside of journalists (if they do), but I think I will stick around for a while.
  • I finally got my Mastodon.Social account set up as well. I’m still wrapping my head around the Federated system, but I see that I don’t necessarily have to split myself into multiple pieces. I already have multiple personalities online, so I need to be careful here 😉
  • Slowly I’m coming back to tumblr too, under my personal name, and want to use that as a place to post comments on articles and asides. While I wanted to keep everything here on my blog, I would still like to reach a larger audience.

My plan is to have daily summary of the things I like elsewhere until that becomes unnecessary or unwieldy (or I just abandon it due to forgetting, which is more likely). Feel free to follow me in any of those places.

Content moderation is what Twitter makes — it is the thing that defines the user experience. It’s what YouTube makes, it’s what Instagram makes, it’s what TikTok makes. They all try to incentivize good stuff, disincentivize bad stuff, and delete the really bad stuff.

From Nilay Patel’s “Welcome to hell, Elon” at The Verge

Social Media Exile

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I don’t think social media is really all that healthy.

I’ve been positive in dealing my own rhetoric, especially in class. I’ve tried to discuss its functions conceptually, that there are benefits if you curate well and hypervigilant, but the labor costs outweigh the benefit.

I have been mindful of how I feel when I’m on a platform. Twitter is now where I feel the worst; Facebook is pretty neutral as I’ve culled my friends list down considerably. Instagram and TikTok are still relatively positive, if not actively negative. But I want to re-evaluate how *I* want to use platforms, what *I* want to say.

Right now, dunno, ya know?

This is going to be tricky as I read in Digital Composition and Rhetoric. There are more media out there than just social media channels, but like the sewage systems of most metropolitan areas, everything runs into them. Those channels are drivers of discourse now. We build cites based on how fast our shit flows underneath.

(Perhaps that’s not the best metaphor – but you see what I mean.)
I will be thinking a lot about how we pull back, as a society. How we maintain important connections, but not add to or get inundated by the garbage. Maybe it’s time to just go full in on a personal web-site. Keep all of my postings there and worry less about enGagEmeNT and more about cultivating a space for me.