Has there been a lack of communication lately?

[Rabbitearsblog]

It seems like since we are living in an age where social media is pretty dominant in communicating with other people, it feels like I see more people arguing or putting each other down for having personal opinions instead of trying to be more civil about other people's opinions.  I mean sure, there are some opinions that can be offensive and some people have the right to call out that person on that behavior, but at the same time, when it comes to someone liking or hating something, that person is immediately attacked for having a different opinion.  What do you all think about all this?

[Solister]

I love this kind of topics.

But it is... hard.

I mean. I'm doing an international affairs degree, I can simply not live or imagine in a world without internet.

At the same time, it surely has unwanted things.

But specifically going to social medias and interactions, there really is some speculation that most social medias forge "interests" for you, and so, always suggest you a thing to let you annoyed and supposedly start a fight. All this for the price of an ad.

However, what could we do? I'm pretty sure lots of friendships and family relations were cut for the disagreement of a single thing, say, politics. I don't think Social Media is the only one to blame, because depending on the proximity, these would probably still happen. The main point here, I believe, it is the kind of content both sides is consuming and if it's tendentious to one side, say for example, fake news.

Said that, I don't really mind Social Media "for friends" these days. I don't have a Twitter and gave up on Facebook earlier this year, and don't even miss them. However, I'm pretty active at Reddit and here on SSMB which are two communities I really enjoy because I don't necessarily stress myself out. Still, I guess the better solution for you, is definitely disconnect the most you can on internet, soon I started realizing it matters nothing to me what others are doing, neither I need to know all new headlines cause on the next day there will be more, and I don't need to know them (and ironically, sometimes  memes are better than news sources for me).

For the others, well, I don't know. I don't think a mass propaganda down social medias would work, neither believe you should do. Giving up Facebook was a personal choice. The problem is mostly that society is still linked (thus Social Media) through them, it's not because I'm not there that people will stop doing stupid things there (Well, better Facebook, than TikTok I guess).

Last, maybe this post I made a few months ago is relevant to the subject. It's not the same theme, but it may interest you and can relate:

[Kazhnuz]

It's not a difference of quality more than a difference or scale. It's basically the same than before, but on a larger scale.

On usenet and old bbs, flamewar where pretty easy to appear (this notion comes from here). The godwin law's is the first instance of using the idea of internet meme , and it comes from here. The notion of trolls, etc… comes from that era here. On forums, I've often seen during the mid-2000 people insulting each other from their opinion. Same on angry blog post. And comment section are seen as an hellscape since a lot of time. Another instance of that is that the Netiquette had to exists, and often have to be reminded. You don't have to remind people of a rules they already follow.

Heck, my father have been insulted and received threat mail from heinous groups and conspiracy theorist because he was a moderator on a usenet forum back in the day, and when i was a kid/teen I found a website entirely dedicated to insult him.

There are entire thesis about why people react like that more easily on the internet. Is that written form is more detached, so it's easier to attack ? It is just that you have less consequence on the internet ? Is that something else ? These studies certainly know that way better than me with my anecdotal data.

 

What's the difference now ? Scale. On the early days we add some hundreds (maybe thousand, but really rarely) of people that where in a circle were they could communicate between each other). Now we have millions. Mob reactions can happens. Stuff can go a lot faster, and everybody can hear of it.

So there isn't a lack of communication today more than before. it's just that nowadays, everybody is hyperconnected to everybody on a few services where the scale make it impossible to get proper moderation. We aren't just in small, focused communities. Well, here, we are, but on the social medias.

[Rabbitearsblog]

10 hours ago, Kazhnuz said:

It's not a difference of quality more than a difference or scale. It's basically the same than before, but on a larger scale.

On usenet and old bbs, flamewar where pretty easy to appear (this notion comes from here). The godwin law's is the first instance of using the idea of internet meme , and it comes from here. The notion of trolls, etc… comes from that era here. On forums, I've often seen during the mid-2000 people insulting each other from their opinion. Same on angry blog post. And comment section are seen as an hellscape since a lot of time. Another instance of that is that the Netiquette had to exists, and often have to be reminded. You don't have to remind people of a rules they already follow.

Heck, my father have been insulted and received threat mail from heinous groups and conspiracy theorist because he was a moderator on a usenet forum back in the day, and when i was a kid/teen I found a website entirely dedicated to insult him.

There are entire thesis about why people react like that more easily on the internet. Is that written form is more detached, so it's easier to attack ? It is just that you have less consequence on the internet ? Is that something else ? These studies certainly know that way better than me with my anecdotal data.

 

What's the difference now ? Scale. On the early days we add some hundreds (maybe thousand, but really rarely) of people that where in a circle were they could communicate between each other). Now we have millions. Mob reactions can happens. Stuff can go a lot faster, and everybody can hear of it.

So there isn't a lack of communication today more than before. it's just that nowadays, everybody is hyperconnected to everybody on a few services where the scale make it impossible to get proper moderation. We aren't just in small, focused communities. Well, here, we are, but on the social medias.

I agree that the scale of the communication between people online is much bigger in scale due to more enhanced technology nowadays when before, we only really had forum boards to communicate with other people and that was few and far between.  Now, why people are much more aggressive whenever they are responding to any kind of news or opinions from other people, I'm not sure why that's the case, unless it's like you said, because people feel like they won't be attacked if they say anything bad compared to saying such horrible things in person.