2026-10-22 22:31 UTC
Replies (17)
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@Farbs@mastodon.social 2026-10-22 23:54
@mcc@mastodon.social That certainly resonates with how YouTube brought us a lot of bad. I wonder if it's because in-person communication, or at least better simulations of it (voice, visual expression) is much more persuasive*. So... forum flame wars > siloed, video fuelled radicalisation? * For me, anyway. Arguing with text feels like arguing with an idea, whereas disagreeing in person feels dangerous and bad and wrong so on balance what they're saying feels more likely to be right.
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@jwz@mastodon.social 2026-10-23 05:14
@mcc@mastodon.social Counterpoint, The Television was terrible but it didn't used to be a self-modifying attractor. When we thought "this could all turn into TV" we didn't envision the Ultron that TV could itself become.
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@chrisradonc@social.vivaldi.net 2026-10-22 22:40
@mcc@mastodon.social I definitely miss the days when going online and communicating with people I'd never met meant regular people called me a weirdo. People with the same kind of attitude might now think I'm weird now for not posting up my opinions on facebook.
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@Video_Game_King@mastodon.social 2026-10-22 22:43
@mcc@mastodon.social A part of me wants to say that the Internet is good but social media is bad...but then I remembered Penny Arcade described this problem in 2004. Things only got a lot worse since then.
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@bob@feed.hella.cheap 2026-10-22 22:50
@mcc@mastodon.social there's a well documented feedback loop between right-wing social media and fox news. fox news picks emerging talking points from niche corners of social media, amplifies them, and then those are the ones that diffuse out to most right-wing media consumers. there's no equivalent for liberals or the left (or there wasn't ten years ago when the analysis I'm thinking of was done)
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@ajroach42@retro.social 2026-10-22 23:25
@mcc@mastodon.social I'm willing to consider this viewpoint.
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@AnarchistLakeland@mastodon.social 2026-10-22 23:51
@mcc@mastodon.social Hmmm, I would argue that capitalism ruined the internet. (however I am currently in highschool so I never truly experienced the internet) So yeah, TV did ruin the internet because TV is very capitalist.
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@cuirass_entertainment@mastodon.social 2026-10-22 23:59
@mcc@mastodon.social I would have felt horrible typing this but I’ve always felt it lol
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@fullywoolly@mastodon.social 2026-10-23 00:54
@mcc@mastodon.social the Internet is good ... I don't think it's only the tv people. I think it was the monetization part. Accessibility brought in a lot of people that wanted to use the internet as an appliance which drastically shifted the culture. There's plenty of room on the Internet for that, but where they landed is important. Being beholden to FB now meta for content that was feeding them what drove engagement to serve more ads and hoover up more data. Ads and data brokers are the real evil imo.
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@mxchara@cyberpunk.lol 2026-10-23 01:05
@mcc@mastodon.social "the Internet is bad" only for a rather specific and quite small (in comparison to the great masses of good useful information) subset of the Internet
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@lispi314@udongein.xyz 2026-10-23 01:19
@mcc@mastodon.social Corposcum and states ruin everything. That we have the Internet in all its mediocrity instead of OSI is pretty much entirely because of their deliberate sabotage.
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@nu_scooter@woof.tech 2026-10-23 01:22
@mcc@mastodon.social It's like when railroads were first invented and suddenly regular people could go to other countries and share ideas with eachother, they could move around in their own cities quickly, and this became such a serious threat that they forced everyone into cars.
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@scottmichaud@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-10-23 03:33
@mcc@mastodon.social I'm reminded of Rick Mercer's opening monologue for Made in Canada. --- All my life I wanted to make movies. A good movie can change lives. A great movie can change the world. But television, it's different. It's not about making a difference. Television's about making one thing only. Money. I work in television; I can get behind anything. ---
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@MissConstrue@mefi.social 2026-10-23 05:51
@mcc@mastodon.social I will grant your premise in that they absolutely made it worse, but I would argue that while video killed the radio star, it was the tremendous successes small businesses experienced, which led to rapacious capitalism mongers, which led to ad companies, which led to legislation making interstate taxation for small business so complicated they were forced to add a process layer owned by capitalists, which led to algorithms, and here we all are.
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@fazalmajid@social.vivaldi.net 2026-10-23 06:49
@mcc@mastodon.social "Television is not vulgar because people are vulgar – it is vulgar because people are similar in their prurient interests and sharply differentiated in their civilized concerns. All of world industry is moving increasingly towards more segmented markets. But in a broadcast medium, artists and writers cannot appeal to the highest aspirations and sensitivities of individuals. Instead, manipulative masters rule over huge masses of people." —George Gilder, Life After Television
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@woo@fosstodon.org 2026-10-23 09:26
@mcc@mastodon.social A thing gets bad when bad people think they can make a lot of money from it.
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@jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com 2026-10-23 11:05
@mcc@mastodon.social I have stories about that; involving *literal* TV production teams being brought in to revamp the UI and user interaction dynamics of a major early social media (early as in 1995) I worked on, originally designed with a 'community' and user-group model. Like a better AOL. The TL;DR is, they threw out our entire concept and replaced it with 'channels' for version 2. I am *not* kidding. If you were around then and read between the lines well enough you know which service I'm referring to.