Although I’m not pretending to have any real understanding of social interactions in general — in fact, as I often mention, I go through life feeling like I really do’t know what to do in a lot of “everyday” social situations — I find the way little communities and cliques develop to be fascinating, both to observe from the outside, and to be a part of from within.
I have a few examples in mind. First, and most prominent, is Twitter. I’ve drifted from group to group a bit since I originally joined Twitter a number of years back. Originally, my use of Twitter was primarily to have a means of talking to my online friends with whom I used to interact on 1up.com. After “The Great Exodus”, when 1up’s specialised forums were mashed together into a NeoGAF-style monstrosity of just “Games” and “Not Games”, a significant proportion of the community left the site’s forums, and many of them found themselves on Twitter. Over time, people changed, moved and became involved in different things. Some gave up on Twitter altogether; others started using it for professional purposes; others still “rebranded” themselves.
I fell somewhat into the latter category. After suffering a fairly serious instance of doxxing and harassment back in 2013 — see, it’s not just women it happens to, contrary to what the media would have you believe — I left Twitter, initially intending not to return, but after realising what a pile of crap Facebook is for actually interacting with people in a meaningful manner, I returned. After realising that the interminable social justice yelling on Twitter was setting off my depression and anxiety, I left again. This time when I came back (they always come back) I decided to “reinvent” myself a bit, and follow fewer of the people I felt I “should” be following, and instead focused on people who posted things I found interesting or enjoyable to interact with. Consequently, these days I find myself on the fringes of “anitwitter”, a subculture on the social network that discusses, posts screencaps and generally enthuses about anime and games. I, as you might expect, fit right in.
Elsewhere on the Internet, the Discord server I mentioned the other day (which, dear reader, you’re still welcome to come and join) has been developing slowly but surely, but it’s our Final Fantasy XIV Free Company server that is perhaps the more interesting example. Taking cues from the in-game friend who introduced me to Discord in the first place, I added an “NSFW” (Not Safe for Work) channel to the server. It immediately became the most active channel in the place, though initially people weren’t quite sure what to post in there, i.e. whether or not it was okay to post filth. (It was, though someone stumbled accidentally into it and complained a bit at being confronted with a wall of hentai, so we’ve since made it invite-only — community management at work!)
What’s interesting about the NSFW channel is that the usual boundaries of “politeness” that are up when interacting with other people online in real time — in my experience, anyway; I tend not to hang around with the sort of people who hurl insults and abuse at one another — are nowhere to be seen. I don’t mean that people are rude to one another; quite the opposite, in fact. The NSFW channel is a place where everyone can be open and honest about the things that they like, and where no-one judges one another for the things they talk about and post. (Or, if they do, they keep that to themselves.) It’s pretty refreshing and liberating, actually, and makes it abundantly clear that there should probably be more places for people — particularly, it has to be said, men — to be able to talk about things like sex, fetishes and all that sort of thing without fear of judgement or anything like that. I shan’t go into any further details than that, but suffice to say we’re all having a jolly old time in there.
Anyway, yeah. Online communities. Just as interesting as real communities, I think you’ll agree…
Longtime supporter of this blog and regular commenter Jud joined Twitter recently, and seems to be at a bit of a loss as to what to do with it. I remember feeling much the same way when I first joined the site; it was quite some time before I got a feel for what it was all about and how it worked. So with that in mind, today’s entry is dedicated to Jud and anyone else who doesn’t understand what Twitter is, how it works and how to use it.
What is Twitter?
Twitter always used to position itself as a “microblogging” platform; a means for people to express themselves in deliberately short snippets of text: no more than 140 characters. Over time, it’s evolved, and can now be used for a lot of different things: as a means of staying up-to-date on topics that interest you; as a means of socialising with people who share your interests; as a means of staying in touch with friends; and as a means of yelling abuse at random strangers on the Internet.
The most important thing about Twitter is that it is a public means of communication. That means that anything you put on Twitter can be read by anyone on the Internet, and they don’t necessarily have to have a Twitter account to do so. There is the option to make your account “private” — which means only people who are already following you or people you specifically grant the ability to follow you after they request it can see your tweets — but using that kind of misses part of the appeal of the site, which is coming into contact with people you may not have otherwise “met”.
The best way of thinking of Twitter in metaphorical terms is that it’s a bit like being at a party, but a rather strange party where everyone present is constantly making speeches in the hope that someone will listen to them. Someone who follows you is someone who is listening to your speech; your tweets themselves make up the speech. This is the simplest possible use of Twitter; use it to express short snippets of thoughts and opinions into the world, and hope that someone, somewhere finds it interesting.
Key terms
Timeline: the main screen you see on Twitter, consisting of all the tweets from people you are following. The most recent tweets are at the top, and as you scroll down the page you’ll see older and older tweets. The screen will keep scrolling forever in most circumstances, so don’t try and reach the bottom, otherwise you’ll be there all day.
Tweet: A single 140-character public message that may or may not include mentions.
Mention: A tweet that includes another user’s username.
Direct Message: A private message between two or more Twitter users.
Profile: An individual user’s Twitter page that shows just their tweets along with some brief biographical information they may have chosen to share. You can access any user’s profile by going to http://twitter.com/username, replacing username with the username of the user whose profile you would like to see. For example, to see my Twitter profile, you’d visit http://twitter.com/AstralFireIII.
Avatar: (also “avi”) The small image a user uses to represent themselves on Twitter. The default avatar is an egg on a coloured background. Since a lot of people habitually ignore “egg avatars” as they’re a common sign of spammers, it’s best to put some form of personalised image here as soon as possible; it doesn’t have to be a picture of yourself.
Banner: The large image that appears at the top of your profile.
Follower: Someone who has chosen to follow you and have your tweets appear in their timeline.
Mute: An option that allows you to stop seeing tweets from people or that contain particular terms without outright blocking them.
Block: An option that prevents another user from interacting with you or seeing your tweets.
Retweet: An option that allows you to reshare someone’s tweet onto your follower’s timelines (optionally with a comment of your own), even if they aren’t following the person you retweet.
Livetweet: A slang terms used to describe someone using Twitter to provide “live” updates on a situation that is unfolding. Most commonly used during press conferences or big news events where things can be announced, revealed or happen dramatically and quickly.
How do I interact with people?
There are several ways you can do this:
Mention: Also known as “@replies”, mentioning someone involves including the “at” (“@”) sign followed immediately by someone’s username somewhere in your tweet. If you do this, the recipient will receive a notification that you have mentioned them.
Important to note about mentions is the fact that if you put the @username at the beginning of the tweet, only people who are following the recipient of your mention will see your mention in their timeline. If you want your reply to be more “public” and visible to everyone, even if they’re not the recipient, you can either put the @username elswhere in the tweet (at the end is common) or put something before the initial @username such as a full stop. The latter practice is often known as “dot-replying” and is considered bad form by some people.
In our “party” context from earlier, this is like replying to someone’s public speech and having a public discussion that other people can overhear.
Subtweet: I include this here only because people complain about it all the time. Subtweeting is a made-up word used to describe passive-aggressive tweets that don’t directly mention someone, but which are clearly and obviously about a particular person. While it’s delightfully easy to be passive-aggressive on Twitter, subtweeting is considered the height of bad form, so avoid it.
In our “party” context, this is like making pointed comments about someone without actually mentioning them or talking directly to them. (“Someone should have looked in the mirror before coming out tonight!)
Direct Message: Also known as a “DM”, a Direct Message is what you use if you want a private conversation with one or more other Twitter users. Direct Messages do not appear on your respective timelines, and instead appear in the Messages tab. To send a Direct Message to someone, either go to a user’s profile or the Messages tab.
In our “party” context, this is like dragging someone off to the bathroom (or room of your choice) for a private conversation.
Favourite: Clicking the “star” icon (it sometimes appears as a “heart” on some Twitter apps) under a tweet has a similar effect to the “like” button on Facebook. It’s an interaction that basically says “I like this” or “I want to keep track of this for later”. You can revisit your favourites from your own profile page, or look at other people’s favourites from theirs. Favourites are public!
In our “party” context, this is like nodding approvingly at something someone has said. Alternatively, some people use it like making a note of something someone said to revisit later.
Retweet: If you see a tweet you particularly like, agree with or just want to share for one reason or another, you can retweet it. This means it will appear in all your followers’ timelines, even if they don’t follow the person you retweeted. You can optionally add a comment to a retweet if you want to add your own thoughts on it.
In our “party” context, this is like repeating something someone said to you earlier to someone else.
Hashtags: Adding the hash sign (“#”) to a word (or cluster of words with no spaces) turns it into a hashtag, which your followers (and you!) are then able to click on to see other people talking about the same thing. This is most commonly used by marketers or communities who want to keep track of discussion on a given topic easily without having to follow hundreds of individual users. Some hashtags become mini-communities in their own right.
In our “party” context, this is like all the jocks clustering in one corner and talking among themselves, all the nerds in another corner talking among themselves, and all the Game of Thrones fans sitting in another corner giving their own play-by-play commentaries of the episode that is currently on the television.
What else can I do on Twitter?
Besides following people and interacting with them via the means listed above, you can also group people (including those you aren’t following) into Lists, each of which then gets its own individual timeline — this is useful for collecting together things that you might want to keep track of, but don’t want to clutter your main timeline with.
There’s also a powerful search function that lets you look for users, hashtags, topics and even specific things people have said.
What should be the first things I do on Twitter?
Update your profile. Make sure that you can be found (assuming you want to be found!) by including your name (or a known pseudonym you use) and some biographical information, optionally including your location.
Add an avatar. Egg avatars are habitually ignored, so put a new picture in as soon as possible. Go to your profile and hit the Edit button and it’s simple to do.
Follow some people. Twitter is made for socialising, so follow some people you find interesting or want to stay in touch with. Don’t feel obliged to follow all the people they follow, because you may have different interests. Instead, over time, gradually curate your following list until your timeline looks the way you want it to.
Interact with people. People won’t follow you back unless you give them a reason to. Interact with them, talk with them, engage with the things they’re saying.
Try not to get into any fights. Twitter’s brevity is a blessing and a curse; the 140-character limit protects against waffling somewhat (though many people get around this by simply chaining long strings of tweets together by replying to themselves) but this also means that, on occasion, certain nuances can be lost. Discussions on contentious subjects can escalate quickly!
Gratuitous self-promotion. Twitter is used by a lot of people as an important means of getting their work in front of as many people as possible. Don’t be afraid to link to things you’ve written or otherwise produced that you particularly want people to take a look at.
Enjoy! Twitter can and should be fun and useful. If it’s not, though, don’t worry! Some people simply don’t get along with it as a means of communication and happily go about their lives without it. Follow the tips above, though, and you should be getting the most out of it in no time.
Here’s a curious paradox for you: how much of the supposed epidemic of “bullying” and “harassment” going on on the Internet these days is down to people bringing it upon themselves?
This isn’t a question of “victim blaming”, as the buzzword has it, but it’s an actual phenomenon that I’ve observed — and, in my younger days, even engaged in myself. I can’t explain why I did such a thing, but I know I did it, I know that I was aware I was doing it even at the time, and yet I simply couldn’t stop myself.
I suffered dreadfully at the hands of bullies in primary school. I’m not sure what it was about me — my hair, my accent, the fact my ears appeared quite large in comparison to my head (I’ve since “grown into” them, I think) or some combination of all of the above and a few other things besides — but I was a regular target for some of the schools more notorious troublemakers. And it wasn’t to do with my friendship group, either, as on a number of occasions my supposed “friends” actually sided against me in an attempt to win favour points with the bullies (who, inevitably, were the “cool” kids). Perhaps it was self-preservation, perhaps they’d really had enough of me; either way, it was a betrayal, and it hurt.
But I know that I was partly to blame for some of the incidents that happened. I recall deliberately goading the bullies on more than one occasion — swearing at them, insulting them, trying to attack them — and inevitably being knocked to the ground, winded and crying. The teachers on duty would do their usual “come over and look concerned” bit, but then nothing would ever happen to the people who had assaulted me. And so the cycle would repeat, over and over again.
Perhaps it was an attempt to claw my own little bit of “power” on the playground, because I was very much at the bottom of the food chain. Perhaps it was an attempt to let out my frustration about what I now recognise as social anxiety and difficulty interacting with some people. Perhaps I was just a little cunt. I honestly don’t know the reason. But what I do know is that despite the fact I was the “victim”, I was also genuinely to blame for a goodly proportion of those incidents — not all of them, mind, but a fair few of them.
And I’m reminded of this as I watch interactions on social media today. Mr Brandon Orselli, the chap who runs NicheGamer, an independent games site that I’ve become quite fond of, regularly has to fend off people who start attacking him, his work and his staff without any sort of provocation. Their reasoning? His site has, at times, been sympathetic to the consumer revolt known as “GamerGate”, which has now been raging for some ten months and, despite a considerable amount of evidence to the contrary, is still regarded as a “hate group” of “misogynists”.
Now, I’m not here to talk about GamerGate and whether or not it’s right (largely because I know it’s a topic of discussion that tends to become irrational very quickly — both “sides” are very much at fault in this regard, and frankly I want nothing to do with the perpetual arguments and finger-pointing) but one glance at the front page of NicheGamer will tell you that it’s absolutely not any sort of GamerGate propaganda rag. Rather, it’s an up-and-coming independent site with a clear focus, a staff that is obviously passionate about their work — including some highly knowledgeable specialist writers — and an editor-in-chief who is not afraid to stand up for himself, his work and his site.
Orselli does admittedly, at times, come across as a little arrogant on social media — but you know what? I understand the pride he takes in his work, and the pleasure he feels when things go well for his site. And I very much respect his choice to take the bull by the horns and engage these “critics” in an attempt at conversation even as they are, at times, spreading information that simply isn’t true.
Why am I reminded of my own playground experiences? Well, the sort of people who are attacking Orselli and his staff remind me of the young me. They poke and they poke and they poke and they goad and they goad and they goad… and then they call foul (or, more accurately, “harassment”) when the person they’ve been poking and goading bites back. (It has to be said, mind you, that it’s not quite the same situation: Orselli is not a “bully”, has shown admirable self-restraint and civility in these interactions, and has been a lot more calm and collected about them than I probably would be!) In other words, observing from the outside and recognising this behaviour as something I once did (as a child!) makes it seem very much like those attacking Orselli, his site and others like them are specifically going out and looking for trouble so they can further their “harassment” narrative.
Certainly nothing I’ve seen of NicheGamer’s output — and since I’ve pretty much stopped following big games sites as they don’t cover many of the games I’m interested in these days, it’s one of the few sites I do check in on semi-regularly — warrants the sort of unpleasantness I’ve seen hurled at Orselli and his team on a seemingly daily basis, whatever your feelings on GamerGate (which, as previously noted, is not the same thing as NicheGamer). If anything, NicheGamer should be applauded for trying something different in a world of identikit big magazine-style or blog-type games sites, and catering to a specific audience rather than casting a very wide but very shallow net.
But anyway. It hopefully goes without saying that this isn’t any attempt to diminish any instances of genuine harassment that actually goes on on social media — after all, I’ve dealt with it myself, so I know how shitty it is. But this sort of behaviour — deliberate provocation — just rubs me up the wrong way, particularly as I’ve suffered at the hands of bullies many times over the years, both by bringing it on myself and through no fault of my own. So in the words of Twitter’s favourite anti-bully ranger:
I’m probably going to upset a few people with this post, but this is something that has been festering inside me for quite some time; something that I need to release by talking about it. I hope doing so will help me feel a little better, as well as make the people who care about me aware of the way certain increasingly prevalent attitudes in popular culture make me — and, I’m sure, others like me — feel.
I’ll kick off with an immediately contentious statement: I completely understand why the term “social justice warrior” is used as a pejorative.
I will immediately qualify this by saying that I do not think the concept of social justice is unimportant, nor that it is something that should be swept under the carpet and ignored. There are still problems with attitudes towards marginalised groups in society. There are still groups out there whose sole reason for existence is an irrational, burning hatred of certain people. There are subsets of passionate fans in all interest groups — be it video games, sports, movies, books, anything — who do not have a positive influence on the community as a whole.
However, I believe that for the most part, human beings are fundamentally decent people. I’ve met my share of assholes, sure, and seen evidence of people being mistreated, insulted and even threatened online — although, on that note, I will also say that we’re collectively a little hasty to jump to the descriptor “death threat” when it isn’t always particularly accurate. But I’ve also met enough decent people in my time in this world and on the Internet to find it difficult to believe that the world is the seething morass of hatred and prejudice that the most passionate advocates of social justice — the aforementioned “social justice warriors” — believe it is.
Let me clarify my earlier statement. The term “social justice warrior”, as I see it — and as many others see it, too — does not simply apply to anyone who believes in social justice, otherwise there would be no need for it; it would simply be a means of describing pretty much everyone who isn’t an asshole. Rather, it describes, as noted above, a particularly passionate and outspoken advocate for social justice — and someone who is not above using particularly unpleasant tactics to try and get their point across. Tactics like public shaming; insulting; “othering”; discrimination; ignoring opinions based on socioeconomic, ethnic, gender or sexuality groups; dogpiling… the list goes on, and, you’ll notice, these are all things that anyone who truly stands for social justice should really be against the use of, regardless of who they’re aimed at. A “social justice warrior” would discount my opinion on all this, for example, because I’m a white, straight, heterosexual, cissexual male: the very definition of the concept of “male privilege” that many of them cling to so very desperately.
Why is this a problem, though? It’s easy enough to ignore and filter out other bile-spewing groups based on hatred — when was the last time you accidentally stumbled across neo-Nazi ravings without deliberately going looking for them, for example? — so why not just tune out these people? Well, the answer to that is simple: unlike other hate-spewing groups, these loudmouths are increasingly infiltrating mainstream popular culture having positioned their approach as being “correct” from a moral perspective. My experience of them has largely been in the video games sector, but from what I understand, they’ve had a fair crack at numerous other communities over the last few years, too.
Let me explain why they bother me so much, and hopefully, my dislike of their tactics will become a little clearer.
A few years back, a games journo friend of mine — Jeff Grubb of GamesBeat — wrote a news story. I forget the exact details of the story (and can’t seem to find the original since GamesBeat’s numerous refreshes over the last few years), but it involved, as I recall, Twisted Metal creator David Jaffe making some contentious statements that involved the hypothetical punching of a woman in the face. Jaffe wasn’t advocating for violence against women, of course; doing something like that directly would be tantamount to career suicide; if I remember correctly, the context was something to do with playing multiplayer games and reactions to winning and losing. The details of the story itself are somewhat unimportant, anyway; what I’m really concerned with here is the reaction to it.
Jeff wrote the piece on Jaffe’s statements from a factual perspective — as a reporter, without editorialising. Different publications approach this sort of thing in different ways: more blog-style sites like Kotaku have no problem with their authors saying exactly what they think about a particular issue, whereas GamesBeat’s parent site VentureBeat is more of a business-centric publication that is less concerned with drama and more with simply reporting what has been going on.
Because Jeff didn’t condemn Jaffe’s statements in the article, however, he attracted the ire of an early incarnation of the “social justice warriors”. The situation became worse as he attempted to defend himself on Twitter; as time passed, more and more people, including high-profile games journalists with large followings, started attacking him — rather than Jaffe, who arguably should have been the subject of their ire, though even that’s debatable, given what I recall of the context surrounding his comments — and publicly shaming him, denouncing him as an “example of white male privilege” and effectively setting hordes of followers on him. I became seriously worried for his safety and wellbeing while this was going on.
This wasn’t an isolated incident, either. Numerous times over the last few years we’ve seen outspoken members of the industry with social justice leanings adopt the tactic of publicly shaming and bullying, even going so far as to threaten people with ending their career. Most recently, we’ve seen Polygon’s Ben Kuchera attacking a member of EA’s customer engagement team over the latter’s concern over community-made Twitter “blacklists”; in previous months we’ve seen the widely celebrated writer Leigh Alexander threatening to end people’s careers, feminist critic Mattie Brice throwing a hissy fit when someone called her out on a sexist joke and all manner of other atrocious behaviour. It simply isn’t acceptable.
All this isn’t to say that these people can’t voice their concerns. What I do find myself violently disliking about this culture of public shaming that has been growing over the last few years, however, is that there’s little to no “right of reply” in most cases. Once someone is branded as a misogynist, sexist, transphobe, racist or whatever by these self-appointed crusaders of morality, there’s no recovery from it. They have no opportunity to say “well, hang on a minute, here’s why you’re not quite right there…” and no opportunity to criticise the arguments being levelled against them. More often than not, critics of Kuchera, Alexander et al are swiftly blocked, silenced and/or mocked, simply because the “social justice warrior” position has been successfully positioned as the “correct” attitude. The same thing happens when anyone attempts to start a conversation surrounding feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian’s Tropes vs Women video series; while she does attract plenty of hate-filled bile — and that, let’s be clear, is always unacceptable — she and her team appear unwilling to engage with or discuss legitimate criticisms of her work, and often post deliberately provocative statements seemingly with the sole intention of drawing the trolls out to point and laugh at them.
Now, I’ve been standing on the sidelines throughout all of this. I have, thankfully, never been attacked by these people, even when I was working in the mainstream games press on GamePro and USgamer, even when I was writing about notoriously provocative and controversial games such as Senran Kagura and other titles from Japan. Perhaps I was just too small fry for industry “megaphones” (as Alexander calls herself) to bother with, and I’m not complaining; the fact I made a point of remaining positive while acknowledging these titles weren’t for everyone helped me build up a decent audience who appreciated the work I did, particularly as it was in stark contrast to the majority of other sites out there.
So why does all this bother me so much? Well, because it’s deeply, deeply frustrating, and because the culture of fear that these people are perpetuating online makes me very nervous about speaking on certain topics for fear of being ostracised. More important than that, however, is the feeling that it’s driven a wedge between me and a number of friends whom I no longer feel particularly comfortable talking to because I know they’ve drifted more towards the social justice side of the fence — or, in some cases, become outright zealots. I miss those friends greatly, and it makes me extremely sad that I can’t talk to them any more simply because I don’t share their ideological viewpoint — or, rather, I do, but I fundamentally disagree with the methods through which they go about expressing that viewpoint.
What should people do instead? Simple. Champion the things that you’re fond of and believe in, without putting down other people for what they enjoy. Diversity isn’t just about creating experiences that “everyone” can enjoy, though that’s part of it. Diversity is also about creating experiences that appeal to specific audiences. There’s nothing wrong with that; in fact, it makes for more interesting, more focused pieces of entertainment that feel personal and relatable. Cater to men, women, heterosexual people, homosexual people, cissexual people, transgender or transsexual people, white people, black people, Asian people, anyone you like. Accept that some things are not “for” you — though that doesn’t need to stop you from finding enjoyment in them, as the number of otome games I’ve enjoyed over the last few years will attest — and celebrate the things that are. If you believe that there aren’t enough works catering to the groups you consider yourself to fall into, throw your support behind those that do or even make your own. Just, for God’s sake, don’t ever position yourself as The One Correct Attitude and point the finger of shame at anyone who doesn’t fall within your own specific worldview, because that’s where the majority of this nonsense is coming from.
I’m not a misogynist. I’m not a sexist. I’m not a racist. I’m not a transphobe. I’m not even an anti-feminist or a men’s rights advocate. I just want these “social justice warriors” to understand that what they are doing is not, in fact, championing diversity; it’s stifling conversation and creating a culture of mistrust between developers, players and press — and between friends.
I hate it. And I wish it would go away. And I want my friends back.
So another outlandish “privacy scandal” looked set to erupt on Twitter earlier. For the benefit of anyone who might be considering sharing anything regarding Samsung Smart TVs sending your personal information to third parties, allow me to clarify a few things.
Samsung Smart TVs have a voice recognition feature. I know this because I have one. (I also never use it, because voice recognition is, for the most part, stupid and pointless when you have a remote control right there. Assuming you have hands, it is pretty much always just as quick to use the remote as it is to remember exactly how you’re supposed to phrase a voice command.)
Anyway. The way this voice control works is very simple. You press a button on the “special” remote, not the “normal” one, and the microphone in the remote starts picking up your voice. When you’ve finished speaking, it sends what you said over the Internet to a speech recognition service (that more than likely converts the speech into computer-friendly text for more accurate processing) and then your TV receives an instruction based on what you said. The TV itself isn’t doing any real processing; that all happens remotely, and the TV simply receives the instruction to do something based on what the speech recognition service thinks you said.
Astute iPhone-owning readers will know that this is exactly how Siri on Apple devices works — it’s why you can’t use Siri when you don’t have an Internet connection, even to access information stored locally on your phone such as your address book and suchlike.
The reason these services work like this is to take some of the processing workload off the phone/TV/other device with voice recognition. It’s not an ideal solution, but it does mean that the devices in question can be less expensive because they don’t need hefty processing power or software to recognise voices pre-installed on them. One day we may have devices that can recognise our voices accurately without requiring an Internet connection — although chances are by the time we’ve perfected that, the Internet will be “everywhere”, rather than just in Wi-Fi hotspots and mobile coverage areas — but until then, this is how voice recognition tends to work.
As such, a necessary part of the entire process involves sending a recording of what you said to the third-party speech recognition service. This means that if you press the microphone button on your Smart TV remote and then decide that the appropriate thing to say at that moment would be “My credit card number is…”, a recording of you saying your credit card number will be sent to this speech recognition service. Chances are, nothing will happen with it, but as with any sort of unencrypted information transmitted across the Internet, there’s a slim risk of nefarious types intercepting the transmission and taking advantage of it.
Because of this slim risk of stupid people telling their TV remote what their credit card number is, Samsung have had to put a disclaimer in their Smart TV documentation that the TV may send your personal information to a third party, and of course, people have misinterpreted this as the TV always listening to what you’re saying, and it therefore being unsafe to share any personal information while within earshot of your TV. This is, of course, utter nonsense, because as I’ve outlined above, you have to specifically press a button in order to activate voice recognition mode, and the “third party” it’s being sent to is doing nothing more than converting your babblings into something the computer in the TV can recognise as an instruction to do something.
That is it. Nothing more. Nothing sinister. And if you’re still uneasy, you could 1) not buy a Smart TV, since technology clearly terrifies you, 2) not use the voice recognition function (which, in my experience, is patchy, slow and pointless anyway) or 3) not talk about credit card numbers or other personal information when you’ve pressed the button that specifically asks your TV to listen to you.
So there you go. This has been a public service announcement. I thank you.
I know I’ve been very anti-Twitter and very anti-social media in general recently, but an unfortunate side-effect of “going dark” is, to be perfectly frank, loneliness.
It kind of sucks that social media is the default means of people communicating with one another today. I’ll grant that it’s a convenient and easy means of people to talk to each other without sharing completely “personal” details like email addresses or phone numbers, but I sort of miss the days of sending lengthy emails back and forth with people. I know the option is still there to do that, but how many people would actually respond, I wonder?
This is a preamble to the fact that I have rejoined Twitter in an attempt to reconnect with the people I effectively severed social ties with when I went dark a while back. I don’t regret doing that — remaining clear of some of the most ridiculous Internet drama in years has been thoroughly pleasant, and it makes me glad to have the close friends I do have who have stuck by me even as I was harder to get hold of — but I have found myself somewhat wanting for conversation at times.
And so we come to this, then: an attempt to recapture whatever it was that attracted me to Twitter in the first place, and kept me as an avid user for a long time until I became thoroughly disillusioned with the whole thing.
The temptation with Twitter is to follow everyone and everything. A follow isn’t the same as a friendship request on other forms of social media: it’s not reciprocal. You can follow someone and they remain completely unaware of your existence. This isn’t necessarily as harsh (or creepy) as it sounds, since many Twitter users make use of the social network primarily as a broadcast medium for keeping people up to date on the latest happenings or pointing them in the direction of posts, forums and articles that are a better place to hang out and talk in detail. Twitter is, after all, shit for nuanced discussion, as anyone who has ever attempted to discuss anything deeper than how nice the sausage you’re currently eating is will have undoubtedly discovered.
I’m not going to do that this time, though. I’m not going to use Twitter as the noisy, messy hodgepodge of microblogging tool, text messaging service and RSS reader that it once was: the emphasis for me now is on the thing I always enjoyed using it for most: talking to people from all over the world.
I’m not going to follow hundreds of people. I’m not going to feel obliged to follow people who follow me unless I find them interesting. If people start retweeting things that upset or annoy me, I’ll simply turn off their retweets — retweets, after all, are by far the most irritating feature of Twitter in my experience since it’s a means of someone shoving a third party’s opinion in your face — and if they remain annoying or upsetting after that then, well, maybe I don’t really want to be following them after all.
My account is public at present, but once I have a nice little collection of followers gathered once again, I’m turning my account back to private, which means my tweets won’t be public and people will have to request to follow me rather than just being able to do so. My professional life is now completely separate from my online existence, and as such I have no need to “network” online by sucking up to “important” people and trying to make them aware of my existence by building up as much “social capital” (to co-opt a phrase that means something else) as I can.
I can instead concentrate on using Twitter as a means of talking with friends and — hopefully, anyway — having a bit of fun. And with any luck, this will help at least partly deal with the feelings of isolation and loneliness I’ve been feeling recently.
I find Internet culture endlessly fascinating and, at times, more than a little terrifying.
One of the most interesting things about Internet culture is how small it makes the world seem at times. I recall when online connectivity was just starting to become a thing — beyond the old-school world of direct-dial bulletin board systems, that is — and as well as the obnoxious phrase “information superhighway” being coined, a second, lesser-known but rather accurate phrase came into brief usage: “global village”.
The concept of the Internet — or, perhaps more accurately, the Web — as a global village is an interesting one, and if you spend some time wandering around online, you’ll come to recognise the village’s various haunts. There’s the village hall that hosts everything from coffee mornings to neo-Nazi rallies (Facebook). There’s the pub where everyone is always talking over everyone else and no-one’s really listening to one another (Twitter). There’s the deceptive village shop that looks small but actually carries a frighteningly comprehensive array of products of all descriptions (Amazon). There’s the coffee shop where socialites of all descriptions like to hang out and have in-depth discussions about everything from literature to their sexual conquests (Reddit). And there’s that dark, unlit back alley that very few people go down, but down which you’ll find either an army of like-minded outcasts or a horde of terrifying monsters, depending on your outlook (4chan and its successor 8chan).
There’s far more to the Internet than this, of course; the global village has become more of a town over the years, but it’s never really lost that sense of having “landmarks” around the place: easily recognisable places from which you can easily get your bearings and which, should you choose to make them your regular hangouts, provide a sense of comfortable (or sometimes uncomfortable) familiarity.
They’ve all evolved over time, too. Take Facebook; when it originally launched, it was designed for college students. Then it expanded to take in young, cool people in general, and allow them to keep in touch with their close personal network of friends easily. Then it expanded again to become more public and open. And today, of course, almost everyone is on Facebook to some degree or another, regardless of age, gender, interests and even level of computer literacy.
Change hasn’t always been for the positive, of course — although how you regard these changes, positive or negative, is partly down to your own individual feelings and how you want to communicate online. Twitter and I, for example, parted ways when it was becoming increasingly apparent that the microblogging service was being used by a lot of people more as a broadcast medium — and sometimes an echo chamber — than a means of communicating effectively. Its inherent limitations started to strain at the seams as people, for some inexplicable reason, started to think that it was an appropriate medium for having in-depth debates about complex issues. (It really isn’t.) Then the marketers found it, trying to encourage us to tweet using the hashtags for their products seen on adverts or TV shows — who does this? And over time the noise built and built and built until, much like Facebook, it was not what it once was. For some people, it’s still fun; for me, it had lost much of the charm that caused me to use it a great deal in the first place.
There’s a lot going on behind the scenes in a lot of places, too. Take Wikipedia, for example; at face value, it appears to be a perfectly reputable source containing a vast array of information about pretty much anything you would care to name. Ostensibly being a reference work, much of it is written in an impartial, unbiased manner — though there are exceptions. And it’s in those exceptions you start to see that yes, this is something that is put together and constantly maintained by humans, many of whom are doing it simply because they enjoy doing it. Dig further and take a peek at the inner workings of Wikipedia and you’ll see that it’s far from a solo effort; teams of editors are constantly discussing, debating, arguing and even fighting over the most peculiar of topics; in order to deal with such situations, the site has formed its own quasi-government to arbitrate disputes, with unfortunate instances going through strict, formal procedures managed not by Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales, but by councils of users. It’s fascinating to observe.
There are billions of people on the planet, a significant proportion of whom now have some form of access to the Internet. With that in mind, it’s kind of crazy how small the Internet feels sometimes. That “global village” really is a thing and, while just like any other village, not everyone gets along with everyone else, the virtual world we’ve all helped build together is a fascinating thing indeed.
Just be careful if you venture into some of those dark corners. You might not like what you find… but on the other hand, there’s always the possibility of being pleasantly surprised, too. Explore at your own risk!
Over the weekend, mankind enjoyed a significant step forward in the field of space travel. Unmanned spacecraft Rosetta successfully detached its probe, named Philae, and landed on Comet 67P, aka Chryumov-Grasimenko. It was the culmination of a ten-year mission for Dr Matt Taylor and his colleagues at the European Space Agency, and a historic moment for humanity: we finally had the chance to examine a comet up close, and perhaps make some steps forward in understanding the way the universe works; how the solar system formed; perhaps even how there came to be life on this planet.
As much as it was a historic moment for humanity, then, imagine how Dr Matt Taylor felt as a significant portion of his life’s work finally came to fruition as the probe successfully touched down and began transmitting data back to Earth.
Then imagine how Dr Matt Taylor felt when confronted with a giddy press more concerned with his sartorial choices than with the scientific milestone he had just passed — the shirt in question being a rather loud Hawaiian-style number featuring rather vivid, camp, retro-style imagery of women in PVC outfits shooting guns and generally looking pretty badass. (A shirt, I might add, made for and given to him as a gift by his friend Elly Prizeman.)
“I don’t care if you landed a spacecraft on a comet,” read a headline on The Verge put together by the two-person team — yes, this garbage took two people to put together — of former Polygon editor Chris Plante and his colleague Arielle Duhaime-Ross, “your shirt is sexist and ostracizing.” And this was far from the only article published that day attacking him and his wardrobe rather than celebrating his achievements.
We don’t have to imagine how Dr Matt Taylor felt. Because it was captured on film.
Can you imagine. Can you imagine reaching the culmination of a ten-year project, making such a significant step forward, and then some blowhard on the Internet telling you that your shirt is directly responsible for women not wanting to enter the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics? Can you imagine having to deal with abuse seemingly supported by the mainstream media, whom you previously thought would be keen to celebrate your achievement but now are, quite rightly, somewhat wary of?
Welcome to a world dominated by bullies.
The Internet has brought with it many great things, one of the most powerful being the principle that “everyone has a voice”. The Internet has done more to advance the concept of free speech than pretty much anything else in the world, but while some people use this for good — to share information, to reach out to people who need help, to make friends in far-flung corners of the world without having to physically travel there — there are others who use it for ill. To lie, to cheat, to accuse, to blow things out of proportion, to bully.
This particular breed of unpleasant individual has been seemingly growing in numbers — or, if not numbers then certainly prominence — in the last few years, largely thanks to social networking sites Twitter and Tumblr. Ostensibly concerned with admirable-sounding concepts such as “social justice” and feminism, these individuals purport to be progressive thinkers who want to make the world a better place for everyone, but in actual fact are nasty, narrow-minded bullies who simply attack anyone who doesn’t see the world in the same way they do.
The mission is a colossal achievement. Millions of us have been watching Philae’s heart-stopping journey. Everyone in this country should be proud of Dr Taylor and his colleagues, and he has every right to let his feelings show.
Except, of course, that he wasn’t crying with relief. He wasn’t weeping with sheer excitement at this interstellar rendezvous. I am afraid he was crying because he felt he had sinned. He was overcome with guilt and shame for wearing what some people decided was an “inappropriate” shirt on television.
Why was he forced into this humiliation? Because he was subjected to an unrelenting tweetstorm of abuse. He was bombarded across the Internet with a hurtling dustcloud of hate, orchestrated by lobby groups and politically correct media organisations.
And so I want, naturally, to defend this blameless man. And as for all those who have monstered him and convicted him in the kangaroo court of the Web — they should all be ashamed of themselves.
Sadly, Dr Matt Taylor’s trials were far from the first time this sort of outrage has erupted, and it will be far from the last time this happens, too. These supposed advocates of social justice — referred to in the vernacular by their opponents as “social justice warriors” or “SJWs” — are renowned for two things: taking offence at everything it’s possible to take offence at, and then bullying people into submission, often until those suffering the bullying end up apologising, as Dr Taylor did.
This sounds ridiculous, but it’s all too painfully familiar for me. I was bullied repeatedly throughout primary and secondary school — and once again at one of my previous workplaces — and the execution was exactly the same. Wear down the victim’s defences with repeated, unprovoked, unwarranted attacks until they snap in one way or another — be it violently, at which point the bullies can point at the victim and say “look how violent they’re being!”, or tearfully, as in Dr Taylor’s case, at which point the bullies can point and laugh at the victim and claim that they’re only upset because they know they did wrong — and then move on in the knowledge of a job “well done”.
It keeps happening, too, and these people never get called on it because they wield a considerable amount of influence and power — influence and power that lets them get away with a whole lot of nonsense.
Consider, if you will, the recent case of Independent Games Festival judge Mattie Brice, an outspoken, anti-men feminist who has claimed to be “leaving” the games industry on several occasions due to the abuse she was supposedly receiving.
Brice tweeted that she was “automatically rating low any games with men in them” during the course of her IGF judging duties and that she was “loving all this power”. Understandably, this tweet — whether or not made in jest — upset a number of people, who complained to the IGF, who subsequently, admirably and promptly asked politely that she, you know, stop doing that lest people think that their judging was rigged. Brice then complained publicly to her Twitter followers about how she was being “harassed” and how the IGF were treating her poorly, and continued until the IGF issued an apology, not her. Her defence in all this? “It was a joke” — the last fallback of the bully, and an excuse I heard many a time when working as a teacher. It was never, ever, true, and you’ll forgive me for being skeptical of this particular instance being a “joke” when we’re talking about a person who made a game called “Destroy All Men” and has often posted anti-men rants on Twitter.
And lest you think I’m singling out Brice here, she is far from the only one; she’s simply one of the most recent examples. I’ve thankfully remained largely free from this sort of nonsense up until now (though it remains to be seen if this blog post will attract zealots) but I’ve witnessed friends and former colleagues being attacked too many times over the last few years for me to sit here continuing to bite my lip.
YouTuber and PC gaming enthusiast TotalBiscuit demonstrated a good understanding of the issue in a recent post, and came to what is quite possibly the crux of this whole social justice thing and why it bugs me so much:
It’s so goddamn American.
A lot of this social justice stuff seems to be focused on a very American set of ideals and circumstances that doesn’t take into account much going on outside the country’s borders. I mean the idea that racism against white people doesn’t exist: let’s take that one on for a second. [Fellow YouTuber and Irishman] Miracle of Sound accurately pointed out the genocide perpetrated against a portion of the Irish population and the hundreds of years of oppression that they suffered under the English. Sounds pretty damn racist to me.
The concept of white privilege is very American, too. You’ll find a lot of British people, particularly Northerners like myself, bemused by it. I grew up in pit towns, or should I say, ex-pit towns, because Thatcher destroyed our economy when she broke the miners’ unions and put a lot of people out of work. Our towns were vast white majorities but I can safely say we had no privilege, no advantages for being white. Some of the richest and most successful people in our towns were Indian and Pakistani.
He’s absolutely right. These social justice types take a very American — specifically, West Coast — view of the world and assume it is the correct one, then shout down anyone who doesn’t agree with them. They release the hounds on Twitter; they publicly shame them on Tumblr; they encourage the media to buy in to the narrative, and, worryingly, they succeed. Compare, for example, the media portrayal of consumer revolt “Gamergate” as a misogynist hate campaign that wants to drive women out of gaming with the reality of it being one of the most articulate, passionate, genuine, diverse, intelligent and inclusive — albeit at times somewhat ill-focused — groups of gamers of all genders, races and creeds that I’ve ever observed. (As an aside, I haven’t involved myself in Gamergate’s activities — as a former member of the press I don’t agree with everything they stand for, though I feel they do have a number of fair points to be made — but I have spent a couple of weeks lurking around their regular online haunts to see what made them tick. It’s been eye-opening to see the dissonance.)
It is worth clarifying at this juncture — and it pisses me off that I have to add this disclaimer — that I am not against the concept of “social justice” or, more accurately, equality. Quite the opposite; I believe in equal opportunities and equal, fair treatment for everyone, and my behaviour towards other people in my own life reflects this. Meanwhile, however, these keyboard crusaders make themselves immune to criticism by simply responding to any critics with “so you’re against social justice, are you? You’re against progressiveness?” but there is a right way and a wrong way to go about things — and bullying people until they seemingly agree with you is very much the wrong way to go about it. That is what this post is about, not about standing against the very principles of progressiveness.
All this has been going on for several years now — longtime readers will doubtless recall a number of posts where I’ve alluded to this in the past, and I’ve seen more friends than I’d care to mention either fall victim to these Internet bully mobs for a careless word at the wrong time or get swept up in their twisted ideology, never to have a rational word to say ever again — and it’s time it stopped.
Why do I bring this up now? Why do I feel that this one lone blog post can make a difference?
Well, frankly, I don’t; I am but one voice shouting into the void, and I would doubtless be argued to be a textbook example of a white cishet male privileged neckbeard shitlord (yes, this is genuinely something that these believers in “social justice” call people), but it’s worth mentioning — particularly as the debacle over Dr Matt Taylor’s shirt has brought this whole sorry situation very much into the public eye. I hope that this helps more people to see what has been brewing in online culture for a few years now — and I hope it helps put a stop to it.
This is not a move towards a progressive society. It’s a move towards 1984-style Thought Policing, and it’s not the direction that we as a society should be moving.
The bullying needs to stop. And it needs to stop now.
Posts that essentially boil down to “I’m Leaving [insert site name here] And Here’s Why You Should Care” are the very worst kind of egocentric narcissism, as most of you probably know. This is because they usually amount to someone attempting to attract attention to themselves flouncing off in a huff after they feel they’ve been slighted, only to return a week/month/year later to repeat the cycle anew. If you’ve had the patience and willpower to follow Fez developer Phil Fish over the last couple of years, you’ll have witnessed this action firsthand.
And yet here I am making a largely similar post, and not for the first time. I shall try and keep the egocentric narcissism to a minimum, however — though I’m making no promises.
This post is about two things: 1) why I don’t intend for Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to be part of my daily routine any more, and 2) how you can reach me if you’d still like to talk to me online — because despite the things I’m going to say under heading 1, I can’t deny that I’ve made a lot of good friends across all three networks over the years, and it would be a shame to abandon that completely.
To begin at the beginning, then. There are a lot of words ahead, but I would appreciate you sticking around to read them — particularly the last section about keeping in touch.
Don’t worry, there will be pictures. They’ll be irrelevant pictures, but there’ll be pictures.
Why I don’t intend for Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to be part of my daily routine
Those of you who have been following this blog recently will know that I decided to subject myself to a voluntary social media blackout this week. Specifically, I logged myself out from Twitter, Facebook and Google+, deleted the relevant apps from my phone, ensured that anything that might bug me with notifications from them was well and truly switched off and finally settled down to a week of peace.
It’s now a week since I started that blackout, and the time at which I decided I was going to review whether or not I needed social media in my life any more. And the conclusion I’ve reached is that I don’t think I do. I opened Twitter earlier today to see how I felt, and felt no urge to scroll down to see if I’d missed anything — I closed it straight away without even scrolling off the first page of tweets. I didn’t even feel the urge to open Facebook or Google+ at all. I have broken the “habit”, it seems, and I don’t feel like I “need” to develop it again.
Because it is a habit. It’s compulsive behaviour — at least it was for me. You may do it yourself without realising it; you reach a quiet moment in the day, and out comes the phone or up comes the web browser, and you do your “rounds” of your social networking sites of choice. You scroll through the reams and reams of content the millions of members of these sites worldwide have made, rarely taking anything in, rarely stopping to appreciate, say, the composition of a photograph on Instagram, or the witty headline that someone came up with for a news story on Facebook. It’s page after page of noise, little of it meaningful, all of it vying for your attention with equal fervour. And yet still around and around and around you go.
Some people deal with this noise better than others. Some people can discipline themselves to set aside a little bit of time to check their networks, then put them aside for hours or even days at a time. That can be a valid strategy, but with the speed at which modern social networks move, if you’re not there when something happens, your contribution to the “discussion” — and I use that term loosely — is likely worthless, since conversation will have moved on by then.
This matter of “discussion” is worthy of consideration, so let’s ponder that a minute.
The approach most people tend to take to discussion online.
One of the things that drove me to start my week-long blackout a couple of days earlier than I intended was the whole #GamerGate thing on Twitter. For those who don’t follow the video games field — or those who simply aren’t on Twitter — in simple terms, this was an argument between video game journalists (particularly those who err on the “feminist” side of the sociopolitical spectrum) and those who self-identify as “gamers”, i.e. people who play, enjoy and are passionate about video games and would rather not be told they’re awful people whenever possible.
I don’t really want to get into the details of the events surrounding #GamerGate as that would be long, tedious and, more to the point, has already been summed up in a great amount of detail elsewhere on the Internet. (As always, note that there are two sides to every story — something that both sides on this particular argument have been guilty of forgetting.)
Suffice to say, however, that #GamerGate brought out the very worst in a lot of people. It brought out some of the most unpleasant trolls the Internet had to offer, who, predictably, went after a number of people who — let’s be honest here — often court controversy to make a point. On the other side, those loud-voiced members of the press and their numerous sycophants continued down a path that I’ve been unhappy to see them proceeding down for the last year or two: belittling, ridiculing, publicly shaming and even outright insulting the very people they are supposed to be writing for.
Whatever fair points both sides had — and make no mistake, both sides had fair points — were lost amid the noise, and discussion never got anywhere. It was frustrating to watch; I tended not to participate as much as possible as I learned a while back that any attempts to call for moderation in such matters tended to result in accusations of “tone policing” — which, ironically, is itself a form of deflection attention away from a point being made — rather than genuine attempts to calm down and discuss things like rational adults. And thus nothing was ever resolved.
As I said above, different people deal with different things in different ways. My frustration with these endlessly circular arguments — in which no-one was really listening to anyone else and in which any fair points were inevitably lost in all the blind anger and insults being thrown in both directions — manifested itself as anxiety, stress and depression. I was genuinely afraid to contribute to these discussions for fear of attracting the wrath of one, the other or both of the angry mobs involved. And it was having an effect on my mental health.
If you can take yourself out of a situation that is causing you problems with your mental health and not cause yourself further problems, you should do. So that’s exactly what I did. I extracted myself from the whirling miasma of rage, quietly slipped away for a while to reflect, contemplate and heal — and now, here I am, a week later, with no desire to jump back into the fray.
This isn’t to say that Twitter, Facebook and Google+ are nothing but whirling miasmata of rage and other negative emotions, but frankly, the other stuff there has seemed of little value to me for some time, too. There’s only so many “You Won’t Believe What Happened Next!” videos you can take seeing before you just don’t care What Happened Next; only so many “adorbs” pictures of cute things you can see before you never want to see another squirrel again; only so many baby photos you can scroll past before your only reaction to a friend enjoying a new addition to the family is… well, nothing.
It’s all noise to me, in other words; an overwhelming swathe of constant content; a never-ending stream of consciousness in which meaningful life events are ascribed equal importance to a video of a cat drinking water from a squirt bottle. I don’t need that. I’ve always been one for social anxiety, but right now I’d rather hear important things from the lips of the people involved rather than read it on Facebook or Twitter; I’d rather actually hang out with friends than hope I get more than a couple of “Likes” on the picture of the bag of chips I’m about to eat, or a couple of comments on a post I made about how much I’m enjoying Tales of Xillia 2.
I’m not saying there’s no place for these sites in society at all — clearly a lot of people get great joy, excitement and enjoyment out of them. But for me, their value has dwindled significantly over the last year or two, so it’s starting to make sense to cut them out of my daily routine and instead seek other means of staying in touch with the people I actually care about.
Which brings us neatly on to the second part of this post.
Well done for reading this far. Have a cake.
How to stay in touch with me
I’m not retiring from the Internet altogether. Rather, I’m being more selective with how I communicate and with whom. Consequently, I’m focusing on ways of communicating that allow me to take more control over my online presence, and which are more inherently personal than just shouting into the void of social media.
Note that I’m not closing down my Twitter, Facebook and Google+ accounts — they’ll be used to broadcast these blog posts — but I won’t be actively checking any of them, so please don’t @mention or comment via any of those means if you want a reply from me.
Here are the main ways through which you’ll be able to contact me in future:
This site. I post one blog entry here every single day, and have done for the last 1,699 days. Leaving a comment on my most recent post is a good means of getting a message to me. I’ll try and be better about replying than I have been in the past!
Email. Close friends probably already have my email address. I don’t mind sharing it, but I’m not putting it out in the open on this site. If you’d like to chat via email, you can start a private conversation via the contact form on my About Pete page and, assuming you’re not some sort of crazy stalker, I’ll probably get back to you.
Google Hangouts. For real-time chat, I use Google Hangouts almost exclusively. I don’t do voice and I don’t do video, but text chat is something I’m happy to engage in with you, assuming I know who you are before you just pop up saying “hi” and nothing else. If you don’t already know my Google Hangouts info, drop me a message via the aforementioned contact form.
The Squadron of Shame forum. Most of my “public” conversations — “broadcast-type” messages, I like to think of them as — will now be found over on the Squadron of Shame forum. Although the Squad was originally set up as a small but well-formed group back in the 1up.com days, the modern Squad is very open to new members, with the only requirements for membership being that 1) you’re interested in games, particularly those a little off the beaten track and 2) you’re respectful to other people’s tastes in games, even if they don’t coincide with your own. Come and sign up and say hello, since that forum is where I’ll be spending most of my online “social” time these days.
Final Fantasy XIV. If you happen to play Final Fantasy XIV and find yourself on the Ultros server, look up Amarysse Jerhynsson and say hello.
Thanks for taking the time to read this post; I appreciate it. To those of you that I’ve only interacted with on social media in the past: I’m sorry to leave you behind just as, in some cases, we’re starting to get to know one another (I’d like to give particular, specific shoutouts to @FinalMacstorm and @SonyofLastation here, both of whom I’ve very much enjoyed talking to recently) — but I hope you’ll consider staying in touch via one of the means above, and I hope you understand my reasons for wanting to eliminate stressful, anxiety-inducing and unnecessary noise from my personal life. To those of you who are already firm friends beyond the boundaries of social media — well, the same, really; I hope you’ll respect my decision here, and that you’ll stay in touch via other means.
Onwards to a brighter future, then: one largely free of pop-up notifications, pointless arguments and unnecessary stress. I’m looking forward to it very much indeed.
I’ve decided to go through with a week-long social media blackout. (By “social media” I mean “Twitter and Facebook”, just to clarify; I’m not breaking my own rules by posting here.)
I was originally intending to start it off on Monday, but then yet more nonsense in the whole Zoe Quinn thing kicked off this morning and I just didn’t want anything to do with it whatsoever — either the inevitable abuse she would receive for the things she was posting, or the unbearable smugness of her supporters.
So I started it today, cold turkey. And I’m serious about it. I deleted the Facebook and Twitter apps from my phone. I logged out of the sites on all my browsers. I removed the bookmarks from Chrome, the browser I use most frequently. And I haven’t looked at either all day.
While I won’t pretend I haven’t felt a few urges to pop my head in and have a look, I haven’t acted on these urges at all. I haven’t felt the need to. I know that, going by what I saw this morning, something would just irritate and annoy me. And I don’t need that.
I’m not going to cut myself off completely, though. For the week, my online socialisation will be through email, instant messaging (Google Hangouts), comments on this site and the Squadron of Shame forums. All of these are environments where I have much greater control over my socialisation, and which are populated by far smaller groups of people. And they are all people with whom I know I get on and can enjoy conversation with.
One may argue that there’s a danger of creating an echo chamber when you simply surround yourself with people that you’re 100% comfortable with, but in reality it’s actually rather desirable to have a friendship group that understands you. It’s an admirable goal to attempt to understand and ingratiate yourself with groups that you don’t know a lot about, or whom you probably wouldn’t hang out with in “real life”, but eventually it just all starts to feel a bit high school, what with all the cliques, cool kids and groups that end up being the butt of everyone’s jokes — often without justification.
Ponder how your friendships work in real life. Chances are that over your lifespan, you’ve met a significant number of people. Some of these became friends because you had things in common or enjoyed spending time together. As time passes, the number of true friends you likely have has probably dwindled as everyone’s lives start to move in different directions. That’s a bit sad when it means you lose touch with people with whom you used to spend a lot of time, but it’s also part of the natural “filtering process” our real-life social lives go through over time.
With social media, this filtering doesn’t happen automatically, so unless you take the time to actually go through and prune your friend and follower lists every so often, over time the noise just builds and builds and builds, often with disparate groups ending up butting heads with one another in your timeline or news feed. If you stand on the periphery of a few groups that, for whatever reason, end up at each other’s throats, it can put you in a very awkward and undesirable situation, as we’ve seen with the whole “Gamergate” thing over the last week or so. To use my own personal situation, I identify with the games journalists who are undoubtedly frustrated at the constant accusations of “corruption” being levelled at them, but at the same time I also identify with the gamers who are sick of journalists talking down to them as if they’re some sort of superior moral arbiters. Both sides say and do some regrettable things, and even if you’re not directly involved — as I’ve taken care not to be — it can be anxiety-inducing to see what’s going on.
That’s not what the original promise of social media was. I recall signing up for Facebook for the first time and being amazed by the prospect of being able to easily stay in touch with people. Twitter, meanwhile helped me make a ton of new friends and discover people with common interests all over the world. Since I first signed up for both of them, though, their place in society has changed; Facebook has become little more than a link repository for endless “You Won’t Believe What Happened Next!” clickbait bullshit, while Twitter has become a place where they who shout the loudest get to be “right”, and whoever is right gets to declare anyone who disagrees with them as some sort of awful deviant.
As such, then, we come to my blackout. I feel positive that it will have a good effect on my mental health. And when it comes to next weekend, I’ll make some more permanent decisions about my online existence.
I may have already made up my mind. But we’ll see.
Although I’m not pretending to have any real understanding of social interactions in general — in fact, as I often mention, I go through life feeling like I really do’t know what to do in a lot of “everyday” social situations — I find the way little communities and cliques develop to be fascinating, both to observe from the outside, and to be a part of from within.
