Beast's Lair History

[Altima of the Gates]

Social media worsened pre-existing issues a whole lot and spread them much wider than ever before. Add that stuff like word count limits and a general limiting of space to express oneself, and social media basically managed to murder any leftovers of nuance that still existed.

I wish twitter could just be erased from human consciousness.

But therein lies the rub, it worsened pre-existing issues. Meaning those were already there, and people can now more easily see the best and worst of people by being more interconnected. Cliquish behavior, and being able to take advantage of the gullible and sometimes unintelligent who aren't able to do much but work off knee-jerk reactions.
It means it doesn't have to be Twitter, any communication platform can cause the same type of issue if media literacy, and critical thinking skills are suitably impaired. Not to put Twitter itself off the hook, but people do have a responsibility for their own actions and how they react. Political and Social spin wasn't created by Twitter but people can take advantage of people using that tool. But that's all it is, a tool. People are the ones that have to change as well.

Companies canceling people to save their own butts based on public outrage could have been manipulated in other ways. Would the smarter thing be that we hold the company accountable for its fast trigger response?
Now I say this as a person who doesn't use social platforms much. But decrying the advancement of communication while not addressing the problems that mankind has (critical thinking, parsing nuance, patience when disseminating information, media literacy in an era where propoganda hits almost every second of the day). How far would we go to try turning back the clock by getting rid of these platforms and then realizing we never addressed those core issues?

[Byegod]

Studies have shown that at least when it comes to certain topics

People act the same online and offline, aka if your a asshole online your probably the same offline.

[Snow]

Personally it makes me ill seeing stuff that should be having forums or at least had them in the past, instead having giant frenetic discord servers with fifty different channels. You're supposed to find information or coordinate on a project or whatever but everything's popping in real time with emojis dotdotdot animation sound effects and whatever. And people are just using it as if it's a forum, so why not just have a forum? With the added benefit of not constantly tethering on the edge of them implementing cryptoshit while no one's looking.

[Five_X]

Social media and Discordism also highlights the modern web's tendency towards ephemerality. It's probable that most of what is online today won't be archived, not to mention is increasingly difficult to archive as social media simultaneously trends towards centralisation. Archiving a forum or IRC logs is pretty common and easy - and has already been done by enterprising members of this forum - so a site host going down isn't the end of the world even if it's based on user record-keeping. Archiving all of Twitter, or Facebook, is a different story entirely, let alone less text-based platforms like TikTok or Instagram. In addition, people continue to happily store their stuff in "the cloud" as opposed to in hard copies that are easily readable and recoverable. Most people, I think, don't know that "the cloud" is just borrowed server space in some California warehouse computer networks. One of the people I work with is a leading scholar of internet history, and he's constantly exasperated by the sorry state of digital archiving. It's a rough place to be; I really wonder in 20+ years how much of all this will be around and accessible.

[Mattias]

Hey, maybe we can make a killing minting NFTS of forum posts? Toss a monkey Gilgamesh on there and we can score millions of dollars from Jimmy Fallon.

[Rafflesiac]

Moderators, ban this man.

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

Hey, maybe we can make a killing minting NFTS of forum posts? Toss a monkey Gilgamesh on there and we can score millions of dollars from Jimmy Fallon.

Only in my wildest fever dreams.

[Mattias]

Moderators, ban this man.

They hated him because he spoke the truth.


Seriously, there's got to be one stupid celebrity we can bilk before this scam completely legitimate money laundering scheme business opportunity bubble bursts.


Not Gweneth Paltrow though, she's already aped up. Maybe if we coloured it green and told her to shove it up her vagina?

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

Even if we try, we're the ones who are going to lose, not the already wealthy celebrities.

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Also, it warms my heart to see so many people hating on crypto here. Not all is lost, I guess.

[mAc Chaos]

Social media and Discordism also highlights the modern web's tendency towards ephemerality. It's probable that most of what is online today won't be archived, not to mention is increasingly difficult to archive as social media simultaneously trends towards centralisation. Archiving a forum or IRC logs is pretty common and easy - and has already been done by enterprising members of this forum - so a site host going down isn't the end of the world even if it's based on user record-keeping. Archiving all of Twitter, or Facebook, is a different story entirely, let alone less text-based platforms like TikTok or Instagram. In addition, people continue to happily store their stuff in "the cloud" as opposed to in hard copies that are easily readable and recoverable. Most people, I think, don't know that "the cloud" is just borrowed server space in some California warehouse computer networks. One of the people I work with is a leading scholar of internet history, and he's constantly exasperated by the sorry state of digital archiving. It's a rough place to be; I really wonder in 20+ years how much of all this will be around and accessible.

I’ve thought about this in general. Digital records, whether on the cloud or at home, are unlikely to survive.

Unlike finding a book or writings on paper from a latin manuscript from the middle ages somewhere from 1000 years ago and translating it, no CD or VHS or hard drive is going to survive that long, and even if it did, the technology to read it will be long gone. You’re already out of luck if you get your hands on one of those even after the last 20 years.

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

I guess the only solution would be to find a new storage medium for all that data. I hope those DNA-based storage media the news occasionally makes a big deal about catch on. Those could last for about 7 million years if they acted like real DNA.

[Snow]

People printing out fanfics might be on the golden path.

[mAc Chaos]

Historians looking back won’t find anything from the internet or digitally, but they’ll probably find information indirectly in books written about or referencing those things, just like there are people we know about like Socrates whose direct input we’re missing but know of indirectly.

...now that I think about it, our paper books probably aren’t going to last as long as vellum ones so even those won’t make it.

[Mattias]

Also, it warms my heart to see so many people hating on crypto here. Not all is lost, I guess.

Things is, I don't even hate crypto. It makes sense. Sure it's backed by nothing, but hey that's the risk you take. Even proper currencies can tank at random.


NFTs though, they bring to mind the old "Sell the Brooklyn Bridge" scam.

[Snow]

I do hate crypto.

[Nanashi(kari)]

Social media and Discordism also highlights the modern web's tendency towards ephemerality. It's probable that most of what is online today won't be archived, not to mention is increasingly difficult to archive as social media simultaneously trends towards centralisation. Archiving a forum or IRC logs is pretty common and easy - and has already been done by enterprising members of this forum - so a site host going down isn't the end of the world even if it's based on user record-keeping. Archiving all of Twitter, or Facebook, is a different story entirely, let alone less text-based platforms like TikTok or Instagram. In addition, people continue to happily store their stuff in "the cloud" as opposed to in hard copies that are easily readable and recoverable. Most people, I think, don't know that "the cloud" is just borrowed server space in some California warehouse computer networks. One of the people I work with is a leading scholar of internet history, and he's constantly exasperated by the sorry state of digital archiving. It's a rough place to be; I really wonder in 20+ years how much of all this will be around and accessible.

And nothing of value was lost. In fact, my heart feels great relief knowing that cringiness from twitter and other social medias will be lost to time.
まるで救われた気分だ.

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Also, isn't it funny how older digital media can last longer just like older physical media (cuneiform, stone inscriptions, parchment)?
It's like poetry.

[Snow]

I'm glad my own posted cringe will some day disappear. Realistically does 90% of everything ever posted merit archival for thousands of years? Everything wears out after such a passage of time. The problem is we can't search up stuff posted mere months ago on twitter, discord and the like. Idk about insta I don't use it, maybe tumblr is a bit better but they run their absolutely buck wild keyword and tag censorings periodically to appeal to investors so not much better either.

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

I think every single one of our posts is worth maintaining an archeological record for because a thousand years down the line, or even 100, you bet that shit'll be worth its weight in gold. Look at how experts collectively squee over finding old diary entries and other such ancient shit posts.

[Mattias]

Wait you can't find tweets after a few months on twitter? Then how do people always manage to dig up these decade old homophobic comments that ruin someones life by not letting him host the Oscars because he refuses to apologize?

[Five_X]

I'm glad my own posted cringe will some day disappear. Realistically does 90% of everything ever posted merit archival for thousands of years? Everything wears out after such a passage of time. The problem is we can't search up stuff posted mere months ago on twitter, discord and the like. Idk about insta I don't use it, maybe tumblr is a bit better but they run their absolutely buck wild keyword and tag censorings periodically to appeal to investors so not much better either.

It doesn't look important in the lived present, of course, but the core advantage of the digital age in terms of history is that we have records from a vastly more diverse group of people than any other period in history. From ancient Greece we have exactly one, fragmentary, piece of writing from a slave; in the digital age almost everyone has some kind of personal writing accessible online. The ideal examples are early web blogs which, among other things, include things written by children - a historical record almost nonexistent before the internet. There is a great deal we simply can't know about the lives of people in the past that even the most fastidious of microhistorians can't tease out. When it comes to digital records, it's a paradigm shift: historians of the future may either know about our societies with unprecedented detail, or they may know very little at all even by past standards.