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PostPosted: Mon Nov 14, 2022 10:07 pm
 


Die Of Boils, Mr. Sparky Car.

A long decade ago, my assistant, a millennial of course, explained to me that there was this sort of bulletin board, a tweeting, chirping sort of collective, where you post what you want to hype – a new season of television, an essay on your blog, a cute picture of your ferret. Okay, I said. You kids have fun with that.

But no, there came a second moment when I found myself misquoted on something – I can’t remember what — and I wrote a corrective, which sat on my blog like a stale bagel on the plate until Reena explained it again: You link what you write to the chirping thing, people find the chirp, and then find what you wrote.

So this odyssey began in simple utility. It ends this week with me assuring a daily helping of anonymous, racebaiting fucksquibs that no, as aggrieved white people, they are not being systemically victimized by the evil predations of other races and that for claiming such unevidenced they very much need to eat a sack of stale, unsalted penises.

And beyond that shitpile of gaping assholery, there is a second fresh, quotidian portion of Jew-haters whose complaints about my oven-dodging will have to wait because I need to go drink a fresh quart of baptized baby blood and then get to my globalist banking duties so as to e-transfer their life savings to the Israel Bonds campaign.

Then there are the luftmensch ideologues, extreme right and left, with their furious sloganeering and unending purity tests. And after that rabble, of course, there are the Russian bots and make-it-up pranksters, as well as the garden-variety trolls who simply want me to engage with them in an online version of the streetcorner Dozens. I oblige graciously by claiming to finger their relentless and properly paid mothers, after which they feign mock outrage because their sainted moms are dead, opening the door to me concluding that I no longer need to wonder why it took the nice lady so long to finish.

Then, with the rest of the day, I try to get some work done.

I know I’m being reductive about Twitter here – I’ve made friends on the site in the last ten years and been exposed not just to clever witticisms and savage humor, but to some genuinely insightful ideas. And sure, I’ve had my share of fanboy interactions with some notable folk that make me marvel at our new digital world: My god, Chuck Yeager once thanked me for a tweet. Chuck fucking Yeager.

In short, there will be a lot about Twitter to miss.

But what will not be missed is the asymmetrical warfare in which the most contemptible and abusive rhetoric is not only sustained but enhanced by its proximity to normal discourse. Or worse, and more lethal for our republic, there’s nothing to enjoy in the organized campaigns of disinformation that course through Twitter before the mainstream media can get its boots on.

Earlier regimes were ridiculously slow to understand the damage being done, and efforts to hold the worst and most dishonest players to any vetting or standard on the platform were halting and inconsistent at best. Yet there was some effort. The arrival of Elon Musk, and his bland assertions that all manner of speech should not only freely uttered, but freely platformed, gives fresh concern. Worse, his suggestion that I should continue to provide him with free content to help maintain and nurture that kind of hellsite is, for me, problematic. I won’t appear on Fox or write for a Murdoch publication; why in hell would I do anything to personally sustain any other social media outlet that platforms lies and hate? Or pay eight dollars or eight cents for the privilege?

Because here’s the guts of the problem:

The solution to the worst kinds of lying and racebaiting isn’t to accord such shit-talk its place in the national agora and then reply with a careful and reasoned counterargument. When a Goebbels or Streicher declares that Jews drink the blood of baptized children, the strategic defense against such is not to join the argument and say, no, actually, they do not, and then drone out an analysis of the Tsarist forgeries in which the claim originates. The solution is to call the lying motherfucker a taintsniffing shitmonger and send his tweet to digital oblivion. Mock, block and roll.

That’s what Twitter, in the end, taught me: The worst and most cancerous campaigns on the internet are not to be outreasoned or debated. Doing so grants credibility where none should exist. And Twitter has never truly come to terms with the asymmetrical dynamic.

Indeed, I was once suspended from the platform for telling some fecal-flecked wonder who claimed my friend Tony Bourdain was slain in a political assassination that he very much needed to fuck off and “die of boils.” Presumably, Twitter saw little wrong with transforming a real and personal tragedy into grist for submoronic conspiratorist horseshit. No, the platform saw my reply as a real threat that I could and would summon a non-lethal skin disorder to fell my enemies. So, agreeably, I deleted that tweet, then returned to the site and told @Jack — founder and CEO Jack Dorsey — that his understanding of what speech needed to be policed was nil, and that he should, well, die of boils. Suspended a second time, I refused to remove the second tweet and resolved to quit the platform; some days later, Twitter itself took it down and restored my account unilaterally. So hey, I had to stick it out a few years more.

But to credit Dorsey just a little bit, the fact remains that prior to the latest technobrat taking the helm, Twitter was at least struggling with the problem. Musk isn’t remotely capable of such; witness his own willing retweet of the organized slander of Paul Pelosi a couple weeks ago, followed by his quiet removal of the tweet absent the courage of any apology. Quite a shitpiece Mr. Sparky Car has turned out to be.

I know there are many who found neither decorum nor dignity in the blunt ugliness of what for me was very much a bit of decade-long performance art. There I was in the gutter, trading spit and flinging sewage. Well, yes, but it was fun. And if you came correct, we could argue, perhaps even laugh, as many new friends came to understand. But if you came to play, we played. I’m from Baltimore, where The Dozens are an American cultural artform like any other.

An aggrieved bystander once called the act graceless. I readily agreed:

“This is Twitter. There is no grace. None. Here in an orgy of organized disinformation and trollery, our republic has come to die. There is no teaching the fuckmooks and deplorati. Go down swinging. Use every cruel word. Invoke their mothers. Lather them with contempt. Enjoy.”

I still mean that, every word. For a decade, I took a bit of time every day – more when trapped on a film set amid lighting delays and actors late from the trailers – to urge some rancid bastards to remember me to their mothers and stop lifting my cash from their purse. It did little lasting good, sure, but it brought my blood pressure down, and at the worst, I tutored some folks in the greater scope and reach of American maledicta. Given where Musk is threatening to take twitter, they’re now better prepared to take a turn at the task. The internet, after all, needs to be mowed.

-David Simon


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PostPosted: Tue Nov 15, 2022 1:06 pm
 


Thanos Thanos:
There was also life before any of the rest of the internet too. In hindsight it was kind of fucking awesome. Simpler, funnier, happier, less insane, and just plain more enjoyable all around. Any dying person from 2010 upwards has probably wondered on their deathbeds "why did I waste so much time doing any of that?" when they reflect in their last moments on their utterly pointless activities online. I know I will. "Like, WTF man?!?!?!?" :oops:


Kind of where I am these days, and probably the reason for my paucity of posts these days even here on CKA. I don't read inflammatory posts on Twitter anymore and curate those I follow to reasonable people. Don't often click on what's trending 'cause that just going to be a bunch of people howling.

Twitter, as a tool of communication, is vastly over-rated.


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PostPosted: Tue Nov 15, 2022 1:31 pm
 


You may not read what is on twitter anymore but you might want to read this:

I know everyone’s watching Twitter’s various features & systems fall apart. It’s clear that the wheels are falling off.
$1:
But a quick reminder that you also need to keep an eye on what’s happening in the European regulatory space.

In short, Twitter’s in BIG, BIG trouble


Between the advertiser exodus and this, stick a fork in Twitter it's done.


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PostPosted: Tue Nov 15, 2022 3:04 pm
 


Zipperfish Zipperfish:
Thanos Thanos:
There was also life before any of the rest of the internet too. In hindsight it was kind of fucking awesome. Simpler, funnier, happier, less insane, and just plain more enjoyable all around. Any dying person from 2010 upwards has probably wondered on their deathbeds "why did I waste so much time doing any of that?" when they reflect in their last moments on their utterly pointless activities online. I know I will. "Like, WTF man?!?!?!?" :oops:


Kind of where I am these days, and probably the reason for my paucity of posts these days even here on CKA. I don't read inflammatory posts on Twitter anymore and curate those I follow to reasonable people. Don't often click on what's trending 'cause that just going to be a bunch of people howling.

Twitter, as a tool of communication, is vastly over-rated.


Given the mendacity and urge to turn every platform into a one-sided echo chamber, including here at CKA by certain individuals, it's a major wonder anyone normal uses the internet for communication at all. It doesn't take much for one or two individuals to promote their own opinion as absolute fact, post clips from some mouth-breathing podcasters or YouTube diatribes that are supposedly "evidence" making those alleged facts into something unimpeachable, and then gather a cluster of like-minded who are more than willing to be purposely blind to reality as long as the agenda gets advanced in the direction they want the zeitgeist to move towards.

You used to only get this kind of mechanism happening within political parties, where it makes sense for the like-minded to take control. When they do it in places where open discussion is supposed to be the only point of the platform? Yeah, it puts the claim of "all are welcome" into the category of an outright lie. When it turns into some extremist's dream, from the sort of people so deep into the KoolAid they've been long addicted to that's turned them into the kind of creature who's made literally everything political, it becomes more than a bit of a turn off for anyone not wired that way. That kind of self-serving romanticism and crusading moralist self-regard isn't something I find very palatable to be around anymore.

I'm pretty certain, given that there's less than fifteen of us posting here on a regular basis anymore, that CKA will be gone someday. And maybe sooner rather than later. A year or so ago I would have seen the end of this place as a major personal tragedy. Now though, with the way the one-direction-only winds have been blowing for far too long? Not so much. My only regret now when the inevitable happens and Trevor shuts it all down will be that I put this much time and effort into it to begin with. Sound and fury that accomplished nothing is going to be the only way to look at internet-based communications, and that will apply to everything that all of us were so silly to have deemed to be so bloody important.


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PostPosted: Tue Nov 15, 2022 3:27 pm
 


If twitter is so overrated then why do journalists depend on it so much?

Twitter has become a cesspool of humanity but just like every other platform out there it is a tool and it reflects the society we live in. It is true that it has the ability of signal boosting and that can become an echo chamber, that is twitters greatest strength and weakness. That's not the platforms fault, it is how society reacts with prejudice that is the real issue.


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PostPosted: Tue Nov 15, 2022 5:19 pm
 


Twitter being used as a tool or a talk platform was never the issue. Twitter being weaponized and used as a hammer to mercilessly crush any dissent & to target individuals for personal destruction was and still remains its main problem. Jack Dorsey certainly never intended it to become such a thing. But that's what it became. And for all of Musk's flaws, both personal and professional, he remains correct that it shouldn't be some sort of exclusive private preserve for an unofficial mob of thought police who swarm attack literally everyone they disagree with and not just the old dipshit neo-Nazi types who got kicked off the platform thanks to their own idiocy.

Musk should shut it down entirely at this point. Then rebuild & reboot it with all the old flaws and political/social favouritism that's been practiced by the Twitter employees abolished altogether. An entirely new start would be the only thing that can save it because it's been too thoroughly poisoned by the activities of too many malicious actors among both the users and the company admin as well.


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PostPosted: Tue Nov 15, 2022 5:36 pm
 


Why reinvent the wheel? No matter what the name of the social media platform is, be that Kanye's right wing Parlor or Twitters supposed left wing it is the rules and how they are enforced is the issue.

Sadly, drinking from a fire hose is something only an algorithm can do. Human centered and equally enforced terms and conditions is impossible to achieve on scale. So there is always going to be inequality and that is going to be pointed to by unscrupulous actors as bias when in fact it is more an issue of scale.

Purposely biased social media platforms are inevitably going to be cutting themselves off into obscurity. Only platforms that embrace large tent inclusion will be viable. This will require rooting out weeds from the garden from time to time not throwing out the entire garden bed.


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PostPosted: Tue Nov 15, 2022 9:27 pm
 


xerxes xerxes:
Die Of Boils, Mr. Sparky Car.

The solution to the worst kinds of lying and racebaiting isn’t to accord such shit-talk its place in the national agora and then reply with a careful and reasoned counterargument. When a Goebbels or Streicher declares that Jews drink the blood of baptized children, the strategic defense against such is not to join the argument and say, no, actually, they do not, and then drone out an analysis of the Tsarist forgeries in which the claim originates. The solution is to call the lying motherfucker a taintsniffing shitmonger and send his tweet to digital oblivion. Mock, block and roll.

That’s what Twitter, in the end, taught me: The worst and most cancerous campaigns on the internet are not to be outreasoned or debated. Doing so grants credibility where none should exist. And Twitter has never truly come to terms with the asymmetrical dynamic.

-David Simon


Yeah, but the problem with this analogy is that one person's "worst and most cancerous campaign" might still be someone else's "this is an important issue worth discussing". This can be flipped around in the sense that some radical leftists or rightists could, if you're trying to make a thoughtful point, just scream at you for being a racist/sellout/traitor/freedom-hater/Communist/fascist instead of actually answering your questions.

And that's the distorting effect that's one of the main reasons why general political discourse is so toxic and polarized right now.

Thanos Thanos:

I'm pretty certain, given that there's less than fifteen of us posting here on a regular basis anymore, that CKA will be gone someday. And maybe sooner rather than later. A year or so ago I would have seen the end of this place as a major personal tragedy. Now though, with the way the one-direction-only winds have been blowing for far too long? Not so much. My only regret now when the inevitable happens and Trevor shuts it all down will be that I put this much time and effort into it to begin with. Sound and fury that accomplished nothing is going to be the only way to look at internet-based communications, and that will apply to everything that all of us were so silly to have deemed to be so bloody important.


It'd still be a personal tragedy for me. I love all the discussions and connections I've fostered with people here, including you.

Strutz Strutz:
There was the existence of life before Twitter and Facebook and without them life would likely continue. Private messaging boards perhaps for specific groups?


So we'll all go to Reddit then, or forums like this one will make a comeback?

And what I mean is that the whole echo chamber problem that's bad enough with current social media is only going to get worse the more and more social media fractures into smaller and more hive-minded entities. And that could all too easily spill out into society in general, as it already is.


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PostPosted: Tue Nov 15, 2022 9:32 pm
 


I think the same fear mongering was prevalent when automobiles took to the roads. Total chaos of no standards and no laws. Yet we are not all Amish here are we? Why is that?


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PostPosted: Wed Nov 16, 2022 2:48 pm
 


I posted a pretty science-based tweet on Twitter on mask mandates and was jumped all over for being anti-mask. I posted another tweet a few days later and was jumped all over for being with the "mask forever" crowd. The tweets were basically identical. lol


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PostPosted: Wed Nov 16, 2022 3:42 pm
 


Zipperfish Zipperfish:
I posted a pretty science-based tweet on Twitter on mask mandates and was jumped all over for being anti-mask. I posted another tweet a few days later and was jumped all over for being with the "mask forever" crowd. The tweets were basically identical. lol

Sounds like reality to me. :lol:

I think people just see a few key words then fill in the rest based on their perspective.


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PostPosted: Wed Nov 16, 2022 8:48 pm
 




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PostPosted: Thu Nov 17, 2022 6:40 pm
 


Twitter locked downImage


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PostPosted: Thu Nov 17, 2022 6:48 pm
 


and from last night:

https://twitter.com/ZoeSchiffer/status/ ... 4483339264

$1:
A senior member of Twitter’s legal team just posted this message in Slack:“Everyone should know that our CISO, Chief Privacy Officer and Chief Compliance Officer ALL resigned last night. This news will be buried in the return-to-office drama. I believe that is intentional.”


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PostPosted: Thu Nov 17, 2022 6:52 pm
 


Apparently over 75% of who was left at twitter took the three month severance instead of working for that man child. God I hope he buys Facebook next.


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