[Politics] Someone explain Social Media to Me and why are people constantly Owning Themselves on it?

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Ok, unless you count this, youtube and my email, I'm not on your typical types of social media.

I'm not on Twitter, Any of the Picture apps, or Facebook.

But I just can't understand why people are constantly Owning Themselves on Social Media.

13 Police Officers are going to be let go [https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/18/us/philadelphia-police-begin-firing-social-posts/index.html] due to their social media garbage. Border Patrol mocking the conditions and dehumanizing their detainees [https://www.propublica.org/article/secret-border-patrol-facebook-group-agents-joke-about-migrant-deaths-post-sexist-memes]. Political hopefuls dashed their own dreams [https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-social-media-1.3220589] due to their own tweets.

At the end of the day, yeah, I'm glad this Self Ownage exists. But I can't understand WHY people can't get it through their heads that their messages are always going to get out. They always do. Why continue to voice things that they know will get them into trouble? Especially if you're in a position of any authority.

Everything can be used against them. So why do people insist on loading all the guns they can and passing it around the world?

 

[Trunkage]

Freedom of Speech. They think it protects them from employers

 

[davidmc1158_v1legacy]

Had a long philosophical discussion with some friends back in college. During that long, wandering talk I came to the conclusion that the concept of "natural rights" was false. All of the so-called natural rights really didn't exist in a state of "nature" and were not inherent, they were a set of (magnificently wonderful) fictions human beings created out of whole cloth. I love them dearly, but they are only as real as the agreements held between people on whether or not they actually exist.

Instead, I came to the conclusion that actual, real, "natural rights" that truly exist in a natural state do exist, but they are completely different from what the political philosophers claimed. 1) You have the right to die. No government or authority has the power to make someone immortal against their will. 2) You have the right to ***** (not complain, I mean *****/quibble/be snarky/whine). No matter how profound the censorship, within a person's head they will always have the power to internally ***** about how something's unfair/rubs them the wrong way/etc. and 3) Every human being has the inherent and completely natural right to do something stupid. It seems to be ingrained into humanity right on the genetic level. The only human beings that have never done anything stupid were those that never lived long enough to make a decision.

Social media is nothing more than a metaphorical megaphone being held up to the human species. As such, those truly inherent natural rights, especially # 2 and 3, are simply amplified and broadcast in ways that were once merely whispered between oneself and one's close confidants, even if said confidant was once merely a reflection in the mirror.

Additionally, there seems to be a basic mental disconnect for human beings between what is really "real" to them and what appears on a computer screen. On some basic, subconscious level we seem to assume that the text we're looking at is not somehow connected to an actual human being. We're arguing with/yelling at/responding to a wisp of thought, an idea that appears as text on a screen rather than an actual, honest-to-diety person. When reality comes bursting in to shatter that illusion, it comes as quite a shock.

 

[Elfgore]

Freedom of Speech. They think it protects them from employers

Why not take it a step further and just say any consequence whatsoever? Seems to be what most people who use that defense think.

Maybe because they've gotten away with it for so long, being unable to adapt to the reality it's getting more and more difficult to do with modern communication and people becoming less shitty?

 

[WindKnight]

Freedom of Speech. They think it protects them from employers

Why not take it a step further and just say any consequence whatsoever? Seems to be what most people who use that defense think.

Maybe because they've gotten away with it for so long, being unable to adapt to the reality it's getting more and more difficult to do with modern communication and people becoming less shitty?

Its easy to assume the 'silent majority' are really on your side, especially if you hang out in groups where everyone around you IS on your side, and will give you kudos and encouragement for doing/saying terrible things.

So these people walk onto the public stage, totally sure that when they say awful shit, the vast majority of people are going to stand up and applaud them, and hail them as their new hero.

 

[BrawlMan]

Freedom of Speech. They think it protects them from employers

That, and some people like hearing themselves talk way too much, and don't know when to shut the fuck up. I still see point in having a Twitter account. It's a glorified chatroom everyone can see.

 

[Elfgore]

Its easy to assume the 'silent majority' are really on your side, especially if you hang out in groups where everyone around you IS on your side, and will give you kudos and encouragement for doing/saying terrible things.

So these people walk onto the public stage, totally sure that when they say awful shit, the vast majority of people are going to stand up and applaud them, and hail them as their new hero.

Ah yes, the Lauren Southern approach. "People aren't talking about it because they'll be labelled a bigot, but a lot of people agree with this." *proceeds to say something super bigoted that most sane people don't agree with*

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Freedom of Speech. They think it protects them from employers

Why not take it a step further and just say any consequence whatsoever? Seems to be what most people who use that defense think.

Maybe because they've gotten away with it for so long, being unable to adapt to the reality it's getting more and more difficult to do with modern communication and people becoming less shitty?

Its easy to assume the 'silent majority' are really on your side, especially if you hang out in groups where everyone around you IS on your side, and will give you kudos and encouragement for doing/saying terrible things.

So these people walk onto the public stage, totally sure that when they say awful shit, the vast majority of people are going to stand up and applaud them, and hail them as their new hero.

That's what I always assumed it was. People like living in an echo chamber. People will unconsciously seek out people that agree with them, and that is where they are most comfortable, and overtime they assume that the majority of people agree with them because they're "normal." Then they say a bunch of stuff they think is obvious only to get slapped in the face with public scrutiny because the majority do not exist in that same echo chamber.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

People are used to being able to say certain things out in the real world, and that never has any effect on them, it gave us a false sense of security about what we could get away with saying. If you talk in the real world and theres no recorders going, theres no proof you did say whatever you did.

But on the internet things you say are recorded forever, and yet we get away with just as much usually because now anonymity protects us, leading us to feel safer on the internet because then we can say anything without our reputations being effected. But on facebook you usually use your real name so theres no anonymity and everything you say is recorded, plus theres that culture of feeling like you can say anything on the internet, dangerous mixture.

Americans these days like to get riled up and cry about free speech when this happens, but the sort of free speech they seem to be talking about, the right to say absolutely anything with zero consequences, has never even existed and isn't what the term means.

It has always been like this, but people didn't realise because like they say 'words are wind' and usually unproveable and unrecorded.

 

[Asita]

It's worth noting that we live at a very interesting time. It's hard to overstate how dramatically the internet has changed the world, much less how rapidly it has done so. To try to put this in perspective, do you know when Google's search engine was launched? 1997. And being able to leverage it so effectively is a far more recent than that. Being able to learn so much about any given individual so quickly is still a new phenomenon and a lot of people haven't entirely internalized that yet. And in many ways our minds just aren't wired to naturally think like that. Our sense of community tends to be confined to a hundred or so individuals and because of this it can be difficult to imagine that our conversations are being broadcasted to anywhere from thousands to billions.

To put it a slightly different way: When I started this post, I only thought of it as talking to the handful of individuals who had posted before me. As I wrote, however, it once again clicked for me that this post is publicly available. Literally everyone and anyone on the planet with access to the Escapist boards can read it, not just the people in this community. As an analogy, I'm basically talking to people in a room, but with a camera broadcasting the conversation internationally. We make our points and posts under assumptions linked to the former aspect rather than the latter one.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

To put it a slightly different way: When I started this post, I only thought of it as talking to the handful of individuals who had posted before me. As I wrote, however, it once again clicked for me that this post is publicly available. Literally everyone and anyone on the planet with access to the Escapist boards can read it, not just the people in this community. As an analogy, I'm basically talking to people in a room, but with a camera broadcasting the conversation internationally. We make our points and posts under assumptions linked to the former aspect rather than the latter one.

To be fair: Asita was the one made this post, for the world to see.

Not Johann Goldberg
Bio-metric Engineer at That Big Company Down the Road
Class of 2010 Oxford Currently Residing in London England.

There's so much more distance from us saying our thoughts here than us saying our thoughts with our pictures visible and all of our information stupidly tied to any thing that comes from our mind.

 

[Asita]

To put it a slightly different way: When I started this post, I only thought of it as talking to the handful of individuals who had posted before me. As I wrote, however, it once again clicked for me that this post is publicly available. Literally everyone and anyone on the planet with access to the Escapist boards can read it, not just the people in this community. As an analogy, I'm basically talking to people in a room, but with a camera broadcasting the conversation internationally. We make our points and posts under assumptions linked to the former aspect rather than the latter one.

To be fair: Asita was the one made this post, for the world to see.

Not Johann Goldberg
Bio-metric Engineer at That Big Company Down the Road
Class of 2010 Oxford Currently Residing in London England.

There's so much more distance from us saying our thoughts here than us saying our thoughts with our pictures visible and all of our information stupidly tied to any thing that comes from our mind.

Granted, and I make a point of being tight lipped about my personal data for that very reason. Even so, I imagine that people familiar with me in other communities could probably still identify me (or at least suspect my identity) if they pieced together what I have let slip over the years, to say nothing of my posting style/habits.

With that being said, the general principal applies both here and on Facebook. In simplest terms, we're more wont to think of these as conversations with friends in a bar than we are to think of them as broadcast over a PA system, despite the latter being closer to the truth.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Certain people just can't count to ten.

 

[Schadrach]

Honestly, people will either get over this siht, or in about 20 years primary elections will be a search to find someone - anyone - who has never said anything that would offend the base on the internet.

 

[CaitSeith]

Several people see social media as something totally separate to the real world, and never think that real world people (specially people who know them) would read or care about their posts.

 

[CaitSeith]

Honestly, people will either get over this siht, or in about 20 years primary elections will be a search to find someone - anyone - who has never said anything that would offend the base on the internet.

Isn't that how Trump won the primaries? As far as I know, he never said anything that would offend his base.

EDIT: Oh, yeah! Also Trump tweeting the first stupid thing that comes out of his head makes a lot of people feel they can do the same.

 

[Agema]

But I just can't understand why people are constantly Owning Themselves on Social Media.

Firstly, start that we all have blips in our impulse control and say things we shouldn't have to people we shouldn't have.

Then extend slightly to the idea that some of us have rather more serious losses of control and write stuff on media platforms with global visibility.

 

[Avnger]

Honestly, people will either get over this siht, or in about 20 years primary elections will be a search to find someone - anyone - who has never said anything that would offend the base on the internet.

Isn't that how Trump won the primaries? As far as I know, he never said anything that would offend his base.

I don't think I've ever seen a better backhanded compliment.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Honestly, people will either get over this siht, or in about 20 years primary elections will be a search to find someone - anyone - who has never said anything that would offend the base on the internet.

Its going to be so cringey when us Millennials are running for president and the debate questions will be like "At what age did you send your first nude selfie?" or "Did you support the #DoGoodForDogs and why did you not support #DontDoBadToDogs? What mixed signals are you sending to Streamers in New New York?"

 

[CaitSeith]

Honestly, people will either get over this siht, or in about 20 years primary elections will be a search to find someone - anyone - who has never said anything that would offend the base on the internet.

Its going to be so cringey when us Millennials are running for president and the debate questions will be like "At what age did you send your first nude selfie?" or "Did you support the #DoGoodForDogs and why did you not support #DontDoBadToDogs? What mixed signals are you sending to Streamers in New New York?"

I think the debate would be something like "Did you support climate change deniers?" Or "Do you consider worth rescuing Miami from underwater?" And "Do you think you can beat Mark Zuckerberg at his re-election?"