h a l f b a k e r yCompound disinterest.
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One of the most annoying hashtags I have ever had the
misfortune to encounter is the above. Its tantamount
to the assumption that we are all being dishonest all of
the time unless we say we arent. The use of filters on
social media makes us all depressed, and when I say
filter I mean it
more widely than just on images.
My initial response to this was to want to use Lynx to
access FB and Twitter in order not to be swayed or
annoyed by peoples selfies and misleading images.
I thought at first that the way to remedy this would be
to have an app which simply allowed no filters, but the
obvious problems with this are that it only deals with
images, letting the user edit first and that it fails to
deal with other kinds of post. It also still lets the user
select images from their life and make it look shinier
than it really is.
Therefore, I suggest a standalone application which
accesses the camera at arbitrary times in order to
capture the everyday humdrum and tedium of our lives
and submit them. Speech to text would also enable us
to submit our quotidian inanities without an inanity
filter. Particularly dark images would not be submitted
in order to circumvent sticking something over the lens
or keeping the phone in your handbag, and tone of
voice would be detected for particularly monotonous
intonation patterns.
This way we could all see the vacuuming, washing up,
visits to the bathroom, traffic jams, supermarket
trollies and the like which make up our real lives, plus
boring conversations about whose turn it is to do the
laundry, bringing people tea too early or leaving things
to pile up beside the bed.
This would be good for everyones mental health
because we would all get to experience that most of us
are not in fact beautiful people leading a wonderfully
exciting life.
Funded by selling content to the CIA, naturally.
[link]
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I watched a film about this recently - I forget the title, it
wasn't great, but did raise the issue that all the big tech
companies want us to embrace this open, sharing and
transparent lifestyle, where our lives are broadcast for
the benefit of anyone wishing to dip in a toe (and then
feel entitled to post sarcastic comments below) but when
the CEOs of the same companies were encouraged to
behave in the same way, making their board meetings,
strategy and details of interested parties equally
transparent, they very quickly found that...problematic. |
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We're the generation who lived through the wild west of
the internet, saw it explode into what was, for a while, a
truly free and genuine expression of human experience. I
think that time has very much passed now - sadly. And I
don't know/see a time when it will come back. |
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The bad guys saw all the exploitable gaps, and that's
where they are today, monetising the content we
generate. |
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I agree that all these things are bad for our collective
mental health - but I don't think more transparency is the
answer - it might mean people feel the need to live parts
of their lives in super-sanitised, super-shiny annexes that
are "up-to-scratch" with the Jones'. It only takes one
Jones, and before you know it, everyone catches the
virus. |
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My answer would be to eradicate any internet content
over 256KB in size. This way all glossy images would be
rendered too blocky for any kind of glamour to exist in
any form whatsoever other than perhaps in magazines. |
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We'd need a way to democratise these of course, and a
nationalised magazine service or NMS might be created to
serve that purpose, publishing bi-monthly all of the
lifestyle nonsense and fluff that is of such great
importance (at least in terms of Jones-familiarisation) to
humans now, as it has ever been. |
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I think the key question this idea raises is - what is this concept of "bringing people tea too early"? It almost suggests there is an inappropriate time for a nice cup of tea. |
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Variant: Take the pictures and record the audio as
described, but don't post it. Let users post whatever they
want. Then automatically compare what they post to what's
observed at random moments in their life. More similar (less
filtering) -> higher score -> more visibility to other users. |
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