I don't have a full answer, but a couple thoughts:
1. Volunteer. Somewhere, anywhere, for a good cause, for a selfish cause. Somebody will be happy to see you.
2. Stop trolling ourselves. As far as I can tell, all of the mass social media is trending sharply towards being a 100% troll mill. The things people say on social media do not reflect genuine beliefs of any significant percentage of the population, but if we continue to use social media this way, it will.
Disengage from all of the trolls, including and especially the ones on your "own side".
> the mass social media is trending sharply towards being a 100% troll mill
I agree. It's one reason I still come to HN and it's one of the few places I bother to comment (and the only place with more than a few dozen users). The moderation and community culture against trolling makes it a generally positive experience. I do still need breaks sometimes, though, for a few months at a time.
I'd love an online community where everyone was having discussions only in good faith. Zero trolling. I can dream.
Sure. Outside already satisfies good faith discussion. There is nothing gained in duplicating the exact same thing online. Use the right tool for the job, as they say. Online discussion is a compelling in its own right because you can stop being you and take on someone else's persona to try and discuss from their vantage point. This gives opportunity to understand another side of the story in an environment that provides the necessary feedback to validate that you actually understand another side. Too often people think they understand other angles, but one will also want validation, which online discussion provides. More often than not you'll realize that you actually didn't understand it at all, so it is a valuable exercise.
Thank you for explaining your position. I don't know if I would have described that as bad faith, more like good-faith-in-disguise, but I understand what you are getting at.
> I don't know if I would have described that as bad faith, more like good-faith-in-disguise
It is good faith from the author's perspective, but bad faith/trolling from the reader's perspective. It, as taken from an expectation of replication of what is found outside, is deceptive. There, of course, can be no such thing as bad faith/trolling if you remove trying to see it as a reflection of outside.
So, as the earlier comments are taken from the reader's perspective, it is what is labelled bad faith. But I too get what you're saying.
I would also argue that even people who I like a lot and have known for many years can be very different "people" online than in person. It's sometimes shocking the dichotomy. I try to remind myself and others to ignore some of the online weirdness and focus on the in person interaction.
This is so tough, though, because the things happening in the world really, genuinely, do matter and its very hard to realize that our passive emotional reaction to them is not meaningful, probably actively bad for us. If I could snap my fingers and do one thing, I'd obliterate social media from the face of the earth.
Whatever else you think of Bluesky, it's a place where trolling and doomerism are rejected. The nuclear block (and a culture of block, don't engage) does wonders for denying actual trolls an audience, and secondarily for permitting people to do the virtual equivalent of walking away from someone who's behaving badly. In particular, doomerism about Trump is minimized there the same way.
There's a fine line between "rejecting doomerism" and "putting your fingers in your ears and going 'lalala'" though, and it's important not to cross it.
Sometimes I can't help but wonder if we're just shooting the messenger in placing the blame on social media.
Bluesky is full of people angry and screaming about Trump. In my feed, at least, though, the "it's all fascism, we're doomed" posters are getting blocked. It's an angry call to action that survives. They're consciously recognizing the pessimism is counterproductive and blocking.
I’m a founder of one of these AI music companies and that noise you’re describing (it differs between co’s for us it’s loud vocals, for Suno it’s vocal aliasing/sandiness and mushy instrumentals, etc) is exactly why I think these songs should not be going on Spotify/etc.
We’ll have this (and the corny lyrics issue) mostly fixed in a month or so, then it mostly becomes a recommendations problem. For example, TikTok is filled with slop, but it’s not a problem - their algorithm helps the most creative/engaging stuff rise to the top. If Spotify is giving you Suno slop in your discover weekly (or really crappy 100% organic free range AI-free slop) blame Spotify, not the AI or the creators. There are really high effort and original creations that involve AI that deserve to be heard, though.
I suggest going back and listening to some of the first experimental electronic music. The tools have improved a lot since then and people have used them to do really cool things, even spawning countless genres.
Thankfully, most of it doesn't reach your Spotify feed. I think most of it is garbage, but I'd fight for the right of people to continue posting it. All things algorithmic have this exploration/exploitation, diversity/fidelity tradeoff and Spotify has theirs tuned very heavily toward exploitation/fidelity. I think there is a cool opportunity for someone to put the tradeoff dial into users hands.
I tried to commit documentation to our source repository; I was told to upload it to the documentation site instead.
The documentation site that we've used for one year, subsequent to the previous documentation site the we used for 3 years, subsequent to the previous documentation site that we used for 5 years.
Following the trend, by the end of this year we will migrate documentation every 5 minutes, degrading every time.
At least source code can be migrated with fidelity. (The main branch anyway)
I have a strong preference for checking in docs with the source code but I'm a software dev.
We have a data team where I work that has a huge Confluence Wiki that helps them maintained shared reality about procedures and standards. I never log into it, if I need to know something from their point of view I go next door and ask one of them.
> "It’s the performance of ‘care’ from leadership. Saying one thing loudly and proudly, yet doing another quietly, repeatedly."
It's the employee engagement survey where you want people to say that the company cares about you, and first line managers get in trouble from the results but executive leadership does not. It's the cognitive dissonance that you expect us to just deal with.
It's the lack of communication when people are fired. There's no good way to fire people, but there sure are bad ways and you've found them.
It's the times that I've told my boss about issues I'm dealing with and those issues show up in my end of year review instead of working on them together.
I used to work in a fairly secure government data center. I was a facility electrician, but also sat on lower-level hire boards (i.e. blue collars). My RFID would grant me access anywhere across multiple facilities.
>It's the lack of communication when people are fired.
Arriving to work, I observed the long-time janitor, whom I'd helped hire and knew very well, stuck at the entryway. He was extremely helpful albeit not too bright — I had no reason to suspect his badge had been deactivated (==fired) so I badged him in (our offices adjoined).
Janny went to work, a typical Monday, following others to clean construction-related debris (he just thought his badge broke).
Not until he tried to return from lunch, was he informed that his employment had been terminated. When I asked the facility manager "WTF, dude?!" he made some snide remark about "ooops I forgot to tell him — don't worry they're able to land on their feet anywhere" (janny was a non-white citizen).
Started looking for a new jobsite immediately after this. Ignorance and hatred are odd bed-fellows.
1. Volunteer. Somewhere, anywhere, for a good cause, for a selfish cause. Somebody will be happy to see you.
2. Stop trolling ourselves. As far as I can tell, all of the mass social media is trending sharply towards being a 100% troll mill. The things people say on social media do not reflect genuine beliefs of any significant percentage of the population, but if we continue to use social media this way, it will.
Disengage from all of the trolls, including and especially the ones on your "own side".
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