JAMES GUNN FIRED FROM MCU

[odessasteps]

Trevor Noah the latest person being grilled for old rweets.

[John from Cincinnati]

Same ones that got attention back when he was named Stewart’s replacement?

[odessasteps]

I dont remember what those were. These are apparently about Aboriginal women. (So I saw in passing in my timeline. I didn't investigate further at the time. )

[Victator]

If someone is going to ruin a relationship over politics, they would eventually ruin it over something else. 

I'm a Mormon Democrat in Alabama. I am always outnumbered, but I have good relationships with people of different ideologies. They are misguided but not hopeless. The world is not Twitter. 

[evilwaldo]

Now the alt right feels emboldened by their actions so they will start going after people on the left.  Then the left strikes back going after people on the right starting a sheetstorm on Twitter and social media.

Meanwhile, the people who run the bot armies are laughing all the way to the bank because they could care less what side they are on.  The color of money is the same.

 

 

[AxB]

So I'm the only person who thinks that James Gunn's firing is like that time Pat Patterson got fired? Because production on GotG 3 won't actually start for at least 6-12 months, right? Plenty of time to hire him back and say he's done his penance now.

[BurningBeard]

On 7/24/2018 at 4:15 AM, evilwaldo said:

I have been deleting my accounts and happy to have hours of my daily life back.  I keep asking myself, what do I get from this site?  Am I happy being a part of this site?  Does the site increase my stress?  

Right now the only thing keeping me on Twitter is luchablog and NHL news.  OUtside of that, meh.

When you peer behind the curtain enough and realize that 99% of social media is meaningless, you see things in a different light.

I got rid of my Facebook about three years ago, don't mind Instagram as it's just pictures (although its gone mega downhill since FB took that over) and though I use Twitter solely for work as a news feed I do find myself getting sucked into the negativity more times than not so am tempted to get rid of that too. Can anyone recommend an RSS feed as a replacement haha?

20 hours ago, Betsy Zeidler said:

I do love all these old timers complaining about Twitter and Social Media on a message board, the ur social media.

Aigh but we're here by a common bond (the greatest sport on god's green earth) and don't have to put up with peoples quirks, opinions and bullshit unless we choose to so it's an acceptable format. 

13 hours ago, evilwaldo said:

We lost civility in daily society

It's funny you should say this. I've been ruminating on Nietzsche a lot lately, trying to make sense of my world view, and his prophetic vision of all that would happen in a Godless society seems to have come true. Filling the moral void where once was mass-religion is a chaos of cultural preferences, an overload of choice, perpetuating empty values of a herd mentality. We are surrounded by men and women who turn their back on challenging ideals with a banal and content existence, with their main concerns being the trivial and narcissistic, buying into this religion of comfortableness: a world that glorifies the mundane and shuns higher values. I honestly think the void he warned we were staring into with blinkered eyes is social media.

On 7/24/2018 at 6:31 AM, piranesi said:

There is, thankfully, still the one nice choice, which is not to participate at all. but at some point, that will become a suspect thing. "You don't engage with social media? What kind of creepy fuck are you? What are you hiding?

I already experienced this in my brief foray into online dating several years ago. Despite having an in-depth profile and many pictures, the fact I had no online presence outside of a LinkedIn profile was majorly suspect to a lot of girls haha 

[Bustronaut]

How do y'all think social media works?  I choose the people I want to follow, so I don;t have to put up with their quirks, opinions and bullshit unless I choose to.  You're not assigned people you have to follow.  I block THOUSANDS of people on Twitter just to keep from being bombarded because I dare to be LGBTQIA+.  Twitter is the tenement staircase, or the backyard fence where you go and gossip about everything.  It forms a more realistic view of the world because all viewpoints are given equal footing in your timeline, so it (heh) socializes discourse.

It seems like a lot of people who have a problem with it are used to being THE voice in the room, so they try to harangue others into not using it to keep their spot.

[Raziel]

Which is how you create the idiologicly pure echo chambers that foster one viewpoint without letting anything else in, which is the biggest part of the problem.

 

And that's not even getting into the constant validation part of it where you're either fishing for attention, or seeing whatever facade other people have up then wonder why you don't have it that easy.

[Bustronaut]

[Raziel]

Good to see you haven't lost your ability to add nothing to a conversation.

[OSJ]

This has gotten beyond ridiculous. Okay, here's my deal as an e-list celebrity, I have a rarely used FB acct, my wife let's me know if there's anything important that I need to see, it's usually just a couple of friends posting pictures of their kids or their cats. I've blasted the orange shit-gibbon a time or two and no one seemed to be overly offended, though one sister-in-law pointed out that she had voted for him. 

I've lived 61 years without Twitter and see no reason to change now, if you have something that all-fired important to let me know, e-mail me or pick up your cell phone, otherwise I'll happily remain blissfully ignorant of whatever it was that was so important that you had to tell the world.  My wife and I celebrate 34 years of marriage on Friday, longer than some of you have been alive, yeah, it's a big deal to us, but do I feel any need to let the world in general know? Not a bit. I gave up validation seeking in high school, and that's been quite awhile ago. 

[evilwaldo]

6 hours ago, CreativeControl said:

I got rid of my Facebook about three years ago, don't mind Instagram as it's just pictures (although its gone mega downhill since FB took that over) and though I use Twitter solely for work as a news feed I do find myself getting sucked into the negativity more times than not so am tempted to get rid of that too. Can anyone recommend an RSS feed as a replacement haha?

Aigh but we're here by a common bond (the greatest sport on god's green earth) and don't have to put up with peoples quirks, opinions and bullshit unless we choose to so it's an acceptable format. 

It's funny you should say this. I've been ruminating on Nietzsche a lot lately, trying to make sense of my world view, and his prophetic vision of all that would happen in a Godless society seems to have come true. Filling the moral void where once was mass-religion is a chaos of cultural preferences, an overload of choice, perpetuating empty values of a herd mentality. We are surrounded by men and women who turn their back on challenging ideals with a banal and content existence, with their main concerns being the trivial and narcissistic, buying into this religion of comfortableness: a world that glorifies the mundane and shuns higher values. I honestly think the void he warned we were staring into with blinkered eyes is social media.

I already experienced this in my brief foray into online dating several years ago. Despite having an in-depth profile and many pictures, the fact I had no online presence outside of a LinkedIn profile was majorly suspect to a lot of girls haha 

I just deleted my IG account.  It has gone to crap forcing people to put up stories instead of pictures.  When they went to the AMA thing, I said goodbye.

Nietzsche may be right.  The problem with all the zealots trying to push religion back on the masses is they are using religion as a cover for the racism, bigotry, and child abuse stuff (still flowing like a sheet river out of the Vatican, just look at Archbishop of Washington, Honduras and Chile for examples.)

If I can find a way to get my Lucha and NHL news from a different source, I will delete Twitter.  For me, Twitter is the site where I can get news regarding different items that I cannot get elsewhere.

 

2 hours ago, Betsy Zeidler said:

How do y'all think social media works?  I choose the people I want to follow, so I don;t have to put up with their quirks, opinions and bullshit unless I choose to.  You're not assigned people you have to follow.  I block THOUSANDS of people on Twitter just to keep from being bombarded because I dare to be LGBTQIA+.  Twitter is the tenement staircase, or the backyard fence where you go and gossip about everything.  It forms a more realistic view of the world because all viewpoints are given equal footing in your timeline, so it (heh) socializes discourse.

It seems like a lot of people who have a problem with it are used to being THE voice in the room, so they try to harangue others into not using it to keep their spot.

As a LGBTQIA+ individual as well, I do the same thing.  Below is how I feel handle social media.  I wield the remote control.  Validation is not important to me. 

 

 

2 hours ago, Raziel said:

Which is how you create the idiologicly pure echo chambers that foster one viewpoint without letting anything else in, which is the biggest part of the problem.

 

And that's not even getting into the constant validation part of it where you're either fishing for attention, or seeing whatever facade other people have up then wonder why you don't have it that easy.

But is it an echo chamber and how is it different from television?  My take on both television and social media is this.  I have the power of the remote control.  If I see something I don't like when I turn the television on, I change the channel.  Nobody is forcing me to watch the news, KUWTK, or any reality television.  If I turn on the television and find nothing on I turn off the television and find something else to do.  Pick up a book, play a game, go to the gym, etc.

How different is the echo chamber on social media than the echo chamber on television?  I see no difference.  I have the power of the remote control.  I will wield that power.

 

1 hour ago, OSJ said:

This has gotten beyond ridiculous. Okay, here's my deal as an e-list celebrity, I have a rarely used FB acct, my wife let's me know if there's anything important that I need to see, it's usually just a couple of friends posting pictures of their kids or their cats. I've blasted the orange shit-gibbon a time or two and no one seemed to be overly offended, though one sister-in-law pointed out that she had voted for him. 

I've lived 61 years without Twitter and see no reason to change now, if you have something that all-fired important to let me know, e-mail me or pick up your cell phone, otherwise I'll happily remain blissfully ignorant of whatever it was that was so important that you had to tell the world.  My wife and I celebrate 34 years of marriage on Friday, longer than some of you have been alive, yeah, it's a big deal to us, but do I feel any need to let the world in general know? Not a bit. I gave up validation seeking in high school, and that's been quite awhile ago. 

Same here, I choose what I want to share.  Nobody is forcing me to share anything.  I can share what I want and when I want.  I have control over my life not a faceless algorithm that picks things based on its stored data on me.

 

--------

My newest annoyance is YouTube.  I have been fascinated with the Kilauea so I have been following it via the USGS and local news sources on YouTube.  The algorithm has recently started recommending fake news sites with BS news on the eruption.  I notice some of the fake news sites have blue verified check marks and there is no way to block these sites.  I click the button telling Google that I do not want anything from this site but Google and their algorithm keeps sending me videos from these fake news sites.  

How does fake news proliferate?  Google spreads it via the algorithm.  It does not matter to Google if you don't want to watch something.  They will send it to you anyway.

 

 

[Raziel]

At the end of the day, this sums up my feelings on Social Media pretty accurately.

 

 

[Craig H]

If I ever refer to social media then I'm more referring to Twitter and Facebook more than forums, usenet boards, etc. Forums and stuff like that aren't "sexy" or even easily accessible. Garbage like Infowars, 4chan, Prison Planet, Above Top Secret, and the other god media thing website weirdo place like Above Top Secret have had forums for years, but so few knew anything about actually using those forums and if they did, alt-right speech, trolling bullshit, conspiracy theories, or whatever were basically localized. Think of those sites as petri dishes that are just loaded with bacteria, viruses, cancer cells, whatever.

Facebook and more so with Twitter, it's the whole population. There are people who can use it responsibly like Betsy or evilwaldo or other people. That's fine. The problem is that teenagers and kids can be some of the worst people and Twitter is loaded with those people. The anonymity of Twitter has enable adults to act like that as well. A gang mentality or echo chamber mentality is started and all of these shitheads band together. What's worse is that Twitter is so easily accessible by so many people in the population that all of the crazies on there see someone else with a similar opinion and they feel they're not alone and therefore their opinion is right. More and more assholes see this and then feel emboldened because, hey, there's so many of us with this shitty opinion and you NEVER hear about! Our voices must be heard and we must not be held down any more! You can block those people and that's good for your own personal anxiety and sanity, but not so for many others. So to go back to the petri dish analogy, someone has taken the petri dish with this destructive virus for which there is no cure and they've unleashed it onto the general population (ie Twitter). The virus then spreads like wildfire.

I feel that this is where the thought that social media (mainly Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) is cancer or toxic comes from. The virus has spread so much to the point where it's destructive to life offline. Then you factor in that people have no idea how to fight the overwhelming groups of racist or ignorant individuals that they too then band together with an entirely opposite view and it all just becomes a mess where the best solution is if Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram all were shutdown and then the nutjobs had to go back to their shitty conspiracy theory or alt-right forums.

[SorceressKnight]

18 minutes ago, Craig H said:

Facebook and more so with Twitter, it's the whole population. There are people who can use it responsibly like Betsy or evilwaldo or other people. That's fine. The problem is that teenagers and kids can be some of the worst people and Twitter is loaded with those people. The anonymity of Twitter has enable adults to act like that as well. A gang mentality or echo chamber mentality is started and all of these shitheads band together. What's worse is that Twitter is so easily accessible by so many people in the population that all of the crazies on there see someone else with a similar opinion and they feel they're not alone and therefore their opinion is right. More and more assholes see this and then feel emboldened because, hey, there's so many of us with this shitty opinion and you NEVER hear about! Our voices must be heard and we must not be held down any more! You can block those people and that's good for your own personal anxiety and sanity, but not so for many others. So to go back to the petri dish analogy, someone has taken the petri dish with this destructive virus for which there is no cure and they've unleashed it onto the general population (ie Twitter). The virus then spreads like wildfire.

I feel that this is where the thought that social media (mainly Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) is cancer or toxic comes from. The virus has spread so much to the point where it's destructive to life offline. Then you factor in that people have no idea how to fight the overwhelming groups of racist or ignorant individuals that they too then band together with an entirely opposite view and it all just becomes a mess where the best solution is if Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram all were shutdown and then the nutjobs had to go back to their shitty conspiracy theory or alt-right forums.

But that ties into the same problem that has led to this point with social media: Even using it responsibly like "choose who you want to follow, block who you want to block" is...well, not very responsible and a big reason we get what we've gotten now:

Someone uses social media reasonably. They choose the people who they want to follow, they block who they want to block, and go with it.

Makes sense, right? One small problem:

Once you can choose who you want to block...suddenly, you no longer have to find some way to coexist with someone who has a differing opinion from you on something. You can simply say "You disagree with me on this? Bye forever. Blocked." Whether or not you have a serious, dealbreaker of a difference like "you don't think I'm a human because I am this",  or a moderate difference like "you're a Democrat, I'm a Republican", or even if it's as small as "I ship this pairing in our favorite TV show, you ship one half of it with someone else in the same TV show?" You no longer have to work past that difference and find a way to see each other as human beings- and hopefully show the other side that each other aren't monsters who are inhuman because of this difference. You can simply delete them from your existence. 

When that happens, eventually the deluge comes. You end up with that echo chamber of only people who agree with you on a subject, and eventually that group WILL tribalize themselves. Eventually, that group WILL militarize- why should you learn to coexist with these people? Anyone who's good and human believes this sort of thing- you don't know anyone who doesn't believe in it. This means that by not agreeing with you, they're clearly pure evil, and since they're pure evil, that by definition makes you pure good, and thus anything you do to them- ruining their careers, ruining their lives- heck, even if you find them and attack them in real life, is noble and heroic since you're doing it to someone who's evil. 

[Craig H]

Well, that ties into my other thought that maybe EVERYONE can't learn to coexist and there shouldn't be a platform for the opinions of everyone. Like it's just part of your DNA. Maybe it was better when you had your friends, you had people you communicated with in forums if that's what you used, and then that's it. If you want to find someone with similar interests, you have to do the work to seek that sort of thing out.

In a similar vein, it's like having to enter a username and password to access the internet as mentioned before

[Curt McGirt]

Some of us need or desire a so-called "echo chamber" to avoid abuse and persecution, because the world, and especially the world online, is a gruesome place that wants to harm them. Let us please take that into consideration. 

[SorceressKnight]

1 minute ago, Curt McGirt said:

Some of us need or desire a so-called "echo chamber" to avoid abuse and persecution, because the world, and especially the world online, is a gruesome place that wants to harm them. Let us please take that into consideration. 

But that's the whole point. The world may be a gruesome place that wants to harm them, but getting into an echo chamber only makes that same thing happen more and more. 

Part of being able to make the world less of a gruesome place that wants to harm people is to show people who would disagree with you that you're human too, and you don't deserve to be harmed for who you are, and hopefully showing that person that you, and everyone like you, are good people as well.

By contrast, going into an echo chamber just means that not only will you not change anyone else's minds that you're a good person who doesn't deserve to be harmed, but it'll do the exact opposite, and eventually convince YOU that anyone else who disagrees with you is a bad person who DOES deserve to be harmed. 

[Curt McGirt]

1. I understand your argument, and I would like to agree with you, but 

2. It's an ideal reality. From at least what I've experienced in my life, people aren't going to respond that way (because they're assholes and bigots), and I feel that if someone wants to form an online shelter for themselves on Facebook or a forum or whatever, they deserve to do that. All I'm saying.

There are a lot of existential arguments in this thread that I don't even want to touch upon and will leave to the braver of you

[Craig H]

At the same time, I understand what Curt is getting at and yeah, you do need to know you're not alone.  Not to be biased, but if you're persecuted or discriminated against because of your race, gender, sexual preference, etc. then you have more of a right to feel not alone than some hateful piece of shit or some online troll.

How we achieve that, I don't know.

[OSJ]

The argument that someone who consciously wishes to avoid assholes will become an absolutist is a flimsy one, and easily disproved. My FB friends include my one-time darts rival, who has been a friend for over twenty years. Brian and I have never agreed on anything, if I say "the sky is blue" he will immediately say "No, it's more of a gray!" I find some of his opinions amusing, (especially those about MMA and boxing, being Golden Gloves thirty years ago does not make one an expert, lol). Anyway, co-existing and having respect for (almost all), was instilled in me years ago in martial arts training. I pride myself on being able to get along with just about anyone, the only caveat being that said person is at least capable of empathy for their fellow beings. If they demonstrate that they lack this capacity, I can easily choose to figuratively cross the street to avoid inter-action, this really isn't complicated.

[Curt McGirt]

...we create a form of isolationist comfort, or else force ourselves, middle fingers raised, into the world openly no matter the cut of our jib? Or try and form a middle ground between the two? I'm all for the latter but I understand both sides of the extremes... within reason.

See, it is yet another existential question. I'm glad this board is intelligent enough to think about this. 

[OSJ]

8 minutes ago, Craig H said:

At the same time, I understand what Curt is getting at and yeah, you do need to know you're not alone.  Not to be biased, but if you're persecuted or discriminated against because of your race, gender, sexual preference, etc. then you have more of a right to feel not alone than some hateful piece of shit or some online troll.

How we achieve that, I don't know.

I'd like to think that in many ways we already have. This forum is a pretty good example of that. 

[Curt McGirt]

1 minute ago, OSJ said:

I can easily choose to figuratively cross the street to avoid inter-action, this really isn't complicated.

This is my original argument in a nutshell. I don't even have to block people on Facebook (the only social media forum aside from this that I still use), I just ignore them. If it helps your life be saner, hey, any port in a fuckin' storm.