Swiftian Flappers…

This is where “Influencers” come in. They say, “hey, look at this!” and someone does. Neo is that, in many ways. She does it on a more small-scale level, but in general it’s the kind of way things ought to go — you learn to trust the influencers you choose, because they steer you consistently towards truth and utility, and maybe fun as well.

There are many of these already, I don’t think he has much truth or utility, but clearly George Takei is an example. Breitbart qualified when he was alive. Crowder and Rogan also qualify in many ways.

Some have gotten bigger than “influencers”, such as Ben Shapiro, who has become a brand outlet, pretty much.

More critically, it was personal. They doxxed his kids. They’re lucky he hasn’t hired hit men to go after them. 50-100k each is pocket lint for him.
😀

And this: “For a lot of people, the ability to combine submission (to the group) with aggression (toward the designated targets of the group) is very attractive.” I’m very aware of this, and see it in operation among progressives all the time. And they absolutely do not or cannot see it themselves. It operates on the right, too, obviously, but seems to me somewhat different there, though I haven’t been able to pin down why. Could just be my own bias.

See also my related posts Freedom, the Village, and Social Media:

https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/58551.html

and Conformity, Cruelty, and Political Activism:

https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/57600.html

It’s a lot of work to escape the bubble. Sometimes I fall for the propaganda, masking and the Covid Vax. I have become a lot more non trusting after so many lies have been exposed. So much credibility of the press has been squandered. And so much credibility of so called experts.

I prefer the trust, but verify way of thinking. I’m now in many areas, first ask the who, what, and why. Tom Luongo is making a lot more sense to me now days.

Talking to regular people on politics and current events is surreal. Most don’t even realize they are in their created media bubble / safe space.

Any Twitter user could do it. Probably wasn’t really feasible pre-Musk due to the unpredictable blocking, but easily do-able now. Question would be which blogs do you link and how much for each one–every post every day, or only ones you think are particularly significant?

It’s a lot bigger than social media. In the days of blogging, most Internet content was generated by “nerds”, people who care enough about something to work on it and share it for free.

Nowadays most Internet content is generated by or in the service of marketing. And unless a webpage is entirely homebrewed, there is code attached that is aggregating information on you which is being sold and otherwise monetized, mostly through targeted advertising. They watch not just what you click on but what you don’t, and what you hover your cursor over but don’t click, and how long it takes you to make up your mind…

This data is available at a cost even small businesses can afford. Not too long ago I went to work for one of these small businesses and I found out that I was in their purchased data (along with everyone else naturally)–the information there wasn’t up to date or completely accurate but I was startled, and I shouldn’t have been. (I hadn’t anticipated the emotional impact of seeing your own name in there.)

And that’s why the centralization of social media. It was hand-in-hand with monetizing the Internet.

The strategy is nearly always to give something away for free to people that lets you target them with advertising. Some tiny percentage of the targets buy what you’re selling. What you sell them pays for all the marketing you already did, and so you make a profit by targeting them further as well as selling your targets to other entities who wish to target them.

The data is more valuable the more comprehensive it is, and the giant social media companies are uniquely placed to capture that data, hence their profitable and close collaboration with marketers.

Legacy media has been nearly entirely captured by marketing, which is why the NYT and WaPo and their ilk increasingly skew their content to the people who already read them. Anything “fact” you see in legacy media should be approached with the same skepticism you apply to any other advertising–it may be true, but they are telling it to you because they want you to buy something, not because it has information value.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb6XUDCebQ8

He also shares insights about Musk’s talents and tasks taking on the Twitterverse.

If it hasn’t already been done, Substack or someone else could set up an aggregator site that links to what’s happening in blogging on a a daily basis. It would do a lot to revive the blogoverse, if it needs reviving. DrudgeReport, aldaily, scitechdaily already do that for different sectors of the internet, but the blogosphere is a larger than what they’ve presented.

“A collective-intelligence platform would be much more than a “town square” in which people can yell at each other. It would be a place in which people can self-organize into communities of interest, and where they can individually and collectively discover and curate quality information sources and reach conclusions. In such an ecosystem, quality thinkers could find their respective audiences, and teams of people could coalesce and collaborate on addressing the questions that might improve our lives. I’m not just talking about “big problems” like climate change or the risk of nuclear war—a good collective-intelligence platform can help us better address questions and problems at any scale: Should I quit my job? How do I fix the chronic water leak in my basement? What’s a good design for a 10-square-meter vegetable garden? Getting the right information and connecting to the right people at the right time will be vital. ”

https://quillette.com/2022/12/14/can-elon-musk-improve-twitter-a-roundtable/