Slashdot Mirror
Social Media and the Age of Microcomplaints (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader writes: "Name an inequity, and it is highly likely that social media has helped call meaningful attention to it, if not started and hashtagged a movement," claims the NY Times. The article suggests people are much more willing to complain about meaningless issues now that they have a public audience. "The smartphone in particular has facilitated extemporaneous caviling. Irritations that the passage of time may have soothed can, in the moment, be immediately expressed to an audience." Further, an aggrieved social media post can lend more weight to a minor problem than the author ever intended, or than it deserved. An offhand tweet can lead to a nationwide media frenzy as people who aren't connected with a complaint's author lack perspective and emotional context for it.
Just microignore them.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
When I first read the term, I was confused. When I first read the tumblr about it, I was fluctuating between disgust and amusement.
Now that I'm thinking about it, I think they have the term right. 1000 microaggressions makes a milliaggression, and 1000 milliaggressions form one standard aggression.
Since most of us deal with dozens of aggressions each day, this provides a proper reference frame for just how blatantly sheltered and whiny anyone who counts microaggressions must be. Yes, all of you counting microaggressions, you can take my derision and disgust at your fragility as 1.13 milliagressions.
There are far to many people walking around in a fog of narcissism thinking that everything is about them. Take, for example, that pretentious asshat that is Bono commenting on the Paris attacks saying that the terrorists were targeting music. News flash, Bono, this isn't about you.
This is causing huge problems! We must stop before it's too late! #stopmicrocomplaints #kwitcherbichin #nominorproblems
Microcomplaints may make a mountain out of a mole hill, but it may also give management (or at least someone higher up the food chain) and opportunity to earn back business.
Several years ago I ordered a mattress online at Sam's club. I waited for it to be delivered. And waited. And waited. After missing several dates it turns out that their vendor screwed up the order and it never even went into manufacturing despite being told that it had really been shipped. None of the CSRs at Sam's club or the vendor really cared about me or gave me any options other than keep waiting. Walmart Corporate got a hold of me after I posted several microcomplaints online and satisfied my situation much in my benefit within a few hours. Instead of losing my business forever (especially since a Costco just recently opened, they earned it back).
Hey, look! People who never do anything for anyone are demanding things again. Let's all listen to them and take them seriously. Because that will help. They'll totally be satisfied and won't find something else to complain about tomorrow.
This society discriminates against the micropenis. I am starting a movement to end this. Fairness and equality is a must in this modern day society which has no room for discrimination. I propose for every full bodied penis a woman fucks, she must fuck a micropenis.
If you don't share this with all your friends you support discrimination. #micropenisrights
Like those tweets last year that kicked off the biggest video game moral panic since Columbine? Or would Slashdot prefer to keep singing that tune?
The article suggests people are much more willing to complain about meaningless issues now that they have a public audience.
The article complains that people are much more willing to complain about meaningless issues now that they have a public audience.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Pretty much the same as before. 99% of the world's truly horrific shit gets ignored to the point of festering evil and imminent death and ... oh look kittens playing with yarn and some neo-celebrity didn't like her burrito!
'Immaturity', an inability to meet the realities of life as a self-actualized adult. The media chase it for the ad revenue. That's pretty much it.
Social media has created a new scary norm where that "nationwide media frenzy" (mob mentality) is the prosecutor, jury, and judge and your employer's fear of reputational risk is the executioner.
It doesn't matter if you are right or wrong. Logic doesn't apply - only perception management.
The new, widely-embraced form of discrimination is having an opinion different than that of the mob. Our laws need to adjust to form adequate civil protections.
Microcompliants will likely get drowned out by those who have big media bull horns.
Sure there will be great responses from microcompliant once and awhile, but that will be far and between--the exception.
Imagine if we had #youreholdingitwrong back in 2011-- that would have gotten drown out by the Apple media machine. And in some ways with traditional facebook, rededit, bbs, etc... it was drowned out by Apple media and nobody cared any more--though the problem made a lot of people waste $600.
The level of entitlement people have today is overwhelming, and they're more than happy to share with you about how mad they are that Amazon sells "Fuck the Police" T-Shirts and how Starbucks doesn't have Christmas themed coffee cups anymore.
Nobody gives a shit and neither should you, stop being so conceited.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
If even the staunchly illiberal publications like New York Times and The Atlantic complain about there being too many grievances, it must, indeed, be a real problem.
A problem, they helped facilitate, I might add. Because, when people are simply pursuing happiness, one can get a (sorely mistaken!!) impression, everything is right in the land of Capitalism — so, if causes for real complaints are gone, we must dig deeper to rouse up new ones. Somebody complimented your demeanour? They must be RACIST!.. Girls learn belly-dancing — to stay fit and please their boyfriends? They are appropriating! And so on.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I think a lot of this is driven by the fact that many people have realised, consciously or otherwise, that they enjoy being angry. That they get some sort of validation or self-worth from it.
A few months back, I dropped out of participation in a TV/movies forum I'd been a member of for years, largely due to a growing trend in "hate watching". This is where people would pick a show they hated, sometimes for artistic reasons but more commonly for political reasons, watch it all the way through and post in great acerbic detail about everything they hated about it. This, of course, led to people who liked that show jumping in to defend it and launching their own retaliatory "hate watches" and meant that more or less every thread broke down into a flamewar.
Previously, people had just not watched shows they didn't like beyond the first episode or two. Everything was a lot more live-and-let-live. Problem was, of course, the forum's moderators realised that the hate watch flamewars were producing masses and masses of page-views and therefore advertising views. So instead of trying to dampen things down, they did everything they could to encourage it.
This is part of the problem; the current financial model for most of the web (and social media in particular) is based around ad-views. As anger and outrage lead to lots of page-views, the financial incentive is to keep people in a state of perpetual quivering outrage.
That's just part of the explanation, of course. I'd look to colleges for most of the rest.
destroying civilization.... one byte at a time.
using 'social media' automatically lowers your iq something like 40 points, and when most people on the internets are starting out with only 2 digits.... it's a pretty significant reduction.
Back in the early 90s when websites were just being created and foisted upon us (yes, kids, there was an Internet (long) before there was a slashdot!) a funny and insightful friend said this, "I don't know about this new World Wide Web thing. It's going to make people think they're a resource." Blogs are one realization of her forecast. I see social media (and all the crap that goes on it) as another form of it.
Did she ever call *that* one!
Jason Van Patten
You mean, kinda like this?
Now, we're not ones to go round spreadin' rumors
Why really, we're just not the gossipy kind!
Oh, you'll never hear one of us repeating gossip!
So you'd better be sure and listen close the first time.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
being a crybaby for the most part. Twitter & FB, have been 2 of the WORST things, for the most part, for the entire world. It's a prime example (for the USA) why the founding fathers were INTELLIGENT to set up our country, as a representative republic, and NOT an outright democracy. Democracy is nothing but touchy feely emotional rule. Use Ferguson as a prime example. FB, twitter blew up about how a white police officer, killed a "poor misunderstood gentle giant" who was running away from the officer. Then, by the time the FACTS in the case came out, that he had already fought the officer, tried to take his gun, was running TOWARD the officer...it was too late, the town was destroyed. With "instant" media comes a huge responsibility, but, in this day and age, we have no real media. What we have is "tmz media".
Festivus - isn't it the season for airing of grievances?
[Insert pithy quote here]
People are mostly part of one big stupid herd and social media allows them to increase the effectiveness and collusion of that herd. #NewsAtEleven
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Yeah, I think that scale sounds about right, since there's generally a one-in-a-million chance of my giving a shit about someone being offended.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Vegan On His Way To The Complain Store"
Just because an issue is "meaningless" for you, doesn't imply it has no value for others.
I know liberals say it isn't happening, but there is a faction of the left that hates everything traditional in American life. This is how you get claims such as "the nuclear family is a an American conservative invention", despite the fact that every society has families like this.
Alternatively, there are some people who just want to put up a tree with ornaments while there are far more religious people who want Christmas to be specifically about Jesus (they would in fact complain about materialism taking over the holiday). The first group is also getting crap from these anti-Christmas people even though they don't necessarily agree with the more religious types.
Someone asked her how she could stay so calm on the job. She told them that the assholes on the phone were NOTHING, she had been attacked by professionals.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
There are far more "news" articles about "news" articles about people getting their panties in a twist over a Christmas cup than there are "news" articles about people getting their panties in a twist over a Christmas cup.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's social networks not social media.
Don't let the outdated commercial broadcast radio and television corporations who coined "social media" feel relevant.
That Hollywood movie was called The Social Network not The Social Media.
Come what may social media like facebook , twitter and others are here to stay.
Complaints will always pop up , but lets look at the big picture. Its benefits are ennormous.