Weigh In: Has the social media revolution devolved conversation?

[misteraven]

53 minutes ago, T4M* said:

I never did like social media in general other than Myspace.  Not that type of person to be like "oh, did you see this on facebook?" A lot of content I've posted (on facebook), people would see it, but not bother to provide feedback on it, however, in real life, people would bring up that content as an excuse to have a conversation,  the fuck? Easily annoyed by this effect, I began searching for an audience to at least look at the material, and give feedback, whether or not it was productive.  Found 12oz and didn't know what I got myself into lol I survived the noob stage, ONLY because there was people on here who would pay attention to what I provided to the table and were willing to back me up when I was being attacked. Immediately,  I felt a connection. Slowly but surely,  I manage to meet people to the point of exchanging real phone numbers and talking on the phone about certain stuff off the 12oz forums. In my situation, when the website went down, I literally had no where else to go. I took some time off the internet to discover myself and once I came back, I notice a lot of people went to facebook, snapchat, etc, still not my vibe.  Instagram caught my attention because i found my audience there. Here, my audience were mainly on the meme pages, dao,  ms paint and any other photoshop activities. As far as my oontz oontz,  not so much. 

 

But even though I found my audience,  there really isn't a whole lot of conversations going on, other than the ones I have with my close friends. It's all about dropping quick responses with emojis and pressing things, convenience . 

 

Southpark made an episode with the hashtag #savethelivingroom,  here we are, finally, with our own hashtag #savethedesktop,  or #savetheconversations. 

Glad to see you on here and appreciate the comment. Sucks the way things went down. I explained a lot of it in the 12oz History thread and a few other places. The new me thread of consistency I keep hearing is how important this place was or how many good times and strong relationships came out of it. I’m aware of half a dozen marriages between two 12oz members that met on the boards and almost as many kids that came out of two members on here. Plus tons of friendships that are years old and even survived 12oz dark years when the forum was all but abandoned. In hindsight I wish I’d done things differently, but suppose everything happens for a reason and if anything, this thread and the results of relaunching a couple weeks back and promoting since then has really proven to me that things aren’t over. In fact, I think the best days can be ahead of us.

 

Now I’m seeing social media starting to collapse (is anyone actually on Facebook anymore?) and keep hearing more and more how unsatisfied people feel after years of thumbs up or down, double taps and emojis. It’s simple and fast, but just leaves so much to be desired. You get out what you put in and your post reaffirms that fact.

 

Welcome back man!

[delv]

I'd not heard of this guy before, but this was really interesting. Anyone read anything from him?

“People are just less connected with other people…. So *in fact*, there is less community. It’s not just that people feel it, it’s actually happening. 

When I published the book, one of the most striking things that happened to me was lots of people came up to me and said ‘yes, you’ve got it right.’ They didn’t know the data for goodness sakes, they knew their mom had been in X and they weren’t. They knew their dad had been in the Rotary Club or in a Union, and they weren’t.”

[misteraven]

1 minute ago, misteraven said:

Not sure if this comment belongs here or in the social media weigh in thread...

 

Been thinking a lot about this and talking to some people... There's been a handful of comments, none bad, about how slow the forum is. As I've mentioned in other places, being honest... I'm amazed this place never died completely during the "dark era" where I basically ignored the forum entirely for a year or more at a time. Really its testament to the few moderators that stuck around, as well as a handful of die hard members that also chose to stick it out.

 

This being said, after really analyzing the situation, Instagram really isn't much better from my experience. On my personal account I have a little under 2000 followers. On the @12ozprophet account, there's almost 55,000. Back in the early days of IG, I used to regularly see posts garner 2000+ likes, sometimes more and there weren't nearly as many people following. Now it's exceedingly rare to see it hit 1000 likes and I've seen many hardly hit 100. 100 likes out of 55,000 followers! I follow a quite a few people on there, something like 400 or so and yeah, there's a fairly steady stream of content, but most my feed are the same dozen or so high profile commercial accounts that each post a dozen or two dozen times a day and no doubt pay a ton to both prioritize posts and fully optimize their strategy. Most the time, their posts are pseudo ads tying back to posts that in turn are likely paid for or at the least, product from companies that they work with regularly.

 

I know I'm already on a negative tip regarding my opinions on social media, but what I'm getting at is, yeah... sometimes the forum feels like its moving a little slow, especially compared to what we all remember. But likewise, Instagram doesn't feel like it has all that much activity to me either. At best, you get see a flurry of likes right after a post, but as we all know, comments are pretty rare and actual discussion is all but nonexistent. Because its so easy to like and drop an emoji or use it in general, combined with their algorithm that *curates* your feed for you and obviously shuffles posts every time you load to make it feel like there's all this new exciting stuff (never mind that its not unusual to see a post for the first time that's 3 days old), you get the perception that there's all types of activity happening on Instagram.

 

Anyhow, reality is that we're something like 5000% up from where traffic was at only a couple months ago when I started posting regularly on the last forum. Last week, we managed to break back to back traffic records nearly every day. Since launching the new forum, stats have been zero'd out and are accurate. On the old board, it wasn't unusual for me to find myself as the only logged in user. I'd get excited to see when there was 3 or more of us logged in at a time (with mods often being at least 1 if not both of the other 2 members). Now I'm seeing 10 or more on average and seeing it spike as high as 25 logged in members at peak times. For the last 18 months, the record for all users at one time stood at 147 people. Last week, we set a new record at 389 people! I've helped recover at least a few hundred old accounts in the last few weeks and have seen a surge in new registrations. 

 

For whatever reason, many still aren't posting often despite how easy it is to do so on the new forum (especially on mobile), but new posts / threads have certainly grown exponentially each week since relaunching the forum and actively promoting the forum. The more popular sections like here in Channel Zero have the entire front page with posts that are under 24 hours old.

 

The original Writers Forum literally took many years to get to the level we all remember. We've managed to bring things back to life in about two months. Again, being amazed at the fact there was anything left to bring back to life after all that neglect, technical issues, drama, etc... I'm equally amazed at how far we've come in the last two months. With the rate of growth we're seeing, I can only imagine where this will all be a year from now.

 

Obviously we have a ways to go before posts on here seem to be near real time as they were back at its peak. When I started mapping out a come back plan and working on this new forum, my theories about social media fatigue and frustration and the need for real, meaningful online discussions and true community were simply speculation. I can say with confidence that we now have solid, tangible evidence that this is all real and more importantly, that we can turn things around with the forum and rebuild a significant community and reclaim ownership of our small corner of the internet, as well as the relationships, discussions and interactions we all share.

 

Just thought I'd put this out there as its been on my mind a lot lately. I'm doing all I can to fix issues as they pop up, visualize new features and improvements, as well as reach out to as many old members as I can while also promoting to all the young kids that are more recently turned on to 12ozProphet. As you know I'm also starting to find a little rhythm and momentum with 12ozProphet as a brand, putting out the type of stuff I'd be excited to see myself and working to once again set the bar for cool stuff. 

 

I'm constantly reminding myself to stay patient, to look at the evidence and successes around me and to not get overwhelmed, frustrated or discouraged that I'm largely starting over again from the beginning and often pitted against either commercial titans like Facebook / Instagram or bullshit brands (and even some I was a fan of) that can barely be credited with going through the motions with their recycled and diluted concepts and bullshit product.

 

Sorry for the monologue, but this is as much about me reminding myself of all this as it is me reminding you guys. We have something special with what we've collectively created with this forum. It's 100% on all of us to build it back up and beyond the successes of the past. I welcome any input, feedback or suggestions on what else we can be doing and also encourage you guys to leverage your own social media accounts and relevant relationships to spread the word to old members and new potential members.

 

It's absolutely going to happen one way or another, but no doubt we can help push it along a little faster.

 

Appreciate all the support you guys have provided over the many years.

 

Cheers!

Posted that in the who's missing thread, but equally relevant in this one.

[DETO]

SOCIAL MEDIA IS FUNNY. AS MY INNER CIRCLE HAS GOTTEN OLDER, GOTTEN MARRIED, HAVE HAD KIDS, MOVED AWAY, ETC... SOCIAL MEDIA HAS HELPED US STAY CONNECTED. TO THIS DAY I HAVE 5 CLOSE FRIENDS WHO DON'T SEE EACH OTHER OR OUR FAMILIES VERY OFTEN, BUT WE STAY CONNECTED, MAINLY BECAUSE OF SOCIAL MEDIA. YET I HAVE MADE "FRIENDS" WITH PEOPLE I WILL PROBABLY NEVER MEET, BECAUSE OF THIS WONDERFUL THING CALLED THE INTERNET. FOR INSTANCE, I DON'T HAVE CLOSE PERSONAL FRIENDS WHO ARE INTO THINGS LIKE GRAFFITI, PRO WRESTLING, MOVIES, SHOES, COMICS, BUT I HAVE MADE BONDS WITH PEOPLE ONLINE WHO SHARE MY INTEREST.  

[misteraven]

Question @DETO- You said that

 

Quote

THIS DAY I HAVE 5 CLOSE FRIENDS WHO DON'T SEE EACH OTHER OR OUR FAMILIES VERY OFTEN, BUT WE STAY CONNECTED, MAINLY BECAUSE OF SOCIAL MEDIA.

What do you mean by that? Do you actually discuss or is more that you get to see the occasional glimpse of what they're up to via social media and occasionally drop a comment? Not trying to trivialize your relationship or disrespect in any way, but the experience I seem to have and have read over and over again is that people think they're connected but in reality nobody is actually connecting. Saw and discussed this with @diggitywhere we literally been following each other from pretty near day 1. We've been friends in real life even longer and yet somehow barely spoke to each other via social media. Literally years going by with hardly even a comment. If anything, it made me more disconnected since seeing his post made me somehow feel like I was connected and didn't really have to make any more effort to keep up with him or what he was doing.

[Internerd]

51 minutes ago, misteraven said:

If anything, it made me more disconnected since seeing his post made me somehow feel like I was connected and didn't really have to make any more effort to keep up with him or what he was doing.

 

Word. I have childhood friends who I have literally seen every day of my life since I was 6 years old until I left my home country when I was 18 (I'm 28 now) who I am still "friends" with on social media but haven't had an actual conversation with in a good 6 years. Although I always thought it was great that social media gives us this platform that allows us to connect and keep us up to date with friends around the world, it occurred to me I have become completely disconnected from a good majority of my friends and family. A few photo posts here and there, some inside joke comments occasionally and I feel like we're still the same homies from 15 years back but in fact I have no idea what's been going on in their lives

Edited July 24, 2018 by Internerd

[Internerd]

In the end that's just me being a dick friend but that's just the way things have become where it's easier to smash that like button to let people know you're still there than to pick up a phone 

[Kults]

I recently deleted FB. Id had it. Was a good run but it just became so monotonous and repetitive. NO I dont want to see pictures of your dog/kid fuck off

[DETO]

2 hours ago, misteraven said:

Question @DETO- You said that

 

What do you mean by that? Do you actually discuss or is more that you get to see the occasional glimpse of what they're up to via social media and occasionally drop a comment? Not trying to trivialize your relationship or disrespect in any way, but the experience I seem to have and have read over and over again is that people think they're connected but in reality nobody is actually connecting. Saw and discussed this with @diggitywhere we literally been following each other from pretty near day 1. We've been friends in real life even longer and yet somehow barely spoke to each other via social media. Literally years going by with hardly even a comment. If anything, it made me more disconnected since seeing his post made me somehow feel like I was connected and didn't really have to make any more effort to keep up with him or what he was doing.

THANKS TO SOCIAL MEDIA, WE GET TO SEE GLIMPSES OF EACH OTHERS LIVES. WE TRY TO GET TOGETHER FOR FAMILY DINNERS EVERY SO OFTEN, BUT WITH KIDS, SPORTS, WORK IT'S HARD TO SEE EACH OTHER IN THE PHYSICAL FORM. 

[GnomeToys]

Rant and slight TMI follows:

I started off my internet adventure in the 1990s in high school.  The first access was a BBS that would pull certain newsgroups every 24 hours or so and allow posting in them.   The delays were long, and the content was very hard to sift through in that format.  That evolved into an ISP showing up.  They were slow.  As in couldn't keep up with 56k modems.  I'd given myself the (awful, looking back) task of learning x86 assembly language in detail and learning to write computer viruses, so I was hanging out on newsgroups that were populated by college professors, professional programmers, and various upper level CS students for the most part.  It's not really a place a high school kid fits into, but I learned what I could there.  Viruses in the early days were like graffiti for very bored programmers.     Got interested in 3D art, too.  Lots of forums for that.  Ended up hanging with a bunch of pirates software liberation advocates on one hand, and in the forums of the most detailed reverse engineering site on the net at the time on the other.  

 

The programming newsgroups were kind of uptight about anyone that wasn't in their group, and you had to know more detail than I did at the time to ask any questions they'd answer.  Still interesting.  Typical stuff from college professors IME.  Not really a place for general discussion, but you could get an answer out of them with careful phrasing and a detailed enough question.  

The software liberation advocates were hilarious in general.  Hung out there for a long time and still wonder where some of the people went.  Ran a ridiculous for the time distro site for a year when I had good bandwidth.   Torrents have removed a lot of the public part of that scene, really.  They accepted me pretty quickly and it was a fun place to post. 

The people posting in the reverse engineering forums (which constantly shuffled around between free hosts & random *chan style boards with almost no features thanks to members hacking them) were almost all older than me, lots of them were security professionals, PhDs, etc.  That was also a fun place to hang out.   Anyone was taken seriously, as it was highly multilingual.  Ideas were respected more than anything.   Not as much "personal" interaction since everyone was under a different alias every 5 minutes, it was mostly focused on software, but some were more into network / script hack type stuff.  You were safe from anyone doing anything to you there (unlike *chans) and it was sorta a neutral zone between black hats & white hats.  Got a couple of posts published as full articles on the site which had apparently new (ab)uses of various things that were later (ab)used by huge amounts of software / etc. 

 

You would not be able to find anything like that on a modern social network.  Not because of the topic, but because even in a "group", they are not self-moderating like those boards were.  Facebook allows the creation of an endless stream of bad messageboards at its best, and the rest of it is entirely filled with spam and garbage.   /b/ had more interesting sharing coming from people, and their entire purpose was spam and garbage.  It has changed communication for the worse, but has also locked lots of people in;   if you have a bunch of friends who refuse to use anything but facebook and don't understand email, you have no contact with them.  They want you to install facebook messenger and use it for phone calls.   Why in the everloving hell would I do that?

 

Anyway, I learned a lot of stuff there outside of reverse engineering of software.  For example, one of the pages was on "reality cracking", which I think many here might enjoy even if the articles are dated:   http://search.lores.eu/realicra/realicra.htm
It's a lot of essays on things such as the psychology of supermarkets, propaganda, etc.  I've showed this to many people over the years.  I had one guy tell me it was paranoid bullshit.   He's right, that's exactly what it looks like;  that's why it works.  It's been studied in detail, and research isn't that hard to find.

Quote

 

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/mar.20074

Research examining the effects of store environment on shoppers has found that a number of atmospheric cues have significant effects on shoppers' cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses. To date, retail atmospheric cues have been studied in isolation, instead of simultaneously, like they occur in the retail setting. This study examines the interactive effects of two atmospheric cues—retail density and music tempo—and their impact on shopper responses within a real shopping environment. Based on the schema incongruity model, it is found that shopper hedonic and utilitarian evaluations of the shopping experience are highest under conditions of slow music/high density and fast music/low density. Significant main effects of music tempo are found for behavioral responses such as approach/avoidance tendency and extent of browsing behavior. The results underscore the need to examine interactive effects of atmospheric cues to better understand the impact of the store environment on shoppers. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

 

 

 

Quote

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318459775_The_Role_of_Store_Layout_and_Visual_Merchandising_in_Food_Retailing

Literature proposes a number of store attributes as potentially significant factors affecting customers’ evaluation of retailer’s image, store loyalty and overall satisfaction, such as merchandise assortment and quality, service in general, personnel, store layout, convenience, cleanliness and atmosphere. Successful and profitable retailers use effectively each and every square meter of the retail space, both in the store and in the warehouse. Since retail space is costly, space management is gaining strategic importance in retailing. Appropriate store floor plans, location of certain merchandise categories, levels of inventory and visual displays are crucial factors of proper use of retail space. Misuse of retail space can be detrimental to retailer’s bottom line as it can result in difficulties in orientation of customers in the store, their shorter stay in the store, consequentially lower sales and possible loss of customers. It is hypothesised that effects of poor space management are even more pronounced in retail formats that incorporate self-service as a selling method with food retailers being especially at risk because in a setting where consumers can find identical merchandise in more than one store, layout and presentation become key differentiating factors. An empirical study is conducted as to determine the role of food store layout and visual merchandising compared to other store attributes in achieving customer satisfaction and to define preferable large food store layout among consumers. Research results imply that retailers need to create stimulating atmosphere and appealing layout in order to trigger consumer's buying decision.

I won't spam any more of them, but google will find plenty of interesting reading on the fine art of psychological manipulation. 

 

How does that apply to this post?   Facebook et al. are making their money selling personal information (which people give up freely) and advertising space directed at them using their personal information, and it is designed so that people will want to.    I had one of their recruiters contact me a couple of years ago;  their job posting was looking for both a psychologist and a software engineer.  I had a bunch of college psychology and listed it on my resume for the hell of it, I guess they thought I'd be able to communicate with a psychologist more easily.  You can pretty much guess what the psychologist was for. 

 

......

 

Anyway, back to things, I left the boards during a period where I was extremely depressed.  I'd been laid off at work because they weren't busy enough, and the date I was supposed to come back in kept getting shoved another week in the future.  Lost electric & utility in Feb.  Tried to OD and failed.  Went on a last ditch effort looking for anything on craigslist, and found a software engineering job with a...  bizarre description.  They were a commercial spin-off of an AF contractor doing incredibly expensive software protection.   I didn't really like software protection as a career, but it wasn't the worst thing in the world by itself.  I turned out to be way, way better than I'd thought at it, and I made more the first year than I had in the past 7 so I had the temporary anxiety relief of money to keep me going.    One of the managers told me they all thought I was a plant or lying about my work history for the first couple of years because I was picking up the job too fast (and I'd guessed how it worked  at the interview).   

 

Nothing we did was secret, but the scale was large enough that there was company wide paranoia, and most of us kept assault rifles next to our beds.   I was getting job offers for positions at various contractors that needed  high level clearance constantly, and got approached by someone claiming to be CIA once who was trying to judge interest level during the earlier time there.   I'd not have believed him if he hadn't just happened to be sitting next to me on a flight to one city and again on the flight back from another city a couple hundred miles away.  He left me with a card with a name that apparently doesn't exist and a phone number which I haven't attempted to call.    All of that didn't play well for my natural paranoia and I left a lot of social sites I'd been on, lost contact with lots of people slowly, and generally went absolutely over the course of years.  Right before it got really bad, I'd found out that code I'd written was on close to a billion devices at that point, which was also strangely terrifying when I thought about it later since I never actually believed that I knew what I was doing in terms of the code being any good.  ?

 

Came back out of it to the point that I could use the internet again a couple months later...  memory was still an absolute wreck.  At first I couldn't remember my address or phone number, and would space out in the middle of conversations and forget what we were talking about 10 seconds ago.  Stupidly I got on facebook first thing and couldn't comprehend it.  With everything suddenly "new" to me, it was the most ridiculous, batshit thing I'd ever seen.   I also thought Donald Trump was either a hallucination or a mass trolling effort for a good 6 months, because I couldn't believe that either.  My eventual conclusion was that, while yes, my perception was warped badly when I started noticing it, Facebook is also something nobody would accept as being a good idea if it just popped up in the early 2000s instead of evolving from the slow, stupid shift in culture.  It had gotten me in the same way, and more posts like this one and analyses started popping up.  Most people on there sort of agree that they don't like it, but they're still using it.

 

Social media in general is not only a platform where various warped ideas and behavioral norms exist, but it's spreading them by slowly causing people to adjust and believe they are a "norm" of some sort.  Memes are abused continuously, but nobody really realizes that the images themselves were things that managed to filter through people who understood they were creating a viral image, and survive that for years.  They're still viral.  That's a problem when people forget or don't know they are.  There's a warping that occurs from that, too.   It's also created an endless reliance on the internet.  I can't reach most of my friends without going through a third party service which provides nothing and which I don't use, so I talk to far less people these days.  It's unfortunate, but I can't do much about it unless I decide to join the crap that my ideals tell me is a carefully engineered psychological manipulation that I should be avoiding like the plague...  and the problem with those is that even if you know about them you can't avoid being affected to some degree. 

 

Hopefully that was reasonably coherent.  ?

 

/rant

Edited July 28, 2018 by GnomeToys

[GnomeToys]

Use of multiple social media platforms and symptoms of depression and anxiety: A nationally-representative study among U.S. young adults

 

[delv]

@GnomeToysThat was a fantastic read. Thanks for posting.

 

I recently deactivated my FB account, but to do so felt like being trolled as it just signs you out and stops notifications, it doesn't actually do anything else.

 

I'm in a similar position to what you mention in that my friends all use FB. If I quit entirely I'd stop hearing from, seeing or being invite to anything they are doing. On top of that, they all use messenger.

 

I don't know what the answer is, but myself and a close friend have started the process of removing ourselves from social media in an effort to simplify our lives. I can only hope that others close to me follow suit. 

[GnomeToys]

Thanks @delv. 

Yeah, their deactivation thing is a fucking bitch.  Deactivating alone won't do it, there's a heavily buried delete account button, but that alone never seems to delete anything as long as a direct link exists somewhere.  It will delete an account eventually though.  They send a lot of stuff via email, and you have to make sure your account is logged out both there and anywhere you might have used it to sign up for while incredibly drunk, because a single login will reverse the whole process, so deleting the password from any browser / password manager type thing is a good idea too. 
 

Yeah I don't have a good solution to any of it either, except trying to educate people and convince them of it.  The most common response I've gotten is, "Yeah, but this group about [insert hobby here] I'm in is really nice and they don't troll...  well, that's part of the point.  They're still collecting all of your info to sell to the highest bidder, and as the old "get your war on" comic once said (modernized & paraphrased), "Facebook would probably hold a baby-fucking contest in the middle of a rape survivor's meeting if they thought it would get him more users".  I mean damn, AOL Instant Messenger was far less invasive than all this shit.

I don't have the means to provide an alternative, but I will note that name.com says "fuckafacebook.com" is available for $8.99.  For a basic server that could handle text-based chat the hosting fees should be next to nothing these days.  

Alternately, that might make a good URL for a porn site. 

 

[misteraven]

Believe I read that Facebook wont actually delete your data, only your login and content from publicly accessible servers?

 

That said, problem I have is slightly different... In the past, when 12oz had advertising, I had to have a FB account in order to participate with certain campaigns. Later accessing some tools, required a FB login and like many sites these days, there wasn't always an option to register independently. Obviously we no longer have third party advertising on 12oz, but as I work to reposition 12oz back into a brand and put out product, I quickly learned that the way that game gets played successfully these days is by leveraging social (namely Facebook and Instagram) and using their tools.

 

Example: To have a business account on Instagram, it has to be linked to a Facebook page, which in turn must be managed by a Facebook user. If you don't have an Instagram account, you have no analytics and sort of fly blind in regards to posting and understanding your followers. Not the end of the world, but on a simple and small scale, its a reflection of what happens with the big dogs that are looking to better target their goods and services by optimizing their efforts through better and better targeting.

 

Likewise, most small business' doing online sales have evolved to depend on sellable Instagram posts even if they aren't advertising, which usually goes hand in hand. To sell on Instagram, you need to have a Facebook store, which in turn requires a Facebook page, which again, needs a Facebook account. For now, you can sell on Pinterest and Etsy, which aren't tied to Facebook, but my own personal experience is those those platforms aren't nearly as affective as Instagram. Likewise, you're also just trading one middle man for another, even if for now none of us look at the owners of those platform in quite the same way we do Facebook.

 

Sort of leaves me in a fucked up spot in regards what to do with my Facebook account.

[~KRYLON2~]

I never really gave any thoughtto how deeply rooted fb and instagram are with advertisers. Crazy world these days

[GnomeToys]

Fuck pinterest. 

They basically encourage random artists'  / photographers' work to be ripped off and used in pseudo-articles and then mirror it in a format it can't be sourced to the original in.  On the off chance image search or tineye finds something there, you can't even view the damn site without signing up, and doing that doesn't lead you to the page the image was on.   That's not a big deal if it's just random people on the internet using it, that happens all the time, but places that would have been paying for images otherwise love using that kind of thing as a free-for-all. 

 

Actually...

Quote

Have fun in the adblocker and the TCP/IP routing definitions just in case you get that far shitheads.

 

127.0.0.1                pinterest.com
::1                        pinterest.com

 

Facebook does something similar and strips all metadata from uploaded images.  They claim this is to prevent people from being stalked, but the number of people going around correlating GPS data in image uploads with post time is probably a lot lower than the people looking at a series of selfies where someone describes that they just got to so and so bar then takes a picture of the street address.   On the other hand, if anybody could just go and scrape all that crap from their images, facebook would lose another bit of personal info they could sell, so they store it, strip it out, and call it privacy.

 

[delv]

@GnomeToysThings are getting even weirder in China - 

 

[~KRYLON2~]

That is fucking ridiculous. 

[misteraven]

I believe it... I have noticed some people I follow doing a lot of a live streaming this summer. Super mundane every day type stuff and nothing particularly special. I've tuned in a time or two just to check it out and not seeing any big numbers watching it though. Being honest, I still suspect its got more to do with social media fatigue and people looking to try and make it fun than anything else.

 

Couple things I noticed this week though...

 

1. The notes Facebook published in regards to Instagrams algorithm and how they prioritize posts is absolute bullshit. Their number 1 criteria and most heavily weighted according to them is supposedly based on interaction. Once again, I noticed a glut of Hypebeast and HighSnobiety posts in my feed. Literally 7 - 8 posts in a row, which I have not seen from anyone else (in fact, even two posts in a row from anyone else probably has never happened). Considering I have never like or commented on posts from either of them, this simply proves to me that there are other factors that are more prevalent in how posts are prioritized and that if Instagram / Facebook is going to lie about this from jump street, that I'm not going to trust anything else they have to say either.

 

2. That user engagement, at least according to their version of it is surprisingly balanced. That no doubt Hypebeast and Kim Kardashian seem to get a zillion likes and a million comments, but if you figure out it based upon percentage of followers, its falls well within the ballpark of what I do with 12oz and what I see the average joe person receive. This was a pretty big surprise to me actually as I expected higher engagement levels, especially from larger commercial accounts that you can likely assume are gaming the system since their feeds are run like a business.

 

---------

 

Think I already got into this - can't remember since I've had the conversation with a few people as well - but I can tell you guys this... Historically 12ozProphet has done far better with product sales back via the forum than we have with social media. Admittedly causation does not necessarily equal correlation and I'll be the first to admit a lot more has changed than the introduction of social media... but at a time when we had 750 - 1000 members logged into the forum (perhaps 2000 total users. mind you logged in was defined as someone that actually logged in within the last handful of hours), which in turn represented about 16,000 active users (defined as members that had logged in the previous 7 days), that we did roughly 10x more sales on average than I see during the average successful release now.

 

What this tells me is that the actual value of social media followers is exceedingly low. 12ozProphet has almost 55,000 users on Instagram. Our most successful posts will garner about 1200 likes. This converts to under 2.5% of our followers actually liking our posts, and thats the successful ones. Factoring in for fake followers that run bots to build their own followers, that still is unbelievably low. Now I also recognize that with the *curated* feeds, a significant portion aren't even seeing our posts, despite making the effort to follow. Regardless, it proves to me that despite how easy it is to post, the return on that minimal effort / investment is hardly worth it. Now considering the focus here is simply getting a follower to double tap an image, it becomes exponentially less when the goal is to get them to comment. Not that there's really anything to gain there considering most the time a comment winds up being an emoji or an acronym (LOL, SMH, etc) it really drives home the point. Ultimately the goal is to generally to convert to sales or at least traffic / exposure so you can imagine how poor those numbers end up being (especially when you can't put links in captions or make clickable posts (only stories if you have a business account). Exception is shoppable posts and who wants to lay a bet that this feature will not be free for too much longer? I suspect the only reason its still free is that the conversion to sales is so low, that few would actually pay for it. Likewise, with social media registration numbers tanking and even usage plateauing at best or declining at worst, it makes sense to leave this alone for the time being.

 

Again, this begs the question... Social media isn't really engaging in the traditional definition of the word. It doesn't begin to compare to the engagement we saw back in the day where kids were literally on the forums for hours at a time, or even compared to the time on site numbers we see here now. It's mostly a place where people spend their idle team from what I see. It fills those empty minutes throughout the day, so that maybe someone checks in 25x a day, but rarely for more than a couple minutes. Meanwhile, though the effort / investment is very low, the return on that investment has become increasingly poor, despite being pretty terrible to begin with. I know most users aren't creating video edits and motion graphics for their feeds the way a lot of commercial accounts do, but I still see individuals putting a lot of effort into photos or thought in general to help make their feed cool. We're handing over content, then allowing these companies to monetize it through advertising, then monetize it further with analytics data and yet again by selling off individual private information (profiles).

 

Pretty crazy that it hasn't altogether collapsed since it really has gotten hard to find the redeeming bits to it. I can only assume that people are still hooked into the idea of being *connected* and that the reality is that there just isn't any real alternative to fill that want.

 

---------

 

This being said, there's about a dozen, maybe a dozen and a half of you that I've noticed have been extra active these last weeks after a pretty long hiatus. I won't call out specific users, but I have seen the same names pop up almost every time I look at the online list under activity. I'm curious how many of you guys have pulled away from Instagram or social media in general since rediscovering the forum or has it simply supplemented that usage?

[Kults]

On 8/1/2018 at 12:40 PM, misteraven said:

Believe I read that Facebook wont actually delete your data, only your login and content from publicly accessible servers?

 

That said, problem I have is slightly different... In the past, when 12oz had advertising, I had to have a FB account in order to participate with certain campaigns. Later accessing some tools, required a FB login and like many sites these days, there wasn't always an option to register independently. Obviously we no longer have third party advertising on 12oz, but as I work to reposition 12oz back into a brand and put out product, I quickly learned that the way that game gets played successfully these days is by leveraging social (namely Facebook and Instagram) and using their tools.

 

Example: To have a business account on Instagram, it has to be linked to a Facebook page, which in turn must be managed by a Facebook user. If you don't have an Instagram account, you have no analytics and sort of fly blind in regards to posting and understanding your followers. Not the end of the world, but on a simple and small scale, its a reflection of what happens with the big dogs that are looking to better target their goods and services by optimizing their efforts through better and better targeting.

 

Likewise, most small business' doing online sales have evolved to depend on sellable Instagram posts even if they aren't advertising, which usually goes hand in hand. To sell on Instagram, you need to have a Facebook store, which in turn requires a Facebook page, which again, needs a Facebook account. For now, you can sell on Pinterest and Etsy, which aren't tied to Facebook, but my own personal experience is those those platforms aren't nearly as affective as Instagram. Likewise, you're also just trading one middle man for another, even if for now none of us look at the owners of those platform in quite the same way we do Facebook.

 

Sort of leaves me in a fucked up spot in regards what to do with my Facebook account.

I looked into it before deleting my account. Apparently your data is stored in their archives for 90days then gets flushed for good.. or so they say. Call me old school but I never posted anything very personal and no more than 3 pictures of myself in there for the decade I used it. Not too worried either way.

[delv]

I've been back on here more in the past few weeks than I'd been on in maybe 6+ years combined. The timing was perfect (though a little ironic) as I got back here via a 12oz Instagram post. I've also been thinking of removing my FB account for a while and cleaning up my online social presence generally. 

 

The real tipping point for me was moving house to an area with quite an active IRL community. I've never before lived in an area where people meet up and fix shit or plant trees. It's actually quite weird, but exciting at the same time. I now find myself getting involved more and proposing new things for the area that I think others will enjoy. (for example, I setup the first free street library recently) and now I'm starting to get the conversation about the upcoming election (same party has been voted in for the past 30 years, which is fucking crazy) in the hope we can get a new party in and some much needed infrastructure support. 

 

Basically, I think I'm a little over the bullshit parts of the internet and pine for a time when the internet was fun. It's not fun anymore. 12oz was always fun. 

[+plus+]

Raven, you mentioned that people don't put in the hours at a time and that struck a chord.

I've been using my phone for social media during my down time, but its become a routine of *open app, scroll for a bit, like a pic, close app, open different app. repeat.*

I am rarely discussing things (unless im bullshitting w other oontzers or IRL friends)

 

With 12 oz, I like that it is graffiti based because it kinda strips away that facade of civility that some other places like to put on. Like reddit for example. 

 

[Fist 666]

I've been supplementing IG with oontz. Trying to figure out when the right time to delete IG will be. I made a stupid goal of getting 1000 followers, that was sort of my mark to hit. If I didn't block every fake account that adds me I'd be closer to 1200 by now, but I'm at 973 of mostly real accounts I think and I might just call it quits after my next big paint dig. (details I know you all care to read about).

 

Then my intent is to move back to 12 exclusively and delete that fucking app from my phone. 

 

The ease of adding a 12 forum shortcut to my phone was key to my increased time here, also weather has been shit so I've been less inclined to be working outside.

 

 

 

[Fist 666]

Well I can't figure out how to post videos but this is relevant.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxR8pJmI7S4

 

[Mercer]

One thing I agree with entirely is that social media fatigue is real. When instagram came out it was poppin. At least to me it was, I spent a great deal of time posting on there. The same can be said for tumblr in it's pre Yahoo days. I got efame booty, invites to events, and access to cool shit using both of those platforms fairly regularly. Once these companies were sold to either yahoo, or facebook, a slow and steady decline in positive engagement took place.

 

I'm assuming these larger companies are just more profit focused, as opposed to just "growing the brand". Many of the people running the show resemble the "old" way of running a media company, using many of the older business models. You've got Jim in accounting who's only concerned with the numbers. Samantha who runs marketing is only impressed by how many people were engaged, not weather the engagement was positive or not it's the numbers that count. Fred, who was part of the original team, and a driving force behind the success is slowly squeezed out of the inner circle running the show there.

 

Many of us that are more savvy in the arts of online engagement realize if Instagram just stopped curating the feeds, and allowed you to view your timeline sequentially (with adds & sponsored posts injected here and there) it would be much more engaging. Not so much for your average user who doesn't even notice the top post in their feed was from yesterday, but for users like myself, or Allen who wouldn't mind investing some time in creating quality posts if their followers were actually allowed to see them.

Edited August 4, 2018 by Mercer

[6Pennies]

3 hours ago, Mercer said:

One thing I agree with entirely is that social media fatigue is real. When instagram came out it was poppin. At least to me it was, I spent a great deal of time posting on there. The same can be said for tumblr in it's pre Yahoo days. I got efame booty, invites to events, and access to cool shit using both of those platforms fairly regularly. Once these companies were sold to either yahoo, or facebook, a slow and steady decline in positive engagement took place.

 

I'm assuming these larger companies are just more profit focused, as opposed to just "growing the brand". Many of the people running the show resemble the "old" way of running a media company, using many of the older business models. You've got Jim in accounting who's only concerned with the numbers. Samantha who runs marketing is only impressed by how many people were engaged, not weather the engagement was positive or not it's the numbers that count. Fred, who was part of the original team, and a driving force behind the success is slowly squeezed out of the inner circle running the show there.

 

I think this is spot on. But, I think SM Fatigue has moved into a newer sort of "stale" stage.  There's a line going around now that articulates it perfectly for me: Analytics killed creativity.  This is also true in my profession.  

[~KRYLON2~]

I agree 100% that analytics kills creativity, when I worked on political campaigns we had apps like VAN (Voter Activation Network) that your canvassers could select answers to questions you would ask potential voters. based on this data collected you could determine what issues needed to be addressed in your constituency. but what a lot of people fail to recognize is that NUMBERS ARE ABSTRACT TO REALITY!!! sometimes following your intuition is the best road to follow. i believe the reason people value metrics so much is that you have a formula that helped you come to a final decision, and if your decision is wrong you can go back to the data and see where your metrics were off. whereas if you went with your intuition you would be held for full accountability for the success or failure of a decision. i think a 50/50 mix of data and intuition keeps the creativity valid in the decision making process if the information is available.  

 

I think the same can be applied to SM which a few of you said above me there's no value being applied to the quality of the reaction......just that fact that there's a reaction is all that matters. Just thinking about this makes me think that this form of interaction with our fellow human beings is only going to lead us into idiocracy and mediocrity. you opinions validity will be determined by the amount of views/clicks rather then the true human response. 

 

 

[6Pennies]

20 hours ago, ~KRYLON2~ said:

I agree 100% that analytics kills creativity, when I worked on political campaigns we had apps like VAN (Voter Activation Network) that your canvassers could select answers to questions you would ask potential voters. based on this data collected you could determine what issues needed to be addressed in your constituency. but what a lot of people fail to recognize is that NUMBERS ARE ABSTRACT TO REALITY!!! sometimes following your intuition is the best road to follow. i believe the reason people value metrics so much is that you have a formula that helped you come to a final decision, and if your decision is wrong you can go back to the data and see where your metrics were off. whereas if you went with your intuition you would be held for full accountability for the success or failure of a decision. i think a 50/50 mix of data and intuition keeps the creativity valid in the decision making process if the information is available.  

 

I think the same can be applied to SM which a few of you said above me there's no value being applied to the quality of the reaction......just that fact that there's a reaction is all that matters. Just thinking about this makes me think that this form of interaction with our fellow human beings is only going to lead us into idiocracy and mediocrity. you opinions validity will be determined by the amount of views/clicks rather then the true human response. 

 

 

There's a famous "last quote" from the former CEO of Netscape: "In the absence of data we have opinion.  We'll just go with mine."  (or something close to that effect.  

[Kults]

On 8/2/2018 at 11:23 AM, misteraven said:

I'm curious how many of you guys have pulled away from Instagram or social media in general since rediscovering the forum or has it simply supplemented that usage?

I've been using IG less and less. It's the same stuff that pops up constantly. I use it more to follow some local sellers, a few 90s-00 graff accounts and the messenger feature since I got rid of FB and I cant always text. I can say I've been using Reddit a lot less since I've come back to The Ounce. There's a ton less users but I feel the connections are more meaningful and although it's a much smaller group, it's my kind of people.

[misteraven]

On 8/3/2018 at 7:00 PM, Fist 666 said:

I've been supplementing IG with oontz. Trying to figure out when the right time to delete IG will be. I made a stupid goal of getting 1000 followers, that was sort of my mark to hit. If I didn't block every fake account that adds me I'd be closer to 1200 by now, but I'm at 973 of mostly real accounts I think and I might just call it quits after my next big paint dig. (details I know you all care to read about).

 

Then my intent is to move back to 12 exclusively and delete that fucking app from my phone. 

 

The ease of adding a 12 forum shortcut to my phone was key to my increased time here, also weather has been shit so I've been less inclined to be working outside.

 

 

 

I know its fairly simple to add a shortcut, but maybe post a little tutorial or some screen shots or something for the uninitiated?

 

I kept going back and forth about deleting my personal account. Not sure I can really ever delete the 12oz one, even if I do let it lie dormant eventually. But yeah, definitely switched my routine up. Find myself refreshing the All Activity page a lot instead of scrolling Instagram. Also has become the first thing I check in the morning instead of IG.