2 lines
14 KiB
JavaScript
2 lines
14 KiB
JavaScript
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import{d as i}from"./chunks/git.data.DXRlJPI8.js";import{M as o,q as r,Q as e,K as n,u as t,ag as s,p as l}from"./chunks/framework.Sr2_9k8k.js";const h=e("h1",{class:"p-name"},"Digital Locality",-1),d=["innerHTML"],c=s('<hr><details><summary>Referenced by:</summary><a href="/garden/filter-bubbles/index.md">Filter Bubbles</a><a href="/garden/social-media/index.md">Social Media</a></details><h2 id="the-problem-with-global-social-media" tabindex="-1">The Problem with Global Social Media <a class="header-anchor" href="#the-problem-with-global-social-media" aria-label="Permalink to "The Problem with Global Social Media""></a></h2><p>Digital spaces (<a href="/garden/social-media/">Social Media</a>) lack locality. If you see a post or thread, you'll see comments and replies from all sorts of people from all across the world and across the ideological spectrum, and you won't recognize a single one. There are no neighbors in cyberspace. This leads to interactions feeling a bit impersonal, as both the interaction and the other person only matter for this brief period of time, and you'll likely never interact again.</p><p>The only exception to this are influencers and people who are highly active within specific communities, who will gain a reputation through their name recognition. However, for people who aren't influencers or aren't highly active, these will be one-sided relationships (parasocial). The systems have been designed, often intentionally, to elevate a handful of accounts to celebrity status, a form of class struggle in the attention economy.</p><p>The virality sought after by influencers can sometimes happen to "normal" users as well (essentially randomly and non-consensually). This results in the phenomomen of people having their posts "blow up", reaching a much larger audience than intended and with it a lot more attention than intended. People who fall victim to this receive large amounts of negative attention that can seriously impact their mental well-being.</p><h2 id="networks-with-digital-locality" tabindex="-1">Networks with Digital Locality <a class="header-anchor" href="#networks-with-digital-locality" aria-label="Permalink to "Networks with Digital Locality""></a></h2><p>I believe healthier communities should allow for a higher concentration of recognition, as that will lead to more meaningful relationships. This would mean a shift to smaller communities that aren't dominated by a couple personalities. Ones where you see the same people regularly. This would be in alignment with Dunbar's research on communities, which found there's a cognitive limit to how many people we can meaningfully "know". He discusses his research and how it's held up over the years in <a href="https://theconversation.com/dunbars-number-why-my-theory-that-humans-can-only-maintain-150-friendships-has-withstood-30-years-of-scrutiny-160676" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">this article</a>.</p><p>Discord creates an environment like I describe, at least within it's smaller servers, but introduces a new issue in doing so: Discord servers aren't porous. You're either in the server or not, and you can only reach outside a server by fully joining another. This means that it's more difficult to actually discover people with which to form these meaningful relationships.</p><p>A network based on digital locality should operate more similarly to neighborhoods in the real world - you're most likely to see those living closest to you, but you can still see others by just going a little further out. It's "porous" in the sense that you aren't limited to your immediate neighbors; It's a gradient, where more effort will always allow you to reach more people, rather than hitting a wall.</p><blockquote><p>Unfortunately, with car dependent society this analogy breaks down a bit, as now people are covering such a large physical area regularly that its still rare to see a familiar face while, for example, buying groceries.<
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