Thanks for have a conversation on my post!
I'm going to copy and paste this reply to everyone involved because I think this is what social media is really about, but somewhere along the way it has been subverted into something very different and that has really killed it.
It's not about agreement, it's a conversation. You are all clearly not bots or contractors pushing an agenda.
While I do think replacing corrupt egotistical dictators is crucial for the success of any social media platform (or society), I also think the free exchange of ideas is crucial as well.
Feel free to disagree!
Is there is any place where many people meet that can be truly free? In the sense that I can say what I want without encountering resistance?
It is a matter of interpretation how much one takes disagreement as a personal affront or in a way trains oneself to try one's composure by this challenge. Agreement = affirmation of one's own. Conversation = The willingness to listen even to opposing or challenging arguments and verbal attacks. Ad hominem attacks are the most catchy and therefore the master attacks. They may not really be permissible, but you see them everywhere and with far greater frequency and intensity on all so-called social media channels. Banning them only brings out more of them. The art is to let the force bounce off you and if it doesn't (which is most of the time it doesn't), seek to fathom what it is that annoys you so terribly.
I think it is thoroughly exaggerated that hate speech is seen as abhorred, in fact I think it is very popular (thanks to widespread media distribution). To believe that only approval is a positive thing is deluding oneself. ...Every collective thrives on tests of endurance. If it does not pass them, it can disintegrate or become lifeless. Hate is only a hair's breadth away from love.
So I don't so radically agree with you that dictators are at work. Rather, I think most of the potential for conflict online is incompetence or unawareness/ignorance, rapid aggrievement, as well as a rapid weariness of all that is believed to be something honourable or noble. I call it the tension field in which boredom and excitement confront each other and one swings between these two moods as if attached to a hook.
Right now I'm experiencing a contradiction with your comment to me. I'm not a bot, right, so an automated response to your commenters talking to each other I find rather irritating. Are you interested in a conversation? With me? If so, I prefer a personal reply. Though I assume that longer conversations with me is not so much to your taste. LOL ;)
You write really long comments and tend to make things very complex.
But I do appreciate that you are commenting, so I quickly said so.
I am a very slow typist, in the time it would take to do a long reply i could do a picture!
I am not discussing rocket science. But well, no problem, I know you already a bit and I found out that you find long comments uninteresting in general, and you yourself never comment with a lot of words. I was irritated by this sudden invitation to disagree. And also that you praise manual convos and prefer to have them instead of bots. But used automated responses. LOL :D
Bye.
?
That is my point!
Still not getting it.
https://blurt.blog/blogging/@frot/why-blog-posts-need-both-words-and-images