The Crunchy-to-‘Alt-Right’ Pipeline https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/fringe-left-alt-right-share-beliefs-white-power-movement/672454/?utm_source=feed
Blog
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Jettisoned, 2009. Chromogenic Print A first-generation Cuban-American who grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, Anthony Goicolea learned family rituals and histories about a world he would never know -pre-Castro Cuba. His first trip to the island nation was as an adult in 2008, after which he created a series of works in which fiction intertwines with the remaining facts he found there. Within the sparkling, watery surface of Jettisoned, the artist reveals the truth of his photographic illusion: hands hold up the cinder blocks surrounding the boat. Frequently used in Cuba to shore up crumbling infrastructure and create shelter, these cinder blocks attest to the mythology of Goicolea’s invented memories, from which he spins tales both unreal and true.
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Posted in: Converations
I am giving the blog/website another go. I’ve been doing this since at least 2008 when Google Plus was available, Google Reader was strong, and Facebook’s faults were becoming increasingly obvious although that seemed to be cemented during the election of 2016 with Cambridge Analytica. I digress.
I am optimistic that I am a good age to discuss social media. The common assumption is the high schoolers and the young 20’s direct what is cool and what is used for social media but I wonder if that is shifting as older people are now much more familiar with digital environment. We know that that demographic doesn’t even have a formed brain. If we followed the direction of that demographic in diets we would all be eating candy and pizza… maybe the older generations know something? Now that the generational playing field is leveled in terms of computer literacy the younger generations need us for direction? There is an advantage of having lived life before the age of the internet. Right now the habits of the youth point toward mindless scrolling and entertainment being the most valued reason to be online. Could we suggest something better?
And this is where I get to blogs and websites. I have a lot to say (but for now just wanted to get a start to a post so that I could build a website template).
I (will eventually) welcome your thoughts on this.
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I belong to the group of people who believe that big data can and is used against our best interest.
I want to propose that leaving Facebook and returning back to a more loosely structured form of sharing/publishing online is a smart decision. Lets do this in a list:
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- The medium is the message!. Using preboxed online communication, you use the format given to you. It can be liberating and allow you to get to your “content” more quickly, but there is something nice about adjusting the display of your site so that it fits your character.
- I can decide which text is emphasized!
- It won’t kill big data but it will make aggregating big data much harder and will give us (the people) a little more of an advantage.
- Blogs and other sharing tools are way easier.
- The people that are too lazy to set up a blog (again it is really really easy) might also have nothing to say. So what if you don’t get to hear from someone who can’t be motivated to set up their own sharing platform?
- The “blog” format is much richer than it used to be. You can share just photos (treat it like Instagram), you can share quick status updates. You could supplement the blog with Twitter. You have so many options on how to share.
- RSS! Maybe there is something better out now (I might be old fashion) but using RSS you get to subscribe to peoples feeds and you don’t have an algorithm created by a big data company to mine and organize the data for you. You get the news stories that are published and you can scan the titles and decide yourself which is most relevant to you. The news organization itself filters the world for you to make news, you don’t need another layer of filtering. You have the brain width to do this. It might be a bit slower but a slower quality centered stream just makes more sense.
- So lets say you buy the idea that you can subscribe via RSS. You could subscribe to just my photo posts (if I organize them correctly) I can make a stream just for family, you can subscribe to just domestic news from one source and business from another… you have so much more control!
So what if we have a diversified set of blogs again. We can start linking to each other we can share as much or more of what we already share and it can be a more vibrant community than before. Fuck Facebook.
Here is where it doesn’t work:
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- There is an advantage to a straight forward and standard medium. Instagram does work really well and if things aren’t consistent enough it is too distracting and not user friendly
- The more complex medium can get in the way of more seamless sharing. I think there is a benefit to sharing quick and in the moment. I think this could be patched with a more social blogging lay out. Maybe we are using frames again?
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The end!
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Every so often I run into an article considering the solar car, often touting the idea that a car can be “run on solar”, to which I think we are to believe that solar is all that would be needed, the free to run powered by the sun mobile.
A google images spread of solar cars.
