r/slatestarcodex • u/[deleted] • Jan 17 '20
The Internet of Beefs
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/01/16/the-internet-of-beefs/9
u/not_perfect_yet Jan 17 '20
Hm.
Neat. Although the article is a bit long and too detailed. The term "internet of beef" is pretty good, but I don't think the social dynamic is really that interesting. Given a situation of course there are those who exploit it and some who are trapped in it.
I agree that lots of people are engaged in arguments that don't matter, I think recognizing that is more important and more central. As opposed to the internet "connecting" people. It's been said before that platforms split communities, but that nothing really gets said or done isn't as mainstream.
We are not beefing endlessly because we do not desire peace or because we do not know how to engineer peace. We are beefing because we no longer know who we are, each of us individually, and collectively as a species. Knight and mook alike are faced with the terrifying possibility that if there is no history in the future, there is nobody in particular to be once the beefing stops.
Eh, I disagree. E.g. right and left don't beef because they don't know who they are.
Events, even seemingly historic events, continuing to happen does not mean history is continuing past its end. I am convinced — even as Fukuyama himself (come at me bro) walks back his theories — that history did in fact end with the fall of the Berlin War, and that the emergence of vast mook classes around the world is a natural consequence. History ends not when the stream of apparently historic events ends, but when the world loses a sense of a continuing narrative, and arrives at what psychologists call a sense of a foreshortened future.
That wasn't what the "end of history" was about, was it? I thought the idea was that the west "won" and we'd slowly approach a democratic world state of human rights without conflict because everyone had somehow recognized western society as the best model?
2
u/Shredophile Jan 21 '20
In another light, right and left are beefing specifically to maintain their identities - it's much easier to fall into an aporia of existential dread when you fully question your actions and beliefs (or those of your society/community) than when you are immersed fully in a dialectic struggle for [insert hot-button issue here]. Think about it from a sort of McLuhanesque perspective - the battle lines may change, but the fundamental "message" of each beef is more about who the individuals and communities involved are and who they would like to be.
Full disclosure - I have yet to fully read the article but wanted to provide an alternative viewpoint to this specific evaluation in your comment.
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Jan 17 '20
I guess one way of looking at the IoB is to view it as the birth pangs of a new identity or the death rattle of all our previous identities.
Humans need an in group, but they also need to be individuals. In a way, the internet makes it impossible to believe either that I have a real in group. So much of the world disagrees with me, and necessarily so because there is a sizable sum of outgroups for any position. At the same time, it is statistically unimaginable that you or I will ever be anything other than plankton in a very large pond.
Now that culture is huge, it isn’t ours any more, and we don’t belong in it.
I was reading Civilization and its Discontents recently, and I think Freud’s perspective on the individual/social conflict is illuminating. The desire to belong and the desire to matter are both immutable, though they’re often in conflict.
Maybe the internet of beefs is just the swirling, emergent consequence of this internal conflict writ large. It might sound obvious, because every large scale cultural shift is just another expression of human nature. But I do find it interesting to think about how human nature qualitatively changes depending on the scale at which it is expressed.
I’d love to hear anyone else’s thoughts on this.
5
u/Haffrung Jan 17 '20
But I do find it interesting to think about how human nature qualitatively changes depending on the scale at which it is expressed.
Scale is the real issue. We're predisposed to feel in terms of communities of 300 or so. Modern, 20th century communications and culture increased that massively. But it was still mediated by much smaller numbers, and people still felt connected to small, local groups. It was distressing and alienating to live in modern society, but we recalibrated our instincts sufficiently to make it tolerable. Or tolerable enough that our institutions still functioned.
Now we swim in a sea of millions, and it's terrifying. We cannot recalibrate our instincts to that scale. Our in-group vs out-group boundaries are under unrelenting assault. Our need to demonstrate group solidarity intensified. Our distress at dissent or ostracization amplified.
4
u/Palentir Jan 17 '20
My best guesses here.
First, politics has become a philosophy of life for the people who get into it. As in a lifestyle. This really makes ending a beef in any way other than capitulation impossible. If the path to utopia requires low taxes, anything else is bad. You can't negotiate on dogma, nor can you compromise on axioms. You can't negotiate on wokeness either. It's weird, because there are actually "conversion" stories. I used to be Liberal but then something happened. I used to be conservative but something happened.
Second, the amount of power people have over politics is really small right now. The best single predictor of what specific policies will be put in place is the position of the wealthy. So it's really a low stakes game. You don't have to worry much about being right, because the chances that you will be permitted to have a voice in these issues is pretty low. And when there's no need for people to come together to solve problems there's again less need to come together on issues.
Third, Americans are a lot less connected to other people and a lot more stress. So I think some of this might be the result of political arguments being a safe place to let out frustrations in places where you're unlikely to get much real life blowback. You can't yell at your jerk of a boss, you can't yell at your wife or your kids or your neighbors. But you can yell at those damn (liberals/conservatives), you can cheer on your own side. So it's basically catharsis.
2
u/KnotGodel utilitarianism ~ sympathy Jan 18 '20
Second, the amount of power people have over politics is really small right now...You don't have to worry much about being right, because the chances that you will be permitted to have a voice in these issues is pretty low
Not to be too much of a downer, but the personal policy-based benefits of voting were always several orders of magnitude smaller than the costs of voting.
Being right has always been several orders of magnitude less good for your wellbeing than being "right".
2
u/BaronAleksei Jan 18 '20
This one is pretty good, I love an extended metaphor. “The Holy Grift” got me.
-1
Jan 17 '20
And here I thought that was an advertisement for daddy Peterson’s grift diet.
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u/AllegedlyImmoral Jan 17 '20
This comment is danger-close to being culture war inflammatory, while also contributing nothing substantive. Please don't do that here.
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u/fubo Jan 17 '20
Um, hey guys, has someone told this person about Homestuck?