agreed, I definitely don't see it as an them-vs-us thing, because aren't marketers to a degree "giving the people what they want"? (although it's more complicated, I think they're trying to encourage certain parts of our nature, but we're guilty in accepting and reflecting it). We're all, as you're saying, active participants and creators in our collective reality.
Pretentious Crap
- Thread starter josef k.
- Start date
agreed, I definitely don't see it as an them-vs-us thing, because aren't marketers to a degree "giving the people what they want"? (although it's more complicated, I think they're trying to encourage certain parts of our nature, but we're guilty in accepting and reflecting it). We're all, as you're saying, active participants and creators in our collective reality.
Yes indeed - but then of course, Rushkoff is programming as well... programming in this world is completely pervasive. Which is why it is very important to try and understand what parts of our nature different people - or styles - are trying to encourage. This is quite eye-opening, once you get past the false flags and ideological banners.
littlebird
Wild Horses
i think it is both the backstory of the forum, what it started as, and a lot of the majority of posting that goes on (at least in 4chan, which is what i've actually seen the most, taints it with a certain reputation.
the idea of an unmoderated, anonymous forum has its utopian appeal, but how does it exist without it turning into a place for continuous threads on masterbation, shocking sex act pictures, and people asking those who claim to be female to "show their tits"?
granted, i don't have the history of /b/ as chris seems to. my experience is limited to my ex and his friends sitting clustered around the laptop scrolling endlessly and laughing hysterically at the shock value, and then enjoying slagging anyone off they could, being more and more disaffected by anything that was shocking the day before, or the week before. it was all really eye-rolling to me, but then again, i think i may have had a biased and narrow view of it.
littlebird
Wild Horses
how often do you think we get to be exposed to contrasting opinions, and actually take them in, without trying to battle out the differences, prove the opposing party wrong, and cohabitate online with those of similar natures/opinions/beliefs as our own?
i know it is possible, and ideal, to utilize the internet for that goal, but more often then not, do we not all just cling to where we fit?
oh yeah, their popular cry "TITS... or GTFO!"
that pretty much sums the place up...
it's funny that people ever assumed the a total free-for-all online would lead to this utopia, huh? Not that there aren't a lot of awesome, very progressive things about the internet (it's shown me to a wealth of knowledge and art that I never would have been exposed to out here... but not everyone has experienced it that way)
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
It's pretty obvious that they are, isn't it?
I think it is possible to expose yourself to contrasting opinions, if this is what you want to do. But another interesting thing is the way slightly different formats either allow for it or preclude it. Blogs, and especially networks of blogs, often end-up in groupthink, at least with respect to the terms of debate. I suspect there is something to the politics of linking about this. But this point is also true of social cliques generally. Messages boards seem more open, but of course they are not totally open either. And anyway - as we know from /b/ - maybe total openness is not really desirable.
Last edited:
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Dissensus is pretty unique as a message board, because it was set up sort of as a sideshow to a small corner of the blogosphere. Thus you have the oldest posters who try to engage in a sort of protectionism of the content here, which begs the question: why have this an open forum at all if you'd rather keep it in the hands of a few within your blogcircle?
Blogs, IMO, definitely make things worse on the internet. On a message board, it's very obvious and upfront that each person is speaking for themselves and only themselves (no matter how hard some posters might try to "speak from the center"), whereas blogs tend to amplify the "spectacular" nature of events, where blogs become little hysteria/hype machines, ones that eventually feed back into the greater journalistic/print media spectacles. You'll see something get blown way out proportion based on a couple of bloggers claiming "this is what's a trend", "this is what's in", this is what everyone's listening to, etc. This is the same thing so many have criticized about traditional print media.
littlebird
Wild Horses
i suppose there has to be a medium range, though. not the chaos and inevitable fall into the profane, and shocking to shock, that /b/ became (at least parts of it). nor the self-referential, linking to each other circle of groupthink that you reference in regards to networks of blogs, or forums borne of networks of blogs.
i think some message boards find that middle ground, or try to, but invariably clumps of people join together and as you mention, social cliques are formed, and they either are the people who are constantly talking each other up (good point, xxx! otm, xxx! self-reference becoming group-reference, so to speak). or, there are the pairs or small groups who just enjoy sparring with each other; knowingly baiting each other, calling each other out, playing games of semantics (because message boards are a game of words). even in the spats and flame wars that go on, that is a type of social clique behavior.
i don't mean to say that i've never been a part of an online group/community/message board/forum that i did not learn from, or meet people i would not have met elsewhere (or talked to, at least). but, for the most part, if i silently watch, sitting on my hands, i notice the pairings, the groupings, the intentional sparring, and the social construct that is truly hard to miss.
and honestly, even on the 4chan group i witnessed, despite being anon, i still noticed the group mentality going on.
littlebird
Wild Horses
that pretty much sums the place up...
yeah. i either read that constantly, or mentions/accusations/suggestions to fap.
i was lucky in my earliest experiences online. the first real "group" i was a part of (a mailing list, when those existed) where i met some interesting, intelligent, varied and unique people who i still keep in contact with. there were still disagreements, there were definite pairings and cliques that developed, and it was in no way utopian - but it was a good experience.
not all that followed were as good. though some were better, or more challenging, thought-provoking. others i stumbled upon were so inflated with self-reference, pseudo-intelligence, and that attitude that one must criticize everything and everyone (constantly snubbing the collective nose at anything that might smell of mainstream, mundane, or god forbid, "popular").
(i suppose my preference is to the intelligence and the cheesy, and all that falls into the giant gap existing between the two)
the chapter is called "Gatherer-Hunters". and in it, Fischer very clearly states, here i paraphrase:
your talents in the art of selective hearing and seeing is truly impressive, Nomad.
he described them as largely egalitarian, able to feed all of their population all of the time, with no private property, kin-ship ties across the land. all of these leads me to the conclusion that the reason he doesn't talk about war among the Dobe is maybe because it doesn't exist.
__________________________________________________
i grow very tired of this. we have different view-points: i think yours are valid, and only want to offer up other equally, and in my opinion, more valid versions. what you think of mine is clear: it's all bullshit. and no amount of lectures and sources will make a difference.
my over-all opinion of you as an intelligent person worthy of dialog with will not change despite what i perceive to be very dishonest ways you have behaved in this thread.
speaking of which, let us leave josef's nice thread alone now. we have derailed quite enough.
i will continue to study in this area, and hopefully find another place on the web for these discussions. perhaps at a future date, when we are both a little bit older, we can even continue.
peace, nomad.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
That's a pretty inaccurate description of SA, unless it's changed a lot since it was started. Sounds more like rotten.com or ogrish....
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
There was no "chapter" called gatherer-hunter in what you posted Zhao, sorry.
You still haven't provided any sources. I'll wait forever for them, but since they don't exist, it will be sort of like waiting for Godot.
the entire mp3 is chapter 13 of the lecture series. it is entitled "Gatherers and Hunters"
here is screen grab of chapter summary from the PDF of the course:
I think I was thinking of rotten.com... get those names mixed up. :slanted:
although I do see a lot of SA's similarities, in the pranks, irreverence, and being another source of memes, with /b/ culture, even if Goons don't go quite as far as /b/tards. (though there's some anarchy on all those types of sites... like the DOS attacks by users of /b/, YTMND, and SA on Ebaums, etc)
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
the entire mp3 is chapter 13 of the lecture series. it is entitled "Gatherers and Hunters"
here is screen grab of chapter summary from the PDF of the course:
Cool. On the mp3 you posted, Fischer doesn't speak out the name of the lecture. He also does not talk about meat eating and calls the Dobe hunter-gatherers.
The Dobe eat more grains than meat--like almost every human on earth does.
Does this somehow diminish the importance of hunting? Especially as it relates to social organization, where there are clearly defined roles for men and women in these societies? I personally don't care how you say it--gatherer-hunter, hunter-gatherer. Same concept. A form of social organization with clear cut roles drawn along gender lines. The traditional view of these societies is not based on the idea that people ate only meat--instead, it is based on a well-founded understanding of the evolution of the sexes based on the roles they played throughout most of human history as either hunters (males) or gatherers (females).
Beyond this, I don't see why bands are not tribes, or what exempts them from tribe status. This seems like an artificial designation cooked up only to create a picture of pre-history that paints people as non-violent.
Can you link to some anthropology articles that confirm that bands are non-violent and are exempt from "tribal" status because they are small and nomadic?
Is there any reason to believe that bands didn't hunt, and that even if they did, this has anything to do with whether they were sometimes violent to other humans?
Last edited:
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Why don't you just put the whole pdf up?
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
I finally found the wikipedia entry. It's not for "band-level", it's for "band societies."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_society
This explains why bands aren't considered tribes--because bands are basically small family clans that move around and often dissolve out of organized bands.
Ok, I can follow this. I don't know if it makes sense to say this was the "primary" form of social organization, but I can see it being very important in human history.
But I don't see any reason to believe these bands were not war-like. Look at the clans or bands in Scottish history. Didn't they wage war on each other? Aren't there lots of clan wars in human history?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_society
This explains why bands aren't considered tribes--because bands are basically small family clans that move around and often dissolve out of organized bands.
Ok, I can follow this. I don't know if it makes sense to say this was the "primary" form of social organization, but I can see it being very important in human history.
But I don't see any reason to believe these bands were not war-like. Look at the clans or bands in Scottish history. Didn't they wage war on each other? Aren't there lots of clan wars in human history?
you know, i was honest to god expecting you to say that i typed/forged that screen shot of the chapter summary. or simply "that image contains no mention of G + H".
(still not entirely convinced that you heard all of the mp3 though, because the main points in the summary, as is usually the case, are clearly stated in the thing itself)
but good to see, at last, you admit that my position is not ENTIRELY bullshit.
you are like a very long and very dark tunnel nomad (no sexual allegory intended), and i had seriously almost/already given up (before the edit of my last post there was a sentence at the end questioning your sanity, which my better judgement removed), but it's good to finally catch a glimpse of light.
so anyway, it's not really an apt comparison between post-civilization "clans" or "tribes" with people like the Dobe or our ancesters -- everything changes with the initiation into the symbolic order (matrix).
that's part of what makes all of this so fascinating to me: the (largely/to various degrees) direct and "pure", pre-symbolic mind (which i can only kind of imagine).
with civilization came language, power, symbology, hiearchy, ritual, art, religion, politics... it's was (still is, but more fragmented) all one...
(still not entirely convinced that you heard all of the mp3 though, because the main points in the summary, as is usually the case, are clearly stated in the thing itself)
but good to see, at last, you admit that my position is not ENTIRELY bullshit.
you are like a very long and very dark tunnel nomad (no sexual allegory intended), and i had seriously almost/already given up (before the edit of my last post there was a sentence at the end questioning your sanity, which my better judgement removed), but it's good to finally catch a glimpse of light.
so anyway, it's not really an apt comparison between post-civilization "clans" or "tribes" with people like the Dobe or our ancesters -- everything changes with the initiation into the symbolic order (matrix).
that's part of what makes all of this so fascinating to me: the (largely/to various degrees) direct and "pure", pre-symbolic mind (which i can only kind of imagine).
with civilization came language, power, symbology, hiearchy, ritual, art, religion, politics... it's was (still is, but more fragmented) all one...