Rick's b.log - entry 2022/10/30

The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself

I wonder if the story was supposed to go like that? I mean, I'm practically rooting for the Empire here...

"The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself" is on Netflix as an eight part series.

Just Stop Oil

Don't get me wrong here, the climate situation is real and the money we pay for oil is going into the pockets of some truly evil people...

...but the actions of Just Stop Oil and their lunatic brethren of militant vegans (not two words you'd normally expect to see together) are nothing short of pathetic headline grabbing acts of anarchy.

Do you not think that I am extremely angry over what Brexit has done? Do you not think I'd take a certain delight in stealing a tractor and silage tank and pumping a thousand litres of untreated pig slurry into Rees-Mogg's living room, having left the squished corpses of Cameron and Farage on the driveway?
But I don't. Nor do I glue myself to works of art. Because that's not how civilised people behave. That's how clueless wannabe anarchists behave. So, you want anarchy? Fine. Sit on roads, but don't complain if somebody gets out of their car and ejects you from the road in a manner that implies you'll be sitting for a few months longer.

Plus, there are plenty of reasons to want to demonstrate - Just Stop Russia, Just Stop Immigration, Just Stop The Tories, Just Stop Wind farms, Just Stop Jews/Muslims/The EU/Chinese/Everybody Else (whatever else depending upon your desires and/or prejudices)... Just Stop Reality, Just Stop.

But people who feel strongly about something, they participate in local politics or join groups to help promote their desired cause. They don't (usually) resort to pitiful anarchy, because doing that sends a clear message. It's not that "Just Stop Oil has a point", it's more like "Just Stop Oil are arseholes". So, great job, guys. Pat on the back for you all.

The clocks changed

That is all.

Twitter

Which basically means that under the watchful eye of a megalomaniac known for tweeting before thinking, it'll surely devolve into a giant cesspool of the worst of humanity. But, hey, "free speech rulez"!

Makes me wonder. For those inclined to post periodical brain farts, or for getting in touch with major companies (since shaming them in public is about all the customer support they offer these days), what is the alternative?
Remember, MySpace was all the rage until Facebook came and cleaned house. That could just as easily happen with Twitter, once all the rational people walk away in disgust like sponsors walking from whatever Kanye West is calling himself these days.

But the question is, walk where? What does what Twitter does, only with a rational human in charge?

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David Pilling, 30th October 2022, 16:40

Pour soup over Twitter, that should stop the clocks going back.

Gavin Wraith, 30th October 2022, 16:50

I would not touch any social media with a bargepole. You get better value from those who are long dead.

Gavin Wraith, 30th October 2022, 19:22

Judging by this https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/10/doc-who-thinks-vaccinate d-people-are-magnetic-is-in-big-trouble-with-med-board/  it would seem that the more absurd the lie the more likely a certain sort of person will believe it. This puts me in mind of the competitions that used to be held, to see who could tell the biggest lie. My mother and her sister used to play a wicked game at school, called "Local Colour", in which you scored a point for each person who believed you. That the aged gardener was the headmistress's lover, that you were supposed to take all your clothes off when called in to the matron's surgery, etc.

Rick, 30th October 2022, 22:04

I don't remember whether this made it into the SIBA stories, but I once caused chaos at breakfast time by convincing one of the junior dormitories that the milk in their cereal was actually cow cum.    I think the fact that it was so utterly ridiculous was the only thing that saved me from an eternity of detention.

VinceH, 31st October 2022, 00:41

Gavin: So you don't use (or have never used) usenet, mailing lists, or web forums, then - and nor indeed do you comment on blogs. Got it. 👍    (I presume you mean that what your bargepole wouldn't ever connect with are websites/apps aimed directly at that space.)    Cow cum. LOL!

Rick, 31st October 2022, 05:52

I think this depends an awful lot on one's definition of "social media".    A fairly common definition is that it is a specific web 2.0 service that allows users to create profiles of themselves to then post and share content (either with a browser or a dedicated app).  That's more or less the definition given in Wikipedia.    To this end, whilst Usenet and mailing lists are ways of sharing, they are decentralised and often don't involve any specific "profile" other than a known address or alias. Likewise blog responses are a simple form of interaction but may not provide the same sorts of things expected of "social media". You can't pin a picture here, for example.  Forums are a sort of middle ground, a link between the decentralised nature of Usenet and the walled gardens of the likes of Facebook. But a big determining factor to differentiate them could be that with the likes of Facebook, you can choose who you wish to share something with, whereas on forums it is understood to be some degree of publicly available, insomuch as whether the content is available with or without signing in, or based upon a system of user privilege. Some forums offer this as well as a private message facility (such as mine) while others are "it's all public" (such as ROOL). They could be called social media, yes, but a prototype to how it is accepted these days.

Gavin Wraith, 31st October 2022, 10:04

I have vague memories of usenet from the 1980s. I have certainly signed up to mailing lists, and occasionally I make comments on blogs, though I often regret it and wish I had kept quiet. I think these things are marvellous for people to share interests - indeed to educate oneself. Almost every day there is a round of websites that I like to look at: news, RISC OS, maths, linguistics, all sorts of stuff. It is not the same as meeting people in the street, but for the elderly or those with no means of transport it is a godsend. But I have never been too interested in gossip or sport. I am a bad listener and find it difficult to fake being interested in things that I do not in fact find interesting. Email is fine - it gives you time to think about your response. In real life conversation I often find that the opportunity for a response has gone before I have a chance to say anything, which rather dampens any spontaneity on my part. Isn't that l'esprit d'escalier - what comes to you as you depart down the stairs as you leave your host?   Anyway, I am grateful to Rick for heyrick.eu/blog .

David Pilling, 31st October 2022, 16:14

If you accept there's a spectrum of social media, then you find your niche. Something like Stack Overflow is high quality, I only ever made one post on that, and they removed it for not being good enough (which was fair). As the number of contributors goes up, things change. If you're one contributor in a million the chances of saying something new decline. But they are all social media because norms like politeness and obeying laws apply.  They generate their own dynamics like Godwin's law - any mention of Nazis or Hitler and the discussion is over.    (damn damn damn)

Gavin Wraith, 31st October 2022, 16:33

> But they are all social media because norms like politeness and obeying laws apply.     Thank you, I had not made that connection. But I was under the impression that there was also a lot of unsocial content about, from which the politer clientele flee, once they see the way things are going. If, in a restaurant, you see somebody at the next table trying to cut their ear off then you get up and leave - at least I would.

Rick, 31st October 2022, 21:28

My round of websites is basically: ROOL's forum, El Reg, The Guardian, Aldershot, XKCD, and Riscository.  The latter two being checked less frequently (like, daily or so depending on my memory) as they update less often than news or interactive sites.    Norms like politeness and obeying laws? I take it you never read the YouTube comments in the cesspool that it was about five or so years ago? Or the sort of evil maggots crawling out of the woodwork now that the übermaggot owns Twitter?  Politeness and law abiding is only apparent to us because we tend to walk away from places where hate fills the air. But, trust me, it's there.    There is a good reason why the TV Tropes site no longer has a "Troper Tales" forum and why the site almost failed hard. People bragging about what they got up to with children, seemingly being egged on by the admins. It was a useful resource for "tropes in movies" so long as you stayed far away from the forum (it was like a slightly less screwed up 4chan). But a bit of financial pressure (like being dumped by their advertisers and getting some seriously bad press over it) and the nasty stuff got deleted, and they even maintain a ban on so much as creating articles for naughtier stuff (such as "Kiss X Sis" for the tamer end of hentai, I've generally avoided that genre myself).

David Pilling, 1st November 2022, 13:00

When I uploaded some videos to YouTube 10 years ago, I set no comments because at the time the comments always ended up abusive. They improved a lot shortly afterwards.    You could almost take "legal and polite" as sarcasm, but I really meant it, obviously I lead a sheltered life on line - as Rick says the inclination is to avoid anywhere unpleasant.

Rick, 1st November 2022, 14:46

Nothing wrong with what you call a sheltered existence online.  What sort of person would choose to seek out stuff that upsets or offends them? And I don't mean reading The Daily Mail. That's small fry compared to some stuff...I hear the big bogeyman these days are "incel forums".

VinceH, 12th November 2022, 00:50

TBH, I couldn't give a hoot what Wikipedia says; it is not an authoritative source. It presumably references other sources, as is its norm, but those sources are probably ultimately based on someone's (or some group's) attempt to *apply* a definition to something retrospectively.    Hell.. *looks* (ugh, I usually avoid that site).    My conclusion is that I presumed correctly. I'll stick with my own view on this one.    It's worth noting, though, that after citing Wikipedia, the examples you give with excuses for them not being social media include blogs and forums... While the Wikipedia page goes on to give them as examples OF social media; blogs and forums. (The page includes specific examples of these - but they are just examples, and as such not an exclusive list).    That was a waste of my time. Ho hum. 🤷‍♂️🙂

VinceH, 12th November 2022, 00:59

Incidentally, I've now watched Bastard Son.    What stood out to me early on was that although they were referring to themselves as witches, nothing witchcraft-y like spells and whatnot came up until a few eps in AFAICR - instead, my immediate thought was it was more like mutant abilities; think X-Men...    Or more specifically Heroes. That one because it featured a bad guy who could do (via a different mechanism) the same as the main bad guy in this (as described before he appears... and before a creepy 'good' guy goes down the same route!)

Rick , 12th November 2022, 05:38

You're free to ignore Wikipedia - probably a good idea given, as you note, that it contradicts itself. ;)  It was given as a marginally better example than "some random website says".    But as you can see, the actual definition is muddy and unclear.    My own personal feeling is that comments sections on blogs and forums on tech sites aren't really "social media" as these are ways of letting users or visitors communicate with the content creator and each other but that isn't the primary purpose of the site, whereas the likes of Twitter and Facebook are "social media" as they exist purely in order that people communicate with each other.  But, as has been noted, it's an unclear definition.

Rick, 12th November 2022, 05:41

In related news, why am I writing this on a "phone", given that I have made a call of about half an hour using it, and hundreds upon hundreds of hours of everything else. Hell, until I patched in the Bouygues SIM it didn't even have cell network access, and I got it back in, when was it, January?    We probably need a new word for such a device, and the people who use them for pretty much everything *except* making phone calls.

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