I know very few people who want attention from strangers when they go out in public. Most of us want to be left alone while we go about our business. Online provides a forum for people to get the sort of attention we might like. "Look what I can do!" or "Look at me!" Still, one of my gripes about social media is that there are so many people who lurk. The lurkers are there to look at people attempting to get attention. The attention seekers are acting. They are on a stage. Nobody is confusing the act for the real person except the young and naive. The lurkers are the audience. Lurkers don't contribute anything (most won't hit the like button, much less comment, even if later the tell me "I loved your post"). The quiet ones are not "homeless."
Burning Man attempts to solve this with the no spectators rule:
“‘No Spectators’ is a long-standing saying on Playa. You are encouraged to fully participate. It’s all about being there, being fully present, and not just observing. Two of the ten principles of Burning Man are radical participation and radical inclusivity, meaning that there are no outsiders. Everyone is part of the experience.”
– Nora Atkinson, The Fleur and Charles Bresler Curator-in-Charge, Renwick Gallery
Again, nobody is confusing the Burning Man persona with who they are back at the office after the event is over. People try things out, take mind altering drugs. Identity is fluid. Social media isn't bad because it is fake. Social media is good because it is fake.
"...we tend to see other people’s lives as works of art." Sometimes, but most people aren't that good at performance.
>Online provides a forum for people to get the sort of attention we might like. "Look what I can do!" or "Look at me!" Still, one of my gripes about social media is that there are so many people who lurk.
There's a lot to learn from lurking. My mother watches Tik Tok videos and doesn't post herself, but cooks more now than ever based on the ideas she sees on there. You can learn about a cultural trend, a social cause, a musician, a resource, etc. There are lurkers with agendas, sure, but many are just bored and don't take pictures of everything.
Message boards like this offer even more to learn. Many people repeat what's already been said. The lurker respects this or has nothing to say and moves on.
I don't like that Burning Man curator's quote calling their saying a form of "inclusivity" when it doesn't include the lurker. It also suggests that "being present" is necessarily not being observant, but doing things that are supposed to be done at their festival, which I don't agree with. That said, I'm sure a space like that would actively become less of what its meant to be if there were tons of people just spectating. They should own the exclusivity that they want.
> I don't like that Burning Man curator's quote calling their saying a form of "inclusivity" when it doesn't include the lurker.
Indeed. If you explicitly provide no space for spectators, that just means you radically reduce the set of people who want to participate at all. There are plenty of lurking-friendly spaces elsewhere so I don't think that Burning Man needs to change the policy or anything, but to pretend that it is super inclusive because the excluded group is not even present is just not true.
In fact, Burning man can be said to epitomize the western secular idea that individual freedom is the highest good. There are plenty of cultures where this idea is not considered to be true. Even in the US, you can find lots of (evangelical) groups that would find people having orgies, doing drugs, not praying and in a general sense indulging themselves without thinking about God and society an abhorrent idea. In general, all cultures where some sort of patriarchal/matriarchal hierarchy is the norm (ie the tribe elders get to decide for everyone what is best) would fare pretty poorly at Burning Man I think.
Just to clarify for those who have not been to the burn, “participating” does not mean orgies, drugs and going to parties.
The most valuable currency at Burning Man is ability. Participation can be thought more of as creative skill sharing with no expectation of compensation.
People who show up in fancy costumes ready to party stick out more than they blend in. This reality is distorted by social media, because sweaty dirty people doing shit doesn’t get likes the way glittery revealing clothes do.
> In general, all cultures where some sort of patriarchal/matriarchal hierarchy is the norm (ie the tribe elders get to decide for everyone what is best) would fare pretty poorly at Burning Man I think.
This idea is being challenged right now, as Marian and the rest of the board behind The Burning Man Organization have failed to handle the void left by the passing of Larry Harvey and complexity introduced by Covid.
Interestingly, the financial stewardship of the event and those who participate the most (qualify for presale based on previous participatory contributions) have been the key underpinnings of a corrosion in support for what is known as “the org.”
Burning Man as “owned” by this “non profit” group is not happening for the second year in a row in 2020. This is sensible but disagreements with how the board has handled people’s money and “donations” along with political failures around setting expectations has led to an upstart event is being organized in its place.
>> “I don't like that Burning Man curator's quote calling their saying a form of "inclusivity" when it doesn't include the lurker.”
> “Indeed. If you explicitly provide no space for spectators…”
I think of this very differently. Burning Man has grown organically with the dawn of the Information Age. It is a product of it.
No matter how you use the Internet, when it comes to learning and engagement, look at the origins—sharing of scientific information. You are a scientist/artist. You do things. You publish and promote your work in the vein of the scientific method—-making reasoned claims of truth which a stand on their own merit until proven false. It’s not a stretch to make a similar statement of art.
It’s a virtuous cycle, no? If you are “lurking” then you are not contributing to the cycle but only benefiting from it. Not participating is a mistake, and failure.
It’s a mistake because the health of the Internet is measured in truth. The actual financial cost can be very low, creating your own original works and expressions of truth.
“The real world” is already full of spectators. We call them customers.
If there is a hypocrisy at BM, it’s that the cost and time investment favors individuals who have benefited (financially) in the real world from “lurkers” who are willing to pay a modest fee to get their information instead of using those costs to learn to participate and cooperate with others.
The only real remedy for individuals who struggle to participate in their own is to organize and form groups. And this work is difficult and people’s feelings will be hurt and they will suffer cognitive dissonance with our dominant culture of consumption and consumerism.
So in the end I would take a line from within the Python community: be excellent to each other.
> It’s a virtuous cycle, no? If you are “lurking” then you are not contributing to the cycle but only benefiting from it. Not participating is a mistake, and failure.
Not necessarily. Your argument contains the premise that the choice is between lurking and contributing and indeed if that were the case then contributing is the more beneficial one and lurking should be discouraged. However the premise is false, because there is the third option of not participating at all.
Imagine a group of (say) ten creators, ten non-participants and zero lurkers. If one non-participant switches to being a lurker, the total amount of knowledge about (and enjoyment from) the thing in question will increase, while the enjoyment of the creators stays the same. The total amount of enjoyment has increased. It could perhaps increase even more if the newfound lurker would also create, but that is not always an option and the perfect is the enemy of the good.
> “ If one non-participant switches to being a lurker, the total amount of knowledge about (and enjoyment from) the thing in question will increase, while the enjoyment of the creators stays the same.”
I see what you’re doing here. If I signaled I was inviting an argument of this type, that was not my intention.
I think OP's comment feels pretty valid, especially in an in-person event like burning man. There is a divide between participant and passive viewer. As a participant you give, and as a passive viewer you take, which can feel like an unfair arrangement, and there is a big difference between "being present" and "being fully present" which is a level of commitment burning man wants for the festival-goers.
While there's nothing wrong with lurking (I think we all mostly lurk in low commitment subjects and are active in a much smaller amount of things that really interest us), it presents a fairness of effort and commitment to require participation from everyone.
I should be clear that I agree with the sentiment of the Burning Man saying as it applies to Burning Man and events like Burning Man, I was just nitpicking the language of the curator. I happen to be part of a group that sometimes hosts events and it does feel like a faux pas when somebody asks if they can 'just watch.'
But I think it goes to show the weakness of the analogy with social media, because participation and observation are very much different things on the internet than in person. I think that's a net benefit, because people can observe (and learn) without intruding in most cases.
I appreciate that this is a novel non-knee-jerk take on social media but not sure I fully buy it, mostly because the way commerce/the algorithm modifies this “stage” in real time. Art/performance always has and will have some commercial aspect, but it’s usually appears before and after but not during. Maybe the closest analog would be the improvising comedian that takes the set into a direction depending on what people laugh at. But then how do you account for the total opaque interests/influence of the algorithm?
Thank you and yes, the algorithm is a problem. I may have a funny thing that one set of friends like, but the algorithm shows it to another set who don't get it because it wasn't for them, but because they logged on first or some other algorithmic input they get it and the others don't. Maybe FB should let me input hints on who I intend it for.
> “‘No Spectators’ is a long-standing saying on Playa. You are encouraged to fully participate. It’s all about being there, being fully present, and not just observing. Two of the ten principles of Burning Man are radical participation and radical inclusivity, meaning that there are no outsiders. Everyone is part of the experience.”
That sounds like shit the big head on the screen would yell at Winston in the opening chapter of an updated 1984.
Strong disagreement here! 1984 was about an opiated, programmed masses. Everyone was heads down, keeping to themselves in that world, doing as they were told, receptive. It was the ultimate spectator culture. Subservience was required, radical participation, radical inclusivity (thinking of others) was not.
You might be scared of strong messaging- a common thema to both scenarios- but the messages are about as opposite as it gets: RECEIVE versus BE.
Since being a school kid, I have felt that a lot of the world keeps a very very very strong filter up. They don't engage, they don't see most of the world around them, they selectively pick & choose a very limited part of the world to acknowledge & engage in. It's taken me a long long time to see & acknowledge how scary the world can be, to learn to empathize with how burdensome the outside world is, how infrequently being non-spectator & being receptive & engaged is rewarded, how usually slim those rewards are.
In many ways, there's a bit of a tragedy, especially in cities, where engaged people too often are not entirely well, not entirely kind, are not just engaged or interested benevolently but angling to attention, up to something.
I still really prefer a world where we can be heads up, aware of each other, aware of the world about us, casually participatory with each other as we go about. It's such a waste of personage, of society, when people keep to themselves, wrap themselves in their tight knit world, shut themselves off to the world: radical participation seems like such a natural expectation, such a natural way for each of us to be ante-ing in, a little bit, to the world we inhabit. Inclusivity to not tune each other out. But alas, yes, there is also quite the din in the world, many visible & worse & more dangerously many not obviously apparent unpleasant noisemakers out there, good reasons to just go about quietly, on your way, staying in your own world.
I’ve never been to the actual burn, but went to a regional one once. And I agree wholeheartedly with you; it was the complete opposite of 1984. I was invited because of a dude I sat next to at a coffee shop once in a while and had some occasional good chats with.
The event was absolutely mind blowing, and I wasn’t really part of the “altered” crowd (I had some beer and a bit of weed, but no psychedelics or anything like that.) Within an hour of our arrival, I was helping a group of people I’d never met who were building a very large structure (that we burned to the ground on Saturday night, naturally.)
The biggest takeaway, for me, other than making friends that I still keep in touch with a decade later, was that the reality and social systems we take for granted every day are truly just systems we constructed and don’t have to be how they are. Sure, burner life probably isn’t sustainable as a long-term societal structure, but it was really amazing to take a vacation from normal life and drop into a completely different paradigm.
Everyone just pitched in and did whatever needed to be done to make it a great weekend for everyone. We built things, we shared food and drink, we sang ridiculous songs at Jerk Church on Sunday morning, we danced and didn’t care how stupid we looked, and we popped up a temporary community for a weekend. It really stuck with me.
>I still really prefer a world where we can be heads up, aware of each other, aware of the world about us, casually participatory with each other as we go about. It's such a waste of personage, of society, when people keep to themselves, wrap themselves in their tight knit world, shut themselves off to the world:
It seems you have taken Wittgenstein's old phrase "the limits of language are the limits of my world" and substituted "language" with "social media." You are already aware of the people who don't participate, they do exist and participate in your world, you just want them to behave differently than they do. You want them to post more photos, engage more on social media. I've never seen anyone be so blunt about this who didn't run a social media company or work for one themselves.
I don't like people being more guarded and filtered than they would like to be, but I appreciate that there is more to a person than what they post online. The hiddenness of people can sometimes add to the intrigue of getting to know them.
>really prefer a world where we can be heads up, aware of each other, aware of the world about us, casually participatory with each other as we go about. It's such a waste of personage, of society, when people keep to themselves, wrap themselves in their tight knit world, shut themselves off to the world
Very well said, but far more than a mere preference, I feel that interconnection is the engine driving our cultural and societal evolution and progress. Our paradigm shifts occur at the crossroads where different cultures and ideas freely intermingle. This is why the encroachment of mass surveillance will lead to a cul-de-sac for humanity. Radical inclusivity leads to the opposite of 1984...
I think theres a minor difference between a world with no choice and the rules of an event you choose to attend. Maybe more than minor considering how much conscious effort is required just to attend said event.
At least the inhabitants of Airstrip One didn't have to suffer from outrageous prices for food and idiot rich college kids and "influencers" slumming it for a weekend.
Facebook became popular because it was possibly to just observe and not be forced to participate. Everything before Facebook told you when and who viewed your content, Facebook didn't and explicitly banned any sort of apps tat could log who saw your stuff.
So forcing participation sounds good in theory but in practice people love to lurk and hates being seen, even those who produce content. And since Facebook every new social media phenomena like Twitter or Instagram also doesn't show you who looked around at your stuff, so allowing non participation is a must in any social media today for it to become popular.
MySpace, LiveJournal,... none of these had surveillance built in. I'm not sure what "Everything before Facebook" you are referring to, but I can't think of a single system I used that let me surveil my readers.
Myspace let people track everyone who visited their page, that it wasn't a default doesn't matter when everyone just installed their own trackers. Same thing with live journal. They didn't try to stop the practice, instead they encouraged it and had guides how to do it. Facebook was the first to ban all sorts of tracking.
How is that relevant at all? When people talk about privacy they care a million times more if their friends see what they do than if some big organization sees what they do. What I'm talking about is people getting a list of who viewed their content, that is they can see who viewed their beach pictures etc.
Mostly older people use Facebook and real identities. I don't have a lot of experience with mediums that young people use like Instagram and Tik Tok, but I'm under the impression that people goof around and try to outdo each other. Even young people use it in a sophisticated way. I was thinking of the young and naive, like people teens who first get on it (but they learn fast.)
This is what I find kind of bazaar with Instagram stories. What's the point of showing who sees it. But also people keep clicking to look so they can't be that bored by the content.
I also think likes are pretty passive. Idk for me if I share something and all I get are likes, idk it feels weird it's very one way. I'd rather people comment and well do something social or nothing then just a like button click.
Heads up, you were after "bizarre" not "bazaar". A bazaar is a stall lined street/market; that said I could see with influencer culture being as it is maybe instagram is a bizarre bazaar!
> Burning Man attempts to solve this with the no spectators rule
I think that people who choose to go to Burning Man or similar festivals probably score much higher on openness trait (from the big five). Also, psychedelics and certain euphoretics (such as MDMA) said to permanently increase this trait, too.
>I know very few people who want attention from strangers when they go out in public.
How do you define attention? From what I can tell almost everyone wants attention from strangers in some form. I know very few people who deliberately dress to not be seen.
I appreciate the point being made from the outside. I have no social media persona (a decade-old defunct Facebook account might be it, plus HN which doesn't feel social in the same sense), yet I don't feel that I'm homeless in the virtual space. I simply don't inhabit it, and I don't feel that I'm missing out.
>>I simply don't inhabit it, and I don't feel that I'm missing out.
I've wondered about this - but how do you know what you are missing out on? For example, if you were active on twitter or LinkedIn and carefully cultivated those profiles, who knows what life changing connections you may have made? (I've seen several people comment on getting jobs, business partners, fellow hobbyists, etc. on twitter.)
I've not asked the question "what I am missing out" for like almost a decade. It came from the realization that I constantly and always "miss out" on 99.99% of things that happened in the universe. Whatever more Twitter I read won't move the needle of the statistics.
Rarely it happens that my success depends on things I "miss out". On the other hand, usually that my success depends on how well I take advantage of the opportunities I currently have.
So respect the opportunity, and make sure you're ready when it comes.
The more I reduced my Twitter use, the more I realized how certain states of mind get stuck in it easily. The less anxious I got, the less concerned I was with missing out on online stuff, and the less I wanted to use Twitter obsessively.
Agreed. It took me a couple of years to reach that same conclusion. When I did, I deleted Twitter and LinkedIn - the only two platforms I used.
When I realized my mental health was suffering from the “infinite scroll” and the toxicity of people saying things on Twitter that they’d never say face to face,I knew it was time.
That was almost 4 years ago. As the meme goes “No ragrets”.
Actually, if you weren't spending time on twitter, you would have developed a cure for cancer and be a globally known multi-billionaire hero. But you had to settle for getting a job with a 10% pay bump over your previous.
That's a fair question, and, while writing the original comment I thought about mentioning it. The honest answer is that I don't know what I've missed out on without social media. I try very hard to cultivate "meat space" relationships that are authentic. Social media, while I tried it out, never felt authentic and after a while I realized that if a relationship is worth having, it will spill over and endure in "meat space".
I guess my point is that, unless you buy into the idea of having online persona, you may not feel homeless online without it.
The safest way to find out is to just give it a try. You will see quite soon whether you enjoy the ‘game’ of a specific platform or not.
It’s unlikely that you will get good at something you don’t enjoy so I think the moment you can answer that question you should take the consequences.
Not enjoying it -> unlikely to get good at it -> unlikely to reap the benefits -> better skip it or work around it (you don’t NEED those platforms after all)
I mean, you're a real person that wrote this, and I'm a real person replying to you. No one of this is not real. The image that I might make of you in my head and that you might make of me in your head are illusions, but so are the ones we make in "meatspace". Feel free to call the internet "siliconspace" or something like that, but it won't make it not real.
> Feel free to call the internet "siliconspace" or something like that
I think the word you're looking for is "cyberspace".
> but it won't make it not real
If I'm corresponding with someone via mail, are we inhabiting a postspace that is a real place? If I'm on the phone with someone are we inhabiting a voicespace that is a real place? If I'm reading a book, are the author and I in a space?
These are not places. These are media. It's communication as a phenomenon within real life, but to say any of these or the internet constitutes a place of equal primacy as the real world is just silly.
> I think the word you're looking for is "cyberspace".
That's the one, thanks
> These are not places. These are media.
I think that's just different ways to view things. I see HN as a place, and I go to it like I would go to the local pub or something. I see the discord server than I share with my friend as the same thing, a place. On the other hand, if I'm talking to someone on the phone, there's no "space". I think a good way to put it would be that if there's still something while no one is actively using it, I see it as a space.
A mail conversation would be more like a trail of letters, so not a place. I don't really know why, that's just how I see things. For a book, sometimes picking up a book (often with fiction) feels like going back to a certain place.
> to say any of these or the internet constitutes a place of equal primacy as the real world is just silly
I don't really understand why. There are lots of places in the world that are less important than HN. Of course you can go to the forest and touch a tree, but that doesn't make this tree more important than HN just because you can physically touch it.
There is a space of sorts with the phone, but it did take awhile to develop. My understanding of the early history of the telephone is that people conceived of it as like talking to someone in the other room. You can hear them, but not see them—but they’re there with you.
Now we do have very distinct telephone habits, a telephone style of speaking, etc. Try using phone inflection in person sometime; it’s very jarring. “Hey. Yeah. It’s Matthew. I’m sorry, one sec, I need to…”
In an abstractly similar way, a lot of HN comments share some qualities, even from different people (including this one).
Of course it's not real. This is Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation in practice. When you cannot tell the difference between a real person represented in the simulacra (i.e. a site like HN) and the simulacra being generated at will by a malicious actor (i.e. a simulation, fake accounts developing a history of posts, bots, guerilla marketing, etc.) then the smart person will recognize it for the un-reality that it truly is.
Just because it isn't real, though, doesn't mean that it can't be fun :)
I don't really see how this is specific to the internet. Sure, automated bots makes this worse, but is there a big difference between a bot and someone parroting opinions that they've heard and don't really understand? I guess you can have a conversation with that person, but it's often as fruitful as replying to a bot. These people exists in the meatspace, that doesn't make it less real.
> I guess you can have a conversation with that person, but it's often as fruitful as replying to a bot.
That's precisely one of the reasons why it's not real. Conversing in "meatspace" makes it more difficult to just tune out the other side, a "real" conversation is one where leaving the conversation is either tacitly permitted by the other side (by not following the person leaving) and at least bookended by simple social ritual ("I gotta go", "Nice meeting you", etc.). Baudrillard's point is that the simulacra (the discussion online) is no longer showing you that reality, but that too many people have lost the ability to differentiate between reality and what is a convincing simulation of reality.
> I mean, you're a real person that wrote this, and I'm a real person replying to you. No one of this is not real.
I agree that it's all real, but I do say: there is so much less basis of experience gained from interacting with one another on the internet today are much smaller. I would say our experiences gained are very much "less real" because of that. We're not going to recognize one another the next time we cross paths, in all chance, we're not going to have anywhere near the visual or auditory recognition or pattern matching an in-the-world encounter would have brought. The internet is real, people on it are real, but our experiences here are extremely glancing, only the most bare, stripped down contacts, and most of us interact with each other on a near-effectively-anonymous basis, as though everyone were wearing masks & using text-to-speech systems, wearing the same plain clothes. The bandwidth of experience we have with one another in these interactions is extremely tiny.
The internet & online communications is real, it is not an illusion. But nearly everything that happens here comes almost entirely out of context. It relies on us to access our pre-established bits of context to understand & discern meaning. The receiver here has far far far more power than the sender, and the sender has very few signals or images at their disposal to establish themselves, comparatively.
The internet today really feels like a forest in which the inhabitants, almost universally, remain in the dark.
Sure, it's real. Real electricity; cause and effect of pressing our fingers down and moving these tiny invisible machines.
I would love to express the emotion that I feel when I read the term "meatspace," but for all the machinations that I can dream up, I fear that the meaning would be lost as each of my futile attempts travel by wire.
It does a good job of distinguishing “reality” from “virtuality”. The Philip K Dick reference to “reality being something that exists when you stop believing in it” is better but a lot more verbose.
For me, reality is wherever I can communicate with other people. Reality is the inter-subjective (that is, the social constructs that people create and believe in together).
Incidentally, this is a major theme of the anime Serial Experiments Lain, which is what inspired me to think about the topic.
Burning Man attempts to solve this with the no spectators rule:
“‘No Spectators’ is a long-standing saying on Playa. You are encouraged to fully participate. It’s all about being there, being fully present, and not just observing. Two of the ten principles of Burning Man are radical participation and radical inclusivity, meaning that there are no outsiders. Everyone is part of the experience.”
– Nora Atkinson, The Fleur and Charles Bresler Curator-in-Charge, Renwick Gallery
Again, nobody is confusing the Burning Man persona with who they are back at the office after the event is over. People try things out, take mind altering drugs. Identity is fluid. Social media isn't bad because it is fake. Social media is good because it is fake.
"...we tend to see other people’s lives as works of art." Sometimes, but most people aren't that good at performance.