Surfing the SmallWeb I
I want to use the creation and maintenance of this blog as a paradigm shift of sorts, as motivation to reorient myself away from the stifling monoliths of the modern Internet toward the burgeoning SmallWeb, which (as I'm sure you're aware) consists of independently run blogs and websites managed by ordinary people. In the interest of being a good denizen of the SmallWeb, this is a series of posts in which I explore the sights/sites, give some thoughts in response, and link to them to help this independent web become more organically interconnected.
For the inaugural post, I will be perusing BearBlog's discover feed.
Leaving Bluesky by Fool's Gold
Fool's Gold recounts a positive experience with a laptop repair, and tells us how it has helped them regain their motivation to write:
More importantly, because now the entire bottom half of it looks spanking new, it's kind of giving me that 'new toy' feeling. You know what I'm talking about? That feeling you get when you unbox a tech gadget for the first time and every possibility feels within reach. It's making me want to write and do stuff with it, which is a nice change of pace, if you consider that before the battery replacement I would've rather poked my eyes out than use this laggy, slow computer. But it's not laggy nor slow, now!
That rush of creative motivation is an amazing feeling! I wish you all the best with your creative endeavors, Fool's Gold.
They also describe their recent attempts to break free of social media, a desire I am quite familiar with. I have left my Facebook account dormant for a while now, as the sort of updates I'd get from my friends and contacts were rather too shallow to justify all the stress the endless feed would cause me. I left Facebook in favor of places like BlueSky, whose less entrenched position makes it feel like a breath of fresh air. Interestingly enough, Fool's Gold approaches this idea from rather the opposite perspective:
Bluesky wasnāt really doing it for me, but Instagram is a different matter. Deleting it permanently would mean adjusting to a different reality and, more importantly, living in a reality that is different from most of my friendsā.
I understand that making that leap away from a common social setting, even one that only exists digitally, is a lot to swallow, and I don't begrudge them for being reluctant. With any luck, they can reach a place where they are untethered enough to see their time on Instagram more positively than they currently are:
Iām thinking about deleting other socials. Thereās no part of me that wants to be a pawn in this billionairesā game, and every second spent on Insta feels like something I wonāt be able to claim back.
They and I are on the same page there, too.
Snail Mail by tuesday's child
Tuesday's Child describes her interest in sending and receiving postcards, those things that most people likely consider a relic of a bygone era:
One very cool guy from Indonesia sent me a Postcard. I met him on Reddit. I told him that if i go to Indonesia I'll let him know. Gave a stranger my address, clearly I'm not big on internet safety. Although I like to believe that most people are good.
I
collecthoard postcards. It's hard to find ones that have pictures of my city (i suppose i can print my own, but I'd rather buy.)
There must be something really nice about holding a physical gift in your hand like that, an actual, tangible sign that somebody was thinking of you and put in the effort to brighten your day with a small gesture. A collection hoard of postcards sounds a lot more interesting to look at than a collection of rocks or something, too.
Tuesday also references "postcrossing," which I had never heard of before:
Postcrossing isn't super appealing to me. It's cool if you're a collector, but i like ones a bit more personal. Like the one i got from Indonesia was a guy i was talking to for about a year. I can look at the card and say āthis is from a friendā. I can imagine him writing it for me. I know his name and what he looks like.
I had to look that up. Apparently it refers to online communities where people organize themselves specifically to send postcards to each other. In that case, I agree with Tuesday; I think most of the fun would be gone if it was that impersonal and manufactured.
Her post ends on a melancholy note:
Unfortunately, i don't have many friends right now. But i still keep buying postcards.
That is sad to hear. If we ever find ourselves in direct contact, Tuesday, I would be happy to send you a postcard from where I live.
debate culture fucked everything up by Absurd Pirate's Internet Blog
Absurd Pirate expresses their grievances with the idea of debating people whose ideas are patently ludicrous, morally reprehensible, or both:
I've long held the opinion that debates are relatively pointless. They're less about finding truth and more of a rhetorical wrestling match. Trying to find "middle ground" on such absurd stances instead of dismissing them for the batshit/evil takes they are is what legitimizes these opinions.
If you platform a formal debate between someone who thinks trans people shouldn't exist and someone who does, you are essentially holding these two opinions at equal value to be disputed.
Farther down:
I get pissed off at the videos of 1 progressive vs. 20 far-right conservatives. WHY THE FUCK ARE WE GIVING LITERAL SELF-IDENTIFYING FASCISTS A MEGAPHONE!
I don't think I agree with these contentions as presented. The idea that bearing witness to a controversial or harmful idea is tantamount to legitimizing it is not sufficiently explained. There is an explanatory gap between platforming an idea and legitimizing it. The reality is that flat-Earthers, anti-vaxxers, transphobic people, etc. exist and will (for the time being) continue to exist regardless of whether their adversaries acknowledge them. If engaging with these people is lending undue credence to their ideas, then discrediting them, which is only possible via engagement, is too. You cannot demonstrate the absurdity of the flat-Earth hypothesis without presenting all of the reasons why it is absurd. If I present an argument for why an idea is illegitimate, surely I cannot be charged with influencing people into believing the idea is legitimate.
I imagine the retort is that platforming the idea in general, regardless of whether you're praising or criticizing it, "gives it air," so to speak, and allows it to persist. However, I don't find this particularly convincing. Holocaust denial, for example, is self-evidently repugnant and so counter to the mainstream that it is illegal in much of the world. But this illegality has not obviated the occurrence of Holocaust denial; to assert that denial no longer occurs would likely strike many people as offensive in and of itself. Likewise, to achieve Pirate's presumptive perfect world, in which no repugnant ideas are platformed within mainstream channels, we would not expect them to vanish, nor to no longer proliferate within the circles of their proponents, nor to stop converting new people. Absolutely airtight deplatforming, to the extent that it could realistically be achieved, would certainly not be the downfall of extremist or anti-science views. It would, on the other hand, render it impossible for anyone to intervene and prevent ideologically vulnerable people from falling farther down the rabbit hole.
But then Pirate says this:
Truth doesn't come from debate. It comes from thoughtful discussions and asking questions. The Socratic method anyone? We are long far from the days where two people could "debate" in good faith. It's all about agendas, clicks, and retention.
These statements make it seem like Pirate's issue all along has not been with debate per se, but with bad-faith debates facilitated by disingenuous people. But the presentation of this idea is rather confused to the extent that I'm not certain that's even what Pirate means. To start, why would the prevalence of disingenuous debates discredit the whole concept, to the extent that Pirate presents the idea of a "debate" as if all it represents are the negative examples? This would be like decrying Holocaust denialism by declaring that we ought to stop engaging in historical research. (I.e., Holocaust denialism is bad history, and one would not declare the whole concept of history bunk because of a prevalence of bad actors.) Secondly, surely as widespread as bad-faith debates are bad-faith discussions and bad-faith applications of the Socratic method. All of these things are related. Why, then, does Pirate not consider the Socratic method to be discredited at the fundamental level, as they do the concept of a debate?
It's difficult to say. Given that this was a brief blog post rather than a lengthy treatise on Pirate's philosophy, I think these qualms can be attributed to Pirate having written it off-the-cuff and somewhat overzealously. If we read between the lines and assume that Pirate's thesis is not "debates are bad" but "bad-faith debates are bad," then I would be hard-pressed to disagree.
That is a good start. I look forward to all the places and people to be found around the SmallWeb!