![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I am having a hard time writing. Clearly, we're all socially influenced, but I don't know precisely how writing on the internet is so much "social." When was the last time you wrote or read any entry on the internet that truly changed your worldview, even a little bit, about something?
Over and over again, it seems like the best way to actually effectuate what we believe in is to try to reach out to people in person, and engage in in-person dialogue or demonstration -- and even then, it's hard! The broadcast medium of the internet feels both silly and isolating right now.
People are indeed listening, of course -- but often only for things that already confirm their worldview, or add information to a point they already want to make. In business, that's called niche marketing -- people want to gravitate towards others that already agree with them. I guess that's the "Long Tail"? I'm pretty sure that this is doubly so for the internet, as opposed to real life interaction.
~ ~ ~
A year or two ago, Williams broke up the housing clusters, disallowing blocks of 4 people to live together. They argued that diversity in housing was necessary in order to create a group of people who were willing to have their social worldview challenged. It was a hugely controversial move, and it was overwhelmingly opposed by the majority of students on campus. They did it anyway. At the time, I thought, "Well, good luck with that... all you'll get is frustrated people who don't like living together."
Sometimes I wonder whether they were right, and whether that frustration is useful and good for us. I mean, it'd be pretty spiffy if you could get unlike groups to work, and you often do have some unlike worldviews when dealing with co-workers, for instance. It might be useful to have that level of frustration, with people who are 18 and still theoretically able to change how they interact.
But then my cynical side kicks in, and I'm sure that they were wrong, and just created more isolation on campus. Given a choice, I'm not sure I, or your average 18 year old, wouldn't rather chat on IM with someone I knew was like me, instead of talking to someone next door who wasn't like me. I wonder whether the social force of "be only with people who are like yourself" would outweigh everything else.
~ ~ ~
Coming back to my original point, I think that the clustering of alike-people does weird things to the internet -- that is, because you get such big groupings of people who agree on most things, it's hard to get a good voice for disagreement on that forum if you happen to be in the minority. So you splinter off and go with a group of the minority-dissenters, and then no one changes their mind, because your voice is primarily being heard amongst people who agree with you, not those who disagree with you. And who could blame you? Changing someone's mind is hard to do in person -- challenging their beliefs online seems impossible, especially not when you think that most people on that particular (insert: forum, blog, whatever) will disagree with you.
Over and over again, it seems like the best way to actually effectuate what we believe in is to try to reach out to people in person, and engage in in-person dialogue or demonstration -- and even then, it's hard! The broadcast medium of the internet feels both silly and isolating right now.
People are indeed listening, of course -- but often only for things that already confirm their worldview, or add information to a point they already want to make. In business, that's called niche marketing -- people want to gravitate towards others that already agree with them. I guess that's the "Long Tail"? I'm pretty sure that this is doubly so for the internet, as opposed to real life interaction.
A year or two ago, Williams broke up the housing clusters, disallowing blocks of 4 people to live together. They argued that diversity in housing was necessary in order to create a group of people who were willing to have their social worldview challenged. It was a hugely controversial move, and it was overwhelmingly opposed by the majority of students on campus. They did it anyway. At the time, I thought, "Well, good luck with that... all you'll get is frustrated people who don't like living together."
Sometimes I wonder whether they were right, and whether that frustration is useful and good for us. I mean, it'd be pretty spiffy if you could get unlike groups to work, and you often do have some unlike worldviews when dealing with co-workers, for instance. It might be useful to have that level of frustration, with people who are 18 and still theoretically able to change how they interact.
But then my cynical side kicks in, and I'm sure that they were wrong, and just created more isolation on campus. Given a choice, I'm not sure I, or your average 18 year old, wouldn't rather chat on IM with someone I knew was like me, instead of talking to someone next door who wasn't like me. I wonder whether the social force of "be only with people who are like yourself" would outweigh everything else.
Coming back to my original point, I think that the clustering of alike-people does weird things to the internet -- that is, because you get such big groupings of people who agree on most things, it's hard to get a good voice for disagreement on that forum if you happen to be in the minority. So you splinter off and go with a group of the minority-dissenters, and then no one changes their mind, because your voice is primarily being heard amongst people who agree with you, not those who disagree with you. And who could blame you? Changing someone's mind is hard to do in person -- challenging their beliefs online seems impossible, especially not when you think that most people on that particular (insert: forum, blog, whatever) will disagree with you.
