Gaea's recent activity

  1. What will prevent this site from becoming Reddit 2.0?

    ~tildes Ask
    And I don’t mean that in a good way. In just a few years, Reddit has devolved from a place to find relevant and quirky information, to basically a platform pushing outrage porn, political...

    And I don’t mean that in a good way. In just a few years, Reddit has devolved from a place to find relevant and quirky information, to basically a platform pushing outrage porn, political divisiveness, and mindless memes, with occasional humor sprinkled in.

    The outrage porn is the worst, just exhausting and tiresome. The voting mechanics are mostly to blame for this. Since outrage draws the most engagement, the more people who interact with the site, then the more this type of material will surface and thrive.

    The political divisiveness germinates similarly, with the added impetus of state actors throwing fuel on the flames.

    The memes are seemingly harmless, but are no substitutes for actual dialogue.

    I would just like to see a platform that places a premium on meaningful social dialogue for the future betterment of all involved.

    15 votes

  2. Comment on In your opinion, what sort of effects has the rise of social media had upon society? in ~tech

    Gaea
    Link
    I keep musing about a platform for people who care about these issues and more. Less a social media platform than a club, but the only qualification being a willingness to participate...

    I keep musing about a platform for people who care about these issues and more. Less a social media platform than a club, but the only qualification being a willingness to participate legitimately. It would have “validated anonymity,” such that every member must have their real life identity verified and tied to one account, but which can never be hacked or linked. You would be committed to one identity, and your credibility would follow you forever, just as in real life, but your personal information would never be used in any fashion except to ensure you maintain a single account. I say all this only because I believe that the freedom to create multiple accounts and delete and restart at whim greatly exacerbates the problems being discussed. The issue is credibility. There needs to be a real value to cultivating one’s credibility, so in that way members share a motivation to earn it.

    4 votes

  3. Comment on I was sexually assaulted. And I believe incarcerating rapists doesn’t help victims like me in ~life

    Gaea
    Link
    This is a very thoughtful account from a trauma victim that echoes much of my own analysis from personal experience. There is a real disconnect between the views of those who have been traumatized...

    This is a very thoughtful account from a trauma victim that echoes much of my own analysis from personal experience. There is a real disconnect between the views of those who have been traumatized by sexual crimes and the public sphere of opinion regarding offenders. Until society is ready to reject wholly punitive approaches in favor of more restorative measures, we will continue to suffer a high incidence of these crimes coupled not only with low conviction rates, but also low reporting rates, exacerbating the problems we claim to be concerned about.

    Our adversarial system of justice is a looming factor in this equation; truth is not sought by pitting two polarized extremes against each other and then simply selecting a victor. That exercise most often eschews truth in favor of one or another greatly exaggerated falsehoods, because human beings only very rarely exhibit the kind of raw, malevolent evil that the prosecution portrays on the one hand, or the hapless innocence portrayed by the defense on the other hand. Restorative justice would allow for the offender and victim both to come to terms with the actual crime, and for both to feel human again after the accounting.

    2 votes