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Worldwalker · 03-30-2011, 04:48 PM

Remember, though, that the 307th poster wasn't looking at the previous 300 or so posts expressing the same opinion; they were looking at the first few (the author's and the reviewer's) and would have said the same thing if the other 300 hadn't been there at all; the odds are most of them never even read those intervening posts. They're not even paying attention to the fact that 300 other people already said the same thing they want to say. Like all the people posting updates that nobody cares about on Facebook, they're having a one-way conversation. The concept of "discussion" is really no part of this.

That's one of the problems with the Internet that is going to take a while to sort itself out socially. We have millions of people giving speeches with nobody listening. If you give a speech in an actual room to actual people, you can count empty chairs; if you post your profound thoughts on Facebook, you have no way to tell if anyone else cares. And, by and large, they don't; they're too busy posting their own even more profound (to them) thoughts.

A few weeks ago I was looking at a cage full of baby tortoises for sale. Most of them were trying to walk through one side of it. Were they thinking, deep down in their tiny tortoise minds, "he's walking north so I should walk north too?" Doubtful (for one thing, tortoises aren't that smart). Instead, whatever factors acted on one of them (light sources, the placement of the cage, whatever) acted on all of them in the same way. They all had the same reaction to their environment, which was, in their case, to walk north (or whatever way it was). People commenting on blogs, news stories, etc., are more complex than tortoise hatchlings, but their behavior follows the same patterns. The same things that affect the first poster and make him want to say his piece affect the 300th poster the same way -- and the previous 299 posts don't seem to factor into it at all. He wants to say something ... even, sadly, if nobody's listening.

That's one of the things I like about MobileRead: it's a place for discussion, where people actually read what someone else has said before they make their own proclamations. For all the places online there are to proclaim, there are remarkably few to discuss.

03-30-2011, 04:48 PM	#27
Worldwalker Curmudgeon Posts: 3,085 Karma: 722357 Join Date: Feb 2010 Device: PRS-505	Remember, though, that the 307th poster wasn't looking at the previous 300 or so posts expressing the same opinion; they were looking at the first few (the author's and the reviewer's) and would have said the same thing if the other 300 hadn't been there at all; the odds are most of them never even read those intervening posts. They're not even paying attention to the fact that 300 other people already said the same thing they want to say. Like all the people posting updates that nobody cares about on Facebook, they're having a one-way conversation. The concept of "discussion" is really no part of this. That's one of the problems with the Internet that is going to take a while to sort itself out socially. We have millions of people giving speeches with nobody listening. If you give a speech in an actual room to actual people, you can count empty chairs; if you post your profound thoughts on Facebook, you have no way to tell if anyone else cares. And, by and large, they don't; they're too busy posting their own even more profound (to them) thoughts. A few weeks ago I was looking at a cage full of baby tortoises for sale. Most of them were trying to walk through one side of it. Were they thinking, deep down in their tiny tortoise minds, "he's walking north so I should walk north too?" Doubtful (for one thing, tortoises aren't that smart). Instead, whatever factors acted on one of them (light sources, the placement of the cage, whatever) acted on all of them in the same way. They all had the same reaction to their environment, which was, in their case, to walk north (or whatever way it was). People commenting on blogs, news stories, etc., are more complex than tortoise hatchlings, but their behavior follows the same patterns. The same things that affect the first poster and make him want to say his piece affect the 300th poster the same way -- and the previous 299 posts don't seem to factor into it at all. He wants to say something ... even, sadly, if nobody's listening. That's one of the things I like about MobileRead: it's a place for discussion, where people actually read what someone else has said before they make their own proclamations. For all the places online there are to proclaim, there are remarkably few to discuss.