I do immediately recognize that a product is being offered in some fashion, but it’s more about how it’s being offered, as if it is something ostensibly, potentially life-changing. I think there a few HN members who know that there are plenty of products shown on HN that use emotionally jarring language that dances around the fact that the product is something that functionally is not as enigmatic as it’s advertised.
There is plenty of something else mixed in there also, but if you can’t tell I’m working off of a hunch right now. I would need to sit down and do a concentrated analysis to get everything that I feel across to you, if I ever had the chance to do so.
As a personal sidenote: I quite like the woodcut aesthetic generally and the design shift combined with the evocative imagery does more for me than the typical Meta- or Google-style branding.
I shouldn’t have to to think about dopamine and capitalism when I’m looking for a social network; on the other hand I do, kind of, but being introduced to software or a service shouldn’t be presented as such an emotional experience as I think it is.
I have long divorced myself from the consumption of film, games and music; so when it’s understood that without the presentation of an emotional experience the appeal of these three things would effectively be neutralized, I’m fine with that.
My observations are less targeted at software as an art form. I think it’s more about how it’s being marketed and what the effectiveness of a software’s marketing suggests about its targeted audience.
I would be more interested in Bonfire if they had a plain web page that just said for example, “Bonfire is a social networking service that can communicate with the ActivityPub protocol and does X, Y, Z and we are working on W. We named it Bonfire because bonfires are like quaint parties but with a raging flame in the middle of it.”
To summarize, maybe I prefer certain software that advertises itself plainly by its merits than…I guess more “psycho-social” sort of attributes?
That said, I don't see the point of divorcing media-like software (by which I mean at least video games and social media, like Bonfire, and possibly other types of software) from its emotional content. Just as the entire point of a movie or a record is basically only its emotional content, the entire point of using social media software is the emotional content of the interactions with others, right? And, if the emotion is the point of the software, why is it out of bounds to advertise it with that slant? Movie trailers and novel jackets are entirely emotional in their language. Are those somehow bad or immoral?
Or are you simply saying that emotional marketing of software isn't to your personal taste?
Perhaps it’s out of bounds because it’s unrealistic. A social network is neither film nor novel. Maybe the issue is that we are talking about how software appeals emotionally to real people where they will engage in real communications with real consequences with the emotional appeal of movie trailers, video games and novels.
Ironically the tone that the advertisement of Bonfire for example reminds me of is reminiscent of those fake ads from games like Fallout 3 or Bioshock. They’re almost employing the exact sort of rhetoric that people who try to make a world a better place before shoving everyone down tubes beneath the ocean and sticking needles in their arm use.
Is it fair when a social network like Gab or Truth Social behaves the same way?
Or is software with contrived emotional slants only acceptable when it appeals to your own personal views?
Movies and social interactions carry emotions. Social media can (should?) carry social interactions, but why should social media itself be the source of emotions? Can it not be neutral in emotions and 'just' carry social interactions with emotions?
The closest thing we have to a neutral "common carrier" in social media -- if we stretch the definition of social media -- is probably email, but even the choices made there over its decades-long rollout have emotional consequences. Furthermore, the emotional content of checking my inbox on my phone in the waiting room at the tire shop is different than blasting through it with mutt on my Ubuntu desktop, and is different again when I log into my webmail quick on my parents' elderly Dell desktop.
IMO if we try to pretend that there is a clear separation between the medium and the message, then in using these apps we open ourselves up to an even deeper level of emotional manipulation than using them with that truth in mind.
True. Being neutral is a nice goal, but unachievable. Every choice has a color, some dull, some bright, but colored nonetheless.
Antidepressants advertised using solarpunk cartoons of diverse people growing organic produce in a city park with wind turbines in the background. Everybody dressed in pastel colors, while the plants are neon green.
> being introduced to software or a service shouldn’t be presented as such an emotional experience as I think it is.
I found/experienced this when I was writing my own texts/content for a project/startup of mine. There was something pulling on me to write in a more emotional tone and I had to actively cut it back and get more to the point, just call it what it is. A good example is the first sentence of this paragraph; the word before the slash is what I think and the word after the slash is what I initially wrote down. I didn't "found" anything, I had to "experience" it. It's not a "project", but a "startup". I guess I'm influenced by western culture in general and HN-like culture specifically.
Is this also what you mean? Am I close? I guess I feel what you mean, but it's hard to put it into words.
I’m beginning to feel like the way that the Western world expresses itself is at its hyperbolic peak and it’s exposing a lot of our insecurities.