Or you've learnt the hard way that voicing your opinion leads to getting invested in your viewpoint (and worthless internet points) and more time, energy and emotion spent on social media, whereas "passively" consuming you can just walk away from any silly argument that you weren't even trying to start, without it staying with you the rest of the night.
I do think you highlight a certain skill thats advantageous to have , like knowing when something is indeed a silly argument or lost cause of an emotional drain.
It doesn't happen often, requiring effort from all sides, but I've found the 3rd day is about when a superannuated HN discussion starts getting interesting.
(but some email threads I'm in have lasted for years, so YMMV)
I think you meant 'adage'. 'adagio' is a slow musical tempo, which left me confused for a while :)
Sounds like “adagio” is a contraction of “ad agio” as in “at leisure” in Italian, while the usual references suggest that “adage” might have a couple possible derivations. The main one being that it comes through French from the Latin “ad” + a form of “aio,” or “I say,” so in the straightforward sense “a saying”; another etymlogy positing a root in “adigo” as in “drive, force.” [0]
:)
Thank you for the correction!
I think it’s a fundamental flaw to assume that anything on SoMe is actual dialogue.
Take our exchange here as an example. You may never read my reply, you may never respond to it and if you do I may never read it. On top of that, we will probably never talk again and we certainly won’t remember each other.
So what is really happening isn’t really dialogue. It’s talking into the vast nothingness for a shot of dopamine or whatever our brains use to reward voicing our opinion. Maybe it started with dialogue long ago, when online communities were smaller and you’d actually talk with the same people every day. But in 2024 I might as well have written this reply on my notes app where no one would ever read it.
Twitter especially is the modern version of standing on a box in Hyde park, screaming nonsense at passers by. Some of them will tell their friends about the idiot on the box in a pub later, but nobody will remember it. Probably not even the person doing the screaming, because they’ll be on with a new topic the next day.
I'd say this is a dialogue though. Twitter however, seems like one way com mostly and those who are not notable shout into the void for no good reason.
Other platforms or certain subs on reddit? Quality differs wildly.
The so-called 1/9/90 rule posits that on a social media network or review site, only 1 percent of users will actively create content. Another 9 percent, the editors, will participate by commenting, rating or sharing the content. The other 90 percent watch, look and read without responding.
This is my experience as well. So also true on HN, where are majority are just lurkers. (Hi there lurkers, good time to get an account! ;)
I think if you are lurking you far more likely to just consume something without actively giving it a second thought. I think of the adagio that to really know something, you have to teach it (or being able to explain at least) and that doesn’t happen in passivity. It happens in dialogue.