Those of you who use Slack, what a negative impact that thing has had. True asynchronous communication, through email, was destined to be the best productivity boost going. One could plan one’s response windows knowing full well that solicitors and respondents expected delays in replies.
Slack is now this evil gremlin constantly tapping your forehead. “Thread, thread, thread, RED thread, INCIDENT!, thread, company-announcement, team announcement, security-alert.” Jeezus, what a bloody focus-fucker.
You want me to perform deep knowledge-based algorithm analysis and creation while you peck at me with that insidious beak of yours? Peck, peck, peck. NO, I did not get that code change done, not with support begging for help on ten different issues, issues they didn’t bother to investigate themselves first.
But then there are the iconograffati one can futz with, all the hieroglyphics that cover every meme under the sun. Emoji’s were emotions right? What the hell are these called? I do enjoy finding new ones…
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What a trash pile Twitter has become. Reams of banal crippercrap-tweets that drop in uninvited. You must curate your followings to those that post infrequently. Floods of retweets quickly become a nuisance. Damn right TAP: “Unfollow”!
Yet, it’s still a thing. Elon and them, they deserve each other. Musk has become as bothersome as Drumpf was. “Get out of my news feed, you arrogant prick.”
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And of course there’s the ‘Gram. I think I follow like 12 people: a few friends and a few family and maybe three associates/like-minded individuals. Which means that I might get one or two new posts in my feed, daily.
So where do all these other streams come from? Millions of ‘Gramers all trying to catch the viral wave. Oh, I know, Fadebook’s AI is analyzing the milliseconds I spend on each image: 100, 200, 300, skip, 100, 200, 2000, 6000, thirty seconds later, six loops watched. Repeat. Fuck, where did the last half-hour go?
The worst are the “is that real?” vignettes. You just gotta watch it over and over trying to deduce the gimmick. One trick I do is I watch without sound. Rarely do I turn up the volume. Avalanches, floods and wild animal attacks are captivating.
All an alien race would have to do to commandeer the planet would be to interrupt all cell-tower communication. We mediots would stumble around dazed, “what day is it? Where am I? Why am I covered in vomit? Why does my anus hurt?”
Anonymole - apocryphal agitators 
Unplug from as much of it as you can. I don’t even watch the news anymore.
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I know it’s not the same as your job, but I’ve had to work closely with IT for my job and have rather good relationships with them. (It was much easier when IT was a smaller group and in person, but hey…) So, I know certain challenges they face, and I try to be as patient as I can. Only I have people pecking at me to peck at IT. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. I just found out this morning that someone went to the top to escalate an issue. It made me feel bad for the IT people. They will get shi-. A bit off-topic, but I just wanted to say that I get the alerts you get and how it seems never to be ending.
Emojis were meant to express emotions. That’s why I don’t use them as much. CLEARLY they are meant to replace the written word. Why else would you add things that are not related to emotions? I wonder how often these things are used. I guess they serve as the potential for coded language.
Ah, Twitter and retweets. When I check out someone’s account and see ONLY retweets, I leave. It’s just silly.
I don’t even bother with other social media.
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With great accessibility comes constant annoyance.
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Ha!
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Ha! I’m way past the selfie thing – not that it was ever my thing – and can’t understand “Gram” at all. Twitter is useful to get the latest updates on local fires and earthquakes … But making friends? Or getting world wide news?
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The arrival of the internet promised so much. What it delivered was an artificial world that revolves around social media. Yes, I blog, and I use Twitter and FB and Instagram. But I’d gladly toss it all to the side, along with my smart phone, if the world went backwards a few decades.
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What has humanity truly gained with the advent of the internet? World hunger, poverty, human rights were all heading in the right direction by the 90’s, and would have continued.
In exchange for easy, instant access to wikipedia & myriad research efforts & education facilities we got:
* instant access to world events so now we can worry about much more than our local communities (which now suffer as we no longer pay them attention).
* instant shopping
* instant dating
* instant entertainment
* instant promulgation of lies and alt-truths
* wholesale distribution of our PII (personally identifiable info)
I think we were sold a false bill o’ goods.
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Agreed. My greatest disappointment about it is the spread of propaganda and lies. Sale of PII is right behind.
Benefits: more information and more connections to people I never would have “met” otherwise.
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Yet, new connections across the globe at the expense of knowing your true neighbors? We live in insulated boxes, food and wires in, trash and wires out.
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Fair point. I know people on Twitter better than any of my neighbors.
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I use social media for very specific things and try not to engage much otherwise. I’ve never heard of Slack but if it’s as much of a cesspool as Twitter, I’m happy to avoid it!
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I have never heard of Slack but am pretty sure I’d hate it, same way I hate most other forms of social media. I just don’t get it. I’ve thought of signing up for Twitter just to keep tabs on certain personalities I follow, but I know it’d be a total waste of time so I wouldn’t do it. Forget Instagram. Why do I want to look at pictures of food and distorted selfies?
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Instagram is not photos anymore. It’s vignettes, very well done tiny movies, vines pretty much. Absolutely addicting, stay away.
Twitter is a requirement for writers.
Slack should be bombed out of existence.
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Those are high production value vignettes as well. Gotta wonder if Corporate America has taken over everything. or are people just spending a lot of money for 15 minutes of fame?
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Where I work it’s MS Teams. People can’t seem t grasp the distinction between whether something is real time urgent or something they can send in a calmer way via email. I actually have people send email drafts to me via Teams for approval. And many just don’t seem to understand the busy status means I’m not going to respond right now unless you’re in my chain of command.
I don’t want to denigrate it too much. Teams is a boon when we’re having an organization wide issue that requires discussion from a lot of people. My tongue used to be hanging out during those crises from me running between offices. I just wish people would use common sense with it on a day by day basis.
On social media, my solution is to tightly control my exposure. On Twitter, I actually look at someone’s timeline rather than their profile when deciding whether to follow them. Too many people say they’re interested in science, philosophy, or science fiction, but tweet mostly about politics.
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Social media, like diet soda, will turn your brain to jello. Add in some how shallow can we be TMZ etc “curated cultural news”, the Moody Blues video a friend stuck in the 70s sends along with everywhere you’ve shopped recently looking for feedback and there goes the time. I do none of that social media. Thanks for the video I didn’t watch, adios rate my adventures. Thanks for the free sample pack I haven’t unzipped yet. I guess if I cared what my wife’s second cousin ate for dinner I’d hook up, but honestly my dogs, the library, Firestick and some bitchin audio hard/software are all the excitement I can handle.
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