I recently finally went over to join Plurk, which I don't like, because I saw such a flurry of people friending me on Plurk. It was odd. I'm not there, I haven't said anything, I have no presence - why are they friending me? I pictured my Plurk self, living this jolly life with people friending and fanning me and giving me "karma" points which they have there, but I was never there. I could have this entire fake Plurkian life and no one would be the wiser.
I don't like Plurk because it spreads out a time line which it thinks is being cool, but it is merely annoying. When I'm ready to tune into Twitter a few times a day, I read the "replies" and I read the sheets in front of me, as far back as "older" will go. And that's it. I'm not going to read it all day, nor do I need to see a time line all day. These services are wells you dip into, not streams you bath in 24/7. Otherwise they are time sucks. You get what you get.
Another thing I hate about Plurk (besides the dumb "karma" shit which is based more on using the service and having the game-god gift you with karma for doing stuff on the service than anybody actually liking *your content*) is the private groups. These are death. They are to the free Internet and death in general to the spirit in which the Web 2.0 has thrived -- openness and transparency and accountability. Enabling these little cliques that can shut themselves in merely means that like 6th grade girls, they talk about you, "telling lies/well that's no surprise". I managed to catch such a clique in action the other day with the usual suspects who stalk this blog: Dale Innis, Chestnut Rau, Harper Beresford, etc. etc. There are about a dozen of these giddy souls who post to each other all day long, replete with smilies and goofy song lyrics and breathless news of their partnerings and sobs over their de-partnerings and all kinds of hugzzz. They behave more infantile than teenagers do, because you expect more of adults. I always marvel that people behave in this cliquey and goofy way on line, but I suppose it's their coping mechanism for the stresses of revelation that the Internet itself brings, and the stresses of modern life that marginalizes and atomizes them.
These online groups are definitely awful, though, when they begin to spread lies and start campaigns against people and shut out people's expression on political or ideological grounds. And here begins the usual self-righteous huffing and puffing about how everyone should have the right to fine-tune their online experience by picking their friends, muting people they don't want to hear from, shielding their content from all but their intimates, etc. Yeah, we get that. But...
1) Multiple this phenomenon, zoom out, see it at the system-wide level, and you realize it is precisely the sort of weakened group syndrome that becomes ripe for totalitarianism, memes, One Big Idea. Nobody ever wants to contemplate the system-wide syndrome. This was the problem I had with Gillmor and the "track block" debate. He couldn't grasp what it meant for him, as influencer, to have stepped on information, and what that meant to the rest of us to be affected by this influencer for evermore, with his now-partial information stream. Web 2.0 was supposed to save us from this phenom of MSM.
2) I'm for doing that under the rule of law, as I do on my blog. You are barred from contributing if you cause me real damages in SL or RL -- for example Shaun Altman, who has griefed several of my properties in the most egregious way, even opening up an ad extortionist farm and whistling to w-hat and b-tard goons to come buy the microparcels deliberately to harass me. I was glad people like Carl Metropolitan and Brace Corral spoke out against this, as did others, because it really was wrong, and people like Shaun, who are in SL Mentors, for God's sake, should be removed from such prestigious groups and feel the reproach of the community -- the community in the good sense upholding some notion of the rule of law and decent behaviour. The Lindens were rather slow in responding, but they may have finally gotten off the dime as eventually, Shaun had to convert his microparcels to some other dubious enterprise but at least one that didn't directly harm me. He's bought land to grief me from in other sims, and that's just over the top, imagine being so infantile! So...I go by the rule of law in my bannings. And I don't stop anybody from reading my material. On one of these services related to Six Apart, you can make a "neighbourhood" that only sees your content, no one else does. I found that got very boring fast.
Why do people form these groups? Well, I got some amazing insight into this in a book I was editing. I can't quote it in full now because it's not published, and it's not even the point of the book so it's not even worth quoting later, because it just isn't fully researched. But it was very thought-provoking:
The author cites the psychotherapist Sigmund Heinrich Foulkes, working in England in 1942-1946 with patients with “war neuroses,” whom he credits with discovering "group therapy" -- a staple of our modern times that is practiced even informally everywhere. His theory said that a person is merely an element in a closed system of communications (sounds like Connectivism, eh?) This closed system (good he recognized it was closed! wouldn't likely be doing that if he were a latter-day network theorist on the Internet!) becomes a *meta-personality*. This "meta-person" can be used to heal -- that is, people develop a sense of "the group" and being honest "in the group" and working "for the group," i.e. each other.
The author then goes on to say that American researchers in various California universities worked further to develop the theory of the "meta-person". Here, I could add, it seems to get shorn of his healing and therapeutic role and begins to be researched by the Army to use in warfare. Individual consciousness is then suppressed, even the instinct of self-preservation is somehow muted to get special forces soldiers motivated -- and I could add -- and immersed -- in a group goal. Incredibly effective scientific research teams were built this way, that could work long hours in cramped settings. Peope who learned how to function as "elements" in the "meta-personality" later refused to work any other way. Their ego was essentially dissolved into the Group's -- and they perceived this as joyous and pleasurable, not horrible.
The author follows various group phenomenon, like the mafia family, or the clans of various societies, or the Chechen teip system, and identifies them as all examples of "meta-personality". These groups all feel themselves to be "above the law", or "a law unto themselves" because the law didn't service them. They don't care about the law, about morality of those surrounding them not in the group; "everything for the family".
Individuals are mortal, or come and go; the Group stays and is eternal. It takes pleasure in its own moral assessments; it has a kind of synergy. It provides its participants with great pleasure, like playing ball on a winning team. Opensource software teams experience this great bonding and pleasure and it's like a high -- that's why you see them talking so goofily (and the same thing happens on the Nings and the Plurks). People will do anything for their Group; the people in the Group are never wrong. If Dale Innis comes on to brag that he didn't give into responding to some evil Prokofy post, he gets a dozen kisses, hugs, backpats, friendings, love-taps -- and possibly only one brave person will step out of the Group Immersion and counter his premise. Indeed, people who never had a thought of the subject of Prokofy for suddenly remember that in fact they have an opinion, and chime in lustily.
The author then goes on to make an even more interesting statement. In his view, the Christian, Judaic, and Islamic religious do not accept the concept of meta-personality because they have a concept of individual responsibility before God, of accountability for one's own actions. Of course, one could easily counter that when mobilized, in the Crusades or the jihad, these meta-persons get formed in these religions, too. Is the Body of Christ not a meta-person? But perhaps it is a meta-person for good, in that it forces back individual accountability under law?
The author is more interested in stressing the concept of the individual with his dignity -- and his aloneness-- that cannot accept -- or blame -- the meta-person in the end. The Nuremberg defense "just following orders" -- is not acceptable. He quotes the Talmud, "There is no agent for wrong-doing," i.e. you cannot say "you were just somebody else's agent, they are to blame".
I don't see much written on this theory or theories now, except wacky cultic Internet sites promulgating various cults, either rewarmed Westernized Buddhism lite, or neuro-linguistic programming variants or stuff like the California ideology.
But you can see all this in action at Connectivism U -- here and here and here.
Plurk Sux.
Posted by: Dirk Talamasca | 09/29/2008 at 01:29 AM