<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mas.to/@emmetoneill" class="u-url mention">@<span>emmetoneill</span></a></span> i used to detest it to the point where i would actively alienate everybody i thought doing it (which is to say, basically everybody. high school and first year of uni were interesting) until going through an unrelated worldview-shattering event and realizing that all of these things are just tools; tools that are used on me, and tools that i use</p><p>i&#39;ve been a lot more chill since</p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mas.to/@emmetoneill" class="u-url mention">@<span>emmetoneill</span></a></span> i think this is a property of, you could say, human existence more than social media</p><p>our lives are filled with meaningless scripted conversation to the brim. talking to my parents or my coworkers isn&#39;t any less broadcasting a specific image of myself than talking on here. more if anything; i&#39;ve been a lot more vulnerable on this particular website than in many other places</p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://social.sdf.org/@jhoward" class="u-url mention">@<span>jhoward</span></a></span> so to answer your question more directly, resolving an ambiguous question of &quot;is X, Y?&quot; requires you to draw some lines</p><p>you probably won&#39;t draw the lines where i would, which is fine</p><p>i draw a line in a way that encompasses a lot more speech than most people would, and i talk about this</p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.social/@whitequark" class="u-url mention">@<span>whitequark</span></a></span> Maybe, but why draw the line at politics?</p><p>Any form of one-to-many social media communication is more of a self-advertisement than a real conversation. If we&#39;re really being honest, these platforms are about broadcasting a specific image of ourselves. Genuine and meaningful conversations are a very rare exception, and that&#39;s baked into the design.</p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://social.sdf.org/@jhoward" class="u-url mention">@<span>jhoward</span></a></span> the purpose of a system is what it does</p><p>sorting things into boxes is always fraught, but if your screaming into void happens to mobilize people against your enemies, it is definitely propaganda</p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.social/@whitequark" class="u-url mention">@<span>whitequark</span></a></span><br />The propaganda thing is an interesting take, and probably not wrong from the perspective of a reader. Having written an occasional political post, I suppose I see it more as a mix of screaming into the void, maybe trying to connect with like minded people, but not setting out to change anyone&#39;s mind. So, is it propaganda if it&#39;s not intended that way by the writer but interpreted that way by the reader?</p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://chaos.social/@ChuckMcManis" class="u-url mention">@<span>ChuckMcManis</span></a></span> I&#39;ve been practicing that since 2021, for extremely cursed reasons I&#39;m not going to go into</p><p>it has taught me that ideally you do both: you understand others deeply yet don&#39;t rely on them anyway, as much as you reasonably can avoid it</p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://woof.tech/@unlobito" class="u-url mention">@<span>unlobito</span></a></span> i&#39;m like this about plurality, although there is the eternal dilemma of what you want: integration or alienation</p><p>(we&#39;ve been going for the integration because it seemed like the more difficult route, and it produced completely batshit results: for example, my 55-year-old father thinks plurality is completely reasonable and has no issue interacting with us, except that he misgenders me but not my headmate)</p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.social/@whitequark" class="u-url mention">@<span>whitequark</span></a></span> Amen. I too learned early in life that becoming invested in my belief about how a person was vs reality was a losing strategy.</p><p>Brooks is about tools to look inside someone deeply which always leaves you better off when dealing with them.</p><p>Completely keeping people on the &quot;outside&quot; is a strategy I tried in my youth but it did not serve me well. Since that time I&#39;ve worked on awareness and what it tells me to inform my choices.</p>