Truth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK2QEnyo8vI

Definitely an interesting vid. I perceive internet fame as no real fame at all, since most people famous online are only famous to niche interest groups and are unrecognizable on the street anyway.

And a lot of the times, this popularity is carried out in a vicarious existence; perceptively shallow, and insipid at best.

I would never call myself "famous" because the word alone makes me cringe, but for what it's worth, I find a lot of happiness in the thought that there are one or two people out there, who enjoy what I'm doing.

I agree. There is nothing wrong with enjoying the company of fellow users that follow your submissions, and somebody that comes across as grateful for the attention like you do isn't somebody that is affected by any perceived popularity. People that approach it with your mindset are just the same whether they have 5 contacts or 50,000.

I commented. Therefore, I require constant validation.

Most of this made me say Dang...Good points and stuff

Iiiiinteresting, but yeah. Thank god I have an a life outside of the internet.

Very good video, and very true.

But I would also point out, that I think that it is because we can edit ourselves into what we what. ( how we look, what we want heard from us ) That this, makes it an addiction. ( and lying about ourselves to others )

That should be taken as a wake up call. Excellent presentation.

Definitely an interesting video. For me personally however, I didnt find much of it that would apply to myself. The only social networks I am using are furry related. FA, Inkbunny, SoFurry, the likes. And while one could argue that the creation of avatars, furry characters to hide behind, might reinforce the arguments brought up in this video, from my own experiences, I found the opposite to be true.

Whenever I talk to furries and get to know them, I feel that the hiding behind a digital furry character is more a way of building up a safe distance between each other. You see the character first and connect said character with a person. The person can tell you about their passions and hobbies with ease, not having to fear that you judge them because of their looks, their nationality or any other stigma. And after you have build up a certain level of trust, often times people become more approachable. Photos are swapped, and more intimate details are being shared.

That is one of the reasons why I have way more meaningful conversations with furries than other people. It's not just "chatting" about random events of the day. Instead we can actually talk about our feelings, fears, opinions and exchange them since both conversation partners are interested in what the other has to say.

So yeah, I might just be a bit too old fashioned for the flashy new world of facebook, twitter and the likes, but from my own experience, I found that the furry fandom represents (for me at least) a functioning online community, that is about more than just sharing endless amounts of vapid self-centered information.


...or it's just all about porn, I dunno.

*chuckles about the porn comment*

Don't forget, that furries in general don't fit many generalizations. But what are a few thousand furries compared to the millions who live like this video describes?

I think I understand where your coming from. I used to be more into showing my dogs and doing competitive shooting sports. So at shows or out at the range I always found it easier to talk to people I didn't know than if I had met someone say on the street. It's because you have that common thread of interest that gives you an opening to each other.

The concepts presented in this video are fascinating, but I think that the premise is flawed due to the fallacy of overgeneralization.

I don't know.
There are not reliable statistics and there won't be, but there are people around that count their 'friends' in Facebook as real friends. Well in the thousands in some cases. Also, I don't know if that happened in the USA, but here in Germany we had so-called 'Facebook-Parties' that went out of control when more than a thousand people showed up for a party when only a dozen were expected. Leavng the organizer with the cost of cleaning it up the street the party spilled into and repairs in the neighbourhood, Not to mention the legal troubles of noise pollution and accidents for the organizer. Jut because the organizer made a mistake of not limiting the invitation to his friends or simply understimating the number of people that would show up.

With real-life relationships you had a good chance that the friend of a friend would be your friend. Taking the party above as an example, if you invited a friend to a party, he might show up with another friend who might have similar interestes as you. Not another hundred who know nothing of you.

The video generalizes yes, but overgeneralization? I really don't know. Personally I hope so, fearing it might be too true.
One Science Fiction RPG already had the evolution from 'couch Potatoes' to 'tech potatoes in it a few years ago. People who not even leave their home anymore, because they worked from home, ordered everything online including food (even if they were still cooking themselves) and had their social life in virtual reality.

Online friendships can lead to physical ones as well through meetups like those Facebook parties (and no, I've never heard of an incident like that happening in the US xD) or other events like conventions.

The friend-of-a-friend phenomenon can still occur online. Just a couple of weeks ago I invited a friend to group matchmaking in Dota 2 and he brought along someone who I never met before. We got on group voice chat on Steam and I found that he was a really cool guy. Needless to say, we're also friends now.

One of the statements that I completely disagree with in the video is that self-actualization inherently leads to loneliness. The pursuit of self-actualization and the pursuit of friendship are not mutually exclusive like the video implies. Colleges and Universities are often the first step in self-actualization and yet they are the places where many people meet friends that last a lifetime and the advent of online social networking allows for communication between such friends that are incapable of physically meeting up later in life.

I'm always optimiustic about our potential what humanity could do, but the trends I see, do't look too good.
One way or another we'll see.

One can already see social networks and video games merging; what will happen when there is a neural interface that provides full virtual reality? How are we going to be able to deal with our shitty little lives then? I just listened to The Unincorporated Man on audiobook, and one of the themes explores this phenomenon; it nearly destroys the world. Pretty good scifi; I recommend it to those who are into that sort of thing. You don't even have to get off Facebook and read it, the audiobook allows you to stay online with your friends the whole time.

I'd say we already have a preview of that in Second Life and similar platforms.

Thoughtful and insightful. On a personal note, all these points are why I am not a member of all the large and famous socializing sites; however, it does fit in and explain why people feel the way they do.

Should show this to my mate.

come to the wired as soon as you can...

The interesting thing is, like many other things, the maximal groups size for humans has been known for a while and we still haven't acknowledged it in so far, that we tried to remodel our society so that we can work with it. That is (I think) what this video prooves among other things.
*sigh*
We haven't gotten illiteracy dealt with even in the western countries with so much inusdtry and now we are getting a new class, the computer illiterate. In a few years they will be cut off from society.

All good things in moderation.

This is why I like to unplug from the grid when I get home from work. I spend 9 hours per day in front of a computer at my job, so I prefer to enjoy face to face contact with other people than my tenants when I'm able.

This is also why I've refused to join MySpace, FB, LJ, or Twitter, and why I feel I really don't need a smart phone unless it's for work purposes. Well...that and I'm a privacy nut.

Well I fucking love this.

So... this video is basically telling me. "Get off of (insert social network here) and stop trying to socialize through the internet. Instead socialize with people in the real world instead." At least that is what I am taking away from this video.

Simply outstanding. I love the video and it says the truth about the people nowadays.

Thank you so much for sharing this ^_^

Very interesting

Thanks for sharing :)

The reason I found this interesting is because my behavior is actually what he's talking about. The image that everyone sees online is the image I have created for myself. I really have meticulously crafted it. What you see is what I want you to see. I only share the interesting moments in my life to make it appear that this is all that happens in my life.

I've taken the shotgun approach on social media websites, adding a ton of people just to see what everyone's up to and maybe meet someone interesting. I think of the over 1300 people I follow on Twitter, I communicate with MAYBE a few dozen in a week's time beyond a one-shot reply. I see that a majority of people who have this many connections on any of my social media feeds are doing this same thing- essentially trying to individualize in the same manner by establishing their online presence.

There are going to be plenty of people who say "that's not me". It's hard to admit. We might even go out of our way to say "well yes I do these things but I do it X way therefore this doesn't apply." If it doesn't apply, where's the need to justify yourself?

I'm not going to kid myself or anybody else. This guy is talking about me.

With the Internet being integrated into society these days, it's talking about damn-near everybody who's savvy with it. The reasons, outside of ego, that people don't see relation across the Net as legit social behavior is are:

- It's not taken seriously because of "lack" of physical presence
- The power to mold one's self, as stated int he video
- It's easy

There's also the chance that it doesn't apply, which I can see if somebody just doesn't use the Internet all that much to socialize outside of txt to close friends or checking email and galleries. But I felt it sort of redundant to point out that if it doesn't apply to somebody, they'll prolly see the video as casual insight or ignore it since it doesn't pertain to anything they can directly relate to. No need for justification unless they have actual debate to bring overall, not to denounce actual research.

But the first two points I'm dropping I can combine, where, because there's nobody outside of physically close friends/associates/family actually looking at your life in realtime (unless you're on Big Brother 24/7 edition), nobody knows if what you say is truth or fiction. There's little consequence if you're a terrific fiction spinner, which I guess factors in the "easy" part as well.

Growing up in a generation and area where the Internet was "sorta" around, but nobody really touched it, I can definitely see ironic parallels and polar switches in today's culture as opposed to the 90's and the 80's (from my experience). You still have to be socially savvy, though the difference is now you can be yourself more, since you don't actually need much physical presence to interact online, just mental. The flipside of that is that you still need to be sure of yourself, if not moreso, because instead of being able to smile and dress appropriately and get along with people, you have to be socially savvy, be rather en pointe with what's "going on" and relevant to who you come across.

So, naturally, instead of trying to be accepted by the cool kids, you have people on the Internet trying to be accepted by the... cool kids. Irony of people going on about popularity, or anti-popularity, or even about Realtime vs Internet popularity don't quite get that, the way society's changing around the solid incorporation of the Internet, the Internet 'is' becoming a contender with Realtime societal tradition, if not one and the same.

Scouts used to have to hold auditions and agencies used to hire walk-ins, and while they still do, there are not Internet Scouts and Internet contests and auditions. YouTubers are becoming famous (Justin Bieber?), the new generation is fully growing up with the Net, the Net can make or break a company or celebrities, etc.

What it is is this stigma that the Internet isn't "real". I think this might stem from video games and VR sims being electronic/similar to Internet happenings and the lack of physical presence. No consequence for being disrespectful, cuz what are the odds of X ever seeing you face to face? Or X even being violent or formidable face to face if you do meet? So you can see yourself as some sort of superstar and do whatever the fuck you want if you have the savvy to pull it off, thus sort of having a draw, or cultivated "Internet Popularity"

The flipside, and even just as potentially bad, is the way people can just rack up contacts, which is touched on the video. We all get butthurt when we "lose friends" via the Internet, and we usually go out of our way to say that we "know all of these people", even those we interact rather casually and specifically on Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr/Forums/etc. We see relation over a theme as comradery, which is fine, but some see it as a step further, as true friendship, because it's 'something', and that's not quite as fine, especially when the ground is so fragile. People are afraid to get deep because they make a lot of mistakes thinking that somebody they're casually buddies with, usually over a common thread or two, are close friends, which leads to a misconception not only of what they actually have relationship-wise, but a misunderstanding of what a friendship is. People grow cynical, only reach out so far, or are stunted in social interaction thinking it can only go "so far" and that's all there is, and you have the dilemma described int he video.

Also factor in that, just like Realtime, you have people cowing others in public moments of weakness instead of bringing morale or helping. It might not be physical, but it still sucks all the same for some folk with thinner skin.

People say that it only happens on the Internet, but there are shallow people in person as well, which amuses me when people think that the Internet = shallow interaction. I have good friends that are Internet-boound, and I have good friends that are "physical". I've had bad experiences both on the Internet and Realtime. I guess prolly because I don't split it up as two different forms of social interaction; just different ways to be social with their own strengths and weaknesses.

Iunno, it's sorta how I see it, and I'm truncating and omitting some info cuz it's getting TL;DR-worthy lol

Thanks for sharing this.

I'm a sociology student, specialised in internet sociology so the topic is not new to me but thanks for the video. It might come in handy when I'll need to present the problem to some audience.

The reason we think that loneliness is the most common ailment is that we consider that our social community represents the entire world. Even the narrator of this video is in his 20's, which, no offense to the reader, is a prime age to believe such nonsense. It's so easy to assume that we are the center of the world, but that kind of arrogance is the very thing that frustrates the rest of the world, other cultures, and distances US from everyone else, and from each other.

"We become addicted to virtual romance." Do we really? I met my boyfriend of 13 years in real life, in person. Has anyone here, who has had a deep intimate, long-term REAL-LIFE relationship ever gotten hooked on chat-room romances? They're completely different things. Going through the internet doesn't replace anything; it's an entirely dififerent channel of communication and interaction.

"A social network which allows us to manage our social life most effectively." Are you kidding me? Is that suppoed to be Facebook? Facebook is created to capitalize from selling our browsing habits and our personal details to advertising corporations who want to sell us useless shit that we don't really want. Is everyone on your Facebook page someone you CHOSE to be there? Is your Facebook list of friends the people you most want to be there? Or was it thrust upon you?

Or are we talking about MySpace, or, going back a generation, to LiveJournal? Do you really mistake this for real human connection?
Is anyone, even for a moment, convinced, that these things are truly the most efficient way of communicating with the people in your life?

"We're collecting friends like stamps. Not distincting quality versus quantity, and converting the deep meaning and intimacy of friendship with exchanging photos and chat conversations." Yeah, right! Does anyone have such a flat concept of friendship that they cannot distinguish the rich variations of closeness and intimacy from one person to another? Is everyone on your IM client the same kind of friend as any other? Is ANY one of your friends the same to you as ANY other? Does anyone here really equate their Buddy list with the number of close friends they have? Can anyone reading this honestly say that they do this?

"It takes place in real life, and you can't control what you're going to say. And that is the bottom line."
Do you really feel that you have less control in real-life communication than you have in text messages? Sending a text message is so prone to misunderstanding, loss of translation of emotions or inflections. Apart from emoticons of course. Does ANYONE reading this not know that?

The image on the video shows alcoholic beverages at this point. What the fuck? Do you get drunk to the point of inability to control your behavior before you communicate in real life?

"We get to delete." We do not. What we post on the internet gets saved. Look up the Wayback machine. Stories I posted more than a decade ago are preserved there. Everything we post is usable data for marketing. It's rarely allowed to die off. The data is too valuable to waste.

"Investing hours on end building our profile, pursuing the optimal order of words in our next message." Back when e-mail reigned supreme, in like oh, 1996, yeah, but nowadays everything is instantaneous. Does anyone here spend hours crafting, word-by-word, every instant message, before they send it? Do you know how much angst it breeds to wait that long to reply? IM's move in real-time. If you take too long to craft a reply, you get left behind.

Ugh.. I could go on, but I already sound like a bitch saying all this stuff. It's so easy to make generalizations and describe them as though they're representative of everyone.

Erf... I should probably just hide this reply. What I'm saying is that we're more complex than the oversimplified picture this video describes. Many of us are lonely, yes, but it's not BECAUSE of the internet. We're lonely because each of us, individually, has personal issues that we need to deal with and confront, rather than assigning blame to something else. It takes the responsibility of our unhappiness out of our own hands and make it seem like we're victims. We are not. Paying into this idea justifies relinquishing our own responsibility for the loneliness from which we suffer, as a natural product of modern technology. It's only when you get older that you realize the lie of this.

Damn, well this is pretty damn nice. Though I think people are seeing it as an attack on the internet, rather than a cause/effect relationship between the two, and presenting common trends. Its a very interesting essay indicative of our age, which makes it very compelling.

With all the grand technology and advances happening around the world, we have connected ourselves to everyone and everything, and yet in doing so we have also separated ourselves from a real life and situations.

I find the part about the ability to delete undesirables and script our outward appearance very interesting - something you don't think about but realize that we all do it. Thank you for sharing.