Context Clues where are you?
(https://w.wallhaven.cc/full/mp/wallhaven-mpq9ek.png)
Hello, all. I wasn't going to write this today, but I completely forget I was planning to talk about this subject and somehow I forgot (while playing lots of skyrim again).
****
I just want to talk briefly about this topic, because I have already covered similar issues in my last two blog posts. So, I don't want to continue the highlights to negative topics. I just want to share the reminder of how little we actually care about context.
Especially in today's internet age, context is often everything.
--
Lately, I've just been looking at youtube like an old man shaking my head to what I see being posted.
Before, youtube was a rich website I could immersive myself to watch videos about any topic I was interested in, even to view old scenes and movie reviews from films I have loved.
But now, the same content creators that I loved to watch for the weekly dose of nerd culture has fallen to either one or two endgames :
-making amateur reporting about a topic and thus creating a one-sided viewpoint for drama
-using the content that we already know as a stepping stone to complain or nitpick.
Long ago are the summers when content creators discussed about your favorite tv show in a review or make a fun deep dive. Now is the age of the clickbaits, the drama news, and the nitpick complaints that everything is now "mid" and nothing is good. Like, when we should be talking about games like Starfield and it's lore, people are just busy making video rants against Starfield.
To elaborate, this is continuing from my last post in saying that the average social media user is as educated as our lazy technology reveals. And that's not me being mean or harsh, it's just the reality of social media dumbing people to know the most basics of knowledge or awareness of an issue.
Because we are so easy to consume new knowledge, our technological access also widespreads more ignorance and half-baked opinions that flourish into our social media, like mold on bread.
This creates many users having SOME awareness about a topic, without the actual traditional educational studies and learning. Nevertheless, that social media is never a place to give school quality submissions, but it also lacks school quality discourse.
That's why I often allow political, religious, or any personal beliefs topics in my social medias, so long as the community comments remain "socratic."
But even then, how often do we go on websites like discord and find ourselves having to educate when we discuss a topic? I often find myself doing this too much and I have to refrain myself from trying to teach someone the a,b,c's of a subject when most people make surface level arguments without deeper understandings. And that is the difference between two people not being able to agree with each other. Because one is adamant about their opinion, and the other is grounded on what the reality is within a topic. Thus, explaining why so many make remarks following something like "computers are bad, and I don't like them" with replies reflecting "computers can be used for x and y and z."
But, our general ignorance goes beyond and produces context ignorance. The final frontier of most user's experience online is how easy it is to be redirected on a bias topic.
Take for example whenever a new event happens, how people shift their opinion based on the fresh details of that event. This ability to capitalize on as many hot take news is one of the reasons why we have so much clickbait online. The "new" event is the star of the show, the context behind is in the shadows, obstructed, even dare I say forgotten.
This ability for people to not only see a new event, but misunderstand the context, is what defines success in our modern age. The more you can capitalize on drama, what people are commenting, how they are reacting, who are they blaming, the better you can manipulate the more important context into an irrelevant talking point.
Who cares what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is fake, what is factual and what is speculation, when all that really matters to people today is "what just happened."
Our ability for quick access media is our very downfall in our goldfish-brain attention span in what is popular and how current context is more important than previous or full knowledge.
But this isn't so surprising. Our fast access to just "google" something has become a crutch for social media to use as a safety net for understanding. Rather than be knowledgeable about any topic, people can just be lazy and copy paste a snippet of information to appear like we know what we are elites in.
Conclusion.
So, anyway. That's just what I have been going through lately. Lots of unproductive time playing video games so I wouldn't have to engage myself to our current social environments. In this time when I am fixing my network problems, I am growing ever more aware about the public online that I will be reaching out towards soon. So, yes it has been a bit daunting to think about the numerous amounts of twitter neckbeards, the ignorant youtube drama creators, and the good ol' fashion child adults online, but I have to be strong and just focus on my projects. At least, I'm doing the existential crisis now than have a public breakdown in a few years. No time to think about all those people in the future that will use my own content to clickbait drama against me. No space to give a troll more attention. I have learned to just keep doing what I do best and when I go livestream again, I'm going to pretend my viewers and fans are friendly, calm, and kind on other sites as much as they are in my chill community. I have to.
