Conversation

Yesterday, spontaneously I joined a group for a ride to the Tour de France Femme via Strava. The day before that I meant one group via Meetup for a bike ride from Geneva, and a second via Strava for a run. The meetup group, to the best of my knowledge has no strava group.

Every single other group I know does and I find this intolerably frustrating but let’s focus on the positive first. The positive is that I had no runs for the first time in weeks, so I decided to revert to the cycling staple. In so doing I had a pleasant, quiet morning ride to Geneva with barely any cars, before having a group ride to Crans.

A day or two I opened the Instagram app and I scrolled down without seeing a single photo so I deleted the app from my phone. There was a time when instagram was a photo sharing network between friends, and friends of friends. Now it has become a video spamming platform for influencers we have never, and will never met. In essence it has become worthless, hence the uninstall.

I noticed that Threads was also saturated in video. If YouTube, FB, instagram and Threads have reels then we have four video sharing sites that share the same functionality. We have gone from having chats on Threads, and photo sharing on Instagram to a TikTok experience everywhere.

I was perfectly happy hiking in solitude for years in a row, but eventually, as normal life returned, after the pandemic I felt a sense of isolation, especially on weekends. I would see groups walking together and I longed to revert to that habit. Eventually I did and now for more than a year I have been on regular group hikes and bike rides.

I enjoy group hikes and bike rides but as an introvert I usually don’t start speaking with people near the end of an event, and if the event comes to an end then I usually don’t see people again for weeks, or even months. The result is that despite knowing hundreds of cyclists and hikers at this point, my solitude remains the same.

Two or three weeks ago I wrote that I hate Caribana but I also wrote that I have enjoyed the event the past. I also shared a walking route that I could use to get there and back, without using the car. For saying that I hate Caribana I was called a hater, and then that person tried to have a fight, in private via DMs. I said I’m not interested in an argument.

Yesterday it happened again on Whatsapp. Someone said ‘avoid having too much chatter on this group, there are hundreds of people. When I see such messages it frustrates me because at its core Whatsapp is designed for people to have conversations. The idea that we would join Whatsapp chats, to speak very little, to me is absurd. Whatsapp is designed for instant messaging. This is not a cloister where we have taken a vow of silence. This is a social network.

In the golden age of chatrooms and instant messaging there was a rule. Do not post more than two or three messages before waiting for an answer. I regularly broke this rule until at least two or three times I was told off for the deluge. From then on I posted two or three messages and waited for an answer before writing another post.

Alongside the habit of waiting for an answer after a post or two I also got into the habit of writing longer posts rather than short ones- If I have a more detailed thing to write I write a paragraph, maybe more. I prefer to send one long message than a dozen short ones.

Recently I saw a post stating that Wordpress can speak with the fediverse more effectively. For months we could post to the fediverse but if we replied to a toot via WordPress it would be lost. Those on Mastodon instances would comment but be “ignored”.

For months I thought that it was bizarre that WordPress would only broadcast to the fediverse, but not allow for two way chats to occur. I found this frustrating because if people did comment on a post I’d have to use another account to answer, and acknowledge that comment.

Yes and no. Twitter is replacing instant messaging and chatrooms. It’s an open method by which for people to communicate instantly with others. It’s also about the overheard conversation although that term has disappeared. What does “overheard” mean? Well simply that whenever two people discuss a topic hundreds of people are following this conversation and when they decide they have an opinion they can cut in. They do have that 140 character limit though, so they need to get to the point is efficiently as possible. When that isn’t possible then they can do the next best thing. Write a comment in a blog post or even write a blog entry of their own where the conversation that took place on twitter is synthesised into a more digestible chunk of information. As a result twitter is changing people’s blogging habits but the question is why people want to chat publicly rather than in an enclosed space. Today people like transparency. Disclaimer: This is a post from the 28th of Octobre 2008. 

Facebook engagement has declined since farmville distracted people away from conversations and towards mindless interactions with games, the sharing of tabloid content and emotional posts. These changes have had an adverse effect on social networks and the way in which we engage with people. I have noted a shift away from individuals towards following “celebrities” and “thought leaders”. Rather than interacting with 300 people on your timeline, becoming engaged and getting to know people well we have moved to a “yelling to be noticed” model. I have many thoughts on this topic and will elaborate later. Have you thought about how Ello, App.net and other social networks are trying to do what so many forums and discussion forums did before? They’re demonstrating how much context they are lacking. Instead of investing more time with social networks that may never gain traction I’m returning to this blog/website.

Danacea - Jan 0, 2008

We all use twitter differently, but to me it’s a two-way deal. There are people I follow who don’t follow me back - but they’re senior and respected members of he community from whom I’ve learned a great deal. Otherwise, the conversation, the interaction IS the community and unless it’s two-way, then I do find it pointless… …feels like standing outside a room with your ear pressed to the door - uncomfortable and pointless!