Way to go anonymous with accusations. You accuse me of
\nspreading \u201cconspiracy theories\u201d but make absolutely no reference to what I said
\nthat you disagree with. Which makes me suspect that you lack skills in effective
\ncommunication. That lack of communication skills is what this post is all
\nabout.<\/p>\n
Though I\u2019m loathe to do so, I\u2019m going to have to assume that
\nyou are talking about a recent post. I hate making assumptions, but you didn\u2019t
\ngive me anything to go on. The OP also accused my words of being conspiracy
\ntheory, so I\u2019m guessing you are either the OP or someone who agrees with their
\nstatement. <\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what the OP took umbrage with:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem I keep running into is that these sites (twitter
\nclones) are designed by coders who think that no one would possibly want to say
\nsomething longer than 500 characters. It\u2019s okay if the pictures are tiny and
\nshitty. It\u2019s okay if the interface is confusing as fuck. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s completely Orwellian. It is designed to limit
\ninformation, limit conversation, and prevent art from being presented in a
\nformat that actually conveys meaning. You keep talking about how it\u2019s
\nunregulated and decentralized, but you fail to mention that the very format
\ncontrols how we choose to communicate. It\u2019s so much more insidious, because
\nit\u2019s not direct control, instead it makes your thoughts conform to its limits.
\nOf course, every medium does that to extent, but not with the same choke-hold
\nthat twitter clones have.\u201d<\/p>\n
First, we\u2019re going to have to unpack the term, \u201cconspiracy
\ntheory,\u201d which at face value is simply stating that I have a suspicion that one
\nor more people deliberately planned for an outcome. It\u2019s funny how the term \u201cconspiracy
\ntheory\u201d in our culture has become synonymous with outlandish allegations based
\non tenuous evidence. There\u2019s another example on how the power of language
\ncontrols our thoughts. But what I was referring to is not a conspiracy theory
\nin the classical sense. I in no way implied a bunch of people got together in a
\nroom and decided to make these things happen. Except, they kinda did, but it\u2019s
\nmuch more complicated and subtle than that.<\/p>\n
You would know this if you had a good Liberal Arts
\neducation, which I would bet you don\u2019t, because most people have never received
\none, and there are reasons for that. Our modern education system was developed
\nduring the Industrial Revolution. Believe it or not, it was the factories
\nthemselves that created the first modern classrooms. The owners recognized that
\ntheir workers were handling more and more complex tasks that required the
\nability to read and do math. So schools were put right into the factories so
\nthat the employees and their children could acquire the skills they needed to
\nwork in the factories. Mom, dad, and the kids could work side-by-side, learning
\nhow to multiply and be wage-slaves at the same time. When these schools were
\ndesigned, the industrialists absolutely did openly talk about what should and
\nshouldn\u2019t be taught. And in the UK, in Parliament, there were debates on just
\nhow much a factory worker should be taught.<\/p>\n
You can see what changed in the education system by noticing
\nwhat was removed. Prior to the industrial schools, church schools and
\nuniversities spent a large portion of their time teaching Rhetoric\u2014the art of
\ndebate. They thought it important that a person could form a logical and
\nwell-communicated argument. Factory owners wanted none of that, and most people
\ntoday haven\u2019t even heard of the discipline of Rhetoric.<\/p>\n
But the factory owners got sick of having to pay for this
\neducation, and like good little capitalists, they decided to socialize the
\ncosts. Make the public pay for it. So when the government created public
\nschools they simply copied the model of the factory schools. Industrial
\neducation for industrial workers, kids lined up in desks and force-fed
\ninformation. The same care was taken in determining just how much these kids
\nshould actually learn, so they don\u2019t start to question the whole system.<\/p>\n
You can hear our politicians echo the same reasoning today,
\nexcept they are more subtle about it. They talk about how education should, \u201cprepare
\npeople for the workforce.\u201d And how we should concentrate wholly on STEM
\neducation. They don\u2019t need to actually learn about how to communicate ideas,
\nespecially social and political ideas.<\/p>\n
So all our modern communication systems were designed by
\npeople focused on STEM. They have been programmed to look at the world that
\nway. Art, literature, and history mean very little to them, because that\u2019s not
\nwhat they were taught. People hate being told that they have been programmed.
\nThey like to think they are smart enough to break such control. But we are all
\ncontrolled in this way. Even you. Even me. I know my entire argument comes from
\na Liberal Arts background. Just like the OP made extremely good arguments about
\nthe technical issues involved because that\u2019s what they know. The trick is to
\nrecognize the expertise on both sides and make a truly informed decision.<\/p>\n
So when I say twitter was deliberately designed to stifle
\ndebate, I\u2019m not saying the designers of twitter were sitting around going, \u201chow
\ndo we dumb down the public?\u201d They were thinking like coders and engineers. They
\njust didn\u2019t see the value in long-form communication. Also, they didn\u2019t want to
\nmake another Facebook where people argued endlessly. They failed on that one.<\/p>\n
So is that a conspiracy theory? From a certain point of
\nview. Our society was absolutely designed to produce a website like twitter.
\nBut not directly. It\u2019s about shaping our modes of thought. That\u2019s what Orwell
\nwas talking about when he said the Ministry of Truth\u2019s goal was to remove words
\nfrom the dictionary, so people couldn\u2019t even think that way.<\/p>\n
This entire post is kind of a testament to how this works,
\nand how it can be broken. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Way to go anonymous with accusations. You accuse me of spreading \u201cconspiracy theories\u201d but make absolutely no reference to what I said that you disagree with. Which makes me suspect that you lack skills in effective communication. That lack of communication skills is what this post is all about. Though I\u2019m loathe to do so, … Continue reading “You’re a conspiracy nutjob and you need to start thinking before throwing around your bullshit.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46693\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}