dsayers Posted March 7, 2014 Posted March 7, 2014 Long story short, I used to program my own websites back in the day (1999-2004). When myspace came along, I viewed it as a sort of site builder for people who couldn't build sites (while making no effort to find out if my view was accurate). As such, when facebook and twitter came along, I viewed them collectively as being more of the same, but with more leaving your personal info out there willy nilly, posting updates about the mundane details of one's life. Since then, I've allowed confirmation bias to allow in all the horror stories of selling off personal info, contempt for its popularity to fester, while never providing for the possible benefits. Plus, I find the rush of similar social medias (pinterest, flickr, reddit) to be off-putting. Well, I'm here to allow others to convince me of the error of my ways. Most specifically, I'm interested in the potential of these technologies to aide in building friendships. Partially for the purpose and hope of building more friendships with virtuous people near me. Partially to learn where virtuous people can be found in the event that I choose to move elsewhere. Am I missing out? Or am I one of the precious few that never fell for an overhyped, unnecessary fad?
TheRobin Posted March 7, 2014 Posted March 7, 2014 For me facebook is more of a news-site that I can tailor to my personal tastes and interests. Follow intersting people who put up daily content or news (like Stef or Jeffery Tucker for instance), or being in specific groups (like AnCap or Bitcoin) plus sharing some stuff that I find intersting (not that many care I think though, but it can't hurt I guess).
cynicist Posted March 7, 2014 Posted March 7, 2014 I just wrote several different responses to this and erased them so I'm going to try and make this one stick. I could see some limited value in finding Ancaps near you to try and start a friendship with, but overall they aren't very good tools because there aren't many of us around. (and finding Ancap women is even harder for obvious reasons) Stefan's advice on triage is good, but his best suggestion is that you kind of have to create other virtuous people to some degree because most moral philosophy is bullshit and the majority don't even know that they don't know. I haven't really tried building a virtuous circle yet but I've thought about it. I would probably start with just finding people who share similar interests so that we have something we can talk about and then ease them in to these ideas while remaining cognizant of the alarm that telling them black is white and up is down will generate. Then eventually expose them to Stefan's podcasts and books and see if they shriek and run for the hills or not. The only other option I see is moving to be near people that you already know are rational (or working on it at least) but that's pretty much limited to this forum. It sounds grandiose to say that I know but I genuinely can't think of another place like it. I'm a big fan of Reddit for my non-philosophical interests but the Libertarian and even Ancap subforums make my eyes roll so I can't participate there. Is it any better on Facebook? I doubt it. If you find out otherwise let me know!
Recommended Posts