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Social networks as re-villaging


Student of Trinity

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The global village is horribly disheartening. Through most of human history, if you were the smartest person in your village of 50 souls or so, you were the smartest person in your world. Ditto for being good-looking or talented in any way, or for having accomplished anything significant by hard work or whatever. Out of 50, most everyone had a good chance of standing out as best in some respect.

 

Now to be good-looking or smart or talented or whatever, you have to compete with 6 billion people, including a few freaks with all kinds of advantages you don't have.

 

But maybe social networks put us back in the village. Is this the internet undoing itself?

 

 

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If I understand correctly, you're talking about big fish and little ponds.

 

Meh.

 

Size is overrated. If you really must care about something, care about growth. It's pretty tough to become a bigger fish when you're in a small pond.

 

</bad-analogy>

 

I don't quite get what you're saying about the Internet undoing itself. Are you talking about sites like Face-Bok which encourage segregated cliques? I think sites like that are the exception.

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This isn't really a problem any more than the Olympics ruined fun for local champion. The internet isn't anyone's sole social network (or rather, it shouldn't be). So there's this expansive, amorphous group that includes lots of amazing people (in a morass of dreck, largely)? Okay, nice. I'll continue to reign supreme at Go among my friends, or whatever my particular talent is.

 

—Alorael, who also has to say that it's actually quite nice to head into the biggest pond and discover that he's still pretty much the biggest deal ever.

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Originally Posted By: I need no introduction
no, most of the internet is a large scary place with thousnds of posters eek ,
luckly spiderweb forms is a very small comunity.
In the analogy, SW would be it's own little village, with it and the satellites forming a 'county' of sorts. Wikipedia would probably be represented by NYC or the Vatican.

That being said, I agree with the statement. I mean, Eph probably isn't the best DM in the universe (I don't do 'real' roleplays that much, I wouldn't know), but he sure is kicking ass with The Labyrinth.
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Originally Posted By: Dintiradan
Are you talking about sites like Face-Bok which encourage segregated cliques? I think sites like that are the exception.

There are segregated cliques on Facebook? I'm not sure if I've seen any myself, but I haven't had one for very long.
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Originally Posted By: Excalibur
Originally Posted By: Dintiradan
Are you talking about sites like Face-Bok which encourage segregated cliques? I think sites like that are the exception.

There are segregated cliques on Facebook? I'm not sure if I've seen any myself, but I haven't had one for very long.
Gah, sorry. When I say 'cliques', I mean in the graph theory sense. I don't know if segregated is an actual term; what I meant to say is that Facebook isn't strongly connected.

I didn't mean to imply racial segregation, or high school cliques, or anything like that. My apologies for speaking Mathese; I'll try not to let it happen again.
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Yeah, I don't get how facebook encourages segregated cliques either. If anything it seems to encourage a certain fluidity of group boundaries.

 

Edit: On reading your link, it looks like clique in the graph theory sense is essentially the same thing, and it seems clear that one of the two meanings of "clique" derives from the other one.

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