Sometimes people are like "you act like someone who is having a conversation with you online is supposed to exert cognitive effort to learn something about who you are" and I'm like????? Yes??????
I don't know what you are all here sharing thoughts online FOR, but my assumption is that we are in general trying to use some of the same social mechanisms that we rely on for like.......social life in general
If you launched a reply with a misconception say "sorry"! If you ask me to teach you something say "thank you"! If someone has opened up to share an emotion say "that must be hard"!
We're in a relationship if we're talking. A ridiculous, fleeting, tiny relationship, but still. I look at every replier I don't know to see if they follow me -- that's cog effort too! I am way colder to the people who don't follow me because I assume we have no reciprocity! Would you text me like this?
God I get outgrouped so hard on mastodon it just cracks me up. It's honestly not to the level of trolling which is why standard social media language doesn't fit well to describe my personal experiences here. But it's OUTGROUPING and that's real. It's so funny when I respond with just as much cold bluntness as someone replied to me with and suddenly it's like "my god how dare"
But, many people ingroup and those are the folks who stick around following this shouty version of me 
I see you! idk y'all, I just like conversations and don't like being an object. Many of us are like this I think.
@grimalkina
Yes! I am definitely like that! I am a human being and this is a limited medium but one can still do ones best to enrich it, not just with information but also with compassion, moments of joy and sadness.
@grimalkina the fedi has a huge component of people utterly convinced of their own right-ness, that when you’re “correct”, manners and tone don’t matter, and at the same time, more able to be appalled at the slightest pushback than a stereotypical Victorian spinster.
They are just ridiculous.
I have encountered people a few times with whom I actually have a lot of interests in common but their style of arguing was so aggressive, dismissive, snide, shading from passive aggression into active, I had to bail out and it made me feel bad.
And the risk is that you return the aggression and eventually spread it to others.
@grimalkina don't know if this is what you're referring to with out grouping but my reading of the phenomenon is that there's some "social consumption" going on where people expect a new person to shout out every now and then, don't care if it's the same a yesterday or a new one. It's like the social interaction is a product they are entitled to and can ask a refund of if they're dissatisfied.
pencilears@grimalkina you do usually address your audience like you're telling us about your research (which, I do enjoy! I'm here for it! I want to learn!)
But it's a very formal way to have a relationship, so it creates distance. if you want to make more friends in this space, you might try posting more informally some of the time?
Like, your page is your home, but people might feel like they're in your lecture hall, not your living room.
@grimalkina anyways, don't let the peanut gallery's misbehavior get you down.
@pencilears I totally agree with that but some of it is good distance for me (I just don't really feel like I can be my full self here :( ) and I still feel like professional convos and scientific arguments follow these general principles? It's definitely a factor here though. But yeah still kind of interesting to me how one sided the "work" of communicating is assumed to be in some conversations?
@grimalkina I mean yeah, but like part of that is the structure of mastodon itself, if you've got a rando in your mentions here from another server? chances are good they can't even see most of your posts by default.
I dunno, I think of it as managing hecklers, people who misbehave want attention and it's important to teach them that good behavior gets better attention than acting up
(Sorry, my friend in the middle of the bad breakup needs my full attention at the moment)
I'm here to find, follow, and learn from those unlike me.
And to boost others, promote facts and equality, and 
photos of kids & dogs.
@alex nicely described in your social context bio too :)
@grimalkina I read the rest too, but I want to reply to this specifically. I'm not sure that's true.
I'm not sure that that kind of social life "naturally exists" for everyone or that they learned the mechanism.
Besides the way you're writing and other self presentation is already broadcasting some image implicitly. E.g. if someone displays personal beliefs with clothing, do you care why they hold those beliefs? Or do you just recognize, deal with it and move on?
Made me think though.
@bmaxv I'm not sure I'm following. Your second point seems to affirm the existence of social and communicative information.
But your first -- you think we exist in some kind of inchoate madness where we have no cognitive and psychological apparatus that gives us social mechanisms of communication? The fact that you and I are speaking in mutually understandable sentences belies that. If you think that we are just so far apart in our mental models of how humans work we probably won't agree
@grimalkina There is certainly an intersection of beliefs and methods of communication, otherwise it wouldn't work.
But I'm not sure the connection between "someone is saying something online" and "it is *necessary* to learn more about that person and why they are saying it" is as strict and strong.
Even if we don't agree, I wanted to sort... throw a point in there, that that assumption ("supposed to exert...") may not always be true.
To help refine that mental model I guess?
@bmaxv I think I'm following. I suppose when I say "some of the same social mechanisms", to me this modifies the statement enough that it's not saying ONLINE IS EXACTLY REAL LIFE CONVO! THE SAME! I would never walk up to you on the street and have this convo. I also would leave this comment hanging and go get food with no guilt. Different rules that way!
But my example is more like: a thank you online still has a social impact on the hearer. A blunt query still carries information.
@grimalkina That's true. And it makes more sense to me now, thanks! 
@grimalkina I'm afraid, what you're seeing from some people, you might see just as much from them in the real world.
I'm no researcher, but it feels to me like , globally, we're moving to a post-curtesy, post-solidarity era. From small things like a decline in use of turn lights when changing lanes to big things like gaslighting and victim-blaming, my impression is, it's a trend.
In fact I would love to research this, or for someone to take this idea away and study it. Maybe someone in your following reads this and becomes inspired! :-)
@cmw for whatever it's worth, and perhaps you see things I don't, but when I was in developmental psychology if you had a bad day someone I knew always used to say "at least babies are born every day," meaning human beings continue to come into the world with love, wonder, and hope, and the primary activity that most human beings on the planet spend the majority of their time doing is caretaking. So I think that we want connection, even in these difficult times, even if these trends are true.
@grimalkina I like it when people tell me about themselves, but I'm really bad at requesting/inviting/encouraging it.
@denny this gets easier with practice! :) But also, I think about things like "I went and read the rest of your thread" and "I went and read your bio" as being an example of the effort I describe
@grimalkina @denny Reading anything about the person you're responding to is the baaaaaaaare minimum! Goddamn, it's like some people have been raised by wolves. They just like talking at the Internet, thinking their unthought words are gold.
@grimalkina Keep at what you love doing, @grimalkina , I love your fierce self!
@grimalkina I follow your posts with interests. I just find it hard to understand your perspective sometimes, such us in this case. I wonder if it's an expectation mismatch on how social media works (I wrote something before about IRC versus more Twitter-style netiquette). I get though that it's unpleasant to be on the wrong side of this, and for what it's worth I am sorry if this reply is adding to it.
@modulux this reply doesn't bother me at all. It's really clear to me that you are expressing a desire to understand and connect and I appreciate it. Think of it like this: it hurts my feelings when some people criticize things I say, or dispute things I share, but then never follow up to say things like "oh, I am sorry I misunderstood that" or "I appreciate you explaining that", or "I read your bio and realized you actually do x not y".
@modulux I absolutely think it's a mismatch about expectations on social media. I just think that I have a right to my own opinion about it :). My goal is not to be perfectly perceived but to be treated as a full human being rather than an object. Others' goals might be to get information with minimal effort on their part. I am claiming that has a social cost, when folks on this platform often act like it's free!
@grimalkina Mmm, I think I understand what you mean. Of course I agree different expectations are legitimate. For myself I'm used to IRC where, for good or bad, one tends to think of people as ephemeral lines of text. They join, they say stuff, they leave; maybe you meet them again, more likely not, and you definitely don't know who they are or what the rest of their life is like. So it's a very disembodied form of conversation where the text is almost supposed to speak for itself. Used to that, I don't mind randos to reply, build up, tear down or jump off from my posts. But if you start from a more social way of interacting this must seem very unpleasant. I do try to keep track of people's interaction styles, but it's not always easy. Thanks for the clarification, it makes sense to me now.
@modulux this is an interesting perspective! It sounds very lonely to me I must say. While I do think for me there is a large element of detachment (of course, I am aware I'm speaking in large part to strangers, and frequently ignore 'randos'), I find it mentally important to imagine the real people -- some of whom find me in real life at a work conference sometimes!! Or have weight on how my work is perceived with their words
@grimalkina @modulux an ex of mine once explained to me that she found it really hard to think of anything (person or otherwise) on the other end of the keyboard as real. Given that I tend to assume that the dog nobody knows about on the internet is a genuine person, it was a significant clash of perspective. On the other hand it explained much of what I could see.
That all said treating the other as person is the only way we can bring about something better.
And I appreciate the call to do so.
@hypostase @grimalkina I think it's a mixture of habit, culture and values.
On the habit side, people who got used to dealing with very inconsistent, very pseudonymous nicknames without social profiles, it's not that we can't relate to others as people, but it takes time and effort to create that bond after we've been engaging with that string of text for a while. It's not immediate for us to think that way and it takes an effort of tracking who people are. Some of this is technical affordances and what people grew up with, in my opinion.
Culture is a function of people with similar expectations getting together and reproducing these patterns, and having the (usually unstated) position that this is good and natural and inevitable.
Values sounds weird, but, yes, it can be a value to treat text irrespective of who says it. It has a lot of problems but, I think, it is an attempt to deal with matters more objectively and avoid authority, halo, and other social distortions in arguments. I think nerds (speaking as one) are prone to relate like this due to all of these factors.
@modulux @hypostase interesting that to you, nerd is a group and I'm not part of it here! I see that there is a value here, but I am sharing that *I* have values on the other side that are also well worth fighting for and caring about. I also have technical affordances and what I grew up with, and I find it troubling to think that my cultures are not valued here!
@modulux @hypostase ps. speaking as someone who studies cultures among technical people specifically (!) I think there is a lot of assumption in your argument that these are deeply neutral actions vs that they perpetuate a kind of context culture; I mean there's a REASON I get this kind of flak more than my many friends on this platform with extremely different looking avatars than mine eh
@grimalkina @hypostase Ok, first off I do consider you a nerd, you're a research scientist, how much nerdier does it get? I was generalising and, perhaps, not using language precisely enough.
I do agree that there are values in conflict, hence my point that treating text like that has problems as well. I just get the feeling that there are a lot of people on the fedi with experiences like what I described, could be wrong about this and it could be something else; it would be interesting to know. I do hope that you are welcome here, and, as I said, I do try to adapt to my interlocutor's interaction style and I think we should all try to be mindful of this if possible.
And regarding whether the "social indifference" is omnidirectional, for myself, I can't see avatars (not a metaphor, I'm blind) and most of the time I have no real expectations of the gender or other physical characteristics of people. But I'm also convinced that you're right people get treated differently according to those sorts of factors. I hope the fedi becomes more welcoming in this regard.
@modulux @hypostase my comment about avatars was a statement about the probabilities of what I experience given a large number of interactions, not a personal statement about what *you* are doing! I am sorry if the statement about nerds felt harsh and accusatory, I did not mean it personally but because I think often about who is taken to represent what form of culture, it often occurs to me think out loud about whether or not my side of the argument is being taken to represent the "group norm"
@grimalkina @modulux Modulux’s point about not seeing avatars is actually quite helpful for me. As it happens when I see the default I get excited, because I think it’s about postgresql, and then disappointed when I realise it’s not. Sure, I know there are lots of reason avatars hold a different conceptual space for different people, but actual connection with a person in such a space is a really helpful guide to thinking about them.
My avatar is intentionally chosen to identify me in a way that the connection can be made, just not from across the room, for much the same reasons as Cat is aware of how the avatar affects interactions in many cases. For a lot of us we need to think a bit about how that representation is likely to be received, and that may in turn colour out thinking. It certainly colours mine.
Wait? <looks very confused>
Isn't learning about other people the entire point of conversation?
I personally think there's some serious value in the concept of ubuntu, which to my limited understanding is about our ability to be an individual is created by our relationships with others.
@grimalkina idk why but I find it hard to remember this online. I think I’m just so used to seeing insane takes and abuse online that it’s easy to dehumanise posts as coming from the void as opposed to a person. Doesn’t help that these days there’s a high probability you’re talking to troll or a bot. It’s just so easy to be mean online. Thanks for the reminder
@mattsains That sounds like a really unpleasant experience! I personally have found it very important to filter and exercise a lot of choice in my online world for this reason, and I actually *do not* feel I get exposed to a lot of unpleasant online toxicity! I am sure if I did, I would operate quite differently. Not sure what levers you can pull to lessen your exposure to things you don't want but I hope you can find them if you need and want them!
@grimalkina I have no idea which part of this thread to reply to with this comment, and I apologize if I said this already to you specifically...
I think there is a mismatch between the social contexts people are used to in the real world and how social media structures interactions that may lead to this thing you describe.
Specifically, social media blur the boundary between my space and yours. My space is my home feed, and if any of your posts turn up in mine (I follow you, someone ...
@grimalkina ... boosts it, an algorithm puts it there, etc) to part of me it feels like you've come to my living room and made a statement there.
If it's a welcome statement, that's fine. But if not, it's sort of a violation of social boundaries?
The problem is, when you wrote your post, you were doing that in *your* space. So if I reply to it based on that feeling of violation, I might choose words that on your receiving end feel like a violation of social boundaries.
Were we both sharing..
@grimalkina ... a neutral, public space, it probably wouldn't get to that point of mutually feeling our personal space had been violated.
I see a fair few of social interactions that go bad play out in exactly that way. "Someone appears in my mentions" is one of those identifying phrases.
Once I started to understand this problem in terms of spaces, it made a lot more sense to me.
FWIW, this goes back for me to Dr. Richard Bartle, who co-created MUD, the first shared virtual world. He...
@grimalkina ... argues rather convincingly that virtual worlds are spaces, not games, even if we call them that (e.g. MMORPGs). They just happen to shared spaces we visit to play games within them. So a lot of the implicit rules of shared spaces apply.
I've long thought that any website is such a shared space, such as in a web forum. But that is not quite true, because the forum is neutral to all participants.
Social media has the specific difference to a forum that it acts as a home space...
@grimalkina ... for every participant, and so confuses us. It doesn't set the expectations of a shared space, even though it is.
FWIW, that doesn't mean it's all bad. We can still use the personalisation to tailor our experience to what we want.
But the expectation for others to conform to those wishes can clash with their expectations due to this blurring of boundaries.
Anyway. All this to say that, yes, these are conversations 
@jens I think this is a great description and a really good explanation why some replies can feel so strangely aggressive/hostile to receivers!
