brennen
i took
127.0.0.1 metafilter.com
127.0.0.1 www.metafilter.com
out of my /etc/hosts for a bit and went to skim the front page. it took me a good 30 seconds before i was deep in some thread that just kinda felt like one long wail of anguish, and half an hour later i still haven't shaken the overall feeling.
this is a site that has finished its transformation into a sink/amplifier for anxiety and rage - it's not, in its own way, unlike what became of twitter.
brennen
and of course these things are reflections of the general state of the system, even as they're also partially causes of it.
i'm not sure how to turn aside or dampen any of this effect, but i badly want to stop participating in it.
brennen
of course there's plenty to fear and plenty to be angry about. it's a scary and unjust world. and yet it seems pretty clear that our collective susceptibility to these things, our tendency to amplify and redistribute them, is itself doing much of the damage.
i used to really believe spider robinson's formulation of "shared pain is diminished, shared joy is increased", but i think there's something missing there.
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