@pease : This is wandering into "junior host" territory, and possibly a discussion of the identity of Epiphanies in general, possibly opening up another thread...
But I feel like I should answer your critique. I don't think sexism is an identity. Neither is white supremacy. Calling either of these an identity is akin to calling smallpox a life form (which I'm aware is a philosophical argument biologists actually have.) Sexism and racism are based not in self-identification but in other-identification, much the same way that a virus does not have a full life of its own, but must hijack (and ultimately destroy) actual living things to continue its own existence.
Citing the guidelines for Epiphanies:
This is our space to discuss issues where people are personally invested, and academic detachment just isn't possible as those issues involve marginalised groups, discrimination against marginalised groups and other sensitive matters.
Marginalised groups mostly exist IRL, not online. While marginalization can certainly occur within online communities, I think that the emphasis on marginalization here does require a certain overlap between IRL and online identity. In practice, not every thread follows that but in fundamental purpose, I think there is an emphasis on "own experience" here that I refer to.
And yes, Purg and Epiphanies have overlap. These aren't platonic ideals but each space has its own culture.
You may think I'm mistaken, but I think I'm on pretty good footing for my experience and my opinions on how these things work.
And really, there could be another thread on the topic of whether sexism or racism qualify as identities or not. That's interesting.
I think I'm now the same person online and offline.
I'm certainly sweary and innuendous enough in both. Whether I'm even the real me in real life is abthread all of its own.
I'm not sure what the relationship is between my inner self and external self. And regarding online/offline: the last time I checked, people said they found my in-writing identity very different from my in-person identity.
@pease : This is wandering into "junior host" territory, and possibly a discussion of the identity of Epiphanies in general, possibly opening up another thread...
But I feel like I should answer your critique. I don't think sexism is an identity. Neither is white supremacy.…
Thanks Bullfrog. I'm afraid I don't know how to process your response, so I've decided to address your original request again, to see if it changes anything.
I think Epiphanies in particular (someone correct me if I'm off here) is based on the idea that we're supposed to talk about who we are IRL and try to privilege people who are central to the experience being discussed.
And I don't say that to junior host, but to mention the role IRL identity has in this board.
The basic idea of both Purgatory and Epiphanies is serious discussion of a variety of issues. The difference is, as its description indicates, that Epiphanies is for discussing issues “where people are personally invested, where academic detachment just isn't possible, and where issues and identity significantly overlap”.
This involves making space for people with lived experience of marginalised identities and sensitive topics, whether those people are other shipmates or posting elsewhere online. It's about being able to discuss issues without being subjected to attitudes, opinions, perspectives and beliefs that are discriminatory.
It isn't necessary or a requirement for people posting in Epiphanies to talk about who we are in real life. Not everyone engages with a community by talking about their real-life circumstances.
The assumption in Epiphanies is that if someone says they have lived experience, they are speaking the truth. That lived experience ultimately has its foundation IRL.
In this context, it seems reasonable to consider us being the same people online as offline. That, with regard to marginalisation and discrimination, the way we perceive discriminatory attitudes, opinions, perspectives and beliefs doesn't greatly differ - if something sounds sexist to us offline, it will sound sexist to us online. But the extent to which we are subjected to these things is still significantly affected by how others perceive us. (Aside from other factors including biases inherent in algorithms and structural design, etc.)
We are offline beings before we are online beings - in that regard, I'd agree that lived experience has its foundations in real life. However, our lived experience can happen offline or online. Wherever you have disparate groups of people interacting, online or offline, you have the potential for discrimination and marginalisation.
This thread is getting into some really interesting areas around identity and personality! Who I am in real life surely includes the fact that 'in real life' I post on a chat forum in which I may or may not to some degree allow myself to adopt, release or express, attitudes, poses or modes of engaging which I wouldn't adopt, release or express in a face to face encounter. This may sound like looking in a mirror at a picture of someone looking in a mirror at... etc etc. But there doesn't seem any way of getting away from the fact that 'online me' is a component of 'real-life me', whereas the opposite cannot be true.
Unless the Ship is unknowingly giving space to fully AI-generated contributions. Now that would be scary.
In this context, it seems reasonable to consider us being the same people online as offline. That, with regard to marginalisation and discrimination, the way we perceive discriminatory attitudes, opinions, perspectives and beliefs doesn't greatly differ - if something sounds sexist to us offline, it will sound sexist to us online. But the extent to which we are subjected to these things is still significantly affected by how others perceive us. (Aside from other factors including biases inherent in algorithms and structural design, etc.)
We are offline beings before we are online beings - in that regard, I'd agree that lived experience has its foundations in real life. However, our lived experience can happen offline or online. Wherever you have disparate groups of people interacting, online or offline, you have the potential for discrimination and marginalisation.
I think I agree with you there, especially second paragraph. And the rules of online interaction, give or takes a few nuances, are basically the same as offline. These are, far as I can tell, real people we're dealing with and due the respect honor and respect.
I'm not sure what the authentic self is, well, correct that, I'm not sure what the self is. I was thinking of various friends and they have a more or less consistent personality. Or do they? It can also lurch off in different directions, this makes life interesting. As an example, I used to be very extrovert, not now.
I'm not sure what the authentic self is, well, correct that, I'm not sure what the self is. I was thinking of various friends and they have a more or less consistent personality. Or do they? It can also lurch off in different directions, this makes life interesting. As an example, I used to be very extrovert, not now.
Hard same!
And I just had a long chat with @Gwai that fed into this thread...
Even when I was a kid, I didn't have circle of friends, I had a disparate web. And the family I really wanted to connect to all lived far away and visited intermittently. We moved. My immediate family was kinda hard, though not catastrophically. The accident had already happened, we grew up in a house full of coping.
But in all of that, I think I have a complex with the word "authentic" because I've had to reinvent myself multiple times and I'm quite sure that if someone caught me at different places in this time, or heaven forbid saw me at various points in the past, they'd see a seemingly different person. I'm not egotistical enough to accept that I haven't been driven by circumstances.
Lately, it's funny, I've caught myself looking at myself the way scholars look at The Historical Jesus. I look at the socioeconomic factors of where I grew up. I look at the race and class of my family relative to my community. I look at the shifts I've made going to various towns and cities and...my ego? My self? I'm just another white guy, nothing to write home about, nothing remarkable. I tend to fade into the background IRL. A friend recently praised my ability to make myself forgettable, it makes me a good listener. I can slide into a mode where it's like I'm not there, just absorbing my surroundings like a sponge. I just need to remember to wring myself out occasionally.
Anyway, I don't really think I matter as a person, best way to suss myself out is to look at the environment and then suddenly a lot of the quirky personalities I've accumulated make a lot more sense. Like how I was always trying to get my disparate friends together when I was a kid because I craved a sense of being one person with a crew instead of a nomad who migrated from contact to contact without really having a social home apart from my house. Each friend builds its own relationship, and each relationship creates a subtly different me. Church was probably the one place that became a social home, which might be how I wound up sticking to church, and probably eventually wound up here. Go figure.
I've been listening to Tyler Childers' music a lot lately, because he's really good at what he does. And in a musical genre that has huge issues with authenticity, "canned culture" (as I'd call it,) and appropriation; I think he's a really good egg. He walks that line really well.
And he's from the opposite end of West Virginia than me, which is why I feel funny lifting him up. I recognize his culture, but I feel like I'm from the other side of the line, per that weirdly specific pronunciation jab he made about the mountain range.
But there doesn't seem any way of getting away from the fact that 'online me' is a component of 'real-life me', whereas the opposite cannot be true.
I think it can. I think the two of "you" inform each other - the interactions that you have online can inform the interactions you have offline. Maybe where we feel most located reflects the amount of time spent, or the degree to which we are immersed in our online / offline worlds. If someone spends more time online than offline, they might consider the "offline them" to be a component of the "online them". (These are ideas explored in various fictional narratives.) The physical body on which both the "online you" and "offline you" depend might need to be fed and watered, and the bills paid, etc, but beyond that, other aspects of self are up for grabs.
Unless the Ship is unknowingly giving space to fully AI-generated contributions. Now that would be scary.
It might not be happening here, but it seems inevitable. (For example, Meta's plans for AI-generated profiles, apparently including bios, profile pictures and the ability to create and share content.)
… And the rules of online interaction, give or takes a few nuances, are basically the same as offline. These are, far as I can tell, real people we're dealing with and due the respect honor and respect.
Coming back to Caissa's point about lived experience having its foundations in real life, that might be true of us, on these forums, but we're already at the point where generations to come are starting to have significant aspects of their lived experience being founded online, and involving AI.
I've definitely had significant aspects of my lived experience online. I can probably blame this forum for the fact that I wandered back into Christianity years ago, and I've made real friends here, some folks I've known longer than IRL. It's also where I learned a lot of the basic netiquette that makes me very effective in other online environments, where I also have spent a not-inconsequential amount of time over the years.
That trend you describe has already hit me pretty squarely, though I think AI is going to be a barrier to lived experience because it distorts real reflection.
As you wrote earlier, the rules of online interaction are basically the same online as offline. At least, I would guess that is the case for most of us posting here. My understanding is that the incredibly rapid take-up of social media was facilitated because many people who had grown up with an entirely real-life experience of social interaction were able to frictionlessly transfer their expectations to a different medium. People were able to treat the otherwise unfamiliar online social environment as being like the familiar offline world.
However, we are already well into the generations who have grown up with online social media, and whose learned rules of social engagement have involved transfers in both directions between offline and online. These are people who learned how to engage both offline and online at the same time. And who prefer some of the ways online engagement works, to the extent of not seeing all aspects of offline engagement as a normal part of life that they need to come to terms with. Why can't we change the offline world so that it's more like the online world, or just minimise the extent to which you have to engage with the offline world at all?
Human beings invent technology, and using technology changes human behaviour, and what it means to be human.
The effect of AI is to put this on steroids, or add rocket boosters. There is already plenty of written material about AI friends/chatbots and authenticity. One of the things that strikes me is that researchers seem rather more concerned about the authenticity of AI than users. There also seems to be a developing acceptance that although AI is never going to be authentic in a human, real-life (imitative) sense, people are still able to relate to AI friends/chatbots as legitimate companions, albeit of a rather different nature.
Good question. When telephony was first introduced, it was treated as much as a novelty as early social media was. Then we gradually got used to remote communication, even if many of us find it less real than communicating face-to-face. And these days, there's an increasing likelihood of being phoned by an AI bot pretending to be someone we know in urgent need of money.
The expectation - and perhaps fantasy - of authenticity stems, in turn, from a much longer history of technologically mediated communications, dating back to the invention of the telegraph in the nineteenth century. Read through this history, the essay concludes that AI relationships might not mimic human interactions but must instead acknowledge the artifice of AI, offering a new form of companionship in our mediated, often lonely, times.
Back when the telegraph was introduced,
Newspaper accounts warned of the dangers of separating the body from language in this way, detailing what we’d now call catfishing scandals. Other accounts – usually fictional – were more romantic. Ella Cheever Thayer’s 1879 hit novel, Wired Love: A Romance in Dots and Dashes, recounts the courtship-at-a-distance of Clem and Nathalie, two young telegraph operators. The novel turns on the question of whether it’s possible to form a connection with words only. How long can they exist only in language? At what point does the body matter, if at all?
Wired Love shows how the expectations of a body on the other side endure. In the middle of the novel, Clem shows up at Nathalie’s office unannounced, oily, crooked, and musky. He struts in with an “air of cheap assurance,” and flashes his trinkets, reeking of cheap cologne, hair coated in bear grease. He winks and oozes all over her, leaving Nathalie flummoxed. How could this be the person whose words she has fallen for?
It turns out that the visit was only a prank by a jealous telegraph operator on the same circuit who had been listening to their flirtation through the wire. This plot device depends on readers who, in 1879, are at once suspicious of disembodied communication and enchanted by it.
Yeah, I'm definitely a bit worried about what'll happen to people if they get in the habit of using AI is a go-between. I could see that getting really weird.
Far as online and IRL, I think that at some points in life I've had wildly different online and IRL personalities. The social rules are teh same, sure, but since...for instance...I'm absolutely awful at figuring conversational timing, or a lot better at writing than talking...you'd get at totally different sense of me in person than online.
I do think that I've gotten more "integrated" as I've gotten older, and more confident IRL, which I think might be a consequence of internet socialization. I think I learned more socialization on the internet than I did in person. It's easier to process information visually than orally. At any rate, I think internet socialization is already a thing and likely accelerating. I think we agree there.
Also...did I say online and offline were the same? Hm. I think the rules of online socialization can wildly vary even from one forum to the next, just as is true in real life environments. That's an interesting thing.
On top of all that, even using something as simple as verbal language, @Gwai and I can have whole conversations while we hash out what precisely was meant by a simple word. And that's using a common language in which I'm fluent, with someone who probably knows me as well as anyone in the world does!
Comments
But I feel like I should answer your critique. I don't think sexism is an identity. Neither is white supremacy. Calling either of these an identity is akin to calling smallpox a life form (which I'm aware is a philosophical argument biologists actually have.) Sexism and racism are based not in self-identification but in other-identification, much the same way that a virus does not have a full life of its own, but must hijack (and ultimately destroy) actual living things to continue its own existence.
Citing the guidelines for Epiphanies: Marginalised groups mostly exist IRL, not online. While marginalization can certainly occur within online communities, I think that the emphasis on marginalization here does require a certain overlap between IRL and online identity. In practice, not every thread follows that but in fundamental purpose, I think there is an emphasis on "own experience" here that I refer to.
And yes, Purg and Epiphanies have overlap. These aren't platonic ideals but each space has its own culture.
You may think I'm mistaken, but I think I'm on pretty good footing for my experience and my opinions on how these things work.
And really, there could be another thread on the topic of whether sexism or racism qualify as identities or not. That's interesting.
Thanks Bullfrog. I'm afraid I don't know how to process your response, so I've decided to address your original request again, to see if it changes anything.
The basic idea of both Purgatory and Epiphanies is serious discussion of a variety of issues. The difference is, as its description indicates, that Epiphanies is for discussing issues “where people are personally invested, where academic detachment just isn't possible, and where issues and identity significantly overlap”.
This involves making space for people with lived experience of marginalised identities and sensitive topics, whether those people are other shipmates or posting elsewhere online. It's about being able to discuss issues without being subjected to attitudes, opinions, perspectives and beliefs that are discriminatory.
It isn't necessary or a requirement for people posting in Epiphanies to talk about who we are in real life. Not everyone engages with a community by talking about their real-life circumstances.
We are offline beings before we are online beings - in that regard, I'd agree that lived experience has its foundations in real life. However, our lived experience can happen offline or online. Wherever you have disparate groups of people interacting, online or offline, you have the potential for discrimination and marginalisation.
Unless the Ship is unknowingly giving space to fully AI-generated contributions. Now that would be scary.
I think I agree with you there, especially second paragraph. And the rules of online interaction, give or takes a few nuances, are basically the same as offline. These are, far as I can tell, real people we're dealing with and due the respect honor and respect.
Hard same!
And I just had a long chat with @Gwai that fed into this thread...
Even when I was a kid, I didn't have circle of friends, I had a disparate web. And the family I really wanted to connect to all lived far away and visited intermittently. We moved. My immediate family was kinda hard, though not catastrophically. The accident had already happened, we grew up in a house full of coping.
But in all of that, I think I have a complex with the word "authentic" because I've had to reinvent myself multiple times and I'm quite sure that if someone caught me at different places in this time, or heaven forbid saw me at various points in the past, they'd see a seemingly different person. I'm not egotistical enough to accept that I haven't been driven by circumstances.
Lately, it's funny, I've caught myself looking at myself the way scholars look at The Historical Jesus. I look at the socioeconomic factors of where I grew up. I look at the race and class of my family relative to my community. I look at the shifts I've made going to various towns and cities and...my ego? My self? I'm just another white guy, nothing to write home about, nothing remarkable. I tend to fade into the background IRL. A friend recently praised my ability to make myself forgettable, it makes me a good listener. I can slide into a mode where it's like I'm not there, just absorbing my surroundings like a sponge. I just need to remember to wring myself out occasionally.
Anyway, I don't really think I matter as a person, best way to suss myself out is to look at the environment and then suddenly a lot of the quirky personalities I've accumulated make a lot more sense. Like how I was always trying to get my disparate friends together when I was a kid because I craved a sense of being one person with a crew instead of a nomad who migrated from contact to contact without really having a social home apart from my house. Each friend builds its own relationship, and each relationship creates a subtly different me. Church was probably the one place that became a social home, which might be how I wound up sticking to church, and probably eventually wound up here. Go figure.
Is this authentic, or is it just Americana? Go to the video, ~1:48 and you'll get neat insight about authenticity. Tyler's little bit of sarcasm makes me reflect a lot, even though I learned the wrong pronunciation. It's funny.
I've been listening to Tyler Childers' music a lot lately, because he's really good at what he does. And in a musical genre that has huge issues with authenticity, "canned culture" (as I'd call it,) and appropriation; I think he's a really good egg. He walks that line really well.
And he's from the opposite end of West Virginia than me, which is why I feel funny lifting him up. I recognize his culture, but I feel like I'm from the other side of the line, per that weirdly specific pronunciation jab he made about the mountain range.
Coming back to Caissa's point about lived experience having its foundations in real life, that might be true of us, on these forums, but we're already at the point where generations to come are starting to have significant aspects of their lived experience being founded online, and involving AI.
I've definitely had significant aspects of my lived experience online. I can probably blame this forum for the fact that I wandered back into Christianity years ago, and I've made real friends here, some folks I've known longer than IRL. It's also where I learned a lot of the basic netiquette that makes me very effective in other online environments, where I also have spent a not-inconsequential amount of time over the years.
That trend you describe has already hit me pretty squarely, though I think AI is going to be a barrier to lived experience because it distorts real reflection.
As you wrote earlier, the rules of online interaction are basically the same online as offline. At least, I would guess that is the case for most of us posting here. My understanding is that the incredibly rapid take-up of social media was facilitated because many people who had grown up with an entirely real-life experience of social interaction were able to frictionlessly transfer their expectations to a different medium. People were able to treat the otherwise unfamiliar online social environment as being like the familiar offline world.
However, we are already well into the generations who have grown up with online social media, and whose learned rules of social engagement have involved transfers in both directions between offline and online. These are people who learned how to engage both offline and online at the same time. And who prefer some of the ways online engagement works, to the extent of not seeing all aspects of offline engagement as a normal part of life that they need to come to terms with. Why can't we change the offline world so that it's more like the online world, or just minimise the extent to which you have to engage with the offline world at all?
Human beings invent technology, and using technology changes human behaviour, and what it means to be human.
The effect of AI is to put this on steroids, or add rocket boosters. There is already plenty of written material about AI friends/chatbots and authenticity. One of the things that strikes me is that researchers seem rather more concerned about the authenticity of AI than users. There also seems to be a developing acceptance that although AI is never going to be authentic in a human, real-life (imitative) sense, people are still able to relate to AI friends/chatbots as legitimate companions, albeit of a rather different nature.
One of the articles I've been reading, Can Chatbots Be Authentic? by Megan Ward, addresses your question. Back when the telegraph was introduced,
Yeah, I'm definitely a bit worried about what'll happen to people if they get in the habit of using AI is a go-between. I could see that getting really weird.
Far as online and IRL, I think that at some points in life I've had wildly different online and IRL personalities. The social rules are teh same, sure, but since...for instance...I'm absolutely awful at figuring conversational timing, or a lot better at writing than talking...you'd get at totally different sense of me in person than online.
I do think that I've gotten more "integrated" as I've gotten older, and more confident IRL, which I think might be a consequence of internet socialization. I think I learned more socialization on the internet than I did in person. It's easier to process information visually than orally. At any rate, I think internet socialization is already a thing and likely accelerating. I think we agree there.
Also...did I say online and offline were the same? Hm. I think the rules of online socialization can wildly vary even from one forum to the next, just as is true in real life environments. That's an interesting thing.
On top of all that, even using something as simple as verbal language, @Gwai and I can have whole conversations while we hash out what precisely was meant by a simple word. And that's using a common language in which I'm fluent, with someone who probably knows me as well as anyone in the world does!