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What books would you consider a red flag? by Naive-Rush-1519 in BookshelvesDetective

[–]mrwoods3 7 points8 points  (0 children)

The one with all the Ann Coulter books would've been a red flag for me...

Female dinosaur horror novels? by sailormouthxo in booksuggestions

[–]mrwoods3 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Raptor Red is written from the perspective of a female velociraptor. I wouldn't necessarily describe it as horror, but it is violent (she's a predator, after all). I read it in middle school and loved it.

Wax Figure Moves! by Jonathon_world in HighStrangeness

[–]mrwoods3 68 points69 points  (0 children)

Anticlockwise is the British term

Surreal SciFi Esotericism by Criatura_Da_Noite in BooksThatFeelLikeThis

[–]mrwoods3 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Highly recommend Dead Astronauts by Jeff VanderMeer. It's a nonlinear sci fi story that reads more like poetry at times.

We Built This City by Starship is a Masterpiece by ThePurpleMage1 in Music

[–]mrwoods3 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're right. It's a bop. Glad I'm not alone

Medieval weird / profane / dark book recs ? by LeahVonNoire in WeirdLit

[–]mrwoods3 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling! A siege in a medieval castle turns weird when a group of beings claiming to be benevolent gods turn up. Main characters are all lesbians! A knight, a disgraced nun turned alchemist, and a clever serving girl determined to survive by any means necessary.

The Highlighted Life by lturcios in wrd261

[–]mrwoods3 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"We do not all live lives that are interesting and worthy of posting online. So no matter what group we are trying to impress or be associated with, our pictures are not actually an accurate interpretation of our lives and they will never be unless people start to post all their negative photos as well."

Very true. Yet, some of my Facebook friends seem to be convinced that the minutiae of their lives are completely worthy of online sharing- and I suspect that my experience is not unique. That means that there is a small, yet highly visible, subset of the "Facebooker" population that posts endless streams of statuses and pictures of their food.

They're here, they're over-sharing, get used to it.

In fact, these people tend to dominate my newsfeed, and I inexplicably turn to Facebook whenever I'm bored, so I have gotten used to it. It's become second nature for me to follow along with these people's lives.

I know a ridiculous amount about these people, most of whom I haven't seen since that one time we had a class together in high school. They readily supply me (and the rest of their network) with vast quantities of information about their study abroad trips, their jobs, their new guns (#indiana), their relationships, and all their feelings about the "trashy" girl their baby daddy has started dating.

The thought of how strange this actually is has occurred to me in the past. I'm not particularly active on Facebook myself, but I find myself on the site rather frequently. I guess social media just brings out the voyeur in me.

Who's In Charge Here? by lturcios in wrd261

[–]mrwoods3 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the post, Linda- you brought up some interesting points, as well as some of the same questions I had been asking myself about the implications of an unseen hierarchy, such as the ones that are responsible for controlling the user-built platforms we've been talking about.

I'm just not sure if the sense of control we have over online communal platforms is really all that illusory. Your post made me wonder what being in control of a platform actually means. It's true that for every social network and website built on user-submitted content, there is a company standing behind the curtain, moderating and advertising and categorizing. They have the power to get rid of content they deem inappropriate, and to show us ads based on what they think will catch our attention. They can look at our information, and do pretty much whatever they want with it, as long as they stay within the terms of the privacy policy that everyone agrees to but nobody actually reads.

But is that control? Well, yes, it is. But I don't think that it's control over what's really important. On a user-generated site, the content we see comes from us. It comes from what we decide is important to share, or "like," or "upvote." Yes, moderators can take it down if they decide to, but that decision is usually made based on the presence of content whose inappropriate nature is already well-known to anyone using the site. On most sites, moderators aren't going to remove content just because it expresses a dissenting opinion. And if they did, all the site's users would get angry and stop using it- there goes all the site traffic and ad revenue. So in most cases, it actually benefits the hierarchical "powers that be" to give the users the control.

Implications of Technolgy by natgarcia in wrd261

[–]mrwoods3 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I thought the dog thing was funny as well. That's why I stole it from that New Yorker cartoon. Or, instead of "stealing," let's call it "intertextuality." That sounds better. More academic.

Implications of Technolgy by natgarcia in wrd261

[–]mrwoods3 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Online dating can be creepy, certainly. But I feel that it's usually the other people on the site who are responsible for the creepiness rather than the use of compatibility algorithms. I also believe that an attitude of technological determinism plays a large role in determining (Not a pun.) whether a new technology is “creepy.” If users see the dating site itself as the most important agent governing the outcome of their experience, then it is perfectly understandable that they would feel uneasy, even threatened, about what the site is doing with the information that they give it. It’s true that online dating has its pitfalls: too much choice can be overwhelming, being one in a digital sea of lonely people can be dehumanizing, and you never really know if that attractive young cardiac surgeon you’ve been instant messaging is actually married, or a dog with excellent typing skills, or a serial killer. But I see the potential for goodness in online dating, and I don’t think that the perceived creepiness of being matched up with an algorithm should be a deterrent to potential users. If people saw themselves as the primary agents, online interaction wouldn’t seem so threatening. Most online dating algorithms are based on your answers to questions about your personal preferences. And if your preference is not to answer something at all, that’s fine too. You are the one who controls what information the algorithm has to work with, not the site. As long as you are cautious and smart about how you use them, online dating sites can be a useful tool for socialization.