Sunday, August 24, 2008
[Blog] | [Home] | [Robots]
Too Much Engagement Here's something I never thought I'd say: There's such a thing as too much engagement in a social community. A couple days ago, I wrote over at World Domination something that's a symptom of my growing irritation this election season: "How Do You Tell Your Friend He's a Moron?"

Really, it's a symptom of another issue, though, and that is the fact that tech reality has a well known liberal bias. I can't venture out into FriendFeed or Twitter these days without being mobbed by hordes of screaming Obama nuts. It isn't something I can block or hide, either. On O'Biden day, I tried. I went about the business of hiding as much of the "OMG, BIDEN IS SLICED BREAD" tweets and posts as I could, but conversations were cropping up everywhere around it.

Conversations about how great socialized medicine is from people who've never studied the effects of socialized medicine on the economy of a country. Conversations on the wonders of Obama's tax proposal from folks who've never studied tax codes. Conversations on how great communism and socialism is and why we need it in America.

Essentially, I've been thrown in with armchair politics gurus. The majority of these people don't seem to study politics and policy unless there's a national election (and even then, their study doesn't include anything but the campaign propaganda).

In short, it's as if I've been transplanted to your typical Daily Kos/Huffington Post message board.

When I signed up for FriendFeed and Twitter, this wasn't what I had in mind, and it points out a fatal flaw in the lifestreaming service as a message board concept. Folks that I really enjoy having discussions about tech with, I absolutely deplore having conversations about politics with.

I'm really have no desire to spend every waking Internet hour pointing out the falsehood, error, inanity and offensiveness of what most of these folks are saying. I'd much prefer to actually talk tech with these folks, or alternatively talk politics with folks who will say things they know to be true because of research they've done rather than because they heard a candidate or pundit say it once.

I'm going to give some of these conversation agents sime time to die down on the liberal buzz - probably a few days. If my sad guestimation is correct, though, this smug talking point regurgitation isn't going to end until after the election. There's a strong possibility I'll be disengaging from these networks in the meantime; I simply don't think I can stand three straight months of mindless zealotry from folks I otherwise respect.

Update: For those of you who continue to Obama-gush, O'Biden-ate, Bush-bash, or McCain-ify... may I suggest you follow the suggestions put forth in the following video? (Google Reader folks, you wanna click through to the blog for this one...):


Today Now!: How To Pretend You Give A Shit About The Election posted by Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins at 11:47 AM blog comments powered by Disqus