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Originally Posted by Fuzz
I'm about halfway through the documentary, and I was thinking about places like CP and other forums, and I don't really think this bit is true, at least not in the way described in the film. With Facbook and Twitter, you get to select who you talk to, or see updates from, and the algorithms will also do that. There is active prompting, and tracking, and analyzing going on. So you are actively filtering what you see, and selecting only the things you like, at the same time the algorithms are doing it for you, but also feeding you stuff that you haven't selected, typically not to your benefit.
Around here, we are forced to interact with the people who are here. They are not necessarily our friends, or even people we would typically spend time with. You can't really unfriend those that say, love Trump, like you would on Facebook. Yes, you can ignore, but I don't think it is used much.
Perhaps the most dangerous feature here is the "thanks button", and if that is the worst of it, well, it's pretty innocuous. I think you need to separate interacting with people online form being force fed other people's thoughts and opinions, along with products and advertisements. Having meaningful interactions online isn't a bad thing, it's just a different way to discuss topics. Social media is an entirely different thing.
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Where I see the similarities of CP with other social media (Reddit specifically) is the addictiveness of the interactions and, sometimes, the group-think mentality.
CP is where many people find out about news first. Whether it's political, sports, entertainment, etc. That news isn't alway fact checked or information is cherry picked to support the posters view. Sure it could and usually is debunked or errors pointed out by other posters but that's not always the case.
Contrary opinions get piled on and I see forms of bullying happen all the time. If someone says something that's incorrect or is a personal opinion that might seem "out there", it doesn't take the next 10 posters to tell them so.
I also sometimes question the mental health of posters who are unable to let go of an argument. They keep coming back to get in their two cents. If they didn't have this forum, would they just transfer that mentality to something else or would they be a little more relaxed because they didn't have this place to argue with someone?
You can't tell me that someone who posts on here 20-30 times a day isn't a little addicted to the interaction here?
I've spoken to 4 or 5 CPers in the real world, who have said they've had to take breaks from the site because they waste too much time here or the constant negativity is causing it to lose the fun or that they can't stop going to threads they know are just going to piss them off (usually the political stuff).
While CP doesn't force things on you the way other forms of social media do, it can be addictive and is a form of social media.