For help, advice and discussion about stuff not related to aviation. Play nice: no religion, no politics and no axe grinding please.
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By PeteSpencer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1819763
Charles Hunt wrote:Back to the original question.

Down the pub chatting to real human beings.


The four pubs within walking distance of our house have all closed down:

Two are private houses, one is several blocks of flats/social housing and one is a day nursery................... :(
By johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1819767
As I have mentioned from time to time, "the technology that cannot be abused has yet to be invented"

From the printing press to the "soshall meedja " from the flint axe to explosives......
Flyin'Dutch' liked this
By Fellsteruk
#1819769
Love the Internet, it pays my bills and let’s my fly but social media whilst can be very positive is possibly the most toxic corrosive element on our mental health and decay of society to date.

After finding myself being a zombie constantly looking at feeds of so called “friends” I was like, what are you doing, your a drone.

Maybe it was a moment of clarity or instability but one evening several years ago I just deleted my Twitter, Facebook and Instagram account, after a little cold turkey I honestly felt better.

More recently I have rejoined insta but this was fueled by my love of flying and wanting to see what other pilots are doing and pretty much my only social persona.

I do worry that so many kids are on social being influenced by self proclaimed idols, famous for doing nothing but be on social “influencers” giving these impressionable minds a so called perfect life to live upto.

Sorry rant over, social can be good but I think it’s gone far past that these days.

And don’t get me started on big tech’s selective moderation, to keep us “protected”
Rob P, T6Harvard liked this
#1819798
I once had to deal with the aftermath of a fatal incident where news had reached family members via social media before formal family notification; not all pleasant and very difficult to handle. The speed and breadth of reach is something else, but it can be massively problematic used wrongly.
#1819799
Fellsteruk wrote:... but one evening several years ago I just deleted my Twitter, Facebook and Instagram account, after a little cold turkey I honestly felt better.


This was my Facebook experience. I said I was taking a break, thinking I'd go back once Brexit (particularly) and Covid was out of the way.

For a couple of days I was bereft. Now, six or seven months on, nothing would entice me back.

Rob P
#1819821
MattL wrote:I once had to deal with the aftermath of a fatal incident where news had reached family members via social media before formal family notification; not all pleasant and very difficult to handle. The speed and breadth of reach is something else, but it can be massively problematic used wrongly.

That must have been dreadful, unfortunately these days on witnessing an incident the first action of a lot of people is to reach for their phone to either record a video or post something on social media rather than offering assistance. It seems like people get a thrill by being the first to report something or being the bearer of bad news.
johnm liked this
#1819839
It's now around two years since this forum introduced the "Like"-option, thereby becoming a bit more of a social media. I don't mind admitting that it has changed the way I use the forum: if I've posted something that I thought was interesting/clever/funny I do check now again for that little notification bell. We are all humans and crave affirmation from friends, peers and even strangers. Nobody on here is my "friend" in the traditional sense: I've met only a handful of you and then only once or twice. Still, I do appreciate that little "xxx likes this" in the corner. In particular if the person has shown themselves to be an authority in the area discussed.

A big difference between this forum and, say, Twitter is that I find the tone here generally positive, polite and sincere. (There have been exceptions, but let's not go there. They were exceptions, after all.) Deliberate misunderstandings and vicious retorts are thankfully very few and far apart. In particular I like the way most forumites answer posts in the Student Forum.
kanga, skydriller, Charles Hunt and 1 others liked this
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By skydriller
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1819853
The Flyer forum and the EuroGA forum are the only social media I look at.

I have met several of you via the forum fly-ins and I think this personal contact that many of us have with each other is why generally there is a polite tone to most posts. This same personal knowledge also means that humour is also taken the way it is meant to be taken as opposed to being jumped on as offensive.

The knowledge base on the two forums I look at is enormous, with so much information now available to us all with one or two clicks. When I look back at how things were when I started flying and got my PPL... I cringe at how little I knew.

Regards, SD..
Charles Hunt, akg1486, PeteSpencer and 1 others liked this
#1819860
skydriller wrote:I have met several of you via the forum fly-ins and I think this personal contact that many of us have with each other is why generally there is a polite tone to most posts. This same personal knowledge also means that humour is also taken the way it is meant to be taken as opposed to being jumped on as offensive.

You no doubt have a point. But luckily this politeness spills over also on us who for various reasons (geographically, in my case) lack that personal contact. So thanks for that! :thumleft:
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By skydriller
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1819864
@akg1486 Well, I did try really hard to get up to Gothenburg back in 2019, but the weather that August just wouldnt cooperate!! If it were not for this forum and your posts, I would probably not even have tried...

Regards, SD..
akg1486 liked this
#1819870
Rob P wrote:
Fellsteruk wrote:... but one evening several years ago I just deleted my Twitter, Facebook and Instagram account, after a little cold turkey I honestly felt better.


This was my Facebook experience. I said I was taking a break, thinking I'd go back once Brexit (particularly) and Covid was out of the way.

For a couple of days I was bereft. Now, six or seven months on, nothing would entice me back.

Rob P

I recommend, if you haven't seen it, the 'Nosedive' episode of Netflix's 'Black Mirror' series:

#1819899
@skydriller: you are welcome to try and visit again when the current madness has subsided and we're back to some type of (new) normal. As is everyone else, of course!
#1820060
On the R4 'Today' programme this morning (Thur 14 Jan) there was, inevitably, discussion of the HoR vote on Impeachment yesterday. A US politics academic connected the rise of social media partly (and of the extremer parts of the current President's base) to the decline of locally-based local news reporting. [hese trends were, obviously, concomitant in time, andI suppose it's hard to say which is cause and which effect. He suggested (talking only about the US) that not only did the lack of a well-resourced, well-motivated, local media base leave a vacuum which made it likely that the 'ordinary' voter would seek and believe 'news' (however false; eg 'conspiracies') from national and international sources available online in social media, geared by clever algorithms to reinforcement of ever more extreme 'echo chamber' beliefs; but also that there was much less scrutiny by their communities of local politicians (and their influencers and backers) at the start of their careers, so fewer opportunities to stymie the careers of those likely to be incompetent or corrupt.

ISTR reading that the community near Grenfell Tower had had a genuinely local print newspaper, with local office and journalists, and that this had commonly carried complaints from tenants of Council-owned high-rise blocks; but those blocks were now run at 'arm's length' by an outsourced agency, the source of many of the complaints. However, that local newspaper (like many/most) was part of a national chain. The national management had 'consolidated' that and other local London-area papers so that North Kensington was one of several 'patches' assigned to a single reporter based in Croydon ..

In the '80s we used to have the daily printed local paper delivered. For many years now it has been printed only weekly, which we do not buy; but at least it has a daily-maintained website of local news, which I do read.

So where would we be without social media ? Possibly better-informed and engaged locally, and with a more balanced feed of national and international news. Newspapers were/are obviously purchased and therefore chose, but freely received (pace TV licence cost) fairly professional and balanced broadcast (TV and radio) news.
JAFO liked this