I like to think she's going nudie behind that sign.

>>14978

Yeah, and if someone else tries to pin the, at best marginally successful, Arab Spring on Twitter they're getting a hot teaspoon up the nose.

But that's not even a hash. It's a cross hatches at best.

>>14981
#hashtagfail?

WE'RE JUST SPREADING AWARENESS, SPREADING AWARENESS, SPREADING AWARENESS, SPREADING AWARENESS, SPREADING AWARENESS, SPREADING AWARENESS, SPREADING AWARENESS....

Do fuck off... What can the common person do to save 273 people in a foreign dangerous country, thousands of kilometres from home?

Oh of course, bleat about it on social media like some self-perpetuating virus.

>>14983
Better shut down all the newspapers then. All they do is spread awareness.

>>14984

But what do they with do with that awareness? A newspaper exists to spread information as well as awareness. The First Lady can whisper into Obama's ear like a sort of Wormtongue-with-a-heart. How many people is Emma Watson, a fine actress, really informing about these kidnappings? The problem with these Twitter campaigns is that have no real goal, other than the promotion of the cause, but people contribute to them as if they were the end-all solution. And at worst often they can feel like shallow exercises in bandwagoning on the part of those who put themselves in these images. Emma Watson would probably have been better off sending out a link to a news article rather than a picture of her head above a hashtag.

What's the problem here?

>>14986

Apparently if you feel strongly about an important issue or global event you shouldn't do even the smallest thing within your power, but instead do nothing.

On a serious note, it's only /101/ material when they do it for slef-promotion, a la 'official comic relief single' etc. A celebrity using their voice/outreach and influence to communicate about an important issue is a much better use of social media than most.

Kidnappings like this have been happening in north east Nigeria for a couple of years now. Maybe there is a threshold number you have to reach before people start giving a shit. That number might be 273. Next time they should kidnap 272 kids.

HA.

>>14985
I cannot help but feel that the only thing they can accomplish is to give legitimacy to the government, be it US or UK or whatever to intervene even more in other countries, when really I doubt meddling in this situation will help at all.
The people who did this are not going to turn round now and say sorry and return the girls because some actor and assorted teenagers use a hashtag.

>>14990
That is the point of it all, why would anyone think otherwise?

>>14989
Brilliant.

>>14980
There you go.

>>14985
You make it sound like the vast majority of people are so lacking in curiosity or attention that they would acknowledge the hashtag and then not bother to make the minimum of effort required to find out what it means.

Especially when it's rich people. Why can't Emma Watson hire some detectives to find and some mercs to rescue the girls? She can afford it. She can afford anything, she's rich.

>>15038
Because people like Watson have an agent and PR advisors who just tell them what to do, and how to get tweeted/on TV etc. She now has stronger brand value than the other day and can charge a greater fee for advertising and etc.

Maybe some of them do actually give a fuck but I strongly suspect most of these hashtag mandem couldn't place Nigeria on a globe.

>>14994
Yes, that's exactly how the majority of people treated the whole Kony 2012 thing, you know. Or was it an attempt at sarcasm?

>>15040
Proof?

>>15041

The fact that most people thought Carl Weathers and Joseph Kony were the same person?

>>15042
Leaving aside the matter of whether that's true or not, how is that supposed to be proof people didn't look beyond the hashtag?

>>15043
Can you prove they did look beyond the hashtag?

>>15044
Can you prove he can't?

>>15268
I don't like the #YesAllWomen tag, because it deals entirely in absolutes which is something only the Sith do.

>>15268

God I fucking hate twitter. Jesus, when did it get so bad?

>>15270
Those things are all true.

>>15271
The points about sexual assault are reasonable, the ones about being offended over the kind of insults that are made all over the internet because you're stupid enough to post under your real name less so.

>>15272
You do know that the anonymity afforded by sites like this is now a deviation from the norm, right?

It would've been stupid to post stuff under your own name and not expect fallout ten years ago, not so any more.

>>15273
What? I have a bookface but I don't post deliberately inflamatory/controversial/attentin seeking crap on it. You're under no obligation to use your real name on twatter.

The underbelly of vitriol and hatred is no different to 10 years ago, it's just that certain people think they're above it/are too naive to know of it until they are getting threatened.

>>15275
We've moved on from that now lad, keep up.

>>15273
> You do know that the anonymity afforded by sites like this is now a deviation from the norm, right?
Huh? What's wrong with anonymity?

>>15277
That's not what he's saying.

Go get a dictionary.

>>15274
You're not under any obligation, but pretty much everyone I know who uses it does. If you can't see that anonymity/pseudonymity as the default way we communicate online is dead, I don't know what to tell you. If you say something controversial but not threatening in real life, you might get shit for it, but it's not socially acceptable for it to escalate into abuse, certainly not outright threats of violence and murder. People now expect the same standards online.

Every time someone comes out saying more should be done against anonymous "trolls", a certain type of person comes out and laughs at them for "not understanding the internet". That was valid at one point, but now it's very much the other way around. If you can't see the direction it's headed, you're the one who doesn't understand the internet. What was once normal is now, as you say, an underbelly, for better or for worse.

>>15278
How will it help with my question lad? I don't really know what is that mysterious current norm he's referring to (I don't watch the trends closely enough). And that's what I'd like to know. I gather it's what >>15279 is writing about.

>>15280
What he's saying is that anonymity is now the exception rather than the rule.

>>15281
We'll do our best to preserve it here as long as possible.

>>15282
Please do. It is very much appreciated.

>>15282
>>15283
Hear, hear.

>>15280
>mysterious current norm
It's not mysterious at all, you don't need to look very hard at all to see the indicators. Look underneath a news article or blog post and there's a good chance you'll see people commenting under their real name, through Facebook, Twitter, Google etc. accounts.

>>15285
I don't see the problem in this instance. If you don't stand by what you say, then you probably shouldn't be saying it. I'm glad outlets like anonymous imageboards exist where we can dick about without consequence and ask awkward questions, but if you're just innocently commenting on the news, why the hell shouldn't you have the guts to identify yourself?

>>15286
Commenting on the news could potentially be very dangerous.

>>15287
Like voting and attending a place of worship could "potentially" be very dangerous?

>>15286
>I don't see the problem in this instance
Neither do I. I believe that both identifiable and anonymous discussion have a their own advantages, I'm merely pointing out where I think it's obviously headed. For a lot of people the idea of posting things online anonymously or under a pseudonym is alien and suspicious.

>>15288
Voting is possibly not the best example to give, seeing as secret ballots are a hallmark of any state with even a pretence of freedom and democracy.

>>15290
It's a perfectly fine example to give. I don't doubt our ballots are secret now, but really I have no way of knowing for sure and there's nothing to stop a suitably powerful group from compromising that secrecy if they so wished. If a government has reached the point where it starts rounding up random internet commentators, we're all fucked, pseudo-anonymity or not. They'd generally be able to tie IP records to subscribers anyway.

>>15291
>If a government has reached the point where it starts rounding up random internet commentators
I don't think anyone's suggesting that though?

>>15291
What? Your name isn't on the voting slip, how could that be compromised? This is entirely irrelevant because the government is far from the only group that could be dangerous. A party wouldn't have to be in power for their supporters to attack or otherwise intimidate people who comment negatively on the news regarding them. The government has access to your medical record, that doesn't mean you'd want everyone to be able to see it.

>>15293
>Your name isn't on the voting slip
However, it is on the electoral register, where you have a number. The ballot paper also has a number. In order to account for them properly, when you are given a ballot paper, your number is noted against the ballot number in a register. This register is taken to the count with the ballots in order to verify that the ballot boxes contain every ballot paper issued at that polling station and only those ballot papers. There is a lot of (hopefully) untapped potential in there to mine your vote. They could not only identify your ballot, but by reference to the other numbers they could figure out roughly when in the day you were likely to have voted (I was told by my neighbour, who worked at the polling station, that I was the last person to vote there last Thursday). A positive effect that we miss out on is district-level reporting, which most of the rest of the world seems to do now - for instance, in the US there's always that one place in New England with about 20 voters where they all turn up at midnight, cast their ballots, count and declare after about ten minutes.

>>15294
I wasn't aware of that but all the same the government isn't the only group that might be dangerous.

>>15294
>in the US there's always that one place in New England with about 20 voters where they all turn up at midnight, cast their ballots, count and declare after about ten minutes
You mean Vermont?

>>15292
Don't tell me what >>15287 wasn't suggesting. Tell me what he was suggesting.

>>15295
They would, however, be the only people with access to both the ballot register and marked ballot papers.

>>15298
Right but we were talking about commenting on news stories.

>>15286
>If you don't stand by what you say, then you probably shouldn't be saying it

Maybe you'll call me crazy or an immature 'troll' but sometimes when my opinion on a subject isn't too clear I'll post a deliberately controversial/inflamatory comment anonymously and adjust my opinion based on the replies. If someone systematically destroys the controversial point then I'll think 'fair enough, that sounds reasonable' and change my view to accomodate it. If all it gets are a load of emotional replies then I'll have a laugh at people for getting worked up over it and decide they're all idiots for doing so and I'm better off not siding with idiots.

For obvious reasons I wouldn't do this under my own name, but I find it usually stems some kind of debate which is far more interesting than a bunch of people idly nodding and agreeing for fear of being called out personally.

>>15300
Good God, you are an idiot.

>>15300
Trolling is fun but it's not really important.

>>15300

Any confirmation bias you might have renders this system completely useless. It will also leave you open to interpret something that isn't emotional as emotional.

You're an idiot, basically. I doubt this is news to you, though.

>>15300
> If someone systematically destroys the controversial point then I'll think 'fair enough, that sounds reasonable' and change my view to accomodate it.
You're alright m8.

Ignore these other butthurt comments.

>>15303
It's not meant to be a serious way of testing complex hypothsies but quite often people might bring up counterarguments I wouldn't have otherwise thought of. I'm also aware that a lack of good counterarguments from a small sample size isn't necessarily proof that the point is valid.

>>15281
Understood.
>>15283
Couldn't agree more.
>>15285
> Look underneath a news article or blog post and there's a good chance you'll see people commenting under their real name, through Facebook, Twitter, Google etc. accounts.
Not when you're running NoScript.
>>15286
> but if you're just innocently commenting on the news, why the hell shouldn't you have the guts to identify yourself?
Have you ever been threatened because of your viewpoint? Not that those threats matter much usually but they can be pretty annoying, especially when the person you have unknowingly insulted by stating your views/preferences is not a bright one.

>>15306
>Not when you're running NoScript.
Just like the Sun (in both senses), just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not there.

>Have you ever been threatened because of your viewpoint? Not that those threats matter much usually
Usually, yes. Just so people on both sides are aware, exceptionally those threats can be quite substantial, particularly if you disagree with certain groups. Political extremists, animal rights groups, and definitely not Scientology.

>>15307
> Just like the Sun (in both senses), just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not there.
Yah, that's what I meant.