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The digital humanities are one of the true delights of this era. Anthropologists are counting things like sociologists, sociologists are grappling with qualitative data like ethnographers, computational linguists are scraping and making sense of vast corpora of informal speech:
I follow a bunch of these digital humanities types: danah boyd, of course, but also Benjamin "Mako" Hill, whose work on the true meaning of the "free software"/"open source" debate is one of my daily touchpoints for making sense of the world we live in:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBknF2yUZZ8
Mako just published a new ACM HCI paper co-authored with his U Washington colleagues Nathan TeBlunthuis, Charles Kiene, Isabella Brown, and Laura Levi, "No Community Can Do Everything: Why People Participate in Similar Online Communities":
https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/3512908
The paper is a great example of this quantitative ethnography/qualitative statistical analysis hybrid. The authors are trying to figure out why there are so many similar, overlapping online communities, particularly on platforms like Reddit. Why would r/bouldering, r/climbharder, r/climbing, and r/climbingcirclejerk all emerge?
This is a really old question/debate in online community design. The original internet community space, Usenet, was founded on strict hierarchical principles, using a taxonomy to produce a single canonical group for every kind of discussion. Sure, there was specialization (rec.pets.cats begat rec.pets.cats.siamese), but by design, there weren't supposed to be competing groups laying claim to the same turf, and indeed, unwary Usenet users were often scolded for misfiling their comments in the wrong newsgroup.
The first major Usenet schism arose out of this tension: the alt. hierarchy. Though alt. later became known for warez, porn, and other subjects that were banned by Usenet's founding "backbone cabal," the inciting incident that sparked alt.'s creation was a fight over whether "gourmand" should be classified as "rec.gourmand" or "talk.gourmand":
Community managers design their services with strongly held beliefs about the features that make a community good. These beliefs, grounded in designers' personal experience, are assumed to be global and universal. Generally, this assumption is wrong, something that is only revealed later when more people arrive with different needs.
Think of Friendster's "fakester" problem, driven by its designers' beliefs about how people should organize their affinities:
And, as the paper's authors note, Stack Overflow has a strict prohibition on overlapping new communities, echoing Usenet's original design dispute.
On its face, this hierarchical principle for conversational spaces makes sense. Viewed through a naive economic lens of "reputation capital," having one place where all the people interested in your subject can be reached is optimal. The more people there are in a group, the greater the maximum "engagement" – likes, comments, reposts. If you're thinking about communities from an informational perspective, it's easy to assume that bigger groups are better, too: the more users there are in a topical group, the greater the likelihood that a user who knows the answer to your question will show up when you ask it.
But this isn't how online communities work. On every platform, and across platforms, overlapping, "redundant" groups emerge quickly and stick around over long timescales. Why is this?
That's the question the paper seeks to answer. The authors used data-analysis techniques to identify overlapping clusters of Reddit communities and then conducted lengthy, qualitative interviews with participants to discover why and how users participated in some or all of these seemingly redundant groups.
They conclude that there's a community-member's "trilemma": a set of three priorities that can never be fully satisfied by any group. The trilemma consists of users' need to find:
a) A community of like-minded people;
b) Useful information; and
c) The largest possible audience.
The thing that puts the "lemma" in this "trilemma" is that any given group can only satisfy two of these three needs. It's hard to establish the kinds of intimate, high-trust bonds with the members of a giant, high-traffic group, but your small, chummy circle of pals might not be big enough to include people who have the information you're seeking. Users can't get everything they need from any one group, so they join multiple groups that prioritize different paired corners of this people-information-scale triangle.
The interview excerpts put some very interesting meat on these analytical bones. For example, economists typically believe that online marketplaces rely on scale. Think of eBay: as the number of potential bidders increases, the likelihood that one will outbid another goes up. That drives more sellers to the platform, seeking the best price for their wares, which increases the diversity of offerings on eBay, bringing in more buyers.
But the authors discuss a community where vintage vinyl records are bought and sold that benefits from being smaller, because the members all know each other well enough to have a mutually trusting environment that makes transactions far more reliable. Actually knowing someone – and understanding that they don't want to be expelled from the community you both belong to – makes for a better selling and buying experience than consulting their eBay reputation score. The fact that buyers don't have as many sellers and sellers don't have as many buyers is trumped by the human connection in a community of just the right size.
That's another theme that arises in the paper: a "just right" size for a community. As one interviewee says:
I think there’s this weird bell curve where the community needs to be big enough where people want to post content. But it can’t get too big where people are drowning each other out for attention.
This explains why groups sometimes schism: they've gone from being "just big enough" to being "too big" for the needs they filled for some users. But another reason for schism is the desire by some members to operate with different conversational norms. Many of Reddit's topical clusters include a group with the "jerk" suffix (like r/climbingcirclejerk), where aggressive and dramatic forms of discourse that might intimidate newcomers are welcome. Newbies go to the main group, while "crusties" talk shit in the -jerk group. The authors liken this to "regulatory arbitrage" – community members seeking spaces with rules that are favorable to their needs.
And of course, there's the original source of community schism: specialization, the force that turns rec.pets.cats into rec.pets.cats.siamese, rec.pets.cats.mainecoons, etc. Though the authors don't discuss it, this kind of specialization is something that recommendation algorithms are really good at generating. At its best, this algorithmic specialization is a great way to discover new communities that enrich your life; at its worst, we call this "radicalization."
I devote a chapter of my 2023 book The Internet Con, "What about Algorithmic Radicalization?" to exploring this phenomenon:
The question I grapple with there is whether "engagement-maximizing" algorithms shape our interests, or whether they help us discover our interests. Here's the thought-experiment I propose: imagine you've spent the day shopping for kitchen cabinets and you're curious about the specialized carpentry that's used to build them. You go home and do a search that leads you to a video called "How All-Wood Cabinets Are Made."
The video is interesting, but even more interesting is the fact that the creator uses the word "joinery" to describe the processes the video illustrates. So now you do a search for "joinery" and find yourself watching a wordless, eight-minute video about Japanese joinery, a thing you never even knew existed. The title of the video contains the transliterated Japanese phrase "Kane Tsugi," which refers to a "three-way pinned corner miter" joint. Even better, the video description contains the Japanese characters: "面代留め差しほぞ接ぎ."
So now you're searching for "面代留め差しほぞ接ぎ" and boy are there a lot of interesting results. One of them is an NHK documentary about Sashimoto woodworking, which is the school that Kane Tsugi belongs to. Another joint from Sashimoto joinery is a kind of tongue-and-groove called "hashibame," but that comes up blank on Youtube.
However, searching on that term brings you to a bunch of message boards where Japanese carpenters are discussing hashibame, and Google Translate lets you dig into this, and before you know it, you've become something of an expert on this one form of Japanese joinery. In just a few steps, you've gone from knowing nothing about cabinetry to having a specific, esoteric favorite kind of Japanese joint that you're seriously obsessed with.
If this subject was political rather than practical, we'd call this process "radicalization," and we'd call the outcome – you sorting yourself into a narrow niche interest, to the exclusion of others – "polarization."
But if we confine our examples to things like literature, TV shows, flowers, or glassware, this phenomenon is viewed as benign. No one accuses an algorithm of brainwashing you into being obsessed with hashibame tongue-and-groove corners. We treat your algorithm-aided traversal of carpentry techniques as one of discovery, not persuasion. You've discovered something about the world – and about yourself.
Which brings me back to that original, Usenet-era schism over "redundant" groups. The person who wants to talk about being a "gourmand" in the "rec." hierarchy wants to participate in a specific set of conversational norms that are different from those in the "talk." hierarchy. Their interest isn't just being a "gourmand," it's in being a "rec.gourmand," something that is qualitatively different from being a "talk.gourmand."
The conversational trilemma – the unresolvable need for scale, trust and information – has been with us since the earliest days of online socializing. It's lovely to have it formalized in such a crisp, sprightly work of scholarship.
tell me about despair by @hattalove - was this technically December 31st of last year? Yes. Did this fic absolutely change my life and I revisit it 55 times over the course of this year? (I just checked my ao3 history wow that’s a lot of visits 😬)
also a carryover from last year, but the Demisexual Eddie Diaz tag
oh god i forgot my SEAL!buck moment was this year that was ✨ a time ✨
the Friends to Fiancés trope
shipping Reed Richards/Victor von Doom and convincing everyone that Victor is a bottom
…Teen Wolf (in my defense this one is @jjbwaywatch’s fault)
reading Supernatural fics with zero context (this is JJ again with help from @icaruspendragon)
had another Drarry moment, specifically post-war EWE fics (this one is @producerliz’s fault)
watched X-Men First Class and then immediately opened multiple tabs of first class-era Cherik fics
Young Royals (hyperfixated on s1 a month before s2 dropped, oct was a GREAT month for me personally)
similarly, music from Elias
listening to @theficlistpodcast & appreciating their spreadsheet
I had a brief heartstopper/osemanverse moment but that lasted like 2 days idk if it counts lol
…I made the mistake of reading All For The Game and then it ruined my life
Taylor Swift’s discography (thank you @bunkyyy)
the works and writings of danah boyd
and currently, the collection Jason getting blindsided by brotherly Instinct on ao3
It's funny. I haven't actually spent much time thinking about the Crisis Text Line debacle, but I find today that I am more deeply and personally furious than I expected. I'm not sure why. I never used the line, nor do I know of any of my friends or loved ones doing so. I was not especially invested in danah boyd as an intellectual or personality or standard-bearer.
I'm not saying it's inherently weird to be angry about what is obviously a horrific breach of trust and an ethical farce, especially when said farce is so emblematic of our Generally Fucked Condition. It's not weird! But the specific way that I'm angry is a way I usually only feel about something more...personal. Something I have built more emotional architecture around, over years. I'm having mental conversations about boyd of the kind I generally do about like, Iraq warmongers. (Which is something I have a lot more emotional entanglements with, and I understand that pretty well. I've written about it before.) What's happened with CTL is a betrayal, but in what way was I, as a total bystander, betrayed? Not clear.
I dunno. But anyway, for now, fuck her and her board. The volunteers seem to be so devastated; I can't imagine how any users who've heard are feeling. I hope she suffers in obscurity the rest of her days (she won't).
Aleks Krotoski asks 'has the internet been gentrified?'
Gentrification. It’s a constant cycle in the offline world. Run down areas with cheap rent attract a young arty crowd, business moves in when the area has a new hip image, and suddenly everyone wants to live there and the original residents find themselves priced out of the neighbourhood and so move on to a new place to start the cycle again.
But, we don’t just live in cities in the digital age. The internet was once a haven for freaks, geeks and weirdos, but now that everyone has poured into the same digital space, has it too been gentrified? And if it has… where can people go?
Aleks Krotoski explores how digital communities have shifted and evolved, through both the very human development of communities, and the technological changes of algorithms and automation that have like the highways and infrastructure of the physical world, have split communities and fundamentally changed how we live online. She discovers out how the cycle of progress has both helped and hurt us in the digital age, and finds out if the artists, the freaks, the geeks and the weirdos still have a place to call home.
Technology is pervasive. As the availability of portable devices, in conjunction with network bandwidth, becomes greater, so does our need for it to be accessible at all times. A Nokia “brick phone” once sat comfortably in your back pocket, but an iPhone’s preferred location is glued firmly to your hand, contact breaking only to eat (if necessary) and shower (for now).
We are in a state of perpetual connectedness (boyd 2012, p. 72), driven by a need to stay on the proverbial ball, and an insatiable thirst for information. With this constant state of connection comes a constant need to be present –but not in the ways we once were. We no longer need to be in the same office to be colleagues, and no longer need to actively reach out to maintain friendships. Concepts of time and space have transformed, taking our relationships with friends and family online, lifting boundaries previously enforced by distance, and changing our ideas about how and when we should be communicating (Siapera 2012, p. 191).
With the birth of social platforms, came the ability to publish the infinite details of our lives for the masses, to connect with people we know, those we used to know, and those we never would have crossed paths with otherwise (Murthy 2012, p. 9; Siapera 2012, p. 202). We can now stay up-to-date on our cousins’ vacations, participate in book clubs, and be active members of grassroots movements, simultaneously and all from the comfort of our own couches. Does this mean we are destined to become social recluses, misguided in our beliefs that we are interacting whilst wasting away from loneliness (TED-Ed 2013), or is it time to renegotiate what it means to be socially engaged?
Technology has broken down our social conventions, transforming them, and the possibilities are endless (boyd 2012, p. 75). It’s not about having the latest and greatest devices though, it’s about bettering our abilities to connect with people and information – our universal need to associate with others (boyd 2012, p. 73; Siapera 2012, p. 192). Being an accepted, useful member of a community is still important to us, but time is scarce and connecting with those geographically close-by somehow requires more effort than engaging with people anywhere on earth. Rather than being constrained to communicating with those who share a locality, we now seek to be grouped with those who share our interests and beliefs (Siapera 2012, p. 194), wherever they may be, in infinite, always “on”, digital communities.
Whilst the implications of these new communities are far-reaching and fluid, opening a whole realm of questions we don’t always have answers to (am I digging myself into a narrow-minded grave? did it even happen if it’s not on Instagram? did my Facebook data somehow get Trump elected???), I believe the positives far outweigh the negatives. The world is more connected than ever before. Instantly catching up with loved ones far and wide just requires decent network service. Any information we’ve ever dreamed of knowing (sometimes to be taken with a grain of salt) is literally at our fingertips. And if you’re ever feeling lonely, just write a status about it!
References
boyd, d 2012, 'Participating in the Always-On Lifestyle', in M Mandiberg (ed.) The Social Media Reader, NYU Press, New York, pp. 71-76.
Murthy, D 2012, Social Communication in the Twitter Age, Wiley, Oxford.
Siapera, E 2012, 'Socialities and social media', in Understanding new media, SAGE, London, pp. 191-208.
TED-Ed 2013, Connected, but alone?- Sherry Turkle, viewed 14 March 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv0g8TsnA6c>.
Images
'A man and woman talk at the bar' 2013 [image], Liam Walsh, New Yorker, viewed 14 April 2018, <https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/explain-yourself-liam-walsh-cartoonist>.
Steeped in cutting edge research around the social lives of networked teens, danah boyd demystifies technology while being wise about the changes it’s making to life and relationship. She has intriguing advice on the technologically-fueled generation gaps of our age — that our children’s immersion in social media may offer a kind of respite from their over-structured, overscheduled analog lives. And that cyber-bullying is an online reflection of the offline world, and blaming technology is missing the point.
