Jason Wehmhoener

I apparently haven't been following closely enough recently to catch the thread(s) but I will say that I think it's probably more useful to support ideas you believe in than to attempt to tear down the opinions of others. The former can contribute to a movement, while the latter is merely a personal attack. - Jason Wehmhoener

People were posting a bunch of feed items about the Sarah Palin stories of the day and everyone was freaking out. The issue was that all politics on FriendFeed is bad and people saying they're going to stop using FriendFeed for the next three months. Died down after about an hour. - Mark Trapp

People are sick of the political chatter - see? this is why we need "hide" by keyword! - Sarah Perez

What bugs me is that many of the same people who whine about good, healthy political discussion on FriendFeed are the same ones who flood FF with their tiring, pointless, Being-John-Malkovich, belly-button-gazing, blogging about blogging, FFing about FF, gadget worship, and other assorted provincial head-up-the-ass mutual Web 2.0 masturbation. I find those topics marginally interesting, partially for entertainment value, but they're hardly going to change the world. Who is elected in November will. - Anthony Citrano

waahh... ;-) - ChangeForge | Ken Stewart via twhirl

I would hope that the Americans on Friendfeed wouldn't be "sick of the political chatter" in an election year. I do wish people would discuss more substantial issues and leave the spin and personality politics to the networks. I also feel that personal attacks are always counterproductive. I really appreciate political discussion that introduces new information or ideas, and it would bum me out if I stopped seeing that kind of content in Friendfeed. Fortunately I don't see any such thing happening. - Jason Wehmhoener

+1 Anthony, in other words it is OK to flood FF w/topics you have interest/passion about, but if no interest in something else: those folks are annoying. - Ruth Ferguson

i suspect the problem is not centered on politics, but emotions. lots of people get emotionally tied to a side of an argument and, when things get tight, emotions are liable to replace reason. i see religious arguments follow a similar trajectory. - MikeAmundsen

It's possible for adults to gain the maturity to recognize the value of reason and the dangers of unfocused and unexamined passion. - Jason Wehmhoener

@Mike - this is definitely an issue and I have been unimpressed with some people's ability to keep things focused on the issues. But I have found this almost everywhere - not just FriendFeed - people instinctively go ad hominem without any realization of how unconstructive it is (for all sides.) - Anthony Citrano

Yeah, it was never the issue of banning the discussion of politics but the fact that people were getting coarse and personal. And if Anthony doesn't like tiring, pointless, Being-John-Malkovich, belly-button-gazing, blogging about blogging, FFing about FF, gadget worship, and other assorted provincial head-up-the-ass mutual Web 2.0 masturbation then why is he subscribed to me?!* I probably have the most pointless feed in FriendFeed! (*for some reason, I typed that out rather than cutting and pasting) - Akiva Moskovitz

Akiva, I imagine it was satisfying to type that out. :-) - Jason Wehmhoener

If it was the emotional presentation, not the content, where's the moral outrage about this? http://beta.friendfeed.com/e/7... Or this? http://beta.friendfeed.com/sea... - Mark Trapp

Anthony, that means that I *PIRATED* your words rather than *STOLE* them. - Akiva Moskovitz

Mark, what, Noah David Simon's comment? There's a reason why he and Igor are probably the most blocked people on FriendFeed. There's been plenty of discussion about it. - Akiva Moskovitz

@Akiva - that might explain why I was so confused looking at those links. Noah and Igor long ago landed in my FF dustbin. - Anthony Citrano

Akiva: yeah, I've blocked both of those people too, which left me confused. - Robert Scoble

Akiva, I blocked Noah, I don't know what he said. I'm talking about the non-rational, emotional, and half-the-time offensive comments and analysis in the web 2.0 world. Steve Gillmor is the epitome of that. Nobody seems to care about those: that's just business-as-usual. But when it's something outside the web 2.0 world, "Jesus Christ, get that out of here!" - Mark Trapp

Mark: that's because tech doesn't piss off people. Politics pisses off 50% if you really discuss it from any one angle. - Robert Scoble

Robert, sure, which goes to my point. Akiva and Mike were suggesting that it wasn't politics that was causing issues, but the way people were presenting them. - Mark Trapp

Quite honestly, I've been more pissed off by the Google Browser shared items. People share the news as item, then write a blog post, then share via Google reader, then twitter, etc. FF needs to eliminate dupes somehow. It's ironic that I need to turn to Techmeme to filter the noise. - trextor

Robert, it really shouldn't piss off 50%. That's setting the bar pretty low. I would really like to hope that a statistically significant percentage of Friendfeed users are capable of discussing something as important as politics without automatically getting pissed off due to some shallow red/blue categorization of perceived spin. Tell me I'm dreaming and we'll have to agree to disagree. - Jason Wehmhoener

Mark, what Mike and I suggested is proven by Robert's addition. The subject that causes the overly-emotional presentations is irrelevant. It could be made about politics, religion, Mac vs. PC (Mac), vim vs. emacs (vim), Volkswagen vs. Hondas (Volkswagen), etc., etc. - Akiva Moskovitz

Well, I was fascinated that Digg segmented out tech talk and made other "categories" for politics, business, etc. It would have made more sense to keep everything in one stream and search from an architecture / philosophical perspective. It seems geeks are more in love with their echo chamber than even the political types :-) - Brandon Werner

Akiva, that hypothesis isn't demonstrably proven. Polarizing issues in tech are perpetuated, with hardly any outrage, for months. Steve Gillmor's post today is indicative of that: beating the same Twitter vs. Everything argument out that's been going on since March. Yet I don't see a dozen feed items about people getting physically sick of the Twitter vs. everything arguments. It's not the presentation, it's the content. People have a serious issue talking about substantive topics outside of tech. - Mark Trapp

Jason, you're mostly right. I think the majority of the issue stemmed from just one or two users' disrespectful attitudes. I'm consistently amazed at the high level of quality and maturity here. And I'm amazed at the majority's tolerance of goofy-assed shit like the uppercase frenzy last night. - Akiva Moskovitz

Mark, let's get one thing nice and sparkling clear: you are not allowed to disagree with me. Seriously, though, of course it's anecdotal. I don't think anyone has statistical data to back up such a claim. But I have seen plenty of tech arguments get downright nasty. - Akiva Moskovitz

I dunno, Scoble, most adults I know can carry on intelligent discourse about an issue of the day without getting upset. Passion is one thing, but "pissed off" at the other person - to the Person - is unconstructive. Working on a campaign it becomes even harder to depersonalize some pretty intense shit. I have seen many personal relationships crumble as a result. I'm not saying we don't all get angry, I know I have. I'm just saying that when I do, it's not a part of myself I am terribly proud of. - Anthony Citrano

Anthony: I've been thinking about this. Part of the problem is that so many people are so passionate about politics that it causes a very real repetition problem. I've seen hundreds of Tweets about Palin today that mostly say the same thing. After seeing a few I started getting tired of seeing the same thing over and over from different people. - Robert Scoble

I think the answer to the repetition (the "low" level of discourse) is not to tune out politics altogether, but to raise the bar, add something substantive to the conversation. Some potential topics that would help: poverty, health care, taxes, lobbying, military privitization, etc. In other words: issues. Those of us that frequent forums such as this have a unique opportunity to set the tone and topic in a way that WE define. We don't have to stick to the network television talking points. - Jason Wehmhoener

+1 Robert. I don't mind opinions on politics nut after awhile repetition numbs me to the whole process in general - Kyle Lacy via fftogo

People need to calm down. - Duncan Riley

Ooh, that belly-button-gazing riff by Anthony Citrano was a fine piece of writing and dead on. Here's the thing: the Friendfeed software should be powerful and flexible enough to customize and fine-tune the information stream for each of us. No one's obsessions should intrude upon anyone else's obsessions. One should feel fully comfortable in expressing oneself without worrying about invading the space of anyone else. Regarding politics: if it was good enough for Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, James Madison, John Adams, etc. it's good enough for me. - Sean McBride

The best minds I know are intensely interested in cutting-edge technology and deep politics, and all the strategic interactions between these two domains. - Sean McBride

law is code. - Nathan Eckenrode

@Scoble: I can understand - I, too, tire of repetition - whether it be about the latest FriendFeed widget or McCain nominating a nobody as his running mate. I've worked in and around American politics a long time now, and Palin is huge, huge political news. My sense is if you subscribed to fewer people it wouldn't seem as bad, but there are probably emerging features that could help manage the flow, too. Consider that it might be a flaw/by-product of the medium rather than the subject matter. - Anthony Citrano

I couldn't hope to count the Tweets and FF shares I had to wade through around the iPhone launch about who had/didn't have one, how many people were in which line, which store had what stock, who had which line position, how long the line was, who had ice cream with whom while waiting, and every other associated quirk, twist, and subplot. For those who don't get a boner over such things, it's excruciatingly tedious. But I don't complain because I realize, with my friending choices, I've asked for it. - Anthony Citrano

One man's meat is another man's poison, perhaps these things go in cycles. My feed was full of bacon one week (I'm mostly vegetarian) and rather than rant I just ruthlessly hid stuff. Same with Chrome, when you're on a Mac it's not useful. Tolerance, hiding stuff and respect for others go a long way online. - Sally Church

@Anthony Citrano: My thoughts exactly. Exactly. - Valley