Embassy of Time said:
I haven't been here for a long time. Mostly because of LIFE™, but also because I noticed that I, and many others, have begun isolating myself online. By that I mean that I stick to very few (one or two) communities at a time. Comfort zones and all that. But I started noticing that it seems pretty common. People talk a lot about echo chambers, and I am starting to fear that I have slipped into a culture of isolating myself where I feel ‘safe’, or just from habit.
I'm concerned about online society in general, but so far i can't see a general up or down of it yet.
Seemingly it changes society towards increasing confusion and distraction, distrust and sycophancy. That's surely a problem. And maybe the group of game devs, due to their interest in technology, is more affected than some others.
On the other hand it's now easier to find people sharing interests, which is no bad thing, and may help some people to break out of isolation to some degree. Even if those groups of shared interests don't meet in person, but just on virtual spaces.
So that's hard to judge.
frob said:
I don't think that “we creative types” are programmed to slip into it, or that we fall into the traps of social isolation and echo chambers any more or less than any other groups.
Agree if you say it like this. Personally, as a kid i felt like an outsider. A computer geek, surrounded by soccer players in the village. I had friends, but not many.
Then, as a teen in art school, the situation was suddenly very different: Class mates were no longer so different from me. There was more shared interest, and it felt i was part of a community with the others.
But the question may not be about creative types but computer geeks. Which gives us a very different list of associated prejudges than for creatives:
Geeks are not cool, so they are not invited to parties and they only want to sit alone in front of their computer anyway. There surely is a bit of truth to that.
And there also is another issue, which strangely is never discussed in public, unlike justice about genders or colors of skin: forms of Autism, Asperger Syndrome, etc.
Over the years i have learned that many people are affected, right here, and one of them said to me: We tend to focus on tech industry in general, and games specifically. Which makes sense. Caring about complicated details in computer programs, avoiding difficult social interactions, build a virtual world free of all those social issues which are so hard to deal with.
As an industry outsider idk what's done for integration of affected people, but to me it seems the topic would need more attention than the current debates about social justice, harassment or crunch.
I'd like to know what other think about this.
But coming back to the topic, there is indeed one specific related risk i see here: Tech industry as a whole, and the visions they have, try to sell and hype, are currently very influential. Music is basically dead, but games are still doing well and may have replaced the rock star idols for a younger generation. But what if this industry, driven mostly by nerds and geeks, is not skilled enough at social competence to guide people at all? Zuckerbergs legless Metaverse is my favorite example. No fun, no function. But it's ‘the future’. Well, i guess not. But if so, echo chambers and virtual societies may indeed become a bigger problem. I would not wonder.
In this regard, personally i would not want to work on a technology which is meant to suck people into a virtual fake reality for serious amounts of wasted time, e.g. some MMO or it's future Metaverse descendants. That's not better than a rock star in the 70's, showing kids how cool he is by taking drugs, smashing guitars and TV sets.
Currently i'm more isolated than ever. And yes, it's because of games. An accident at work caused me permanent Tinnitus, so i did quit the job to prevent happening this again. And i could not find a new job here in my cow village. So i decided to fund myself from savings, and working on games technology which i hopefully can sell to industry once done. I work at home for many years now, and when Covid came up, i did not even really notice the amount of ‘extra isolation’ it did add on top : )
A site like this indeed helps to feel less isolated, seeing other people working on similar dreams about silly games as well. I have family, but i do not care about other friendships currently - all my time goes into never ending work.
But i'm fine with that. It was my decision to go this way.
