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MacRumors Forum Upgrade 2019
- Thread starter arn
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Could we get an update on when we might get to have dark mode for the forum, please and thank you.
I keep wondering what some real job sites -- or for that matter, hole-in-wall breakfast or lunch counters-- must be like these days whenever I see inquiries like this. My own day-to-day exposure in real places to real people I could do without is mostly voluntary these days, since I have retired from the workplace.
No offense is intended, especially because I'm slowly realizing that your question is not even atypical for forums or social media apps these days. I just wonder about what things are like in some quarters of the real world now, where we may not always have the option just to ignore people. And then I sometimes wonder if being able to ignore more people in a virtual world just makes it possible to put up longer with people we can't ignore out there in bricks and mortar situations. So I'm not even opposed to a positive response to your inquiry.
How about we get the numbers on what members are ignored the most and have them banned.
Honestly though, I wish I could ban people IRL. Unfortunately that's not legal. Just learn to coexist with others. I know a novel thought.
Hah, it's a tempting idea, isn't it. But we're in here, which isn't quite as real as it is out there. Out there we'd bail out sooner from most of the discussions that get really heated in here... no matter if they're about Apple gear or the politics of our own or some other country's head of state, or just some argument about borrowing the car or buying a boat.
I get why the idea of blocking is attractive, but probably it's going to remain up to us to settle for "ignoring" a user and then literally ignoring any thread references we have no control over, past just abandoning the thread or reporting posts we feel violate a guideline.
Sure we can all understand the annoyance when the thread is about tech info we came to collect and some member is posting a bunch of provocative remarks that may hover just under "trolling" guidelines. Same with some of the PRSI threads.
Still, in the end it's all just pixels in here, and we can find a guy down the end of a real bar or at our own kitchen table (or hosting on cable TV with an audience of millions) who's going to say the same thing as some troller's post, and who will get the same shrugs or the same outraged "hold my beer" sorts of response.
The nice thing about cyberspace is that no one really owns it and no one hangs out in all of it at all times. Change the channel once in awhile. It's the same as blocking. When you come back, a different show is on. Maybe you'll like it.
Obligatory though a bit late:How about we get the numbers on what members are ignored the most and have them banned.
Honestly though, I wish I could ban people IRL. Unfortunately that's not legal. Just learn to coexist with others. I know a novel thought.
I am more amused at why some of the more negative posters hang around - both on PRSI but especially the other forums. Why be angry all the time??
Yes, I find this mindset extraordinary, too.
In real life, granted, one can (eventually) exclude people from one's life, but that is a nuclear option in personal relationships, and usually not at all possible in professional settings.
However, the online environment seems to have encouraged the development of a sort of mindset where any exposure to alternative or disagreeable (or disagreed with) views encourages a response of total exclusion.
Mind you, it also seems to facilitate a more intemperate expression of such views than might be found in a real life setting, something which many many may find exhausting.
Great posts.
Obligatory though a bit late:
I am more amused at why some of the more negative posters hang around - both on PRSI but especially the other forums. Why be angry all the time??
I simply wonder where those who are angry all of the time get the energy.
Anger requires a lot of energy, and to maintain it in a steady state requires even more.
Candidly, I'm envious at their energy if somewhat bewildered at their state of sustained rage.
Oh, stop, you're going to make me blush.
Oh, stop, you're going to make me blush.
Are you trying to tell me that you are one of these wholesomely effervescent people, fizzing with life force, bursting with energy?
Or, are you one of those who are fuelled by anger - the sort of individual (and this tendency seems to be found more usually among the male of the species) who goes through life spoiling for fights and who would pick a fight with a chair in an otherwise empty room?
Basically, the kind of individuals who like to shout at people, shop assistants, waiting staff, women, petrol station attendants, junior staff anywhere, bank tellers, probably (female, but sometimes, male, if sensitive and decent) family members as well.....
Probably some are not actually angry. But some are, or seem to be. The human brain is most interested in just one thing, keeping itself and so its host, the human body, supplied with enough critical elements of life to maintain functionality. So... that means focusing on energy efficiency. That in turn means to the brain stem an effort to put and keep on autopilot as many of our variable functions as seems possible. That means figuring out what's reliably stable enough to relegate to autopilot...
See where I'm going here? Yeah. If we're usually angry then that's a candidate for ending up on autopilot. But once it's on autopilot we don't have to manage the feeling or even acknowledge it really, it's just there and the brain has a vested interest in keeping it there so whatever got us there to begin with gets nurtured including conscious attention to irritants, use of assistive chemicals and internal manufacture of the right hormones...
Sure all that involves energy expenditure, but the brain stem has figured out they're less expensive than fueling conscious attention to the question of "Is it time to be angry yet? How about now? How about in one more minute...? How about if that guy says Tim Cook is a great CEO one more time?" The thing is, being on autopilot costs us some of our humanity. If we're angry on autopilot then who has time for joy? Who even remembers what joy is all about? Is joy less expensive for a human being to experience than anger? Brain doesn't care. Brain is busy producing anger on autopilot because it feels pretty cheap.
One of the ways I try to stave off any sort of "on autopilot" emotional status is through meditation. Another is reading poetry, a form of expression that doesn't automatically set my conscious brain to pondering "is this fake news or the real deal??" but rather just invites me to connect to shared human feelings. I find poetry as refreshing as meditation sometimes, regardless of whether the feelings I encounter are jubilant or depressed or anywhere along the scale of human emotion.
An offshoot of either meditation or poetry reading --for me anyway-- seems to be a renewed appreciation of anyone else's expression of genuine human feeling. I find that useful when reading political opinions, whether encountered in person or through media outlets or "social media" sites. I might not feel the same way as someone else does about something, but I think a lot of us can sense on-autopilot emotion from a mile away, mostly because of our own efforts to avoid that trap. When anger or joy is real, that light shines through.
In general, tech-oriented sites pitch to our conscious brain: we're often in here to find precise answers to tech questions or figure out whether this or that model of some gear better suits our needs.
But... we're human, so we engage in sidebars nonetheless, and those sidebars usually involve feelings, whether manufactured or genuine. And of course sidebars can have a tendency to take over a thread or even a subforum if there's not some other outlet.
So I like that in the community-oriented subforums on MacRumors, it's not only in PRSI that the invitation to take a break and share opinions on other than tech gear is still offered. Sometimes "anger" is just an overlay on loneliness. I'd rather a lonely person spend some time taking cybershots at another person's opinion of some iPod or a political position than sit around stewing with unrecognized and eventually unrecognizable feelings. The spiral down from chaotic feelings to feeling nothing at all is pretty dangerous. But in here there's always the chance that a lonely person will end up taking loneliness and its overlaid anger off autopilot in favor of engaging in something healthier and more fun in the real world.
We can't know how many people have dropped in on the photo galleries here (in between taking potshots at someone else's favorite smartphone or their politics in PRSI?) and ended up venturing into photography themselves, or at least shifting gears for a few minutes. Taking our brains off autopilot is a worthy goal for ourselves and for a site like MacRumors as well. My vote goes to keeping all the subforums we have now.
I think his post was somewhat of a pun reflecting his username.
At least that's the way I took it
.
So that was a yes there.
Yes, I read that as an affirmative, as well.
I admit to being one that has been ignored and blocked from contacting a user on here.. I found that out, because I felt the need to right the wrongs of my doings.
I couldn’t send off the apology because after I was finished writing said apology, the personal messages page kindly informed me that I could not contact this individual because I was blocked from contacting said individual.
However, I felt the pain of being ignored - there was nothing I could do to remedy the situation.
I couldn’t send off the apology because after I was finished writing said apology, the personal messages page kindly informed me that I could not contact this individual because I was blocked from contacting said individual.
However, I felt the pain of being ignored - there was nothing I could do to remedy the situation.
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Discourse is extremely ugly and plain. I prefer this classic forum layout.
I'm a member of another forum that uses Discourse and it's ok I guess. I much prefer Xenforo that we use here. It's far better IMO.